this post was submitted on 22 Oct 2023
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Technology
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Umm... Only 13%?
I thought it would have been more...
Actually it makes sense. Look around and check how many people actually take action even if it's inconvenient. Almost no one. For example Amazon and Uber are bad for society in ways that most people understand and are aware of (monopoly, gig economy, killing small businesses, exploiting workers) but what % of society actively avoid them? 5%? Less? So a lot of people will complain that Twitter under Elon is big source of hate speech and misinformation but vast majority will not do anything about it. Probably 5% left for this reason and the rest got annoyed with technical glitches and other changes. Most sheeple will keep visiting.
Amazon is a tough one. Definitely a ton of problems but online shopping in general is very useful for a lot of people. Demanding proper treatment of workers and supporting smaller businesses instead of feeding the monopoly is important and a good start. Giving up Amazon/online shopping would mean having much less access to products for a lot of people. Online shopping displaced catalog shopping, which has been around since Sears catalog days, and is unlikely to go away.
There's plenty of other online shops. I avoid amazon and can get 99% of products from other stores. I would survive without getting the other 1%. People use amazon to save 15 minutes it would take them to find stuff in other places. They know the real cost of those 15 minutes saved but they don't care.
I think you're understating what Amazon adds to the online shopping experience. It's not simply a matter of lazily saving a few minutes. But as long as you're not arguing against online shopping altogether, which your original comment might suggest, I'm inclined to agree that not feeding the monopoly is probably the right thing to do. Of course, similar things could be said for any number of large corporations (Verizon, Comcast, Home Depot to name just a few). Is it people blatantly not caring or something more complex and insidious?