Ask HN: Could You Quit Amazon? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Could You Quit Amazon?

4 points99chrisbard11 comments

No Amazon shopping, no AWS or any of the multitude of Amazon-owned companies. Can you do it?

For infrastructure, I may be using it indirectly. GCE hosts a VPN server. Everything else is on Linode, Digital Ocean, and Vultr. I could very well be accidentally using Amazon, but I've steered clear as best I could.

For shopping, absolutely and already have. Local stores were/are still plenty sufficient with the dry goods. The butcher shop down the road is managing to keep well stocked. Local produce markets are doing a great job. Ebay kicked Amazon's rear for things that weren't available locally. Because of the free time gained the lack of commute, wanting a small audio studio and green screen setup for conference calls was a fun project. The gear was here in 2 days from regional suppliers found on eBay and reverb. Since that was setup, 10 pounds of bulk Lego was purchased from ATLBrick and specific Lego from BrickOwl to try Lego stop-motion. To blow off stress local gun stores have stock Amazon is too scared to handle. The local work wear store has been great to work with. The town lumber yard is always a pleasure. Dealing with Amazon and their crazy delays isn't worth it. Best of all, I don't have to deal with sellers of knock-offs and counterfeit items when I shop locally.

Do you include companies within N degrees of Amazon? Netflix for example? If so, no. I could quit, but I wouldn’t.

Shopping? For the most part I have because of the pandemic. A lot of the stuff I ordered was pushed further and further out for shipping. So I found alternatives or started buying in brick and mortar stores.

Amazon has part-ownership of Netflix? Didn't know that...

Could you clarify that Amazon owns Netflix? Best I can find is Netflix using AWS.

No, they don't. Netflix is hosed on AWS, though.

Sorry. They don't have ownership. But Netflix runs the majority of their service on AWS. That's why I was asking about also breaking away from services that are N degrees away. I mean...I can stop using AWS directly, but if my Netflix money is still going to them indirectly, what have I really done to blunt AWS?

Yes. I haven’t used it for anything in over a year. I seem to be unusual, but I grew up without it, and I haven’t found anything I need that it is the sole provider for.

No. I don't use any of amazon services except for BookDepository, it's the only reliable international online bookstore that ships to my country.

directly yes. Indirectly (dropping all products or services that leverages AWS in the back) no.

No, probably not. A lot of the web services I use are based on AWS.

With Whole Foods under that umbrella and our regional competitor closed ( earth fare, vulture capitalists pushing for growth beyond the capacity of the market, also they ran out of runway just before Covid and would have been making a killing )

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