Sleeping Giants/Amazon/Breitbart

This is the first I've heard of it. Doesn't both me in the slightest because at the end of the day, Amazon is still the biggest retailer. It just is.

Although I do wish them luck in getting Breitbart blocked.

Ethical dilemma...

Not really. Big corporations are gonna corporate, at the end of the day. This involves doing things that I disagree with.

If I stopped doing business with Amazon they probably wouldn't notice, whereas I'd lose about 15-25% of my income for the year. My kid's preschool needs paid, my mortgage hits once a month, and I kind of like eating out every now and then.

Furthermore, Amazon's done enough ethical things that I tend to shrug at the minor stuff, like ads on Breitbart.

There are many companies out there worse than Amazon, doing worse things, that I have no compunctions about using them to make a profit. It's not like we've signed anything permanently binding, anyway. If they cross the pale I can yank my stuff and go to Apple... uh-oh, waitaminute, don't they have Asian sweatshops?

Well maybe Barnes and Noble... whoops, wait, didn't they get sued for transgender discrimination a couple of years back?

Surely Kobo... wait, no, there's some antitrust stuff they got hit with a little while ago.

Well. In the end ain't none of us saints. I reckon I can let this business with Breitbart shake itself out. Either Amazon will pull their ads or they won't, no reason to starve my family over someone else's crusade.

davidjgalloway said:

That's why in these parts, corporations are considered evil BY NATURE, and if what they're doing isn't sneaky, unethical, or plain criminal, it's only because we haven't unearthed the true scandal yet. (Which, given the number of times a scandal is uncovered, makes this an often attractive viewpoint.) And, I should add, no benevolent acts ever cancel out the negatives.

Click to expand...

That's kind of harsh. If there's no forgiveness or redemption, there's no reason to try to make people like your neighbors happy. If one mistake is all it takes to end up judged as evil forever, then where's the incentive to try to make them think better? It's double or nothing, so once you've lost you might as well go all in.

davidjgalloway said:

I do think there is a fundamental difference between choosing not to buy from Amazon as a consumer and refusing to publish with them. As you say, this is a business question for authors. (I'm surprised, though, that it would only be 15-25% loss--I assumed it would be much, much, more.)

Click to expand...

While my writing profits are relatively good, I have a really good day job that I've been working nine to five 40 hours a week for the last 16+ years. So yeah, it's only 15-25 percent, rough estimate. If you want numbers I can message them to you. Don't want people thinking I'm bragging.

davidjgalloway said:

The odd thing about this, as I see it, is that Amazon's size and influence means that it likely has very little to lose from removing ads on Breitbart--I can't see that affecting its revenue stream hardly at all--but the opposite is likely not true. So if Amazon can, with little loss, make an ethical statement that some people will get excited about, what's holding them back? (Also, last I checked, they haven't made any response at all, an odd choice.)

Click to expand...

Well, you said it yourself, up there. The people who would be pleased by the withdrawal of the ads aren't the forgiving sorts. What's the incentive to do this?

Also, it's pressure. This is a pressure tactic, so naturally it's going to meet some resistance. They're probably ignoring it and hoping it goes away.

Or like me, most of them probably haven't heard of it before now.