Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Amazon cancels my account after exposing account lockout for “racist doorbell” [video]

youtube.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 442 posts

Re: Amazon cancels my account after exposing account lockout for “racist doorbell” [video]

#31

Post by NoZebra120vClip »

samtho wrote: post #22
pyeri wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much of a nuisance it really is if an American got cancelled by Amazon+Google? 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 establ…

I’m imagining a dystopian future where to KYC gets way out of control and you are required to undergo a credit, background, and reference check to make an account on a major platform. My guess is that as more of the internet turns to shit that feeds an AI machine that consumes this shit only to regurgitate it later, there will be a need to find out who is really human anymore.

Well, there are often scare-articles running about the "social credit system" in China, and I think that many corporate leaders are watching China very closely in order to establish the same systems in the West. I think that likewise, consumers should pay attention to how this takes shape in China, because we'll be next on the list for implementation and deployment.

Re: Amazon cancels my account after exposing account lockout for “racist doorbell” [video]

#34

Post by shermozle »

TekMol wrote: post #12

For those who don't watch the video: This is about his affiliate account. 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 G…

Because affiliate marketing is cesspool of scammers doing scams at scale. I say this as someone who's measured marketing performance of these channels over the years.

Re: Amazon cancels my account after exposing account lockout for “racist doorbell” [video]

#35

Post by viknesh »

Yeri wrote: post #28

Summary: 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 t…

Written by AI?

Re: Amazon cancels my account after exposing account lockout for “racist doorbell” [video]

#36

Post by throwaway392323 »

charcircuit wrote: post #32

[flagged]

This isn't some personal drama. If true, this is serious cause for alarm

If Amazon is really retaliating against people critisizing them in public like it's really really bad.

Like he said, if Amazon came out publicly and said that we don't want to partner with people that have an adverserial relationship with us, that be bad but at least more straightforward.

Punishing people like this indirectly is dangerous in so many ways that I can't even explain it. It's especially dangerous for a company like amazon that's invovled in so many ways in everyday lives.

Re: Amazon cancels my account after exposing account lockout for “racist doorbell” [video]

#37

Post by TekMol »

chrischen wrote: post #19
TekMol wrote: post #12

For those who don't watch the video: This is about his affiliate account. 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 G…

The 20 clicks it takes for an affiliate is out of the control of the advertiser, and is determined by the publisher and the source of traffic and the intent level of the traffic they are driving. 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 ha…

I don't think that the 20 times lower PPC on affiliate links vs Google Ads is due to market forces.

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.

Re: Amazon cancels my account after exposing account lockout for “racist doorbell” [video]

#38

Post by anywhichway »

ddalex wrote: post #26
prvc wrote: post #8

>I have a full-time job working for a billionaire Out of curiosity, as a very occasional viewer of his channel: what is it that he does in that role?

Aren't we (almost) all working for billionaires ?

No. Even if you work for a Fortune 500 company (which 80% of the workforce doesn't), your CEO likely isn't a billionaire unless they also founded the company. The vast majority of these companies aren't lead by the only 770 billionaires in the US. Even making 15 million a year (typical Fortune 500 CEO total compensation), it would take a long time to hit a billion.

Re: Amazon cancels my account after exposing account lockout for “racist doorbell” [video]

#39

Post by elaus »

viknesh wrote: post #35
Yeri wrote: post #28

Summary: 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 t…

Written by AI?

I haven't watched the video and was very happy to have a summary. What makes you question it was written by an AI?

Re: Amazon cancels my account after exposing account lockout for “racist doorbell” [video]

#40

Post by [deleted] »

NoZebra120vClip wrote: post #31
samtho wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m imagining a dystopian future where to KYC gets way out of control and you are required to undergo a credit, background, and reference check to make an account on a major platform. My guess is that as more of the internet turns to shit that feeds an AI machine that consumes this shit only to regurgitate it later, there will be a need to find out who is really human anymore.

Well, there are often scare-articles running about the "social credit system" in China, and I think that many corporate leaders are watching China very closely in order to establish the same systems in the West. I think that likewise, consumers should pay attention to how this takes shape in China, because we'll be next on the list for implementation and deployment.

[deleted]
Post reply on HN