I've Been Quitting Amazon - and It's Nearly Impossible
I’ve been thinking a long time about boycotting Amazon. After converting to being vegan, trying to be as eco-friendly, pro-worker, and trying to locally source as much of my food, materials, and products as possible, it made sense - I should not be using Amazon. Ever.
I admit, the absurdly good deals, the two day shipping, the wide variety of… literally everything - it made Amazon appealing for years. I had Prime everything, the whole nine yards. I knew they had some bad business practices, I knew Jeff Bezos had WAY too much money, but I kept finding reasons to keep buying on Amazon.
As time went on, I tried only buying things I couldn’t find, I cancelled Prime, but no matter what I did, it was too easy to need something and get it in a few hours or days through Amazon. It seemed like the only solution. At the beginning of the Summer, peak COVID-19 times, I decided to try to pull the trigger. No more Amazon. No more of their affiliate products or owned services. Gone. Done. I started researching everything they own and everything they do so that I could give it up.
Spoiler: It’s impossible.
Amazon Owns Way Too Much
It’s not just Prime Video, it’s not just about how many products they have on their page. They literally own like… everything. And if they don’t own the company, they own most of their servers. Here’s a short list of services that are almost impossible to not use in today’s day and age that are powered by Amazon:
Amazon Owns: Amazon, Diapers.com, Goodreads, IMDb, Kiva Systems, Teachstreet, Zappos, Twitch, Audible, ComiXology, Ring, and Whole Foods.
Amazon Servers Power Companies like: AirBNB, Pinterest, Netflix, Spotify, Instacart, Reddit, Dropbox, Lyft, LinkedIn, Medium, Snapchat, Tinder, Asana, Typeform, Patreon, Yelp, Quora, Intuit, Georgia Pacific, Siemens, Sysco, GE, Autodesk, Nasdaq, 3M, TeeSpring, and literally thousands more
Amazon Hosts Government Data from the Department of Veteran Affairs, Department of Justice, Defense Digital Services, Department of Treasury, Homeland Security, and many other sensitive databases from government agencies.
I feel full-heartedly believe that that’s way too much for a private corporation to have their hands on, so even though my small dent won’t make an impact, it just doesn’t feel right to fuel the fire.
Amazon is Bad for Workers and Communities
Much like any other big-box retailer, Amazon can come to any community, promising jobs and boosting the economy, but Amazon services make it harder for small business to compete, and with the $1.14 TRILLION dollar worth of the company, they can make their prices and profit margins so low in any given industry that they can slam out any competition and then funnel business to the big corporation that does not give a shit about you, your family, or any of your loved ones.
Amazon evades taxes everywhere, so they take their profits, none of it gets funneled into the community, and all it does it deprive the area of having resources
Amazon keeps ambulances outside of the buildings in Pennsylvania because the warehouses get so hot that they need to be able to treat heat stroke to avoid lawsuits
Kindle destroyed the book industry and authors, and doesn’t even let you own the books you pay for
They make agreements with local governments to ignore tax duties to promise local jobs, so that the government looks like the bad guy if they say no
Workers are so droned and hyper-optimized that they end up becoming dehumanized and their needs are not met, especially during Black Friday and other shopping holidays
Amazon employees are still on the frontline of the COVID battle and are susceptible to illness by doing deliveries and handling goods from customers. A small handful of workers have died in the last few years to overworking and COVID.
Amazon creating their own delivery services has undermined the USPS, which people rely on. Defunding the USPS has dangerous consequences, as we’ve seen this year.
Bottom line, supporting Amazon hurts local communities and economies.
Replacements for Various Amazon Services
The easiest way to break a bad habit (like using Amazon) is to find better solutions. So I set out to address a few of my needs and replace them, lowering my reliance on Amazon as much as possible.
Random little trinkets - eBay has provided to have most of these types of things secondhand. While I know eBay is a big ol’ corporation as well, I don’t think they have their hands in government data, so hey, lesser of two evils.
Music - Buy vinyl/CDs used on discogs, ebay, or depop
Clothes - Fast fashion is terrible for the environment and workers, so most of my clothes (other than underwear) is thrifted or secondhanded from Depop, Facebook Marketplace, eBay
Audiobooks - Libby hooks up with public libraries and lets you rent audiobooks for free.
Movies/Video - You can still buy physical copies of these, if you have the storage space for it - you get to own it forever. You can also go to a library and get older films there.
Gaming Streaming - When I decided to start streaming again, I knew I would have to be on Twitch. Google and Facebook are arguably just as bad as Amazon, so if I was going to get on a platform, it’d have to be the best one. However, I can use direct donations instead of subscribing or donating bits, so less money goes to Twitch.
Shopping Local - surprisingly enough, Shopify’s new Shop app lets you explore shops and products from small business and local vendors that use their service, checkout through an app, and really streamlines the whole process. I love going to a vendor and finding out they use Shopify, because when we get to checkout and it asks for my info, it autofills with a quick 2FA check and lets me avoid having to fill out annoying forms, and then I can choose to follow my favorite shops and see when new products are available.
Food - Farmer’s markets are tight, especially if you’re vegan. I’m growing my own food on my deck (apartment friendly!) with locally bought planters, dirt, and small-business sourced heirloom seeds (that used shopify!) It might seem extra, but it really makes a huge difference to buy bulk, buy fresh local, and significantly cut down on shipped products.
While it might not be the biggest activism effort ever, it makes a difference, and I’ve been telling my friends that they should do their best to follow in the footsteps of pulling revenue from Amazon. If we cannot trust the antitrust laws to kick in, we can “vote with our dollar” or “vote with our feet” and do our part to stop using unnecessary services.
Let me know in the comments if you’ve had any smart ideas to reducing your reliance on Amazon and its affiliates.