Is Amazon the reader's friend?

At the end of the day, the reader is a person, and Amazon strives to capture every data point about your life, including biometrics, in order to sell you more crap. Even if Amazon does some good stuff for readers, the reader is still a human who deserves the right to privacy. They shouldn't be scared that their neighbor's Ring doorbell is going to get ICE sent after them.

Amazon is not looking to make friends. It is an automated and unintelligent machine. It makes the most of the technology that is available , is constantly examining the market and looking for best ways to exploit it. The internet has bought about a number of big changes. Amazon did not invent the internet , but it was quick off the blocks and has grown to a dominate position . It has happened with Google and Microsoft. In the past companies like Kodak , Polaroid and General Motors, held dominant positions until the end . Alternatives are always being developed, eventually the mighty fall.

People have been recommending Netflix's The Social Dilemma, which is a documentary-drama hybrid exploring the impact of social media. I haven't watched it yet, but I plan to. I believe it focuses more on Google, FB, Twitter etc., but Amazon, which uses some of the same techniques to "pinpoint" people, is certainly a part of this landscape.

It is so hard not to use Amazon, as they have made themselves so expansive and fast I can find almost anything I need there and get it delivered quickly. Covid has only made this stronger when you can get everything from dog food to web cams (and oh yes, books) there. But they are not a great place to work (and that's putting it mildly). Aside from the brutal pace they are expected to keep up, thousands of their workers have fallen ill with Covid, and when people are injured on the job at Amazon, the on-site medical care they provide is often inadequate!

But sometimes Amazon is the only place I can get what I need when I need it these days (like the brand of dog food my dogs seem to do best with and is not carried at chewy.com or at my local Petsmart). So another modern-day tragedy of the commons, where we do what is good for us individually to our collective detriment.

I'm reasonably okay with a shop knowing things about me to sell me more of their crap so long as the data stays within that scope. But it tends to escape when it becomes a saleable commodity in it's own right