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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]

#181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

similarly, a few days ago I was working on a project with a couple of people and I had our meeting notes in a Google Doc. I went to share the doc with the people and was told that it wouldn't be possible due to "inappropriate content". after a quick scan of the text I realised that it was because the notes contained the word "imagery" - in relation to a logo. once removed, the problem went away, but it's disgusting t…

How did you figure that out from a quick scan? The word imagery is innocuous

trial and error of course

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

#182
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…

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.

I sense that some of this trigger happy approach is coming from other consumer protection laws triggered by the society (through popularity hungry polititians) demanding action from someone and anyone when one or some adverse parties use technology and services with harmful intent.

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.

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

#183
post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 the…

Shouldn't those activities create patterns which are easy to detect? 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?

> 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.

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

#184
post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe he considers his subscribers as family :^) Man, I’m really happy I have cancelled my prime and have non-amazon options for online shopping.

May I ask for your alternatives? It could be useful for me too.

Sorry, they are pretty specific to Turkey so they probably won’t be much help to you. I use this price aggregator/comparor website called Akakce (tl. White coin) that links to tens of different independent/corporate ecommerce websites.

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

#185
post #127
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"In a YouTube video titled "Amazon cancels my account after exposing account lockout for 'racist doorbell'," the speaker shares his experience of Amazon cancelling his seven-year-old affiliate program account, claiming he violated their operating agreement. Despite using the same links to promote products on his YouTube channel for seven years and earning meagre profits, Amazon cancelled his account without any reaso…

Skip the speech-to-text step, grab the subtitles from youtube.

Good one! Not always reliable, but pretty good (this video it does not seem to work with, says no subs). Not sure if Whisper.cpp (yes I did mean OpenAI Whisper) is better though, or has similar issues on the edge cases I encountered with YouTube subs.

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.

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

#186
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…

[flagged]

Remake goodthink fullwise.

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

#187
post #180
post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's in the video. Several hundred dollars per month. 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.

And stupid on Amazon's part, did they think this will make him shut up about Amazon? Or cause more bad publicity

Isn't it just retaliation for sake of retaliation? The company won't be financially affected either way. I wouldn't be surprised at all if some fragile ego called this in.

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

#189
post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cybercuck dystopia, where instead of cool gadgets we are slaves to the machine - willingly

Tfw I willingly gave up all my freedom to corporations but instead of a cute robotic waifu all I got was a talking doorbell

Also the doorbell hates you and will sometimes report you to the police for innocuous things.

Your chirrupy breakfast companion.

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

#190
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…

> Racism off course is never ok

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.

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