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

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

#111

Post by unreal37 »

Semaphor wrote: post #81
arthur_sav wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just Amazon. All big tech companies have this "trigger happy" approach to closing down accounts. Especially payment companies. 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.

> All big tech companies have this "trigger happy" approach to closing down accounts. 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 k…

If you attempt to use a credit card that you haven't used in years, the bank will similarly ask you to verify your identity. I don't think it's weird that unused valuable accounts need re-identification when you start to use them again.

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.

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

#112

Post by valdiorn »

Lutger wrote: post #73
kossTKR wrote: post #5

So Amazon wrongly accuses some random dude of racism after he says "Excuse me how can i help you" from their robotic doorbell, then bricks all of his amazon smarthome products remotely, then bans this man from their associates program for even making a video about it on youtube after 10 years. Are we living inside of the movie demolition man now? I absolutely hate large corporations. Racism off course is never ok, bu…

The Chinese point system is exactly what this reminds me of. It is ironic that unrestrained capitalism actually ends in a variant of communism where it are the corporations, rather than the party, that rule society.

that's definitely not communism.

Some sort of capitalist-imperialism, maybe, but definitely not communism.

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

#113

Post by bmitc »

anywhichway wrote: post #38
ddalex wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I was assuming the commenter was referring to how billionaires basically control everything through influence, government and regulatory capture, etc. So we're basically their little pawns and compute resources.

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

#114

Post by coldtea »

ovi256 wrote: post #64
vifon wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The reason given was that purchases made through his links were for personal use or made by friends and family, which he denies. Why is this even a problem? A purchase is a purchase.

The purpose of the affiliate program is to bring in new purchases from customers who wouldn't have otherwise purchased. Not to be a rebate for purchases one would have done anyway. This, btw, is the hardest problem in marketing.

>Not to be a rebate for purchases one would have done anyway.

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...

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

#115

Post by jhugo »

_boffin_ wrote: post #70
ovi256 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The purpose of the affiliate program is to bring in new purchases from customers who wouldn't have otherwise purchased. Not to be a rebate for purchases one would have done anyway. This, btw, is the hardest problem in marketing.

Attribution?

Right, and it's the part that (on the Web) nobody wants to admit is pretty much based on magical thinking, because you only have a partial view into the actions the user took, meanwhile you're trying to infer their thoughts.

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

#116

Post by comboy »

unreal37 wrote: post #111
Semaphor wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> All big tech companies have this "trigger happy" approach to closing down accounts. 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 k…

If you attempt to use a credit card that you haven't used in years, the bank will similarly ask you to verify your identity. I don't think it's weird that unused valuable accounts need re-identification when you start to use them again. 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.

But instagram is not a bank. I understand not wanting yet another company to have my photo (which nowadays is pretty much knowing who you are) + phone number. Plus it shouldn't require personal identification to post a photo online, especially given how easy it has became to filter out illegal content automatically.

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

#117

Post by cpcallen »

DeathArrow wrote: post #67

Of course, it's not cool that Amazon can terminate anyone's account as they please. But I suppose it's their right. 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.

My impression from the video is that Rossman is actually completely fine with Amazon cancelling his account—he just doesn't like the (in his view disingenuous) email they sent him claiming to to have cancelled it because of TOS violations, rather than saying that they've cancelled because they don't like his video about them.

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

#118

Post by jhugo »

izacus wrote: post #71
burnished wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The briefest of looks at their comment history suggest they are simply helpful.

[flagged]

I basically never click a link if I can see that it leads to youtube, because I'm rarely in a situation where it's convenient to watch a video, and even if I am, it's usually the most noisy & inefficient way to receive a given piece of information. So a summary is incredibly useful, whether it's written by AI or not. What makes you refer to it as spam?

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

#120

Post by unreal37 »

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…

They're not "afraid" of getting scammed. They get scammed often.

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...

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