Sick of scrolling through junk results, AI-generated ads and links to lookalike products? The author and activist behind the term ‘enshittification’ explains what’s gone wrong with the internet – and what we can do about it
I haven’t noticed… But also I have not used amazon in 5 years because Jeff Bezos sucks
Honest question: what do you use instead? I’ve been trying to reduce my reliance on Amazon but often find that other stores are either a lot more expensive or so shady that I wouldn’t trust them to actually send what I ordered.
Fortunately I’ve found some good stores for board games and home electronics / gaming / multimedia but often, when I just need some random thing like replacement pads for my headphones, it’s hard to find a good source that isn’t either Amazon or Ali Express.
So first of all - I am in the EU and I live in a big city.
The most important step is to question your own consume. Often I don’t need a specific thing, or I do not need it within 3 days. But let’s assume I really want that thing.
It is hard to tell what I use instead, because there is no direct replacement for Amazon, but many smaller vendors instead, like how a market is supposed to work, if not controlled by US megacorps.
In general, for all the small tech stuff, in 95% of the cases the vendor on Amazon is also on eBay. Sometimes it costs some bucks more, but I am willing to pay that because subsidies due to people pissing in bottles needs to be compensated.
For computer stuff there is always some shop, I just use geizhals to find the cheapest option (which often is not Amazon). Mind factory comes to my mind.
For clothes I go to town, or order them in their online shops if I know exactly what size I need.
Books, I order them online in my local book store, and then I get get them the next day there.
Let me know what product interests you and I try to answer… But in general I am trying to limit my consumption and ask myself 3 times if I really need something.
The major problems for me are small accessories for electronics like SD cards, cables and so on. I could go to Müller or MediaMarkt but especially for those smaller items, they often only have stuff from HAMA which is insultingly expensive for the quality they offer. Specialized online stores like Reichelt may have a cheaper option but when my 5€ cable comes with 6€ of shipping costs on top, I’m back to square one. The optimal solution would be to wait until there are multiple things that I need to spread the shipping costs over multiple products but when something breaks and I need a replacement, that’s often not an option.
Another point are niche ingredients for international cooking that I can’t get at any of the local Asian or Middle-Eastern supermarkets.
So yeah, ebay, probably…
MediaMarkt is ripoff. So yep, eBay. Bought several SD cards and cables there this year. I can really recommend taking a look. It’s a bit of extra effort and sometimes maybe a couple of bucks more, but that’s a price I am willing to pay for ditching amazon.
As an example, the last time I bought an SD card it was 6,95€ for a San disk 32 Gb ultra
I haven’t bought anything from Amazon since last November and I live in a small city. I’m also not shopping at Target or Walmart which also severely reduces options.
For that weird one-off stuff I’ve been using eBay. I hadn’t used eBay for probably 2 decades and in my mind it was still an online auction house, but a friend convinced me to give it a chance. He sells on eBay and assured me when there is a dispute they always side with the buyer and most things can just be bought outright. And a lot of the stuff in brand new.
I’ve also bought a couple things direct from the manufacturer that I normally would have previously gone to Amazon for. It’s more expensive but not so much so that it bugs me more than giving the money to Bezos would.
Actually eBay is quiet shitty as auction house nowadays. It is a lot if effort setting all the filters and they reset every time you do a new search. Fixed price and global shipment is standard, you really need to watch closely to not buy a product from China. I find eBay very inconvenient for what I used it in 2010 for.
I haven’t used it for any auctions since coming back to it after 20 years, just “buy now”. And yes, you have to be carful you’re not buying from China. I found the same issue with Amazon, particularly when buying less mainstream things.
I’m open to suggestions but in my particular situation, it’s the best option I’ve found.
It is the best alternative, no doubt.
Capitalism. Always.
Agree with everything here… but this isnt news
Half of the posts in this community are just opinion pieces…
We need to have some community standards.
We only use Amazon when its the only fulfillment option available. What I’ve noticed about amazon over the last 5+ years is that it feels like cable/broadcast TV ads do now.
In the rare case I end up watching TV with ads I find them so obnoxious and/or off-putting that I can’t believe they actually sell anything. If anything they put me off the product. And that’s how Amazon feels too.
It was always rubbish, it just became a fad for some reason, and with that they became a semi monopoly for some forms of goods.
I used Amazon once more tan 20 years ago, then I found that local dealers that actually paid taxes and respected workers rights here, they were just as cheap or very very close, and had just as fast delivery, and way better service.
Idiots and sociopaths use Amazon because they are idiots or sociopaths or both.If you haven’t noticed the decline in quality on Amazon then that’s OK, but not an excuse for proclaiming it hasn’t happened.
not an excuse for proclaiming it hasn’t happened.
I never claimed it hasn’t, how did you arrive at that conclusion???
Just because it was always rubbish doesn’t mean it can’t get worse.
But I can see I’ve been downvoted at the current time by 4 idiots or sociopaths.
It’s funny that people never know, even when they are told.
But hey that’s OK, that’s the direction the world has taken. I just wish I didn’t have to run into them all the time, but I guess by the numbers it’s unavoidable.What happened is that it’s got worse. It wasn’t always this bad by a long shot.
The article goes into quite some detail on what has changed.
What happened is that it’s got worse. It wasn’t always this bad by a long shot.
You are repeating yourself, as I wrote above, I never claimed it wasn’t, just that it was always bad.
The article goes into quite some detail on what has changed.
Doesn’t make an ounce of difference, people will continue to use it, just as they always did, and Amazon will continue to fuck their workers and cheat their customers and cheat on taxes, just as they always did. The bigger and richer they get, the more they will fuck both customers employers and society. That’s the nature of a complete sociopath with no contact to reality like Jeff Bezos.
But as I stated above, that’s perfectly OK, because nobody will do anything, especially Americans where half the population actively support that shit.Do I sound negative here? You bet I’m negative, because as I wrote earlier, I saw this shitshow 2 decades ago, but what good does it do to see evil rise, and warn against it, when nobody cares?
I bet that article contains very little I didn’t predict at least a decade ago, monopolistic abuse,declining service at increasing cost, extreme waste in the name of efficiency, environmental problems, work safety problems, horrendous working condition.
But you know the ONE thing I don’t give a shit about, is if people receive worse service, because that was the easiest prediction of all, because that’s always how it ends with near monopoly giants.
Just get over yourselves, and shop somewhere else. If you can’t get it anywhere else, you don’t need it.
I will say your original comment does imply that Amazon was the same the level of rubbish the whole time, and it was merely the perception of it improving because of it becoming a fad. With all due respect to you, I think that is the point that is getting pushback from others. (Not to mention the ad hominem about sociopaths)
I disagree. I’m old and Pepperidge farm remembers :)
Back in the day, there was “no way I’m sticking my credit card numbers into the internet.” People were MORE likely to give out credit card numbers over the phone, or write them down on a piece of paper ripped out of a magazine and mail it. Crazy, I know, but true.
Amazon was cool because it became the first big digital store. You could order all kinds of quality stuff, from the comfort of your house, CHEAPLY, and then they shipped it to your doorstep. If you joined prime - they delivered in two days. Full stop. Oh - it didn’t make it there in two days? Here’s compensation.
Let’s compare that to today:
- quality? No - now it’s endless cheap crap from resellers an middleman vultures
- from the comfort of your own home? Everyone can do that today
- cheap? Nope - amazon is now almost always either more expensive or the same exact price as buying from the manufacturer directly.
- Shipped to your doorstep in two days? Amazon falls down on this all the time now. Sometimes the thing shows up in hours if it’s stored locally, other times it takes weeks.
Amazon lost its way. We ditched our decades old membership and shopping habits. We save more money, stuff gets delivered faster, we don’t worry about getting knockoff crap, and cutting Amazon out of our lives has been a total non issue. (Surprisingly - I thought it would be much more inconvenient than it’s been)
Boooo.
“More than 20 years ago”, as you put it, in 2005, Amazon did not sell much more than books, and they did not ship to Europe yet.
If you are going to lie, make it at least believable.
Is claiming to have hated Amazon before it was cool to hate Amazon the current hipster trend?
IDK, but you are right, I do hate everything Amazon and Jeff Bezos stand for. And I consider people who use their services as morons. I don’t care that I’m downvoted for being rude, people need to know that their choice of using Amazon is despised by people who actually care.
