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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]

#361
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…

> He believes Amazon is becoming less accountable as it grows in power and treats customers worse. He's right. I have recent first-hand experience of them deleting reviews of counterfeit products. The emails say: "We investigated your concerns about product authenticity, and the information we have indicates that the product you received was authentic." I've tried posting a review a further 4 times, each time only me…

I have a 15 year Prime account. I purchased fake Colgate toothpaste on Amazon and left a review to alert others. Amazon then deleted all reviews I’ve ever left and permanently banned me from leaving any new ones. I appealed twice with no reply. Buyer beware.

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

#362
I feel like this is becoming more and more common with not only Amazon, but other big companies like anything rideshare (Lyft & Uber), food/shopping delivery, and others. Whenever you try to bring up a problem that might cause bad publicity, they "proactively" start deactivating accounts.

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

#363
post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In your opinion, do they have to say a racism or merely think it to be worthy of being locked out of their home?

Hmmm. Tough one. I think making certain expressions in the presence of black people should be enough to qualify.

Say the rest, which is that it has to be a white person doing it. Because obviously a black person "making certain expressions in the presence of black people" is no problem at all.

So you want white people to lose their house if they hurt a black person's feelings. Totally legitimate position, not insane at all.

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

#364
post #229
post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 transc…

Just FYI, use: yt-dlp --write-auto-sub --sub-format json3 --sub-lang en I don't know why automatic subs require a different flag, but they do. What's that "mods" CLI?

Nice yeah I suppose I would use format vtt and then convert that to text e.g. with [1]

mods is a CLI interface to GPT-4 [2]

[1] https://webvtt-py.readthedocs.io/en/latest/

[2] https://github.com/charmbracelet/mods

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

#365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the USA I've found that Walmart, Target, Home Depot, and Best Buy together satisfy much of my "need that free shipping on cheaply made shit" desire. You do still have to watch out for marketplace items on some of them. And if it really IS direct-from-China why not go to eBay or Alibaba?

Quite often when ordering cheap Chinese junk that I can wait a month for, I do use eBay and AliExpress. I'm generally pretty happy. I save quite a bit of money, and the experience is no worse than Amazon 99% of the time. AliExpress does manage to have a search feature that is massively worse than Amazon's, if you can believe that possible.

I have more trust for eBay then Amazon at this point.

However, I think the last purchase I made through Amazon was super specific (particular model of washing machine agitator motor) and unlikely to be glump-binned. So perhaps that's the approach.

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

#366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. I got a counterfeit product, reviewed it with photos showing it alongside the authentic version and the very obvious differences (like lack of branding). Rejected as "the information we have indicates that the product you received was authentic." This along with receiving so many low quality products that have glowing 4-5 star reviews has destroyed a lot of my trust in Amazon. I now order direct from manufacture…

This is going to be a huge problem in the medical/health vertical. It's one thing to get a BommyTahama pair of sunglasses, it's quite another to get counterfeit supplements that could cause injury.

Supplements are a battle you automatically lose. The politics around them are such that they are unregulated.

Best avoided imo.

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

#367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think this really matters. It’s still the email they sent out and should be held accountable for.

I don't disagree. I just think Amazon's "reason" is essentially irrelevant.

The reason is they don't want to do business with someone that shittalks them. Amazon has its faults, but this is a reasonable business practice.

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

#368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quite often when ordering cheap Chinese junk that I can wait a month for, I do use eBay and AliExpress. I'm generally pretty happy. I save quite a bit of money, and the experience is no worse than Amazon 99% of the time. AliExpress does manage to have a search feature that is massively worse than Amazon's, if you can believe that possible.

I have more trust for eBay then Amazon at this point. However, I think the last purchase I made through Amazon was super specific (particular model of washing machine agitator motor) and unlikely to be glump-binned. So perhaps that's the approach.

Yeah Amazon is good for popular well known items and long tail stuff.

The things in the middle are the problem.

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

#369

"racist trees", "racist doorbell", "racist photos"... my god, when will all this nonsense stop? When will the mass media stop feeding people with that crap? As a lesson, every single news company that writes about racism more than twice a year must be canceled from all the platforms out there. This shit is out of control and has damaged many people's brains. Or is that coming from politicians who love the "Divide & C…

> When will the mass media stop feeding people with that crap?

They won't, and that's why I think we, as a society, need to move past journalism.

That sounds like sarcasm, but it isn't. And I know what you're thinking- "oh but a free press is one of the legs of the tripod of society!" Well it was, decades ago. Now it's literally all tabloids and propaganda. It's time let it go.

We have various tools that allow individuals to securely communicate with each other. Let people communicate the news, word-of-mouth. We don't need bloggers and corporations anymore to put a spin on the facts.

"Democracy dies in darkness" is a threat, not a plea. Do you listen to cancer when it admonishes you, "don't excise me, or you'll be sorry!"

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