I'm Shocked that Amazon Decided to Screw Users With Ads

From The Verge by way of the Wayback Machine: Amazon’s giant ads have ruined the Echo Show

With full-screen ads on its smart displays, Alexa is becoming less like an assistant and more like a sales rep.

You could read the original, but I think Pixy Misa at Ambient Irony sums it up nicely. Daily News Stuff 11 October 2025: May You Live And Let Die In Interesting Times

Amazon's Echo Show has abruptly turned into a billboard they expect you to pay for. (The Verge) (archive site)

At Amazon’s hardware event last month, I asked Panay how ads fit into his mission to build products customers love. He said that if it's relevant, it’s not an ad, "it's an add-on."

Translation: Fuck you.

"There are moments on the product where ads aren’t always bad," he told me, explaining that if the customer is looking for something specific, and the ad gets them to that faster, it can be a good thing.

Translation: You're too stupid to know what's good for you anyway.

There is more, and the rest of the tech news.

If I owned an Echo Show, which I would never do, ads would cause me to toss it in the trash, since I'm guessing you can't put Linux or Android on it.

And for the record, I'm not shocked that Amazon has chosen to out themselves as giant pieces of shit. I do order stuff from them, but they are usually my last choice. Why? Because they treat their employees like garbage, and I don't believe in supporting that. They also spy on you as much as they can, and they support censorship.

Reason 417 to Turn Your Phone Off Once in a While

Privacy is such a 20th Century concept. Amazon sued for alleged secret tracking of data through mobile apps

Amazon provided a software development kit called Amazon Ads SDK to developers. Embedded in that SDK was a whole bunch of tracking.

This allegedly enabled Amazon to collect an enormous amount of timestamped geolocation data about where consumers live, work, shop and visit, revealing sensitive information such as religious affiliations, sexual orientations and health concerns.

No one agreed to this, because Amazon didn't bother to ask.

"Amazon has effectively fingerprinted consumers and has correlated a vast amount of personal information about them entirely without consumers' knowledge and consent," the complaint said.

The complaint was filed by Felix Kolotinsky of San Mateo, California, who said Amazon collected his personal information through the "Speedtest by Ookla" app on his phone.

Do I think that anything will change because of this? No.

Amazon's Rings of Prime Show Is Destroying Crown Estate Forest

Environmental impact? They don't have time to worry about environmental impact. They're creating art! You on the other hand should worry about your environmental impact every hour of every day. Locals complain Amazon's Lord of the Rings set is 'damaging' Crown Estate forest - Mirror Online

The Rings of [Prime] blockbuster – starring Morfydd Clark as Orc-slaying Galadriel – is being filmed in the 2,500 acre Swinley Forest in Berkshire.

With a rumoured budget of £800million, the fantasy series is the costliest ever.

But locals fear production is harming the wildlife. Drone pictures show a huge castle built on a muddy clearing.

Click thru for a look at the image of that castle.

The bureaucrats are spinning. They say this area is a commercial pine forest maintained by the Crown and was forested a few years back. It will be replanted after the show is done. If as much heavy equipment has been through that site as it appears, that may not be as simple as it sounds.

The sustainability team attached to the show has a somewhat different take, at least in their internal communications.

A memo from the Rings of Power sustainability team leaked to The Guardian said: “The environmental impact of this industry, and of this show, is enormous.”

I'm sure that the people responsible at Amazon, who is saying nothing, and the production, will be back to telling all of us how we have to reduce our environmental impact as soon as their private jets land.

For some reason this reminded me of a classic moment from The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.

Don't Buy Chromebooks

It is bad enough what Microsoft does to suppport, but Google is horrible. “Absurd”: Google, Amazon rebuked over unsupported Chromebooks still for sale

Thirteen Chromebook models have met their death date since June 1 and won't receive security updates or new features from Google anymore. But that hasn't stopped the Chromebooks from being listed for sale on sites like Amazon for the same prices as before.

Take the Asus Chromebook Flip C302. It came out in 2018, and on June 1—about five years later—it reached its automatic update expiration (AUE) date. But right now, you can buy a "new," unused Flip C302 for $550 from Amazon or $820 via Walmart's Marketplace (providing links for illustrative purposes; please don't buy these unsupported laptops).

There are 7 more unsupported Chromebooks that you can buy as "new." Why? Well I'll leave that to Pixy Misa to explain. (He gets the hat tip.) Daily News Stuff 7 August 2023: War And Lawn-Edging Edition

Don't buy Chromebooks. (Ars Technica)

Chromebooks generally have fixed lifespans after which they stop receiving updates, because Google is a garbage company in a garbage industry.

Amazon and Walmart are selling Chromebooks that have already expired, at full price, because garbage companies in garbage industries.

And they do not make any note of the fact that they are selling the digital equivalent of rancid meat, anywhere.

Does This Even Qualify as a Slap on the Wrist for Amazon?

Someday companies will take the privacy of children, or their customers, seriously. Today is not that day.

$25 million is lost in the noise of Amazon. Amazon agrees to $25 million fine for Alexa children privacy violations

The U.S. Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced that Amazon has agreed to pay a $25 million fine to settle alleged children's privacy laws violations related to the company's Alexa voice assistant service.

Amazon has offered Alexa voice-activated products and services targeted at children under 13 years old since May 2018.

First they kept recordings of children. Then they kept transcripts of those recordings even after the parents requested deletion. Why? Because they are Amazon and the rules are for little people.

So the .gov hands down a $25 million dollar fine. I didn't look for the quarterly reports, but at the end of the last fiscal year in December, Amazon had cash-on-hand of about $54 billion. That is billion, with a "B." $25 million is nothing against that. That is about 0.05% of their cash on hand.

Oh, and the double-dog-swear to never do anything bad again, cross their heart and hope-to-spit. Or something.

This is low by even government standards.

In March 2022, the FTC slapped Fortnite maker Epic Games with a $245 million fine (down from a proposed $520 million penalty) for breaching children's privacy laws and employing deceptive tactics, known as dark patterns, to manipulate millions into making unintentional in-game purchases.

So how about we get some real penalties for corporations violating privacy laws. Like a couple of years in prison for the CEO. Not some low-level scapegoat, but punish the guy in charge. See how fast privacy becomes the #1 item on the to-do list of corporations.

I guess it pays to have friends in low places.

Amazon Continues to Treat Both Employees and Contractors as Disposable

This is not right. Amazon sued after Atlanta, GA man shot two delivery drivers | Raleigh News & Observer

Two Amazon contract drivers were trying to deliver packages to an address. They were both shot. (The shooter has been arrested.)

Amazon Flex drivers don't have any vests to identify them as Amazon.

Attorneys for Gutierrez and Denson said Amazon failed to provide them with any clothing that would identify them as Amazon delivery drivers, as well as proper safety training. They also said the company doesn’t use software that lets a customer know when a driver is approaching.

That software is routinely used by other delivery companies such as UPS, FedEx, Lyft, Uber, GrubHub and Doordash, according to the complaint.

Because Amazon has always treated its employees as disposable. Here's a link to a post on how Amazon delayed medical treatment to an employee having a heart attack because "Why bother?"

I would love to say that I never buy anything from Amazon, but they have become my retailer of last resort. Even if I have to pay a small premium to buy from a another site - and you can almost always find stuff for the same price, and sometimes for less at other sites.

Can you guess what Amazon's position is?

I'm Shocked - Shocked! - to Discover Amazon is Against Unions

They are supposed to be Leftist, aren't they? Amazon’s anti-union conduct made free election “impossible,” NLRB officer finds.

Amazon interfered with a union-certification vote, and a second election should be held, a National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) official wrote in a report released yesterday. Amazon's anti-union misconduct made a "free and fair election... impossible," the report said.

Just like the Corporate bigwigs on the Right (and corporate-owned GOP) are not really conservative, Corporate bigwigs on the Left are not really Liberal. Progressive ideology is all about control. Oligarchy would be a better term for it. Just shut up and do what they tell you.

Amazon is appealing, so there may or may not be another election.

Amazon's bad behavior included distribution of anti-union materials at mandatory meetings, though the anti-union vote did win by a large margin.

Amazon is famous for treating their warehouse employees badly, though I haven't read anything about them in a while. (Here's a link to an old post of mine about how they allegedly contributed to the death of someone having a heart attack.) But I can see where the imposition of work rules - including such things as breaks - would be frightening for such an "enlightened" company. Just shut up and do what they tell you to do.

And I'm not really shocked to discover that Amazon is being underhanded when it comes to unions.

How to opt out of Amazon Sidewalk

This is one of the more annoying things that any Tech Company has done. Ever. Amazon to share your Internet with neighbors on Tuesday - How to opt out

And you should opt out.

There are 2 sets of instructions at the link.

1. For Amazon Echo devices, you can disable Amazon Sidewalk by following these steps
2. For Ring devices, you can disable Amazon Sidewalk by following these steps

You should click thru and disable this insanity.

Amazon Hates Its Employees - Example 57

This is insane. Though to be fair, Amazon doesn't employ the drivers, subcontractors do. What Amazon does is completely direct their work. Amazon’s Cost Saving Routing Algorithm Makes Drivers Walk Into Traffic

If it were up to him, Mike said, he would never run across a highway with his arms full of packages. But the routing algorithm designed for its Flex app by Amazon's research scientists often makes it unavoidable, according to a source with direct knowledge of Amazon's routing algorithm. In North America and Europe, roughly 85,000 contracted delivery drivers rely on this algorithm to do their jobs. While crossing the street in a quiet suburban neighborhood is probably safe, doing so on a 50 mph highway can be deadly.

Sane companies, like UPS, have drivers in these situations first deliver on one side of a busy street and then on the other side of a street.

Amazon Cheated while Competing with Marketplace Sellers

Color me shocked. Amazon... underhanded... Dare I say it? Trying to put their own partners out of business. 4,700 Amazon employees had unauthorized access to private seller data | Ars Technica

Amazon's slipshod security and compliance practices appear to explain a Wall Street Journal report saying that Amazon employees used third-party seller data to inform the development of Amazon’s own private-label products. In one case, Amazon employees pored over details about a third-party car trunk organizer that topped the bestseller list. They studied sales figures, marketing and shipping costs, and Amazon’s cut of each sale. Later, Amazon introduced an organizer of its own that competed directly with the third-party product. Amazon told the WSJ that such acts were violations of an internal policy.

Oh no! A violation of internal policy? Sounds more like a monopoly trying to put the competition out of business to me. But what do I know?

Someday companies will take security seriously. But today is not that day.

Vote-By-Mail Not Good Enough for Amazon

Interesting, but but surprising. Amazon Requests In-Person Union Vote in Covid-Plagued Alabama

Amazon.com Inc. is asking the National Labor Relations Board to consider having workers vote in person -- rather than by mail -- on a proposal to form a union at an Alabama warehouse.

I wonder what their stance was - all those Amazon employees at Headquarters - about vote-by-mail for a Presidential election.

The world’s largest online retailer said that a mail election raised the risk of fraud and the coercion of workers. It also said the process would depress turnout, arguing that as many as 29% of its more than 5,800 employees eligible to vote wouldn’t do so or would return incorrectly completed ballots.

I thought there was no such thing as vote fraud.