I haven’t heard about any impact last Fridays boycott had. Anyone got any numbers or info at all on it? FTR I did my part.
The problem with boycotts like this, is they do essentially nothing… A single day, week, or even a full month of boycotts can only be successful if a critical mass of people do it at once. And frankly, they’re not going to get that.
The people most likely to boycott Amazon and the like are people whom already don’t purchase things from Amazon, or lightly do it. Amazon if fine with that, because eventually people go back to buying. So what, they’re gonna post one bad quarter? Small price to pay for doing business.
You can’t boycott evil businesses. You have to stop using them entirely. Forever. And most people simply aren’t willing to.
One day boycotts will never have any impact. A lot of their money comes from prime. Prime cancelling is what they care about.
Amazon is just so convenient, it’s hard to say no. If I need new socks, I can press one button and somebody brings it to my front door in a couple hours at a cheap price. Alternative? Order them somewhere else online and get them in a week or drive 20 minutes, deal with parking + crowds to get them a couple dollars more expensive.
It’s a crap situation but I understand how Amazon got so big.
I said in another comment yesterday that Amazon is the most affordable option in my high COL area and provides the most variety. Especially groceries when I don’t have time to go grocery shopping. Not to mention, I get 5% cash back on my Amazon credit card. With inflation how it is, I’m not giving it up, and I do not feel bad for it.
Amazon boycott March 7th through forever. There’s no need to give them an end date. Our action is completely toothless when we literally spell out for them exactly when we’ll come crawling back start giving them money again.
Boycott March 7th-14th. Amazon makes record sales on March 15th. Great job. High fives all around. That will show them. /s
I have been boycotting them for the last 7 years. I’ll gladly participate with this one for: indefinitely
Canceled Prime weeks ago and done with Amazon. Unsubscribed to all US websites. We always prefered to buy locally, but would occasionally jump the fence. No more jumping. If it’s not either local, made in Canada, or Product of Canada, we’re doing without.
Boycotts like this do nothing because the people most willing to “participate” are people who already don’t purchase from Amazon. Even if you were able to get a critical mass of people to participate for even 3 months. So what? Amazon will post 1 bad quarter and then things go back to business as usual. Nothing happens. They don’t even really lose any money. At least none out of pocket, of which they have plenty for things such as this.
Amazon is a subscription model. You want to hurt them, then hurt their subscriptions. Don’t boycott them, cancel Prime.
I used to buy a ton of Amazon stuff. Mostly art supplies, pet supplies, clothes, novelties I didn’t need.
One day, I was browsing Reddit and I was like-- “what is this boycott thing all about?” and then I started by not ordering for one whole day!
Then one whole week!
Then one whole month!
Anyway, I ended up cancelling my Prime subscription, deleting my Amazon account completely, and cancelling my Prime Store credit card.
Then at work, for Valentine’s Day, we each received a $200 dollar Amazon gift card as an employee appreciation gift.
I spoke up and said that I would prefer to receive cash or nothing at all because my values did not align with Amazon-- which caused many of my coworkers to decline theirs as well.
It was so perplexing to leadership, that they decided that going forward they are just going to give us a $200 cash bonus on our paychecks
So anyways, that’s the impact one of these “pointless” boycott posts had on me.
So anyways, that’s the impact one of these “pointless” boycott posts had on me.
I didn’t say they were pointless. I say they don’t do anything. What does do something is this;
I ended up cancelling my Prime subscription
That’s it. You “buying a ton” on amazon is small peanuts in the grand scheme. Even if you buy a lot amazon is only making a percentage of whatever you spend. Something like 30%. So even if you spend $10k in a year, they make $3,000 net and have to deduct for the cost of getting those items to you. When all the financials are worked out, it’s next to nothing.
The price of their subscription service is their e-penis. They get to say “500 million people pay for Amazon Prime!” @ $139/yr is $69.5 billion. You can buy nothing and they can still survive… But if you stop paying for Prime they lose their e-penis, which affects their stock price, which loses them bargaining rights with their suppliers and ultimately can affect the price of Prime itself.
It’s the surest way to kill them.
There are things only sold on Amazon because that’s where the global mass market is. Even though Amazon does not have a site for every individual country, which other shopping website deliveries to almost every single country? If you want to replace Amazon, spend $5 billion to develop a competitor.
Just stop using them entirely. Delete your account. It’s not that hard.
I completely ditched amazon - private and for my company. there are so many other options, slightly less convenient admittedly, but also slightly cheaper. works for me!
Lol, this is the first one that I’m mildly inconvenienced by participating in. Wheel of Time S3 comes out somewhere in there doesn’t it?
I can wait.
Fuck that show. Fuck the Halo show. Fuck each and every company that just buys a name and thus a built-in fan base and mutilates the original IP beyond recognition.
Just pirate it.
Arrr matey. Its the breakdown of society ‘if the people running society aren’t following the rules, why should I?’ especially a giant corporation, and especially a giant corporation that sides with Trump. So yes, pirate it. Fuck 'em.
The thing is, I really don’t want them to cancel it. I’ve been signing up for it and then cancelling my subscription when it’s finished, and then pirating it anyway. I just want them to see it as valuable, so they don’t try to squeeze 14 books worth of content into one shitty finale because it’s not making them money.
Yes, I can see how you might not want to boycott a company if you’re worried about them not making money because of it.
Oh please, that’s not even close to what I said. I just don’t want them to cancel a show I like and you’re all acting like I’m swinging from Bezos’ dick. You’re all rabid.
The world is on fire and you’re worried about your favorite TV show? Come on dude. These boycotts will not work if we can’t even sacrifice the bare minimum. And yes, a TV show is the bare minimum.
No, you come on. You’re are misrepresenting what I actually said. If you actually read my post, you’ll see that I plan to participate in the boycott regardless. I made a throwaway comment about how it would be “mildly inconvenient” that I’d miss the opening, but also that I would do it regardless.
So what, I’m not even allowed to acknowledge that Prime has stuff I’m interested in? I have to boycott it, and deny that it holds any value whatsoever?
That’s bullshit. It’s entirely possible to both acknowledge that there are decent Amazon produced shows AND think that the company is evil as fuck and want to boycott them.
And here you’ve encountered first hand why these protests don’t work.
that is the wrong mindset for a boycott. no amazon period from now until forever. if shows go under so much the better. take your show business elsewhere.
It’s* time to disrupt
That fuck… I was so confused with the title for a second.
Practice makes perfect, but this better viewed as steps to cutting them out of our lives and not just nudging them to stop supporting facism, destroying workers and our planet.
The need us. We don’t need them.
sounds easy considering I haven’t bought anything from Amazon in years
You and me both my friend. ✊
Me too. I’m from europe and it wasn’t a big deal for me to avoid Amazon.
Right? One week of not buying things from Amazon is fucking nothing. They’ve proven over and over that they’re evil and should be boycotted. Do people seriously buy something every week from Amazon? That’s like addiction shit.
Just stop buying from Amazon. I reached that tipping point like twelve horrific things ago. If you’re still using it, you’re just kind of a bad person with zero self control.
Listen, I can’t just not use Amazon. Where else am I going to get my SYPHILICHODE nail trimmers and LEAKCROTCH underwear?
You can’t just find horrible garbage to buy ANYWHERE, you gotta buy it on Amazon.
I can live without it for a week, but man, these underwear don’t last too long so I gotta keep buying more!
(/s in case this was not sufficiently clear, but this is the ultimate problem with all these pointless little internet symbolic gestures: nobody will notice, remember, or care about them since they’re only going to be a very minor stoppage in buying things, which everyone ends up buying ANYWAYS after the week is over.)
I’ve been able to successfully degoogle, and recently came to terms that I need to deamazon too. It’s going to take quite a while. I’m a prime subscriber and use AWS.
I’m looking into Barnes and Nobel for future book purchases. I recently did a larger purchase online directly from the vendor instead of purchasing through Amazon. I plan to do more of that.
What’s been frustrating has been the small things. I needed a pill splitter, so I stopped at Walmart on the way home from work, dealt with some crowd and retraced my steps around the pharmacy a few times before I found it, then had to deal with self checkout. This would have been quicker and wasted less of my time to use Amazon. That’s going to be the hardest kind of benefit to give up.
AWS I’ll probably start migrating this summer. I’m planning to switch to Backblaze for cloud storage. I still need to look into an alternative registrar, and ideally very cheap static web hosting. I also need to find providers that have good ansible support since I use that for all my local and remote configuration.
It took years for me to get off Google. I worry it’s going to take even longer to give up Amazon, but yeah it’s time.
Amazon bought Barnes&Noble ages ago; buying from them at all is still benefiting Amazon — but there are lots of great alternatives online for books (physical and ebook formats), as well as visiting your local used book stores. I use Amazon for keyword searches basically just so I can maximize the number of results I get elsewhere. Getting off of major sites like Amazon, Walmart, Target, etc. also puts you back in touch with the actual internet rather than the retail echo chamber we’re accustomed to.
I get way better deals that way as well, and pay vendors directly rather than through a middleman like Amazon.
I appreciate your feedback. Moving more local is definitely a goal. I buy a lot of specialized books which I can’t find at small bookshops so I tend to gravitate to larger companies.
All that being said, I’m going to downvote your comment because I can find no credible sources that supports your claim that Amazon owns Barnes & Nobel. I’d be happy to change my mind if you provide sources, but I dislike misinformation.
Totally valid tbh — I just looked it up and it looks like I conflated being outperformed with being acquired so that’s on me lol — I’d delete my comment but I like the other responses to it so I’ll just eat being wrong in public hahaha
Hey I’m participating for a few years now and I didn’t even know it.
Remember to send them an email and let them know you’re boycotting them. They don’t have to know how long you’ve been doing it.
