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

Amazon Closing AmazonSmile

aboutamazon.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 581 posts

Re: Amazon Closing AmazonSmile

#11

Post by deelowe »

snuxoll wrote: post #4
nicklevin wrote: post #2

There were seemingly odd hoops for customers to jump through to have their purchases qualify for Smile. Didn't type in the 'smile' URL? Too bad, no donation for you. One of the oddest was requiring push notifications in order for mobile purchases to count ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21233815 ).

They wanted you to turn on push on mobile so they could pollute your Lock Screen with ads. I did it and promptly set iOS to deliver them silently because it got really annoying, but it was an easy way for the EFF to get some money from purchases I was making anyway.

I'm honestly surprised smile went on for as long as it did. It always seemed so out of character for Amazon.

Re: Amazon Closing AmazonSmile

#13

Post by QuinnyPig »

"Amazon shutters unprofitable philanthropic program."

I particularly like that the email I got addresses me (despite the many tens of thousands of dollars I've spent through Amazon over the past two decades) as lower-case "customer." My default position on the various AWS keynotes about the power of data / personalization is "you first, buddy."

Re: Amazon Closing AmazonSmile

#14

Post by iambateman »

The fun part of Amazon Smile was that it let customers decide how they wanted to change the world…but now they’ve decided they - Amazon - know better, thank you very much.

This is surprisingly honest for corporatespeak and I think reflects the god-complex which tends to follow people who spend a lot of time taking in billions of dollars.

The reality is there were a lot of charities - maybe even most of them - who were getting donations which were completely incongruent with Amazon’s moral sensibilities.

There’s no law saying they have to let customers pick, and this isn’t worth “outrage”, but I think it’s behavior which signals a lot about the way Amazon’s top leadership has shifted.

Re: Amazon Closing AmazonSmile

#15

Post by quanticle »

I'm sad, but unsurprised to see Amazon Smile go. Retail isn't exactly high margin to begin with, and Amazon has made a specialty of squeezing what margin remained. As Jeff Bezos said, "Your margin is my opportunity." So, when Amazon announced Smile, I was very surprised that they weren't adding a surcharge for the donation, but rather where making the donation out of whatever margin they earned on the product.

I guess with the current economic downturn, Amazon has decided that there is insufficient margin to continue taking a cut out and donating it to charity.

Re: Amazon Closing AmazonSmile

#16

Post by [deleted] »

ferminaut wrote: post #10

> All US charities have received $400,026,236.70 as of December 2022. $400 million in donations to charities and Amazon has the gall to say "the program has not grown to create the impact that we had originally hoped."

[deleted]

Re: Amazon Closing AmazonSmile

#17

Post by TMWNN »

ferminaut wrote: post #10

> All US charities have received $400,026,236.70 as of December 2022. $400 million in donations to charities and Amazon has the gall to say "the program has not grown to create the impact that we had originally hoped."

One million eligible recipients around the world, according to Amazon, so $400 per recipient over the decade the program has existed.

Re: Amazon Closing AmazonSmile

#18

Post by m00x »

Amazon treats their engineers so poorly that they have to set up training pipelines directly into middle schools. Maybe they think they can make them drink the kool-aid before they grow their critical thinking skills.

Re: Amazon Closing AmazonSmile

#19

Post by jabberwox »

ferminaut wrote: post #10

> All US charities have received $400,026,236.70 as of December 2022. $400 million in donations to charities and Amazon has the gall to say "the program has not grown to create the impact that we had originally hoped."

Absolute peak corpo-speak. I think I can translate:

> We don't want to send smaller amounts of money to a huge amount of charities chosen by users, since some users likely chose charities that we do not support. It also doesn't allow us to print out those huge oversized checks for photo ops. We will continue to give a bare pittance out to a small number of organizations selected for peak public relations points while minimizing cost and maximizing tax write-offs and greasing the right palms to advance our business.

Post reply on HN