Amazon Closing AmazonSmile • Hacker News Board

Re: Amazon Closing AmazonSmile

#131

Post by dclowd9901 » Thu, Jan 19, 2023, 2:38 AM UTC

urthor wrote: post #104

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> …but now they’ve decided they - Amazon - know better, thank you very much. Or, a less cynical take is that they really can have more impact by focusing on fewer charities. Another commenter posted Amazon Smile's Form 990 from 2018 [1], the most recent year on Pro Publica's website that has a full listing of all the charities that received funds. The total PDF is 2121 pages long, and the list of charities starts on…

Realistically, corporate donations are almost entirely measured by the "gross value added to brand/reputation." Not "actual worth to society." A market based, consumer driven approach like Amazon Smile, is likely optimal. Consumers, on average, are very effective and logical choosers (on average). Amazon Smile was likely a highly effective program. Issue is, Amazon now wants to redirect its customer's dollars to impr…

Totally this. Our company had a diversity hiring initiative and I wanted to do some outreach in our area so I reached out about sponsoring an LGBTQ+ event. As a primary sponsor on the bill, my anticipation was that our goodwill gesture would go a good distance in the community and we should leave it at that, but HQ wanted a signup sheet with us trying to get people’s info for recruiting and numbers to publish for the HR team to show their money wasn’t just “thrown to the wind.” I got very cynical about doing events like that after that. It’s not really giving if you expect something in return.

Like, I get it, it’s not just a slush fund, but maybe it sort of should be. Does every dollar spent have to have clear ROI? Where’s the charity?

Re: Amazon Closing AmazonSmile

#132

Post by HorizonXP » Thu, Jan 19, 2023, 2:39 AM UTC

jzb wrote: post #77

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> …but now they’ve decided they - Amazon - know better, thank you very much. Or, a less cynical take is that they really can have more impact by focusing on fewer charities. Another commenter posted Amazon Smile's Form 990 from 2018 [1], the most recent year on Pro Publica's website that has a full listing of all the charities that received funds. The total PDF is 2121 pages long, and the list of charities starts on…

But smaller organizations will be missed entirely. My charity is a cat shelter in St. Louis. I’d rather they get my cut than a larger charity that means less to me and has bigger fundraising machinery.

Name? I'll get some folks to donate.

Re: Amazon Closing AmazonSmile

#133

Post by sli » Thu, Jan 19, 2023, 2:40 AM UTC

ferminaut wrote: post #123

saxonww wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had already canceled my Prime membership and started shopping elsewhere. I'm not exactly outraged by this news - although I did always buy through Smile - but I'm now doubly sure Amazon won't be my first choice going forward.

I think a lot of folks can get by without a Prime membership. My prime subscription ended almost a year ago now and I don't miss it. Amazon shipping has got progressively slower as time went on. Prime video is terrible UX with subpar content. At $15 a month it just isnt worth it. I've now opted for the "free" shipping that you get when you spend $25+. Items that I cannot wait for I will buy local, which usually now o…

Cancelling my Prime membership a few years ago made it immediately clear that all I was paying for was to not have my package sit in the warehouse for an extra 3-4 days before making it to my house in two days anyway. I also started getting shipments coming from warehouses on the other side of the country, something that never happened while I was paying for Prime. Immediately clear that the benefits for ordering were entirely artificial.

Re: Amazon Closing AmazonSmile

#134

Post by chiefalchemist » Thu, Jan 19, 2023, 2:41 AM UTC

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #73

iambateman wrote: post #14

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 wer…

> …but now they’ve decided they - Amazon - know better, thank you very much. Or, a less cynical take is that they really can have more impact by focusing on fewer charities. Another commenter posted Amazon Smile's Form 990 from 2018 [1], the most recent year on Pro Publica's website that has a full listing of all the charities that received funds. The total PDF is 2121 pages long, and the list of charities starts on…

$ !== impact

Put another way, not every (e.g.) $5000 yields the same impact.

More in fewer hands? Where have we've seen that before? How's that working out for us?

Re: Amazon Closing AmazonSmile

#135

Post by tomrod » Thu, Jan 19, 2023, 2:42 AM UTC

jzb wrote: post #77

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> …but now they’ve decided they - Amazon - know better, thank you very much. Or, a less cynical take is that they really can have more impact by focusing on fewer charities. Another commenter posted Amazon Smile's Form 990 from 2018 [1], the most recent year on Pro Publica's website that has a full listing of all the charities that received funds. The total PDF is 2121 pages long, and the list of charities starts on…

But smaller organizations will be missed entirely. My charity is a cat shelter in St. Louis. I’d rather they get my cut than a larger charity that means less to me and has bigger fundraising machinery.

Indeed. But these things tend to follow a log tale for benefit-to-charity and constant to increasing marginal costs. If it costs Amazon $2 in SMILE proceeds to donate $0.02 for a quarter, then it makes sense, if only for that particular charity, to not process it. This is independent of whether Amazon directly foots the bill or indirectly foots the bill via commitments and outlay portions of the SMILE allocations.

Re: Amazon Closing AmazonSmile

#136

Post by jameshart » Thu, Jan 19, 2023, 2:43 AM UTC

sgerenser wrote: post #107

tompt wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always assumed having to type the smile domain was more about making sure they didn't have to make both an affiliate payment and a smile payment on the same order. Seemed like an easy way to cut off affiliates while appearing to be generous. Maybe I'm just too cynical.

This is exactly what I always assumed. Forcing you to navigate to a different URL killed any affiliate cookies.

Oh but they weren't forcing the customers to go to smile and strip the affiliate attribution for their session. Why, they don't even provide a link for the customer to click! The customer is choosing to actively navigate to smile themselves (when prompted by t he reminder at the top of the amazon page). So obviously that means Amazon can't be accused of doing anything nefarious to screw their affiliates (or, more seriously and litigiously, their advertising partners) out of their due credit for the sale. The customer simply chose to switch to smile. And it's all for charity so who could possibly complain?

Re: Amazon Closing AmazonSmile

#137

Post by thwayunion » Thu, Jan 19, 2023, 2:43 AM UTC

dclowd9901 wrote: post #131

urthor wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Realistically, corporate donations are almost entirely measured by the "gross value added to brand/reputation." Not "actual worth to society." A market based, consumer driven approach like Amazon Smile, is likely optimal. Consumers, on average, are very effective and logical choosers (on average). Amazon Smile was likely a highly effective program. Issue is, Amazon now wants to redirect its customer's dollars to impr…

Totally this. Our company had a diversity hiring initiative and I wanted to do some outreach in our area so I reached out about sponsoring an LGBTQ+ event. As a primary sponsor on the bill, my anticipation was that our goodwill gesture would go a good distance in the community and we should leave it at that, but HQ wanted a signup sheet with us trying to get people’s info for recruiting and numbers to publish for the…

> Where’s the charity?

Carefully recorded in tax filings.

Re: Amazon Closing AmazonSmile

#138

Post by ErikVandeWater » Thu, Jan 19, 2023, 2:44 AM UTC

My guess is amongst the people who set up and used Amazon Smile, the vast majority maintained the belief that Amazon is closer to evil than it is to good.

Smarter for Amazon to pick and choose which charities to spend on so it can virtue signal to the more gullible.

Re: Amazon Closing AmazonSmile

#139

Post by odysseus » Thu, Jan 19, 2023, 2:45 AM UTC

indrora wrote: post #96

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> …but now they’ve decided they - Amazon - know better, thank you very much. Or, a less cynical take is that they really can have more impact by focusing on fewer charities. Another commenter posted Amazon Smile's Form 990 from 2018 [1], the most recent year on Pro Publica's website that has a full listing of all the charities that received funds. The total PDF is 2121 pages long, and the list of charities starts on…

Amazon has been historically very stingy with their donations. Internally, employees have begged for literally decades for an employee donation matching program (similar to Microsoft's donation matching) and have been stonewalled for years, with upper leadership not wanting to give a firm answer as to why. Meanwhile, most of the philanthropic endeavors that Amazon does offer its employees internally are in some way o…

Other large companies are similar. I worked for one multinational where they only allowed employee donation matching in narrow cases:

- certain large universities

- certain large hospitals

And that's it. I wrote to HR multiple times asking if my local health related charity could be part of their matching donations. Finally got a terse answer saying "no, only the ones on the list."

Some enterprises are so scared of anything remotely resembling controversy that they severely restrict matching, and others just don't offer it at all.

Meanwhile, Microsoft is fantastic about employee matching.

Re: Amazon Closing AmazonSmile

#140

Post by ABeeSea » Thu, Jan 19, 2023, 2:45 AM UTC

jmbwell wrote: post #102

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."

Yeah. If they had hoped for more impact, they could have, say, made Smile the default, instead of only very occasionally reminding you to use their inexplicably different URL for smile purchases.

The entire point of the url restriction was to save money on google search ads and boost costumers starting their search from Amazon first. The search ads savings was what went to charities.