A Tale of Unwanted Disruption: My Week Without Amazon
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But companies should not be allowed to arbitrarily cut off access to purchased products like this. Especially when they are designed to be integral to day to day life. I think this practice should be illegal, even if they did say horrible things, attacked the driver, and set fire to amazons headquarters. It is simply unacceptable under any circumstance.
I also think there maybe should be blowback for false accusations on people who report them. Basically. You better damn well be sure you head what you heard. It’s becoming to easy to yell racist run away and ruin somebody’s life.
A secondary of this is the media. We keep saying there are racist everywhere. Even Biden said the biggest problem America has is white supremacy. People are going to find a racisim with out without it one actually existing.
Whose life has been ruined by a single false accusation of racism? Racism absolutely does exist, unfortunately.
That weird digression aside, yeah. People are spending money on content that can be taken away on a whim, or basing much of their lives around email platforms that can deactivate their accounts at any moment. There should be stronger legal protections.
Let’s start with the woman who tried to rent a Citi Bike last week.
And how about the Duke lacrosse players?
Even so, the a fundamental axiom of the American justice system is that it is worse to imprison an innocent man than let a guilty man go free.
Then that includes the employees and executives at Amazon and is all the more reason to not allow them to punish others for behavior that is (according to you) universal.
That was in the context of domestic terrorism: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/05/14/biden-whi...
The FBI has been warning about the growing threat since at least Trump’s term.
The run up to Trump, his presidency, and now his decline are definitely adding enormous fuel to the fire. Doesn't help Republicans now see white supremacists as a voting bloc they can manipulate.
[0]: https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/sites/default/files/documents/qxf5...
You can't punish "false" accusations without silencing people from making any accusation out of fear lack of substantiation will be interpreted as false. We can't say that the driver did this maliciously; he may well have heard what he thought he did. The driver isn't the problem; he was aggrieved and reported it, as he was entitled to.
Tampering with someone's thermostat because you were entrusted with access to it and later decided you don't like them is sociopathic, and every bit as monstrous as deploying ransomware in a fucking hospital. I guarantee you no diligence was done to prevent collateral damage. More than the driver (blameless) or Amazon itself, this particular executive needs to be taken to task for such recklessness. Interfering with life support or communications systems is just fucked; we do that shit as acts of sabotage during war, and it's domestic violence when it occurs between spouses. Even your utility company needs to give advance notice of termination.
Yahoos acting on bad intel one too many times and punishing the innocent is literally what instigated Black Lives Matter. The irony is lost on Unnamed Amazon Executive.
Without this there is no action anybody can take...
We can't live in a world where accusations without evidence hold weight, nothing will get done and everybody can just accuse anybody of anything to get their way.
Unpopular opinion, but people need to grow up. You getting called a name should probably in any case, not be actionable.
And in retro, if you think a door bell called you a name you probably are unfit to deliver packages to any doors, and should seek mental help.
Do you even know how ring doorbells work? The owners inside can talk through them, avoiding confrontation, and saying whatever they want.
Bad things happen to people, it more than sucks. But without evidence who raped you there is little you can do. Sure report it, but no action can be taken on any man is no evidence of who did it.
But way to go, comparing somebody being called a name to rape. Clearly they are the same thing.
If somebody is harassing their delivery guy in any way, yeah, fine, don't deliver, make them pick it up at some location and use normal laws to deal with the harassment.
You would never get your amazon account canceled if the USPS worker said you called them a name.
In short, Amazon has to break up their business, at least when it comes for abuse issues on boundaries that have clear lines.
You fuck around with the Amazon deliver guy should not lock you out of your S3 account, shut and kill your AWS instances. Just as breaking some AWS rule should not prevent you from ordering and having delivered products from Amazon's main website.
It would have been better for Amazon if they reviewed that footage before acting, but it seems like they weren't able (especially because they asked to be sent it by the accused).
Edit: not sure why this is downvoted as there is much evidence to confirm this position of Amazon willful omission of truth, and downright lying (e.g., "our employees don't pee in bottles" for warehouse and delivery employees, "this account registered too many returns" for accounts that show under 10 returns over multiple years).
Apologies, however I don't understand your position. To me this reads as word salad.
(1) There is no evidence to the contrary. (2) You've made a blanket assumption that I have strong priors against Amazon.
If you could reword your statement I am happy to try and understand what your point (assuming there is one).
When you say "We know Amazon will make up anything.", it comes across (to me, at least) as an over-broad statement. The sort of statement someone with strong priors against Amazon would make. We _don't_ know that. You cite some valid examples of Amazon being sleazy, but even if you listed 100 examples, we still don't know that. Examples just mean they have made up some things, at some times — not everything, all the time.
I imagine you were just using hyperbolic language for effect, but that's just my 2¢ POV, in case it helps you avoid being misinterpreted in the future (:
Comments that are reactionary and unnuanced (“all big tech is bad! Because they’ve done this in the past.”) do not contribute to the discussion and are merely venting.
I distrust comments made on this type narrative thinking that doesn’t address the precise issue at hand.
Seriously, fuck Amazon.
But Amazon is pretty committed to customer privacy, and in many cases it is genuinely impossible for them to obtain access to data. Obviously, I can't provide technical details here, so you'll have to to just trust me -- but I promise you, there's a good chance they're being honest about not having access to this data without a request to the customer.
If you said something racist on an iPhone telephone call, would that presumably allow Apple to lock you out of your devices?
This attitude is the reason why this keeps happening. I don't agree that it's Amazon's job to police how I use my own device.
That's not what the ban was about. His account was banned because they wanted to protect their drivers from future racist encounters.
Obviously, they should be very sure that something actually happened, before taking such a drastic measure. The minimum would be to at least hear both sides.
What happens if an Amazon driver encounters someone else at your property or scans your item at the wrong address? What happens when you have no counter evidence or simply get stone walled by their CS?
The EULA/T&C likely “allow” Amazon to do this however the FCC and other regulatory bodies should start regulating the market to prevent stuff like this from happening.
Amazon seems to also be interested in getting into healthcare, insurance and banking sectors should they be able to completely blacklist someone and deny them access to prescriptions or their bank accounts even if they were racist assholes?
That literally that what he wrote.
But to block all of his Amazon Services doesn't help.
As society goes digital, it is inevitable that people link ever more things of real importance to account systems of Amazon, Google, the like.
These accounts cannot be Russian roulette, where heuristics may randomly lock you out. Imagine losing your AWS account, and your entire infrastructure is gone. Or losing your Gmail account, your proxy to 200 other accounts. Losing home automation. Losing your webshop.
We need to have some rights. Real world infrastructure should never be shut down without consent, false positive or not. Account suspensions should come with a documented and verifiable reason, not randomness and "we can't share details". There has to be a robust and speedy appeal process that is equally transparent. Concerns must be separated. If you violate terms on service A, the blast radius should be service A, not your entire life. And yes, companies should absolutely be sued for real damages done if they fail to have the above in place.
I thought all is good...
Then I got an email weeks later asking me to pay this amount to Amazon, around $500. I told them this was squared away, I already paid using other means and thing is resolved.
This dude from chargebacks demanded that I submit card they can use to charge and resolve this "order". Since I already bought the thing, I explained once and didn't want to respond more.
Then everything stopped working like described in this post. I could log into Amazon but I couldn't access any of the pages. Kindle stopped working... that was the thing that I thought is too much.
After few days back and forth, they restored my access, I had to call bank few times as this guy would disable and unlink my new Amazon Store card from the account.
After that, all my books, endless purchases not being accessible... I decided to take a break for a little bit. Amazon Prime was due for renewal, so I didn't renew. I cancelled all subscriptions through Prime, once I was able to access it. I cancelled everything but Kindle Unlimited (sorry I just can't do this).
So this is where we are. I am not shopping nearly as much, I use alternative stores, Chinese retailers get way more direct business from me.
I am sure I will enable it, but I just don't have to do it anytime soon.
Ah, Amazon: the paragon of social justice. Racist dollars are still green.
This is up there with the FLDS hating the federal government sooooo much, they signed everybody they could up for food stamps. To "bleed the beast," of course.
@Author: If I put it to you that you made a bad decision a while back and this is the predictable consequence, what would your response be?
Meanwhile my $20 Wyze security camera has gotten worse over the years with all the updates, fees, reduction in features, etc...
On a similar note, it seems my Nest continues to lie about the temperature, seemingly worse than ever.
Its interesting how often buying the mainstream product gets punished, but DIY is robust.
There is no way to escape this other than through the law. Because accounts give these companies recurring monetization that in theory, last as long as the device itself.
Honestly, I also want similar legislation around Ebooks. We should be allowed to legally rip the books out of a service and keep them as PDFs. It makes is incredibly easy to just read-aloud with a text to speech device.
(No intent to discredit or argue against TFA's primary points)
Maybe I'm misreading the.. tone? I think I'd be pretty (as in, very) mortified if my smart doorbell spoke this, let alone even have an automated response at all? (Although, I don't really use smart appliances, if that's relevant.)
Or, when employing the automated response, I'd probably care to make sure it's fairly apparent that it's a machine, on a quick second-pass thought.
My doorbell is completely silent and I like it that way. The only reason I’d use such a feature is to scare away a package thief if nobody was home.
It's like the all-electric houses that are really great. But I had one of those and when the power was out, we had no running water either (the water-pump was electric) and were restricted to one flush. We couldn't even make a hot cup of coffee.
“'I never thought leopards would eat MY face,' sobs woman who voted for the Leopards Eating People's Faces Party.”
— <https://twitter.com/cavalorn/status/654934442549620736?lang=...>
Sometimes, you have to accept that vulnerability. I have exactly one option for getting electrical service, for example. But in general, people should avoid this sort of arrangement to the greatest degree possible.
Especially for something where there are tons of other options, like home automation.
I use Amazon Echo to turn on/off my lights. If my home automation doesn't work, I can still just use the light switch to turn them off and then they will come on.
Or if there is an Amazon issue, I can use the app of the bulb manufacturer instead. It's a convenience feature and if it doesn't work, it's a minor inconvenience.
Many of us would be much more screwed if something happened to our Google or Apple account... and that same story of erroneous bans have happened to many people.
But because the original blog writer doesn't do that, current HN rules say you should not do that either. Instead, HN rules say you should post the original article and keep the original title. But in this case, by doing that you are effectively hiding what actually happened. This original title sounds so uninteresting that I'd say it would be warranted here to post the article with the title of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36294748
Changing the title to be more inflammatory would color the perspective of readers in a way that the author didn't intend, and would make the conversation on here considerably worse. HN is intended for curious discussion, not outrage brigading, and the headline rule is one of several defense mechanisms that attempt to keep it that way.
@ don't work on this site.
If you need to get dang's attention, email hn@ycombinator.com
When I saw your comment that's what I did.
Thanks.