Amazon cancels my account after exposing account lockout for “racist doorbell” [video]
youtube.com
youtube.com
It is surprising, that there is so little competition for affiliates these days. Amazon seems to be almost the only game in town.
Sure, there are thousands of other affiliate programs. But they pay surprisingly little. Often affiliates earn only like $0.05 per click (on average). While the same company pays $1 per click on other channels like Google Ads.
I am not sure why, but I suspect that it is because companies are so afraid of getting scammed. They trust Google, but not individuals.
They pay $1 per click on Google Ads, need 20 clicks to acquire a new customer and are happy with a $20 price per customer because they know the lifetime value of a customer is higher.
But to affiliates, they pay 5% of the customers $20 order, so $1. Divided by 20 clicks, that is $0.05 per click.
So the affiliate channel is underpaid by a factor of 20.
Why is no company tackling this inefficiency in the market?
Google, through their predictive models more or less is promising a certain CPA whereas a publisher may not have such guarantees. So obviously publishers need to be paid on performance instead. Affiliate advertisers still have to compete since publishers have a choice of who to actually publish.
From the numbers I see, Google Ads are paid roughly "correctly". The ad spent per new customer is somewhere around the lifetime value of the customer. At least in competitive verticals.
But for affiliate links, it is about 20 times lower.
Your argument that market forces should drive the affiliate market towards the same equilibrium is exactly my question. Why doesn't it do that? Visit some random website about some random product. You don't see a variety of affiliate advertisers. You almost always only see Amazon. The cases where there are more than just Amazon links, it is often just to justify the site as a "price comparison" site. But reality is that even on those sites, the vast majority of revenue comes from Amazon.
A customer has many other benefits. Just a few examples: They tell other potential customers about your product. More customers means better and faster a/b tests. More customers means higher stock price of your company.
What is the solution? How can we build trust between publishers and advertisers?
This has the side effect of allowing reputable / high quality sites to charge more per impression, and is also privacy preserving (since it does not require user profiling).
Whereas anyone who signs up for an affiliate account can scam Amazon pretty easily, even just by routing all purchases they'd normally make through it for a discount.
Which is why I'm a bit annoyed they got rid of Amazon Smile, as it was a pretty decent way to "scam" Amazon with them fully knowing - you'd route through Smile and your charity would get the affiliate percentage.
IIRC 50% of all shopping searches are done on Amazon. That may be the USA, not world.
That's how cashback sites work.
it would actually align everyone's interests in actually incentivising sales, not clicks.
Affiliate marketers often use shady techniques to get the click. It's a tale as old as time.
Wasn't there some browser extension years ago that was inserting it's Amazon affiliate link into webpages?[1]
A large amount of the spam we receive in our email is ulimately just some affiliate trying to earn a commission. Affiliates don't have ethical rules they need to follow.
It's very, very hard to find the "old days" true affiliate that drives any significant traffic. It's way more profitable for affiliate marketers to force users to open a new browser window which drops a cookie without the user having any true intention to buy, with the aim to scoop up the commission any future purchases.
I mean if you can trick a million people into clicking a link, you can make money as an affiliate. Or you used to be able to do that.
[1] https://www.perimeterx.com/resources/blog/2016/hijacking-use...
A million visitors and just one sale -> Something is wrong
Mostly repeat customers -> Something is wrong
How would a scammer bring in a steady stream of new customers?
Spam email campaigns. Or google ad campaigns. Twitter bot spam.
There’s lots of ways to get people to click on Amazon links and make money. Especially because I think Amazon gives you the 4% of anything they buy in the next 24 hours or some period. Since a large percent of humans have Amazon accounts and buy stuff pretty recently if you can just get your affiliate cookie on their browser, you could make quite a bit.
With new customers I mean customers who have not bought before.
The affiliate program is trying to drive increased purchases.
People are funny and the slightest distraction might skunk the sale. Not for most, but for a few percent.
I watched my grandmother purchase something online and it was revealing how much time it took and how much she struggled. Something that took 10 seconds for me took her 15 minutes. Amazon wants those sales too.
The shame here is that Louis Rossmann is that type of "old school" affiliate. I buy equipment because he talks about it in detail. Otherwise I might just pick up whatever is at Microcenter, etc.
Still pretty competitive in the gambling and cryptocurrency space IMO.
That's not the main topic of the video at all. Rossmann stresses that he isn't reliant on the affiliate program, and doesn't care that it got terminated. What he does care, is the stated reason for the termination.
What happened is pretty clear. Rossmann made a video critical of Amazon after they randomly terminated a person's account, made unfounded accusations in a phone call, only to silently reinstate the account weeks after without so much as an apology. Days after the video goes viral, Amazon terminates his affiliate account that he used in his YouTube videos.
Amazon, without evidence, states that the reason for terminating the affiliate account is because Rossmann scammed Amazaon by encouraging his friends and family to buy things through his affiliate links. But it's obvious Amazon is doing this in retaliation and the reason is made up to discredit him.
Google has already started paying the price for their customer-hostile behavior. It's a meme at this point how unreliable Google is for anything. Amazon and AWS have consistently been touted as the opposite. Contrast Google IoT Core with SimpleDB. The Googlification of Amazon will be to its detriment.
Ads generate more revenue today, but I can't find good books to buy an Amazon, so I go elsewhere.
It's clear which is better for the customer (and for Amazon long term), but they can't give up on the revenue stream, even if it will eventually kill them (since it drives their customers to other platforms, and provides a place for competitors to grow).
> Day 2 is stasis. Followed by irrelevance. Followed by excruciating, painful decline. Followed by death. And that is why it is always Day 1.
I am very particular at trying to not tie myself into their ecosystem, but we had two kids fire tablets with some purchased games that we lost access to as well.
After a month or so of back and forth eventually they enabled ability to log in to access digital purchases only. But it was my impression they do not have an easy way to separate different branches of their offerings, and often it is all our nothing, since even after partial account reactivation, many parts of the Amazon website are broken.
In the end, I created new account, and since I was attending University of People at that time, I got student's discount for all their services in the new account, which is enough for me to counter the hasle I had to endure while trying to get kids tablets work again :)
Are we living inside of the movie demolition man now?
I absolutely hate large corporations. Racism off course is never ok, but the megacorp should never even be able to brick someones bought products in the first place, or surveil them for that sake.
We need some new heavy laws to whip these corporate psychos into place before we end up mirroring the chinese point system.
Communism is when all property is publicly owned and each person works and is paid according to their abilities and needs.
So pure communism precludes corporations that are owned by private individuals.
It’s also not a variant of communism: first, in the Marxist-Leninist interpretation the purpose of the single party is expression of and progress towards the dictature of the proletariat, the single-party state is not communist (they claim socialism instead) and the ultimate goal is self-abolition (turns out all other issues aside it’s difficult to make such a system abolish itself).
Second, Libertarian Marxist as well as Trotskyists oppose the use of a transitional one-party state and “democratic centralism”.
Some sort of capitalist-imperialism, maybe, but definitely not communism.
Also I would not exclude that these companies can be put in their place by using already existing laws. No need for new laws, it's a matter of political will.
Who precisely do you think has 90% of the power in 90% of businesses? And before you say 'the shareholders, duh', the venn diagram of the PMC and shareholders of these massive corporations is a circle. The ruling class is the PMC. They run the corporations. How could it be any other way?
This last bit is the most important. Even if you don't want to blame the managers, profit and loss mechanism is gone, so we are not under capitalism but in a command economy
That's not what happened in China.
The revolution in China was a _Communist_ one. Maoism is "Communism with Chinese characteristics". That's when 10s of millions of Chinese men, women and children were murdered to further the Communist utopia.
After Mao's death, Deng instituted many reforms and it would be arguable that it was no longer Communist -- but it would be rubbish to call it Capitalism. The government runs _everything_. Where they don't own corporations outright, they install party members to oversee them or own them "individually".
Look at what happened to Jack Ma to see exactly how NOT capitalist the country is.
I think racism is bad, but I don’t think that racists should have their devices bricked.
Should cameras brick themselves if they film a crime? I think it’s a bad situation where consumer devices are making ethical, moral, or legal decisions.
Especially by some kafkaesque corporate no due process system of adjudication where a single accusation with no evidence results in permanent action. And I suspect there’s some stupid KPI about how many racists banned that encourages more dumb actions rather than careful determinations.
It's worse. The germaphobes in Demolition Man seemed tolerant and reasonable compared to today's reality.
https://www.google.com/search?q=police+arrest+park+children+...
The real problem is Amazon having monopoly. If there were some true competition, I couldn't care less about Amazon closing my account as I could go to a competitor.
What does Amazon have a monopoly on?
Audiobooks.
https://doctorow.medium.com/why-none-of-my-books-are-availab...
If there was more competition or these things were based on open standards you could easily switch over I might be more inclined to agree, but I think right now these companies have way way too much power.
The threat of a company deleting an account for many people would be detrimental to their lives. We are way way too dependent on corporations and in kind of tired of people being scared to regulate.
Regulation often makes things worse, so we can't just look at the potential benefits without considering the potential (and likely) negative consequences.
That doesn't mean folks are scared of regulation. It means they're _smart_ about it.
If you're dependent on Amazon for e.g. your e-reader files, AWS account, or even your wishlist and taking your data elsewhere is a pain, then your argument doesn't hold.
They can't have it both ways.
Well, it took some underpaid service worker (doing this repetitive work probably 1000x/day) just 1 sec to click a button to choose from a bunch of generic texts reviewed by a legal team to cancel your affiliate relationship with them and you even "got" it. Very effective. Win/Win.
Maybe in the future Amazon will refine this with their own customized LLMs: legally watertight, some "honesty" fine-tuning and who knows from time to time sprinkled with some limericks just for the creepy giggles ...
And owning to the previous experience with Amazon the way more important point: >Don't try to compete with Amazon [...] they will literally destroy you. The corollary to that: if you decide to do even some penny business with them, you are wholly at their whim.
The machine at work seems to be very trigger happy atm.
If there was one iota of proof, half the people on the internet would be arguing how it's Amazon's right and duty to brick people's homes if they say the bad word.
None of them realizing that once such precedent is established, the Amazon corporation will be using and abusing it to it's own advantage.
Such non-immediate concerns are beyond half the people in the internet, who lack the ability to project the future more a year ahead.
Out of curiosity, as a very occasional viewer of his channel: what is it that he does in that role?
(but I might be wrong).
This might be of interest:
Come on introverted, basement-tanned Muskies hiding behind your 500+ karma, gimme your curious and thoughtful downvotes! You are so funny!
Even if you start counting anyone that works for a company even partially owned by a billionaire, about half of us employees work for small businesses: https://www.forbes.com/advisor/business/small-business-stati...
And it's not silly just reality.
Er ... which one?
The one where fund managers who get bonuses for quarterly performance decide stuff?
Seriously, we're getting into "banality of evil" territory ...
And what? That means it's fine to just dismiss as if it's not a problem?
But if define it that way, then "working for" becomes a phrase that has no real use. "X is working for Y" just means "Y has a lot of influence in the world" and says nothing about the relationship between X and Y. So I don't recommend using that definition.
At the time I worked for intuit, it was Brad Smith, but you could make the case we were BOTH really working for Scott Cook, who IS a billionaire
So billionaires.
They won't, and that's why I think we, as a society, need to move past journalism.
That sounds like sarcasm, but it isn't. And I know what you're thinking- "oh but a free press is one of the legs of the tripod of society!" Well it was, decades ago. Now it's literally all tabloids and propaganda. It's time let it go.
We have various tools that allow individuals to securely communicate with each other. Let people communicate the news, word-of-mouth. We don't need bloggers and corporations anymore to put a spin on the facts.
"Democracy dies in darkness" is a threat, not a plea. Do you listen to cancer when it admonishes you, "don't excise me, or you'll be sorry!"
But if that sort of thing is the main source of news, I think you'll find it would result in even more misinformation than journalism produces.
A free press is essential to a liberal society (real liberal, not leftist authoritarianism). Ben Franklin didn't publish for free, so we should recognize a free press includes for-profit press. And long before there were bloggers, there were pamphleteers. We need all of it.
So that's the reality of how they do business.
On HN (among other threads): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36296250
Maybe I don't understand the affiliate program, but throughout the video I keep thinking this is an accusation against accusation.
That said, I can't stand his shtick anymore. Louis getting wronged by corporations is content fuel.
It's also high blood pressure content. It makes you mad at stuff. I've got enough of that in my life, I don't know about you.
(Another example: Not Just Bikes can be like this as well, despite me agreeing with the dude. The tone and script of the videos makes the problem of car dependency, which, again, is a legitimate problem, seem more devastating than it really is)
The YouTuber had his Amazon affiliate account canceled after 7 years without warning or evidence of wrongdoing. The reason given was that purchases made through his links were for personal use or made by friends and family, which he denies. He finds the timing suspicious as it came a week after he made a video criticizing Amazon for canceling a customer's account for a racist doorbell claim. He argues that the small amount of revenue from his affiliate links is inconsequential to him. He believes Amazon is becoming less accountable as it grows in power and treats customers worse. While not excusing Amazon's actions, he questions whether enough vetting was done before canceling his account. The snap decision shows how trigger happy Amazon is to remove people's accounts.
Easy way to use tools to achieve something similar:
yt-dlp (YouTube video downloader), whisper.ai (STT), and then you can use e.g. ChatGPT to summarize the text data.
[1] https://www.summarize.tech/www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kcohq313q...
Here's the output by Whisper.cpp
> $ whisper --verbose False --language English --output_format txt transcribe_me.wav
> [...] (removed, comment too long)
> $ cat transcribe_me.txt | mods -f "summarize this in Simple English"
> The speaker discusses how Amazon accused a customer of racism due to something a robotic doorbell said. They also talk about the concept of companies limiting how fixable devices are, and how this limits the freedom and sovereignty of consumers. They mention that Amazon canceled their seven-year affiliate program account, claiming that they violated terms of service by having employees and friends use the links to buy items. The speaker argues that Amazon overreacted and that this demonstrates the problem of companies becoming less accountable as they gain more power. They call for more scrutiny of such behavior.
> $ cat transcribe_me.txt | mods -f "summarize this in English"
> The creator discusses how Amazon accused a customer of racism because a delivery driver claimed that he heard something racist from a robotic doorbell. The creator explains they often discuss the concept of "right to repair" and how companies are making devices less fixable over time, requiring customers to buy new ones or rely on the manufacturer for service. The creator talks about how having a system in your house that can be turned off by Amazon if an employee claims that your device said something racist to them is concerning. They also receive an email canceling their Amazon Affiliate account that has been open since 2016, claiming that the purchases resulting from special links are in violation of the operating agreement. The creator disputes these claims and argues that such actions demonstrate the problem of companies becoming less accountable as they become more powerful.
Note, mods requires OPENAI_API_KEY to be set.
yt-dlp --write-auto-sub --sub-format json3 --sub-lang en
I don't know why automatic subs require a different flag, but they do.
What's that "mods" CLI?
mods is a CLI interface to GPT-4 [2]
I believe we need to pass down new consumer laws to protect the people. We pretty much rely on their services and they have no accountability.
After years, I made my first Instagram post last week. I got instantly banned (it was a picture of a new bag I bought). Apparently the way to get it back is to jump through some hoops and post a selfie with an OTP. I decided that’s a bit much work and I might as well let them delete my account that only follows a bunch of people I know without ever looking at their pictures.
It's bonkers, and clear how they go about obtaining their data.
I don't mind anti-spam measures in cases which are common spam techniques. Hijacking unused accounts is common enough to warrant an approach like this.
It’s also reasonable not to want to provide Instagram not to have too much information because after all it is Meta, however it’s debatable whether sharing a photo with a photo sharing service is too much information.
> Both sides are reasonable, a common form of spam uses hacked accounts that have grown organically, the normal way, and have then been abandoned.
That does not seem to be the case here.
When it comes to money, sure, take caution. When it comes to a dozen-or-so followers+followees, abandoned a decade ago with hardly any posts... congratulations, your marketing efforts or network effects were successful and they're back. Now stop trying to steal their personal data under the guise of "security".
If you must, feel free to make a password recovery via their emergency mail or something, but don't try to steal personal data.
The rest just doesn’t work; the accounts get hacked using the recovery mechanism because the email accounts get hacked or expire and they get used for spam.
The real fundamental change after the dot om bubble was that the open web effectively died and was replaced with a handful of walled gardens. If you have your own site and post pictures to it there are very few that can stop you, posting to Instagram and you're effectively politely requesting a company to take rights to your photo and host or online if they would be so kind.
I would rarely use it, but then I would try to pay for something with it and it would be declined, when I called they always said it was "suspended due to inactivity"
So for example, a backup card you use for gas only, or a store-branded Mastercard that you only usually use at that store.
You still run the risk of a block, but it's reduced.
In emergency you need to contact your bank.
I have had my card declined several times Once on travel to USA - I probably should have told them before - in this case I had to phone them an international call and it was immediately reinstated. They also denied a payment when it was in a place accross the country from my normal use, which wa good as it was not me trying to use it.
Basically if your spending is abnormal - e.g. in a different place or for a large amount then you might have to confirm the payment. The benefit is the bank is able to stop more fraud.
I doubt that. The bank will either cancel my account long before that, or it will work.
> Hijacking unused accounts is common enough
Ah, yes, for all my 20 or 30 followers, can’t have them see a single image, and of course, the hijackers also hijack the computer those accounts are from, so the IP belongs to the same entity it always did.
They make decisions in milliseconds on each purchase to determine whether it might be fraud. This includes looking at past purchase history to see if this transaction is unusual.[1]
[1] https://usa.visa.com/visa-everywhere/security/outsmarting-fr...
Never posted anything. Never liked anything. Never commented. 5 years later I go to login. Account is banned.
And even if no one reported you if you don't have 2fa etc I'd say it's reasonable for FB to assume your (IG) account was sold, hacked or swapped.
The only tag was the brand of the bag
I have no idea, and I can’t check any more :D
I have not had to login since I last reinstalled my computer last year, the session simply continued.
We moved away from it because of all the things that go wrong with that, and then the internet happened and we want digital money.
"Digital money" in the broadest sense is how it all works today, even with the coins and notes that are common here in Berlin. "Trust-less" money — without anyone who can undo transactions — is an illusion, as it necessitates the users trust their counterparty as court-ordered refunds can't be guaranteed. But too many entities who can undo transactions has a similar effect, and there's a benefit to scale, so you naturally end up with a small number of Visa/MasterCard/PayPal types who have motive, means, and opportunity to bribe/regulatory-capture governments.
One of the reasons I was originally curious about BTC, before it gave me "scam!" vibes, was the possible it might be a new path that might avoid some of this; but I no longer have that impression.
You still had issues, if the local butcher decided to ban you then you were going to be vegetarian. If the church said you were awful (perhaps in retaliation to you seeing the priest doing something) then you'd basically have to move, you could no longer participate in society.
Society has reconfigured itself away from that. The problem now is you can't even move. If a couple of big corporations ban you, you're screwed. You will struggle to sell your services when 95% of people want to buy your products on amazon and pay by credit card.
The solution here is to have due process and appeals. The impact of amazon or whatsapp blocking you is far more on you than on them, just like the butcher banning you in the past. There's just less comeback, you can't even talk to a person on the phone, let alone face to face. You can't appeal to the rest of the village (well you can, people post on HN or Twitter and get bans overturned, but that's a minority workflow and is far less successful than in the past)
Thucydides , ~5th century BC
Today, in many places, even minor assault will result in consequences. In this way, the law redistributes power from the physically strong to those who may be weak but who have legal standing.
Of course, in an absolute sense, everything redounds to power. All law is in the end, enforced at the point of a gun. But this is an observation with very little practical utility IMO. It's like the saying which people employ when things are not going well, "it could be worse".
To be clear, I'm am here making a case for law as an insurance against indivual domination and warlordism which I think it can be. I am not making a case for the state in general though.
The Athenians then proceeded to kill the adult males and sell the remaining population into slavery. The island was repeopled by Athens, and later produced the Venus of Milo.
If porn/weed/crypto or other stuff is legal, then the bank should not be moral police and close their account. Banks are not police, or judicary system and one cannot run a company without a bank account.
If they explain this with risk, then there should be some special state run bank that handles higher risk customers - and for example freezes money for some time to check everything. But at least does not close the account
Reasonable...but could you describe the elected politicians who will vote to establish that special state-run bank, and keep it going?
In this case the pressure on a government payment system would be even higher as no politician could afford to support something helping porn.
OTOH, I doubt the banks themselves are doing it for personal moral reasons, rather because of outside pressure. They're doing it out of fear of the power that picketers have over their actual livelihood.
This is a “feature”, not a bug.
Passing real laws is hard. Easier to get the huge near monopolies the citizenry de facto require to exist to enforce your shadow legal system.
Remember, the first amendment only applies to the government, and you technically won’t die without a bank account or internet access!
Not all of course, companies with too much power act hostile just for the sake of it (means random management bullshit from power obsessed or just ambitious member of it).
So I am not too sure if even more and more consumer protection laws for for particular situations will solve this instead of making it worse.
Some regulation is necessary for most serious or common matters but regulations are not a magic wand that will solve all of our problems without effort from the individual!
Hint: if you have no evidence of something but believe it because of an underlying philosophy, you should figure out how true it is before arguing its case.
It's a strategic goal of the United States to be able to drop individuals out of the economy.
Don't let the foreign part cloud the picture. You cheese off someone bad enough, we have the mechanism to put an entry in place that echoes out to every lawfully operating money transferer, and suddenly, you don't have money anymore.
Every money transmitter's legal department has a full time department that just day in and day out handles law enforcement or government requests.
Other governments I assume enforce their own versions. Using "The Royal No One", here; but no one wants a world of unrestrictable interaction at a distance. In any form.
Why is this even a problem? A purchase is a purchase.
This, btw, is the hardest problem in marketing.
OTOH, disgruntled friends and family can also take their business elsewhere.
Not to mention Amazon tracking what your "friends and relatives" buy, not individually but as correlated back to you, is problematic in itself...
"Why is there a deduction for personal use of the program?
We do not pay referral commissions for products you purchase through your own links. This includes orders for customers, orders on behalf of customers, and orders for products to be used by you, your friends, your relatives, or your associates in any manner. Due to the proprietary nature of the way we determine if the order was personal, we can't share the full list of criteria by which we detect these ineligible orders."
https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/help/node/topic/G46FTB8...
I don't read anything there, or in further text that sounds like you'll get banned. Just that they might exclude those purchases from paying out affiliate fees.
"friends" and "associates" is easy to square up and try and define. My business partner is obviously an associate, my neighbor I cook BBQ with is a friend. How would I know who is my relative? What defines relations?
He has 1.8 million subscribers and talks about gear. There's no way his affiliate purchases were done by "friends and family" in any significant number above 0.1% to even matter.
It's just Amazon payback BS.
> Come to our store (Austin, TX) or mail your device to us and we will fix your problem!
Not a lot of money compared to what he makes off his youtube channel, or off his for Macbook repair business with six employees.
He's mad that he got banned for an obviously fake reason, not because of the money.
Until the FTC or his Representative start to cost them real money.
For example, if companies want to have anything more than a simple (unmoderated) review system there might be certain safe harbours they lose.
You do still have to watch out for marketplace items on some of them. And if it really IS direct-from-China why not go to eBay or Alibaba?
AliExpress does manage to have a search feature that is massively worse than Amazon's, if you can believe that possible.
However, I think the last purchase I made through Amazon was super specific (particular model of washing machine agitator motor) and unlikely to be glump-binned. So perhaps that's the approach.
The things in the middle are the problem.
If you write the rules (or laws) such that everyone is breaking them but then chose when and how to enforce those laws you can selectively enforce them against specific people or specific kinds of people. You're terminating him for a totally legitimate not-at-all-dystopian reason when obviously the real motivation is something else entirely. You just weren't looking to see if anyone else committed the crime.
This! I've been saying this for so long and I'm glad to see more people saying it.
In response to this type of behavior over time, we internet "power users" have developed a superpower, something we do better than almost anyone else
We hold a grudge forever,
and, we happen to be good about telling others
This routes around their damage
So that people pay the full price but he gets something out of it. Who cares who makes the purchase?
in reality it was a standard automated response that the customer happen record from another camera but they had to prove to amazon there was no racist comment made, and it took 1 or 2 weeks for them to unsuspend the account
During that time all of their Amazon Devices (echo, alexa automation, etc) were also non-functional
It is possible to do better. Valve does what should be the absolute minimum; tracking community forum bans separately from anticheat bans, neither of which stops you from accessing single-player content you paid for.
Great way of not-selling those.
I already not-bought Kindle because of the Orwell debacle way back when. Not-buying any echo/alexa stuff is clearly the way to go too. I just buy from the store occasionally.
Same for Google properties, I don't do squat on anything other than Gmail, don't want that messed up.
Short summary - Someone had tied in most of their home automation to Alexa and found their account cancelled suddenly one day. They went through the automated recovery systems and were told to contact support, which they did. Support ended up transferring them to an Amazon exec (let's assume "manager") who told them their account was disabled because an Amazon delivery driver reported that someone said something racist to them over their video doorbell (which wasn't a Ring, ironically).
Upon investigating, checking cameras, logs, etc,, the owner determined that (a) no one was home at the time of the delivery, (b) the driver was wearing headphones, (c) the doorbell had done an automated, "Hello, how can I help you?" response to the driver as they were walking away (presumably ring-and-dash or drop-and-dash delivery, as usual).
The driver had apparently, with the headphones on, completely misunderstood.
It took over a week to get Amazon to review all the evidence and reactivate the account. No apology at that point (although I believe I saw they subsequently have).
That's a bad look for Amazon, and the Youtuber makes a valid point that it's a bad idea to trust control of your home to a company that will make such boneheaded decisions.
IMHO, the only correct response for Amazon here is firing at least two people involved in the debacle, apologizing publicly, and promising to review and adapt their policies in response to the incident. Any halfway decent PR department at anything other than a mega-monopoly would be scurrying to do exactly that, but not Amazon apparently.
The idea that after a mistake companies should fire people leads to company cultures that are overall worse for everyone, including customers/users. Demand that they apologize, even that they give compensation, but not firing.
This whole asking for punishment is what actually drives a culture in which these kinds of things do happen more frequently, because everyone involved just wants to cover their asses.
- A customer can be mistakenly called a racist
- Their home automation systems they bought and paid for disabled
- Any digital content (Kindle books, Amazon Prime Video purchases, Audible books, etc.) they bought (sorry, "licensed") revoked.
- It takes more than a week to resolve after being provided with clear evidence of the company's mistake. I mean, good grief, at least the manager/executive should have reactivated the customer's account during the review process, but they opted for "guilty until we've taken our sweet time reviewing the evidence and make sure they're innocent".
- After all that, the customer isn't even offered an apology, much less compensation.
This isn't just a "mistakes and failures happen" situation. Failures and mistakes occurred at multiple points in this process and along the decision chain, and apparently no one involved had the common sense to break out of the resulting insanity-loop.
Firing people for negligence in similar situations would likely have had just such an effect.
If Amazon hadn't taken that extreme step in the first place, the stakes wouldn't be so high, and there would be less reason to discipline the employee (for the record I don't think they should be fired in any case).
And yes, I recanted on the 'firing" part, but I still feel that Amazon's "resolution" here was weak-sauce compared to the "extreme" action taken in the first place. At this point, I'm guessing they wish they'd offered the customer some minor token (say 2 years of free Prime at a minimum) compensation in return for an NDA on the topic. 20/20 hindsight ;-)
Perhaps a door bell that grew up in a well-off (maybe even a gated) community that learned to fear people that are different?
luckily I found the issue quite quickly, and the meeting wasn't held up, but how likely is it now that there's a flag against my account? what if it happens again? this just makes me want to use any alternative possible to Google's ecosystem
You agreed to it: "We may review content to determine whether it is illegal or violates our Program Policies, and we may remove or refuse to display content that we reasonably believe violates our policies or the law." https://www.google.com/drive/terms-of-service/?hl=en
Their list of policy violations is quite long: https://support.google.com/docs/answer/148505#zippy=
You could argue that you could have not used the product in the first place, but for me (not the person you're replying to), the TOS was very different in 2006. I cannot simply just move to a different service. There was no true choice.
Further, if it is a corporate account, the user needs to make a living thus must choose to use the product or tell their employer they need to quit. There is no true choice.
Or more recently, the Black Mirror episode Joan is Awful
> You agreed to it:
I highly doubt that: "clicking agree" and "agreeing" are two entirely separate things.
Literally no one has the time or ability to read, let alone agree, with the things they're forced to click through* in order to live in the modern world.
Therefore, Google gave themselves the right as the GP claimed.
* either literally by clicking through, or by opening up a box an using a product, or by having something like that silently and unilaterally amended, etc.
It’s amusing to start a new console game and have to agree to a 30 page wall of text. Wait, let me have my lawyer review this before I sit down to play single-player CoD (choose your own game from a mega-studio).
Don't they have legal liability here? There is stuff that they can actually get into actual legal trouble for facilitating the sharing and hosting of.
230.c.1: No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.
As long as they are “dumb pipes” they have no liability. When companies started to “moderate” content that was unaligned with a particular political persuasion, the other side claimed they were no longer dumb, but now editors.
AFAICT, any content filtering that is done is to avoid civil suits and provide the appearance of being helpful to society (or at least not fostering the criminal underworld).
I couldn't find a way to contest or ask about the issue so I reached out to a contact at google who sent me a link where I found out that the issue wasn't made in error and will not be rescinded. My work account and all google services blocked forever! Un/Fortunately it was a Friday before a week off of vacation for me and my access was restored a week later right before I returned to work. I know it's a very much first world problem but that week of vacation was the most anxious I've ever felt in my life. My contact told me that it was likely set off by their automatic "human trafficking" detection.
Every few months since then I'll wake up and get one of the same messages and I'll freak out for a little before it fixes itself an hour or so later. I don't like having my account tagged in this way.
Sounds like you should do likewise.
He's right. I have recent first-hand experience of them deleting reviews of counterfeit products. The emails say:
"We investigated your concerns about product authenticity, and the information we have indicates that the product you received was authentic."
I've tried posting a review a further 4 times, each time only mentioning the quality issues and nothing about product authenticity. Every time, it's deleted within 24 hours, and I get the same email.
Amazon CS said: "As I further checked it here on my end, actually to tell you honestly, our partner seller is the one who manipulates the reviews on their product."
Who is the "partner seller" in this case? Amazon.com Services LLC.
It’s a disturbing trend on any site we rely on or use for services. There is no recourse, once a decision has been made. Last week, I was banned from Facebook Marketplace because… I don’t actually know.
I’m cleaning out an old shed and want to sell a bunch of stuff. So, I logged into Facebook for the first time in 2 years, posted a Shop Vac for sale for $50 USD, and an hour later was locked out of Marketplace.
There is an option to “request a review”, which I did. An automated reply a few days later said they would not restore my account at this time. And that’s it.
No warning, no communication, no justification.
I'd like to see regulation around warnings issues before bans, so that account holders may respond and change behavior or clarify the situation with support teams in good faith before the megacorp takes a harsh sweeping action.
You think Amazon is going to let government pass a law that hurts them? Half the time, it's big businesses _writing_ the laws. And when it's not, the big businesses can afford to break the law (i.e. pay lawyers to hold off for a cost-effective settlement) while small businesses get f-d.
Stop buying products and services that can be deactivated at a whim -- or do, if you think it's cost-effective. But government will not save you.
(Yes, I have filed detailed reports with the FDA and FTC)
I've got counterfeit electrical goods on Amazon (solid state relay that was rated at something like 40A, but on opening it up after realizing it was counterfeit, found the electronics were only rated to something like 10A).
I complained in a review, that review never got published, despite the only SKU having only one seller - the purveyor of the counterfeit items. I did notice they blurred the logo of the real brand in some pictures later, though.
Best avoided imo.
They simply cannot be trusted for these kinds of things.
I think there have been a few different noteworthy events where issues have popped up. I'll link to a couple of articles I've found on the topics.
https://themedicinemaker.com/business-regulation/amazons-fda...
https://www.sitejabber.com/resources/counterfeit-cosmetics-t...
When you go to a listing (SKU) on Amazon, it shows you a bunch of "sellers" with various prices. These sellers usually fulfill with Amazon (hence, Prime shipping). Each seller sends its merchandise to Amazon's warehouse for fulfillment (shipping to you). Amazon commingles the inventory; all of that SKU goes into one bin, no matter who provided it.
Suppose the sellers are Creator, Honest Retailer #1, Honest Retailer #2, and Sketchy Knockoff. You care about quality, so you pay extra to order from one of the three trustworthy sellers. You still have a 1/4 chance of getting one of the Sketchy Knockoff's counterfeits, because they're all picked from the same bucket.
This also explains why you might see a review stating that someone received a counterfeit, even though they ordered from the creator.
Turns out what was actually happening was the energizer batteries she was getting from amazon were counterfeits. Of course amazon takes no responsibility...
But Amazon can freely and in great measure host counterfeit trade mark infringing goods for sale and profit from it.
Only if you had knowledge of the infringing material, or if your site overtly encouraged its upload. Otherwise, as long as you comply with the DMCA you would be eligible for safe harbor. (I think.)
I once listed some GPUs for sale on Amazon. Out of nowhere, without warning, they closed every account I had across Amazon platforms (including AWS). That was fun. Many people have reported the same thing with Google.
Just this week a woman tweeted about a Lyft ride that went sideways. Of course some skepticism is warranted on versions of events because it is a bizarre story but Lyft summarily cancelled her account for "jumping out of" a Lyft ride[0]. Even after multiple attempts to give her side of the story they refused to re-open her account. It was only after the social media response that they reversed their position - which is incredible because they seemed to do this without any new facts. If she was really that dangerous to the platform they would/should have stood their ground.
I have a similar story - I once had someone join me for an Uber ride and they yelled at the driver. The next day Uber sent me a notice that they "don't tolerate violence on the platform" and banned me from Uber worldwide for life (their description). It was embarrassing, I don't condone it, but I have to think the driver likely reported it as some kind of physical contact because I have no idea how yelling constitutes "violence". I didn't bother to pursue it in any way because if they don't want my money I won't give it to them.
[0] - https://twitter.com/katlynskye24/status/1670819610138931202
The additional context here is she was yelling at me more than the driver and this was in a small Midwestern town where crime (and especially violent crime) is nearly non-existent. Unlike some of the incidents you hear about where there is physical violence there is a near-zero chance the driver had ever experienced any. To this day I am convinced a little yelling is more-or-less (unfortunately) par for the course of a day in the life of a ride share driver or really anyone in the service industry that interacts with the public.
My perspective is that (again, unfortunately) people in these roles get yelled at on a daily basis (talk to anyone in service). If everyone who ever got yelled at (service industry or otherwise) described it as "violence" these industries would grind to a halt.
My general sense (from my perspective, of course) is the drastic exaggeration and characterization on the part of the driver was more vindictive than a genuine concern for their safety.
My version of events at least. Like the situation I linked to (Twitter thread) absent video (which should be mandatory and provided by the ride sharing platform) these situations are yet another they said/they said and wildly subjective.
This is why I mentioned mandatory platform provided dash and interior recording. It's very clear that in many of these scenarios (linked Twitter feed, my story) there isn't anything resembling an actual review. However the driver's issue was reported all they could have possibly considered to make their decision is whatever they reported. For all I know they said she hit them, for example.
This of course goes the other direction. I was once in a Lyft where the driver had an associate (of some sort) clearly experiencing an overdose in the front passenger seat. She was slumped over, making gasping sounds. I calmly ended my ride early and my first call was to 911 to describe the car and the driver. Going in the app to report the driver was a remote second consideration.
Yelling isn't criminal, what a "reasonable person" would characterize as violence is. As I noted it wasn't even really directed to the driver and at no point did I consider it threatening to either of us. If violence had actually taken place I would have expected the police to show up (as they did in my OD story). If she had hit them (or gotten anywhere close to threatening) I would be the first person to back the driver's story to the police.
Like I said I woke up the next morning to an e-mail from Uber that was essentially "We got this report, the decision is final". Had I even had the opportunity to attempt to provide my version of events I'd feel a lot differently about this.
Trigger-happy is putting it mildly.
What a mess.
this is basic monopoly in action, less competition so a business can make more money with a lower quality service because customers don't have other options. Same reason most government services are so bad, they have a natural monopoly
He’s wrong. What’s happening is more people are starting to notice. Ask any long-term Amazon Seller.
It's also another warning about just blindly sacrificing your privacy or other interests to a massive corporation. Because that massive corporation, like any entity, is made up of lots of people - plenty of them just as petty and immature, as any other person.
Morally, probably no.
But humans are vastly more inclined to discrimination by caste / class / fame / etc. than they usually admit to, and failure to give special treatment to the "right" people will often generate a serious backlash. A CEO is responsible for his company's reputation and financial results - does he "deserve" his job if he ignores that unfortunate fact about the environment in which his business operates?
The flip-side of that approach is that the company can maximize unjust or arbitrary rules against "nobodies" who lack fame or political-clout.
Amazon doesn't care about bad press (do they even get positive media coverage?). It's day like any other and it doesn't seem to hurt them.
They've literally deployed bots or paid shills[0] on twitter before to pretend to be happy amazon warehouse workers.
[0]It wasn't clear which one.
Assuming any attempt to create an alt account will be thwarted by the process (name won't match credit cards or bank accounts, etc.), I can imagine a dystopian future ~20 years from now where such people will become absolute pariahs in the society. Especially if the current trend of smaller tech companies cow towing the lines of established big tech players continues.
Big tech is already setting up to take advantage of the situation and the “AI influx” is the narrative they’ll use to sell it to the average person. We’re going to end up with a verified ID system and Google, Apple, Microsoft, and Facebook will be the gatekeepers.
IMO it’ll happen via Passwordless (auth) and I think the recent push for verification systems on porn sites is just a dry run for what they’ve got planned for the mainstream.
What information source(s) do you recommend for having a pulse on this?
China would love to have our credit ratings system - but I suspect that they don't fully have the financial transaction transparency and society-wide buy-in just yet to be able to really make it work. I'm sure they'll get there eventually, but for now, they still have a large enough 'alternative' economy/non-regulated transactions and exchange that would both allow people to escape the scrutiny of a more official credit ratings system and these unregulated economic channels would likely grow larger due to people's displeasure and avoidance of the ever increasing authoritarian reach. Social credit introduces this concept using data and tools they have available, and eases this into daily life with less existentially disrupting capability - at least for now.
Your chirrupy breakfast companion.
The USPS does not stop delivering mail nor does it revoke your home address if you send or are sent content they deem unfit for delivery (as is the case for many postal services around the world). A meaningful consumer protection would include an expansion into the concept of a “common carrier” to legally mandate a certain classes of online communications providers to not remove access to one’s account (barring an order coming directly from the courts) or they must provide a clear flow to migrate your data to a new email account and forward all messages there for the next N days. In return, they are given expanded safe harbor and indemnification from what the user does on their account.
What I found particularly troubling about twitter banning Trump was that this move of deplatforming was more impactful that literally anything other action taken towards him. Where one stands on the former president is largely irrelevant as this should be concerning because it exposes the elephant-sized lynchpin we have in modern communications: power to silence is heavily consolidated among a small number of players who do not answer and are indifferent to the needs of the general public. To be fair, they are not required to be, and with normal market forces, users are usually empowered to choose where to spend their time, but unfortunately the network effect is more powerful than market forces here resulting in a winner-take-all situation for each major platform subtype.