[HN Gopher] Amazon ends charity donation program AmazonSmile
___________________________________________________________________
Amazon ends charity donation program AmazonSmile
Author : m-watson
Score : 273 points
Date : 2023-01-19 17:02 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (techcrunch.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (techcrunch.com)
| ryandvm wrote:
| Again?
| wardedVibe wrote:
| This happened before?
| tech234a wrote:
| Previously posted 18 hours ago:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34435338
| KingLancelot wrote:
| [dead]
| ja3k wrote:
| To be honest I hated the nags. Little pop ups on amazon.com and
| occasional e-mails that didn't even have unsubscribe links. If
| you want to donate to charity great, but as your customer I don't
| want to hear about it.
| meow_mix wrote:
| Smiling was a low interest rate phenomenon
| steveBK123 wrote:
| yup low cost of capital allowed low margins & high multiples ..
|
| now we are seeing lower multiples and attempts to transition to
| higher margins
| perlgeek wrote:
| > "our ability to have an impact was often spread too thin"
|
| If that's the supposed reason, I call bullshit. Could've just
| reduced the number of charities.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| And seriously, why should that matter; it's their customers who
| are selecting the charities, not Amazon.
| smcin wrote:
| Because no PR opportunity for Amazon. But I agree, it's a
| feeble dishonest excuse. Better to simply say "Because we're
| cutting costs", instead of weeping how it failed to set the
| world on fire with glowing PR for their munificence.
|
| Personally I try hard to avoid sending my business to Amazon
| whenever there's an alternative, and this was one of the good
| things about them.
| philwelch wrote:
| Even worse, an anti-PR opportunity: "look at how much money
| Amazon donates to bad guys!"
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| > Personally I try hard to avoid sending my business to
| Amazon whenever there's an alternative, and this was one of
| the good things about them.
|
| same
| rideontime wrote:
| As a customer, I don't care if their overall impact is spread
| thin, it's my money going to a charity I chose.
| jaywalk wrote:
| Technically it's Amazon's money, not yours. You can't write
| the donations off on your taxes, for example.
| satvikpendem wrote:
| Exactly. If you want to donate, do it first-hand rather
| than second-hand via another organization, in order to be
| more tax-effective.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| Which charities should be remain?
| perlgeek wrote:
| You can select which charity to support on smile.amazon.de at
| least. So pick the top 10% or 5% or whatever charities that
| were supported by the most customers.
| __derek__ wrote:
| Yes, I'm sure all the charities below that line would
| respect the decision and not ask their donors to raise a
| stink to keep them in the program.
| gharman wrote:
| Funny thing is I'd bet the small amount trickling in to the
| long tail charities is more impactful to them than a larger
| amount to the big mega-charities.
|
| I run one of those long tails and Amazon Smile was just
| right to cover running costs for hosting, bank fees, etc.
| bombcar wrote:
| Honestly I'm surprised they're doing this; something must
| have bit them on the paperwork side, because $100-$200
| for each tiny charity (think local dog shelter, local
| church, etc; even if they're 'branded' they're often
| independent charities) was a cheap advertisement for
| Amazon. Now that's over.
| fakedang wrote:
| Because it came under the field of vision of some dumbass
| MBA who decided that saving a few millions would be worth
| more and a sizeable contribution to their end of year
| bonus figure.
|
| Source: I'm a dumbass MBA admittee.
| vineyardmike wrote:
| > Source: I'm a dumbass MBA admittee.
|
| Ya sure this is what you learn in school?
|
| > a sizeable contribution to their end of year bonus
| figure
|
| Highly doubt they're getting bonuses at Amazon.
| fakedang wrote:
| I don't know, just received the offer last month.
|
| Bonus or not, some line item adjustments do put you in
| line for promotions.
| arbitrage wrote:
| > Source: I'm a dumbass MBA admittee.
|
| Is the money that good?
| fakedang wrote:
| I don't know. Just received the offer last month.
| midasuni wrote:
| Only if you cause untold misery to millions of charities
| WorldMaker wrote:
| One of the best reasons to use Amazon Smile was to reduce
| and launder affiliate links and ad spam. I can't help but
| wonder if the real reason they are doing this is because
| of affiliates and/or advertisers.
|
| (As someone paranoid of targeted advertising, but who
| doesn't mind normal advertising, the death of Amazon
| Smile was the final push I needed to move all my Amazon
| tabs into their own Firefox Container.)
| smcin wrote:
| > reduce and launder affiliate links and ad spam
|
| Can you explain that?
| WorldMaker wrote:
| Sure:
|
| Amazon started its history with a deep affiliate system
| whereby "anyone" (capable of creating an affiliate
| account) could create affiliate marked links to get a
| small profit share on items sold, plus marketing reports
| and other information (which only grew more detailed over
| time). Because of that, affiliate links are _everywhere_
| on the web. Advertising companies themselves also use
| them both to get an extra cut on the advertised item and
| also to get those juicy marketing reports for ad spam.
|
| Originally affiliate marks in URLs were easy to spot,
| they were just query parameters (after the ?) and
| removing all query parameters removed affiliate info from
| Amazon links. (There are still ancient ones out there
| like that.) After a while, and I don't know when the
| transition date was, these started to get embeded
| sometimes "steganographically" in other parts of the URL.
|
| At one point, as a blogger with bloated ideas of my own
| influence I set up an affiliate account for myself. For a
| few years after that, I liked to use Amazon in "Affiliate
| mode" where it had an extra toolbar at the top that would
| let me at least take any link I was looking at and
| replace any affiliate marks with my own. I could use that
| to stop sending marketing info to links that I had
| followed (and sometimes make a couple pennies back on
| purchases, like one of the world's dumbest credit card
| rewards systems).
|
| The way Amazon Smile operated is that it basically
| earmarked the money that _would_ have gone to an
| affiliate for the charity of your choice. (I wouldn 't be
| surprised if Smile had just been implemented as a pseudo-
| affiliate, which also adds to other conspiracy thinking
| that Smile might not have been that hard to maintain from
| an implementation standpoint.) Because the charity was
| set in your user preferences there's no use for affiliate
| marks in URLs, so none of the smile.amazon.com URLs have
| affiliate marks _at all_ because they don 't need them.
|
| So the easiest way to take any www.amazon.com URL you
| could find in the wild and make sure it didn't have any
| affiliate marks and wouldn't send data or cash back to an
| affiliate was to simply replace www with smile and let
| Amazon's own backend refresh the URL without affiliate
| marks. This was useful for cleaning your own browsing
| histories of marketing data and also for making sure that
| if you were forwarding links on to friends and loved ones
| they also weren't accidentally sending tracking data back
| to some affiliate with no real need to know.
| fallinghawks wrote:
| They could increase the impact by giving a larger percent of
| the sale. Amazon sends an email every so often telling you how
| much you've "donated" via Smile, and I'm always surprised how
| sadly small that number is. I've been in the program for many
| years and I buy a lot of shit from them.
| sakisv wrote:
| Or, better yet, go from 0.5% to 0.6% or 1%.
| darth_avocado wrote:
| Unpopular opinion, but charities are like carbon credits. Most
| of the money goes into people's pockets and very less
| percentage of the donations actually make it towards helping
| the cause they run on. Very few legitimately use the money in
| the way we expect it to be used. So I'm okay with them losing
| $400M.
| smcin wrote:
| Use CharityNavigator.org or GuideStar to verify charities'
| overhead %s, at least in the US! The information is only a
| click away.
|
| There are good charities that do spend 70-99% of their
| revenues on their cause. And there are high-profile charities
| that don't.
| xyzelement wrote:
| I upvoted your unpopular opinion but it doesn't have to be
| that way.
|
| You can be involved in the community and get to know local
| organizations and how they run, then give to them with more
| certainty.
|
| In our case, the bulk of our charitable donations goes to
| organizations we know first hand, which are mainly local. Eg:
| helping the local preschool, our houses of worship, etc. The
| most 'remote' org we give to is the Israeli ambulance corps,
| but we still "know" them in the sense that my wife had been a
| volunteer EMT there a long time ago.
|
| Point being that - there's some positive synergy between your
| physical community involvement and your "insight" into how
| organizations in your community function, and a sense of how
| the money is spent.
|
| The fact that one of these orgs got something like $400 via
| Amazon Smile from us last year is nice although let's be real
| - nobody is going to stop using Amazon because of this
| change.
| minsc_and_boo wrote:
| You can vet your own charities (i.e. checking their 990's to
| see who gets paid what) and make decisions from there.
|
| Just because the charity sausage gets made in ways that isn't
| always appealing doesn't mean there aren't charities that
| have impact.
| llanowarelves wrote:
| That's truest of the big ones, imo. "Power corrupts" etc.,
| even when that power is a non-profit. I upvoted you since the
| sentiment is correct.
|
| The nice thing about AmazonSmile is that you could pick from
| the small ones you know well and trust.
|
| Now, Amazon will donate to the biggest ones without our
| choice, which is definitely worse.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| >Now, Amazon will donate to the biggest ones without our
| choice, which is definitely worse.
|
| Worse, Amazon has set up their own charities to donate to.
| widowlark wrote:
| not based on every other statement in this thread.
|
| do you have evidence of this assertion?
| AdamH12113 wrote:
| I like the idea behind Amazon Smile but the execution is a bit
| underwhelming. I've spent tens of thousands of dollars at Amazon
| since joining Amazon Prime, but I've only generated $98.66 in
| donations -- a fraction of a percent. That's worse than just
| rounding up the price to the nearest dollar. What's the point? I
| get that Amazon's retail profit margins are terrible, but if
| they're only going to donate a totally insignificant percentage
| of their revenue, they shouldn't get any credit for it.
| Apparently Amazon came to the same conclusion.
|
| If you want to see how much your Amazon Smile account has
| contributed, there's a web page:
| https://smile.amazon.com/charity/my-impact
| rcme wrote:
| I don't understand all the people "calling bullshit" on the
| reason Amazon provided. Of course Amazon's reason is bullshit.
| Amazon knows their reason is bullshit. Amazon knows that you know
| the reason is bullshit. It's called saving face.
| nso95 wrote:
| I wonder if they laid the team off
| gregschlom wrote:
| That's what the article says. Ending the program allows them to
| save the 0.5% they would have donated and lay off the team that
| supported the program.
| antiterra wrote:
| This seems incredibly poorly done from a PR perspective and
| there's no way to make this headline read well for them. Why not
| create and announce they're moving to something like "Amazon
| GiveBack" that gives some sliders to users to vote on the
| allocation?
|
| Sure, people could still call them out on how it's a reduction of
| what they're donating, but there's a much higher chance the
| headline reads well for them.
|
| As it is, the underlying symbolic implication is that Amazon is
| getting rid of its smile and instead.. frowning?
| Spivak wrote:
| I would actually kinda love that in a let's just ride the wave
| of dystopia kinda way.
|
| > Announcing "Amazon Frown": Every year we will donate $10
| million dollars each to <worst people imaginable> but you can
| stop us. Select your most hated group and 1% of your purchase
| amount will be reduced from the donation.
| MrLeap wrote:
| This is a beautiful suggestion that would be guaranteed to
| drive engagement.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| Meanwhile, Amazon _net profits_ in Q3 2022 were just shy of $3B.
| aeternum wrote:
| But they lost it all by betting on Rivian
|
| https://twitter.com/EconomyApp/status/1578475690772508672/ph...
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| No, not really. Equity loss is unrealized loss -- it's just
| on paper because the stock price is down. If Rivian's share
| price goes back up, that loss becomes a gain.
|
| Whereas the $3B net profit is real money they can put into
| their coffers (or share with shareholders).
|
| Edit: now if Rivian goes bankrupt and delists, then yes, at
| that point Amazon does lose however many $Bs they invested
| which they will put as a write-off.
| dbg31415 wrote:
| It's weird that corporations have philanthropic arms, isn't it?
| tpmoney wrote:
| Why? Corporations are made up of people, and people have causes
| they want to be charitable towards. If you're going to be
| bringing in millions of dollars anyway, why not pay some of
| that out to causes you believe in.
|
| It's only weird if you assume all corporations should be amoral
| money exchange systems where by money is exchanged for labor
| and capital which in turn is exchanged for more money
| pasquinelli wrote:
| > Corporations are made up of people, and people have causes
| they want to be charitable towards.
|
| almost none of the people that make up a corporation are free
| to decide where money goes. the few people that do take the
| money out, the board of directors or whatever, could just
| donate their own money to whatever charity.
| criddell wrote:
| Most of the corporations in the US are pretty small. When a
| local plumbing company in your community sponsors a
| neighborhood little league team, there probably isn't much
| discussion on that company's board of directors about the
| donation.
|
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/487741/number-of-
| firms-i...
| philwelch wrote:
| > It's only weird if you assume all corporations should be
| amoral money exchange systems where by money is exchanged for
| labor and capital which in turn is exchanged for more money
|
| What you're missing is the final step in the chain, which is
| the part where profits are distributed to shareholders. If
| I'm one of those shareholders, I might very well take a large
| chunk of those dividends and donate the money to charity. But
| instead of paying me more of those dividends to donate to
| _my_ preferred cause, the company's management has decided
| that _they_ should be the ones donating my money to _their_
| preferred cause.
|
| Aside from that, it's just a failure of specialization.
| Philanthropy is hard, making money is hard, and building a
| single organization that does a good job at either of them is
| even harder. I'd rather have corporations that focused on
| doing a really good job at whatever they did and non-profits
| that do whatever they do as efficiently as possible, rather
| than a corporation trying to do both.
| fwungy wrote:
| A lot of what NGOs, foundations, and other philanthropic
| organizations do is seek to mold things in some way that is
| beneficial to the founders with tax advantaged money.
|
| Rich people don't get rich by giving their money away randomly.
| For example, if Bill Gates didn't start the Gates Foundation
| his money would have been highly taxed, and he would have lost
| control of it. By starting the Gates Foundation he keeps
| control of that money, and he can use the foundation to steer
| policy in ways that are beneficial to him.
| babyshake wrote:
| It's mostly just tax avoidance, right?
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| How so? Taxable income is pretty much always better than 0
| income
| waynesonfire wrote:
| or a talking point. government and business work very closely
| together and when these two negotiate, the government likes
| to see philanthropy.
| tpmoney wrote:
| Only in the sense that money that would have been taxed as
| income was instead paid to charities. Simplified example,
| they took in $200 and paid $50 of that to a charity. At 10%
| they paid $15 in taxes instead of $20. If you think charities
| are overall a net positive (and especially if you think
| they're more efficient at getting money to the right places
| than the government) a loss of $5 in government revenue for
| $50 into charities seems like a good deal
| IgorPartola wrote:
| The way I understand it is that Amazon offers an affiliate
| fee to affiliates. When you don't go through an affiliate
| they get to keep the small percentage. Smile was basically
| Amazon's own affiliate program that paid out to NGOs. It did
| reduce their tax liability but it's not like it's free money.
| Assuming a corporate rate of 15%, when Amazon pays a charity
| $100, they save $15 on taxes. That mean they spent $85, so
| not exactly tax avoidance unless the charity they donate to
| is also owned by Amazon or some such.
| FearlessNebula wrote:
| It's just whitewashing
| Symmetry wrote:
| If they can get people buying stuff on Amazon to type the URL
| into their browser instead of searching for "Amazon" in google
| and clicking the add that pops up they probably save more money
| than it costs them.
| bastardoperator wrote:
| I was told corporations are people, so no.. not really.
| criddell wrote:
| Not really. Most charities are themselves corporations.
| vkou wrote:
| No weirder than having marketing arms.
| karaterobot wrote:
| Never struck me as weird. Trying to think of why you find it to
| be so. Is it because it theoretically distracts them from
| pursuing their profit motive with a "total war" mentality? I
| don't believe that's actually true (either that they have that
| mentality or that charity is a net loss for them).
| JaggedJax wrote:
| With the caveat being I know nothing about them, is a service
| like Cultivate (https://www.wecultivate.us) a good alternative?
| Are there any others?
|
| I went searching around for options after this change and the
| things I like seeing about Cultivate is that it both tells me
| about options to purchase an item on a site that is NOT Amazon,
| as well as keeping the donation feature.
| 56friends wrote:
| I would rather donate $10 to my local charity monthly than have
| one more company track my entire browsing history.
| JaggedJax wrote:
| Good point. The main thing I was looking for was something to
| recommend me alternatives to Amazon when looking at a
| product.
| 56friends wrote:
| Makes sense! The only way I personally found to deal with
| this is check different websites manually. It's either that
| or some extension that can automate this process in return
| for all my data.
| Willish42 wrote:
| I don't particularly like using Amazon but the Smile program was
| the thing to sway me towards using it when convenient. I'm sure
| convenience alone will win them plenty but for my personal use
| this is a huge disappointment. I am almost certain the .5% they
| were giving away from my purchases/would save from this change
| will be less than the profit from products I will no longer buy
| from Amazon.
|
| I would assume this is the case for many users and agree this is
| likely a short-sighted change. Scary indication of things to come
| as money policy keeps making companies more frugal.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Never ended up using this thing. Always had to switch URLs.
| Couldn't care less honestly.
|
| Despite ordering tens of thousands of dollars off the place, I
| have $1.20 given to some random water charity.
| gdelfino01 wrote:
| This may have a bigger impact than they think. Is Amazon good for
| the world? For some, the answer is no but still buy at Amazon as
| any sins are compensated by the the small donation to a NGO of
| choice.
| rcme wrote:
| I don't think the sins of Amazon are any worse than most other
| major U.S. retailers.
| Retric wrote:
| There warehouses are significantly worse than average in
| terms of injuries per hour. They also frequently sell
| fraudulent items directly harming consumers.
|
| I can't think of a metric where they aren't worse than the
| average retailer.
| dsfyu404ed wrote:
| >There warehouses are significantly worse than average in
| terms of injuries per hour.
|
| Per man hour? Amazon is rich and super high volume
| relatively speaking. I got the impression their warehouses
| were pretty damn good compared to other warehouses handling
| consumer goods because the cost of hiccups is so high and
| they have a huge target on their back.
| phil21 wrote:
| > I got the impression their warehouses were pretty damn
| good compared to other warehouses
|
| This is the correct impression. Amazon warehouses are
| almost always a step up in both pay and quality of life
| vs. the other local employment options.
|
| Source: many friends work(ed) the industry. Amazon was
| seen as trading your autonomy in for a better overall
| place to work.
|
| The memes about their warehouses being the worst in the
| world only really exist in white collar circles.
|
| I could never work for them in such a job, because I
| require too much autonomy to be happy. I don't deal will
| with strict metric systems that they enforce. However,
| others really do enjoy that aspect of not having to put
| an ounce of thought or problem solving into their dayjob.
| Retric wrote:
| They don't seem to be very concerned about injuries. One
| example that comes to mind is storing 40 lb bags of dog
| food such that people had to duck and lean over and drag
| them under a low shelf, that's practically designed to
| cause back injuries and in fact caused multiple in a
| single warehouse.
| super256 wrote:
| > They don't seem to be very concerned about injuries.
| One example that comes to mind is storing 40 lb bags of
| dog food such that people had to duck and lean over and
| drag them under a low shelf, that's practically designed
| to cause back injuries and in fact caused multiple in a
| single warehouse.
|
| I used to work for Amazon a few years ago. I'm uncertain
| whether it was 12 pounds or 12 kg, but when a *tote
| weights more than this, you are supposed to handle the
| tote with two people.
|
| *A tote is a small container of items, like this yellow
| one: https://media.wired.com/photos/593256d9aef9a462de982
| 0d8/mast...
| dsfyu404ed wrote:
| Yeah but are they actually worse than the competition
| though? The whole industry is rife with that kind of crap
| (not like you're expect otherwise for a razor thin margin
| industry). I once worked somewhere they'd crib between
| the ground level pallets and first level racking so they
| could overload the racking (but my immediate manager was
| good and they put me on a forklift so I didn't care).
|
| If anything the dehumanizing algorithmic tracking and
| optimization crap they do annoys me far more than the
| safety stuff.
| GoldenMonkey wrote:
| Workplace safety is 3x worse than the industry norm. And
| they recently got fined by OSHA, across 3 different
| states. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/amazon-osha-
| fines_n_63c84509e...
| Retric wrote:
| Actual comparison of injury rates show yes they are much
| worse than the industry average.
|
| Amazon's extreme turnover rate is also significant.
| Someone that's been doing a job for longer has both the
| skill and physical capacity to avid injury doing the same
| tasks as a new employee. This compounds over long shifts
| as people get tired, so limiting new employees to 8 vs 12
| hour shifts would make a real difference among other
| options.
| vineyardmike wrote:
| Price and convenience are probably better than average.
| satellites wrote:
| But that price and convenience is at the cost of quality
| and employee safety. And honestly not even worth it as a
| consumer even if you don't care about the ethical issues.
| I've been severely disappointed with the quality of the
| average item on Amazon over the last few years, to the
| point that I have stopped using them completely. Even
| Walmart is better, which is saying a lot.
| giantg2 wrote:
| I don't think I've had too many quality issues. The vast
| majority of the brands you buy at Amazon are also at
| Walmart or Walmart.com. If you're having issues, then you
| probably need to start evaluating brand vs seller. For
| your current discussion, you need to compare buying the
| same exact item from each. The big win in my eyes is
| being able to buy from Amazon Warehouse for a big
| discount.
| [deleted]
| vineyardmike wrote:
| I haven't had too many (any?) quality issues with Amazon
| I'm no shill - I don't advocate for them since I've heard
| about plenty of quality issues, but I've never actually
| gotten the wrong product or a fake (unless the fake was
| so good it was equal to original... which is fine?).
|
| What is everyone ordering that is subpar? Do people not
| just buy the same brands they'd buy at Walmart or target?
|
| If you buy cheap stuff that was drop shipped off
| AliExpress, but reputable name brands from walmart... why
| not buy reputable brands from amazon?
| Retric wrote:
| Price comparisons assume you get the actual product you
| ordered.
| tootie wrote:
| Unless you have metrics for the average retailer, that's
| probably not true. Local corner shops vary widely, but are
| not the least bit shy about hiring undocumented workers,
| stealing wages, skimping on safety and avoiding taxes. They
| just do it at such a small scale, it doesn't make the news.
| Retric wrote:
| The statistics I gave where in comparison to the average.
| They also have higher rates of injury and pay less in
| taxes.
|
| Amazon has had wage theft issues, but I don't know how
| they stack up on undocumented workers or the average
| retailer which includes Costco etc not just tiny corner
| stores.
|
| Wage theft:
| https://www.theverge.com/2021/2/2/22262294/amazon-flex-
| wage-... more wage theft:
| https://www.wweek.com/news/2022/11/15/murmurs-amazon-
| settles... you can find a bunch of these going back years
| but this is what I was initially thinking of:
| https://www.fastcompany.com/3020175/employees-sue-amazon-
| ove...
| giantg2 wrote:
| Where were those stats? I didn't see them in your comment
| history.
| Retric wrote:
| So wait you searched by comment history rather than say
| Google: https://www.cnn.com/2022/04/12/tech/amazon-
| injury-data-study...
| giantg2 wrote:
| So wait, you lied about providing prior metrics.
|
| It's important to be looking at the same numbers when
| having a discussion about those numbers.
| [deleted]
| Retric wrote:
| No, facts like more than average are statistics. You
| seemingly misunderstood the term and then tried to derail
| an argument which I find hilarious.
| bhelkey wrote:
| > The statistics * _I gave*_ where in comparison to the
| average.
|
| If you say you linked a statistic, it seems reasonable to
| me to assume that you linked a statistic.
| Retric wrote:
| Gave a statistic isn't the same as linking to a
| statistic.
|
| Also, statistics include facts like more than average not
| just specific numerical values.
|
| PS: Though I have also linked to the numeric value before
| just not in this comment chain.
| tootie wrote:
| I don't doubt that Amazon has abused workers in various
| ways, I'm just saying the headlines exist because of
| their massive scale and visibility. EPI estimates (which
| are probably a bit aggressive, but backed by sources) say
| of 2.4M workers in the 10 most populous states, $8B/yr
| are lost to wage theft. Amazon, with about 1M employees,
| is not stealing billions per year. In fact, they
| consistently pay well above minimum wage. My point here
| isn't that Amazon is great and we should stop
| complaining, but rather that worker abuse is rampant
| across all industries and Amazon is likely exceeding what
| is a very low bar.
|
| https://www.epi.org/publication/employers-steal-billions-
| fro...
| Retric wrote:
| You are misusing that statistic the average of all
| _employers_ would include all _workers_ not only those
| workers that experienced wage theft.
|
| If the US labor US labor force is ~161.2 million workers
| and had 8B/year in wage theft then the average per 1
| million workers is ~50 million. Seeing multiple payouts
| well over 50 million suggests Amazon could be worse than
| average here.
| Symmetry wrote:
| They pay a _lot_ more than the average retailer, which is
| why they feel they can work their employees so hard. I
| think they also tend to see less employee on employee
| violence.
| harvey9 wrote:
| The latter is an astonishingly dystopian metric. Is the
| data published somewhere?
| giantg2 wrote:
| "I think they also tend to see less employee on employee
| violence."
|
| Increased shared hatred of the employer leads to
| increased employee cohesion?
| Spivak wrote:
| Shared hatred of <outgroup> leads to increased cohesion
| among <ingroup>. Tale as old as human civilization. Maybe
| one day we'll be able to hack this quirk of humanity on a
| large scale without needing <vulnurable marginalized
| population> to be the artificial outgroup.
|
| One I've seen that I think might have promise is "white
| people" being the outgroup for "white people." Any
| collection of white people forms an ad hoc in group where
| some nondescript "everyone else" is the outgroup. Now
| everyone has a shared thing to hate but everyone you
| interact with becomes temporally part of your ingroup so
| you're never hating an specific person or group of
| people. And even though it's impossible to actually
| become part of the outgroup you still have some of the
| fear that if you embody the negative traits that are
| ascribed to the outgroup you might join them so it also
| gradually norms.
| Symmetry wrote:
| More that employees who show up to work drunk or high can
| be easily fired and replaced, while more normal
| warehouses usually start the shift with people who just
| don't show up and are stretched enough as it is.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Injuries per item picked or per capita might be a better
| metric. It's pretty easy to say the injuries are higher if
| you have more employees and higher volume than the
| competitors. Same thing with fraudulent items on
| Walmart.com.
| rat9988 wrote:
| The hour is a way better metric. It already takes into
| account the capita. It's a work hour.
| fleetwoodsnack wrote:
| Injuries per item picked is obviously the inferior of the
| two, and fairly poor on its own as well.
| giantg2 wrote:
| If I sit on ass all day, I assume my injury rate will be
| lower. Using an injury rate on items picked (or items
| picked per man hour) could at least show the correlation
| between increased productivity and injuries.
| rat9988 wrote:
| The point is that then you'd have a job that would let
| you sit on ass all day in this case. if Amazon warehouse
| workers could sit their ass half the day or have better
| working conditions, their injury rate would be lower too.
| sebzim4500 wrote:
| Inferior in what way? If you are trying to do some kind
| of moral calculation to figure out how many marginal
| injuries you are creating by ordering an item, then
| injuries per item picked is probably the right metric.
| fsckboy wrote:
| > _I don 't think the sins of Amazon are any worse than most
| other major U.S. retailers._
|
| monopolies are bad, for consumers and for competitors. Even
| if you build your monopoly "fairly" by inventing a better
| mousetrap, putting the competition out of business is a
| reward that that is unfair and does not belong to the owner
| of the mousetrap. For example, Amazon could be split into 3
| smaller Amazon mousetraps that compete with each other. Is
| that unfair to Jeff Bezos? No, he would own the same
| percentage of mousetrapping companies as he did before. What
| he would not own is a monopoly.
|
| The sins of Amazon _the monopolistic competitor_ are worse.
| minsc_and_boo wrote:
| >Even if you build your monopoly "fairly" by inventing a
| better mousetrap, putting the competition out of business
| is a reward that that is unfair and does not belong to the
| owner of the mousetrap.
|
| Antitrust laws exist to protect consumers, and if you're
| forcing consumers to buy inferior mousetraps, you're not
| helping.
| fsckboy wrote:
| we don't actually have anti-trust laws, we have laws
| against _the abuse of_ monopoly power, a standard that
| can be difficult to prove and well after the commission
| of the injustices. I think there is sufficient
| theoretical and practical experience to have anti-trust
| laws simply be anti-market concentration.
|
| I'm arguing for it because it's an example of "third way"
| regulation, regulation that should be embraced by left
| wing socialist and right wing capitalists.
| BeetleB wrote:
| I have no trouble finding stuff to buy from companies other
| than Amazon. For retail, it is _not even close_ to a
| monopoly.
| fsckboy wrote:
| in what way does breaking Amazon into three companies
| reduce your choice of product? and monopoly in common
| usage also refers to monopsony, the choice of vendors for
| different marketplaces in which to sell their goods.
| throwayyy479087 wrote:
| They're absolutely not - but the people that attack Amazon
| don't care about that. Amazon to many represents Capitalism,
| and so acts as a catchall for criticisms of Capitalism.
|
| Ironically, small family shops use WAY more child labor,
| unpaid labor etc as a percentage than Amazon. They also
| produce more plastic per item, take only cash to evade taxes,
| etc.
| skinnymuch wrote:
| Oh no small family shops are evading taxes...good thing
| corporations don't that...
| giantg2 wrote:
| Tax evasion has a different meaning than how you are
| using it.
| Retric wrote:
| It's hard to imagine the average small business
| successfully evading taxes as well as Amazon.
|
| In 2019 Amazon paid zero taxes receiving a net $129 million
| refund from the federal government, in 2018 they received a
| $137 million refund after paying 0$ on a net income of 11.2
| billion dollars.
|
| In 2020 they paid a net tax of $162 million on $13.9
| billion of pre-tax income a net tax rate of 1.2%.
| Domenic_S wrote:
| net tax rate is meaningless in this context. Besides the
| fact that they're doing what each one of us do (take
| deductions following the law), it completely ignores all
| the other tax they pay - like payroll tax on a _massive_
| employee base and so forth.
|
| To imply Amazon (or any corp) are floating by with a
| total tax load of ~1% is either profoundly disingenuous
| or profoundly naive.
| Retric wrote:
| Saying companies pay payroll tax is like saying they pay
| sales tax when you buy something from them. It's sort of
| true and sort of false.
| BeetleB wrote:
| It sounds like you don't understand the basics of payroll
| tax.
|
| The SS tax that gets deducted from your paycheck is only
| _half_ the amount. Employers are required to pay the
| other half.
|
| If you're self-employed, you pay both halves, and that is
| one of the penalties of being treated as self employed.
| gowld wrote:
| That's just an accounting/presentation gimmick.
| Mathematically, it would be the same if the deduction was
| 0% or 100% shown in paycheck, instead of 50%.
| DimitriPetrova wrote:
| I think they still have loss carryforwards, they didn't
| make money for several years initially
| Retric wrote:
| They where profitable and paid net taxes in 2016 and
| where hugely profitable yet paid zero taxes in 2017,
| 2018, and 2019. So I don't see how this could be loss
| carry forward offsetting a several billion dollar annual
| tax bill for 4+ years.
| Karunamon wrote:
| "Tax evasion" is illegal and what the parent poster
| clearly meant by "taking cash". Companies (and
| individuals for that matter) take the entirely rational
| step to use all legal methods to pay as little tax as
| they can.
|
| Additionally, receiving a refund indicates that Amazon
| _overpaid_ on their income taxes and that the government
| agreed.
|
| Also additionally, the figures you are throwing around
| are income taxes only. Amazon likely pays many other
| taxes far in excess of the net worth of anybody involved
| in this conversation. Implying that Amazon "paid zero
| taxes" without further qualification is wholly dishonest,
| and you know it, and you should stop doing it.
| BeetleB wrote:
| I was just listening to a small business owner yesterday.
| She paid a $120K down payment on a property, and has set
| everything up so that the tax benefit of that property is
| $180K.
|
| That's not $180K deduction, but a $180K credit.
|
| She'll rent the place out for a meager profit, so doesn't
| have to pay the rest of the mortgage. Essentially, the
| taxpayers bought her the house - she got a house + cash
| out of the deal.
|
| Small business owners definitely play games with taxes.
| llanowarelves wrote:
| Calling a family business "child labor" or unpaid labor is
| like saying a founder is doing unpaid labor, or if he is
| under 16-18, child labor.
|
| Family, ownership, and business are concepts that overlap
| and mean much different things than a $1 trillion company
| with countless nameless faceless employees around the
| globe, that you can buy shares of.
| skee8383 wrote:
| I haven't bought anything from Amazon in years and you shouldn't
| either. Buying things from them supports slave labor, union
| busting, and low wages.
| nh23423fefe wrote:
| 1 of these things is not like the others
| notatoad wrote:
| i really don't want to be in the position of defending amazon,
| their anti-union activities and their treatment of workers is
| awful. but that's definitely not the same thing as slavery.
|
| and their pay rates for warehouse workers is high enough that
| it tends to raise wages in the surrounding areas.
| rwalle wrote:
| Wow, that sounds very privileged and condescending. "And you
| shouldn't either"? I'm sorry I can't do that, so can't many
| other people. Despite all the problems, in general, Amazon is
| still the most convenient and accessible place to buy things
| with relatively good customer service. In some cases it's the
| only place to buy certain products. If you can live in a bubble
| without Amazon, great for you, but don't preach others with
| your (almost) impossible personal choice.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| Humble Bundle has also been ratcheting down the share that goes
| to charities even though that's their reason for existing.
| rpmisms wrote:
| Damn. I used AmazonSmile to support my favorite extremist group.
| (Firearms Policy Coalition)
|
| I wonder if that had anything to do with it...
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| I wouldn't be totally surprised, given the effort to get the
| FPC 501c3 delisted from smile last month.
|
| I thought part of what made Smile cool is that Amazon would
| forward my donations to such a wide range of organizations (eg
| my local church OR my local satanic temple). Talk about
| consumer choice.
| divbzero wrote:
| Berkshire Hathaway had a program where shareholders would
| allocate corporate donations to charities [1] but shut it
| down after subsidiaries faced misplaced criticism [2] for
| shareholders' choices.
|
| [1]: https://www.berkshirehathaway.com/1997ar/shcontri.html
| "Shareholder-designated contributions"
|
| [2]: https://www.baptistpress.com/resource-
| library/news/pampered-... "Pampered Chef profits will no
| longer fund abortions"
| Spivak wrote:
| Twitch also ran into this issue recently where blindly
| allowing donations to any registered charity ended up being a
| bad look for them. It think it was autism speaks (autism /
| neurodivergence is a disease that needs to be cured and "not
| technically eugenics", not popular with gamers, go figure)
| and the lgb alliance (a boring trans-hate group).
| harvey9 wrote:
| If people go to a doctor to get a diagnosis is that not the
| definition of a disease?
|
| As for a cure, that should be a matter for the patient to
| decide if they want one or not.
|
| I strongly suspect that your quote marks should actually be
| inverted commas.
| troad wrote:
| > the lgb alliance (a boring trans-hate group)
|
| Can you direct me to any place where the LGB Alliance
| officially affirms "trans hate" as their core message?
|
| Seems like a remark that fails the barest minimum of common
| sense thresholds, in that it's unclear to me how any such
| body could ever hope to remain a tax-deductible registered
| charity.
| singlow wrote:
| They obviously don't call it hate themselves. It is the
| opinion of certain trans groups that the positions taken
| by the organisation are based on hate. Of course hate in
| modern lingo just means disagreement, or failure to
| support the specific legislative agenda of a particular
| group.
|
| LGB Alliance states that it believes many cases of
| transition are actually a form of therapy to remove gay-
| ness. That a gay person is led to believe they can be
| "straight" if they transition to the opposite sex. So in
| their view, transitioning is a form of homophobia, but in
| the view of trans groups, the LGB alliance is anti-trans.
| From the LGB Alliance webpage:
|
| > Very many children, and quite possibly adults, enter
| the process of gender transition as a result of the
| homophobia of their parents, peer group, or their own
| internalised dislike of their sexual orientation. Young
| gay men or lesbians are being sold a myth that they can
| be straight, that lesbians are really straight men and
| that gay men are really straight women. This is
| homophobic conversion therapy.
| josteink wrote:
| > Of course hate in modern lingo just means disagreement,
| or failure to support the specific legislative agenda of
| a particular group.
|
| Maybe that's just me, but I think we should have higher
| expectations to the language used in discussions on HN.
|
| If we agree this is about a policy-disagreement, then
| let's use those words. Don't use the word "hate" when no
| actual hate is involved.
|
| It doesn't help bring across any points, it doesn't make
| you look better, it doesn't seek constructive replies and
| it doesn't help the conversation.
|
| Enough with the "hate" already.
| singlow wrote:
| My tone apparently didn't come across well. I was in fact
| criticizing the use of the word hate in this context.
| josteink wrote:
| It's just plain rhetoric at this point.
|
| Anyone not _actively_ supporting trans-rights these days
| are effectively labelled a "hater" or transphobic.
|
| Essentially the trans-activist doing their best to
| gaslight the situation and get as much chilling effect as
| possible.
|
| It's dishonest, undemocratic and should be enough reason
| for most reasonable people to distrust them.
|
| And yeah. I'm transphobic for posting this, obviously.
| Spivak wrote:
| This isn't rhetoric, the LGB Alliance isn't some group
| that just happens to not focus on T of LGBT. They're a
| group that wants the T dropped from LGBT, that believes,
| advocates for, and fights for legislation that defines
| trans men as women and vice versa. They were literally
| established in opposition to LGBT groups supporting trans
| people and still are.
|
| There is no gaslighting whatsoever, one of the co-
| founders literally, somewhat famously, broke down in
| court when backed into a logical corner about whether
| trans women were lesbians. Even if you take the naive
| definition of "trans _phobia_ " where there must be
| actual fear it still holds up.
|
| Of course they don't say their beliefs are transphobic.
| That's the real rhetoric -- because they're happy to tell
| you that they think that trans women are men who pretend
| to be women like that doesn't invalidate the very core
| definition of what it means to be trans.
|
| This group would run into no trouble whatsoever had they
| had no stance at all about trans people and just said
| that they preferred to focus on the sexuality rather than
| gender issues.
| [deleted]
| m-watson wrote:
| Here is a link to Amazon's release:
|
| https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/company-news/amazon-closing...
| JustSomeNobody wrote:
| > "After almost a decade, the program has not grown to create the
| impact that we had originally hoped. With so many eligible
| organizations -- more than 1 million globally -- our ability to
| have an impact was often spread too thin," the company wrote.
|
| SO WHAT!? Any money is helpful. This is such a BS argument for
| getting rid of it.
| yunwal wrote:
| They also never supported smile donations from the mobile app for
| no good reason, so it was always pretty clear to me that it was
| nothing more than a PR stunt/tax write off.
| adamt wrote:
| I believe they did - I've used this - full instructions here:
| https://www.amazon.co.uk/b?ie=UTF8&node=17337655031
| staringback wrote:
| > They also never supported smile donations from the mobile app
| for no good reason
|
| They 100% did
|
| > nothing more than a PR stunt/tax write off
|
| Do you even know what a tax write off is? PR stunt of course,
| but that is every single company who also donates to charity.
| Should we instead shame companies for blatant PR stunts so that
| they donate $0 instead?
| yunwal wrote:
| I'm aware tax write offs don't _save_ money if that's what
| you're asking.
|
| > Should we instead shame companies
|
| Companies obviously exist for profit, but companies at the
| size of Amazon can take the view that doing good things is
| genuinely good for business on a level deeper than quick PR
| (creates company alignment, healthier economy).
|
| PR is a competitive, zero-sum game.
|
| > Should we instead shame...
|
| Yeah. This isn't a purity test for a company who's genuinely
| trying to change things for the better. This is shaming using
| charity to launder human rights abuses, dishonest business
| practices, anticompetitive behavior and win favor with
| politicians.
| delecti wrote:
| > nothing more than a PR stunt/tax write off
|
| It was neither. It was a way to get people to go directly to
| Amazon in their browser rather than search items through
| Google. Clicking through Amazon from Google results gives
| Google an affiliate commission on those sales.
| hamburglar wrote:
| Oh, that's interesting. I always wondered why they didn't
| allow me to just have all my amazon traffic get redirected to
| smile, and that would totally explain it. I probably only
| remembered to type smile in the browser one out of every 10
| times I bought something, so my purchases could have been
| much more helpful to my chosen charity if it weren't for
| this.
|
| Is this observation based on knowledge of their motivations
| or just a deduction?
| tsigo wrote:
| Take with a grain of salt obviously, but there was a Reddit
| post [1] from someone claiming to have worked there at the
| time and that this was the entire motivation behind it.
|
| [1]: https://old.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/10ft5iv/a
| mazon_...
| delecti wrote:
| Yeah, this was pretty widely known internally at the time
| (I was there 2012-2017). I didn't have first-hand
| exposure to the information, but I had a _ton_ of second
| /third hand.
| JeffRosenberg wrote:
| They did support it from the mobile app, but in a way that
| always outraged me. They would only allow you to use Smile on
| mobile if you agreed to turn on all notifications and let them
| spam you with ads. Turning off notifications -- either through
| their app or through iOS settings -- resulted in their
| disabling Smile for you.
| scubbo wrote:
| This is not correct in the US. Don't know what country you're
| in.
| joelesler wrote:
| As a board member of an organization that was benefiting from
| Amazon Smile, this is just the lamest set of excuses I've ever
| seen. Amazon should have said: "We're cutting this because we
| don't want to maintain it, it hasn't been staffed, and isn't
| focused in our core business (making money)"
|
| I would have believed that.
| batman-farts wrote:
| Well, this stinks. For a point of reference, I had it activated
| for about 2 years and directed the donations to Federation of
| American Scientists - not a huge name in the nonprofit space, but
| well-established and well-respected. According to the impact
| page, my orders during that time (including some big ticket
| stuff, about half the parts for a high-spec gaming PC) generated
| a grand total of $35.22, and FAS has received $1,150 during their
| participation in the program. I'm glad I could help pay for
| what's probably less than one month of their hosting costs...
|
| It was something of a psychological hook for me, that a few
| pennies from each order would go to support content I
| appreciated. I did mentally kick myself when I forgot to place an
| order through the smile.amazon.com portal. I'll probably end up
| giving a bit more consideration to other online retailers now,
| although every time I've ordered online from Walmart lately has
| been a complete disaster.
| Insanity wrote:
| On Walmart specifically, their grocery order search is entirely
| broken. You can search for an item and in the preview/drop-down
| see the correct item. You press enter and in the product list
| page it is gone.
| mdaniel wrote:
| previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34435338
| [deleted]
| CodeWriter23 wrote:
| I think this is a little short-sighted on Amazon's part.
|
| PTA/PTOs were onboarding loyal Amazon customers via Amazon Smile
| because of the fundraising. In the last PTO I was involved with,
| Smile accounted for about 2% of our donations ($3000/year =
| ~$150K in household spending from our school).
|
| To put that in perspective, about 90% of our $150K annual fund
| raise was direct donations from parents and local businesses, AND
| Amazon's contribution was 3 of the 60 MacBook Airs in the One-to-
| one laptop program our magnet was funding annually. Maybe we
| judge "effectiveness" on a different scale than Amazon but we
| sure appreciated their 5% contribution to that program.
|
| Now these organizations will switch all that customer loyalty to
| Target Red Card.
| rcme wrote:
| Looks like Target stopped supporting schools through Target Red
| Card in 2016?
|
| https://www.ptotoday.com/pto-today-articles/article/6232-tar...
| CodeWriter23 wrote:
| Coincidentally, same year we started homeschooling. Hence my
| ignorance on the topic.
| mouly wrote:
| Does Target Red Card offer charity donations like Amazon Smile?
| Asking for our PTO.
| cheriot wrote:
| > Amazon is trying to find money wherever it can
|
| Not really. Amazon is spending more cash on english language TV
| and movies than Netflix. It's also acquiring it's way into...
| health care?
|
| All of the things that make money at Amazon are related to the
| core e-commerce biz (ads, subscriptions, marketplace) or some
| core competency developed to support e-commerce (AWS). They have
| no competitive advantage in providing medical care, making
| movies, or household gadgets.
|
| Big tech is struggling with the idea that their business is
| maturing and will be less exciting from here. It's a tough pill
| for hot shot founders/managers to swallow.
| WesternWind wrote:
| I've twice done tech work for charities (the second being my
| current contract) and this is going to affect some charities,
| particularly the ones that rely on donors, over others that rely
| on grant money.
| luckylion wrote:
| Though the sums were tiny, weren't they? I mean, it was $400m
| in 9 years, spread over a million charities in the end. To get
| a significant amount of money through that program, you'd need
| to be a big name that a lot of people would choose to donate to
| ... at which point you're a big name that probably gets a lot
| more money through regular donations.
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| Personally I support this. If they're cutting their staff, they
| don't need to be spending on a program that gives away more than
| it brings in.
|
| I'm assuming they rationally did the math to see if the program
| was a net contributor to bottom line or not. (That's the sort of
| rigor i've come to expect from a company like Amazon)
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2023-01-19 23:01 UTC)