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Almost everything on Amazon is becoming an ad

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Almost everything on Amazon is becoming an ad

#501

Post by skinnymuch »

hombre_fatal wrote: post #414
MichaelCollins wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apparently Airbnb will delete any review that criticizes a property for something the property owner can't fix. Loud traintracks with trains blasting by at 3am every morning? That's not the property owner's fault, so that's a bad review. As if reviews exist only to give constructive feedback to property owners, rather than to warn other renters away from a bad experience!

“Apartment is great for early risers!” = it’s on a city bus route that rattles the windows “Interesting locals in the area!” = homeless people on your doorstep

No need to disparage homeless people but point made hah.

Re: Almost everything on Amazon is becoming an ad

#502

Post by skinnymuch »

robryan wrote: post #364
sanitycheck wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure people do it, the bribes are probably not very good. Sadly the company can probably get Amazon to take down the review in that case. Reviews for sellers themselves are a joke too, I was looking at some earlier today, via black friday deals. The number of reviews with a line through them and "Amazon takes responsibility for this fulfillment-related experience" was hilarious, when those reviews were things lik…

The seller could argue that it was damaged in transit. The whole thing would probably be luck of the draw in how their first level support in India chooses to apply guidelines.

Amazon would know that’s bullshit from the density of reviews and feedback on the product’s problems.

Re: Almost everything on Amazon is becoming an ad

#503

Post by skinnymuch »

r0fl wrote: post #497
Symbiote wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't you consider how wasteful this is? Packaging and transport for a box of tissues, then the packaging to dispose of. Write yourself a note if necessary (post-it, phone app, whatever) and buy Kleenex the next time you're at the supermarket.

I have the complete opposite logic. I have to drive my gas guzzling suv to get Kleenex and a few other items OR the person delivering Amazon packages can drive a few minutes from the house down the street that is getting an Amazon package. Amazon is not driving the Kleenex from the warehouse to my house in an empty car! My delivery is an incremental carbon footprint. Going to the supermarket is significantly worse.

The person said to buy it the next time you happened to be at the supermarket. Not to order a few items at a time. I believe they were specifically talking about going out of your way to be environmentally conscious.

Re: Almost everything on Amazon is becoming an ad

#504

Post by iso1631 »

chrisbaker98 wrote: post #479
iso1631 wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100km return, or 30 miles each way, that's not far at all. I used to drive 50 miles/80km each way into London 4 days a week when I worked in an office. My wife still does a 100km return trip to work. I have colleagues that commute 7 days in 14 on a 250km round trip into West London. Your 127km one way train is about the same as the new Reading-Shenfield Cross London service which runs 6 times an hour 18 hours a day (…

> "Greater London Area", although that term is of course steeped in politics. Is it? What's politicised about this term? "Greater London" and "Greater London area" have pretty clear definitions; I'm not aware of anything that's controversial about it.

Greater London has a clear area defined [0], but the boundaries themselves were politically set. Look at say Surbiton, you contiguous sets of houses, some in Greater London, some not in Greater London (Say Beechwood Close). In fact I think this [1] house the Greater London boundary runs down the party wall between the two sides of the same semi. Jay Forman has a 9 minute video on the subject [2]

The contiguous Greater London Built Up Area [3] extends well beyond the boundary of Greater London (Bracknell, Gravesend, Harlow), yet doesn't include parts of Greater London (New Addington for example)

The London Commuter Belt is somewhat woolly [4], but certainly includes places like Slough and Maidenhead, Sevenoaks and Tunbridge Wells, Harlow and Southend.

Significant numbers of people additionally commute on high frequency (4tph or more) trains from places like Oxford, Milton Keynes, Basingstoke, Ashford into Zone 1 45 minutes or less.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_London

[1] https://goo.gl/maps/2Zh9tuQnQoPyrnjC7

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UAusbJmRB0c

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_London_Built-up_Area

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_metropolitan_area

Re: Almost everything on Amazon is becoming an ad

#505

Post by Mistletoe »

ethbr0 wrote: post #330
Mistletoe wrote: post #34

It’s refreshing to see this in the Washington Post, owned by Bezos. Tiny beacon of hope going out into the darkness. Search ads on shopping websites are just capitalism taken to the natural end. Hopefully degradation of user experience will curb it somewhat. Our only other option is some sort of new Internet Bill of Rights being passed and I’m not optimistic lobbyists would ever allow it. We need some sort of fund fo…

> We need voters that vote for candidates that would support the human right to freedom from manipulation from corporations. Donate $3 to the Presidential Election Fund every year on your US taxes. It costs you nothing, is a single checkbox, and redirects $3 of your taxes into the fund. Candidates that take money from the fund have additional (mostly good) limits placed on their spending. It's not perfect, but it's f…

I will do this, thank you!

Re: Almost everything on Amazon is becoming an ad

#506

Post by odysseus »

sanitycheck wrote: post #246

My process for getting usable results on Amazon (.co.uk, presumably the others too): 1. Search for thing 2. Filter by department (necessary for 3) 3. Filter by Seller: only Amazon 4: Filter by reviews: 4 stars+ 5: Sort by price, Low > High 6: (Further filters as appropriate) 7: Look at only products with a high number of reviews 8: For every product, "See all reviews" and filter on "Verified purchase only" and "Show…

You can skip steps 2 and 3 by using https://www.shipsfromandsoldby.com to search or by appending a certain string to the URL which I forget now. I'm not affiliated with that site (and it DOES use affiliate links) but I've found it useful.

Re: Almost everything on Amazon is becoming an ad

#507

Post by sanitycheck »

odysseus wrote: post #506
sanitycheck wrote: post #246

My process for getting usable results on Amazon (.co.uk, presumably the others too): 1. Search for thing 2. Filter by department (necessary for 3) 3. Filter by Seller: only Amazon 4: Filter by reviews: 4 stars+ 5: Sort by price, Low > High 6: (Further filters as appropriate) 7: Look at only products with a high number of reviews 8: For every product, "See all reviews" and filter on "Verified purchase only" and "Show…

You can skip steps 2 and 3 by using https://www.shipsfromandsoldby.com to search or by appending a certain string to the URL which I forget now. I'm not affiliated with that site (and it DOES use affiliate links) but I've found it useful.

Just tried it, doesn't appear to work. It does redirect me to search results on amazon.co.uk, but some of the results are items from third party sellers.

Re: Almost everything on Amazon is becoming an ad

#508

Post by sanitycheck »

FeistySkink wrote: post #390
sanitycheck wrote: post #246

My process for getting usable results on Amazon (.co.uk, presumably the others too): 1. Search for thing 2. Filter by department (necessary for 3) 3. Filter by Seller: only Amazon 4: Filter by reviews: 4 stars+ 5: Sort by price, Low > High 6: (Further filters as appropriate) 7: Look at only products with a high number of reviews 8: For every product, "See all reviews" and filter on "Verified purchase only" and "Show…

I'm skeptical of #8. I sometimes leave detailed reviews for items that I purchased or used elsewhere and have a deep understanding of to dissuade other people from buying. Especially for new products that are being overhyped on YT or through Amazon Vine (how is that even a thing), even though they are of dubious quality. I have quite a few non-verified reviews that are voted most helpful, but Amazon obviously priorit…

Unfortunately there isn't an obvious way to surface good reviews (it's not clear what "top reviews" means, but they don't generally seem that good), yours may get more eyes as Reddit posts or on a blog.

Verified purchase only & 1-2 stars lets me quickly scan through for those people who come back months after purchase to write reviews because the thing broke in some way. I don't care about good/middling reviews except in aggregate, but the bad ones are worth delving into.

Re: Almost everything on Amazon is becoming an ad

#509

Post by odysseus »

sanitycheck wrote: post #507
odysseus wrote: post #506

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can skip steps 2 and 3 by using https://www.shipsfromandsoldby.com to search or by appending a certain string to the URL which I forget now. I'm not affiliated with that site (and it DOES use affiliate links) but I've found it useful.

Just tried it, doesn't appear to work. It does redirect me to search results on amazon.co.uk, but some of the results are items from third party sellers.

Hmm, I just tried it again and both the first and last page of search results were all shipped and sold by Amazon. My search term was "geiger counter" and results were from amazon.com.

Re: Almost everything on Amazon is becoming an ad

#510

Post by odysseus »

strenholme wrote: post #304

That’s why I use uBlock origin: It hides all of those Amazon ads. Also hides Twitter ads, even YouTube video ads, pretty much everything except Facebook ads (Facebook plays cat and mouse games with ad blockers). While I don’t mind YouTube ads -- I have disabled ad blockers on that domain because I’m an electronic musician myself so strongly feel it’s important to support artists and musicians -- these Amazon ads are…

Are there any reputable Safari extensions that hide Amazon ads? uBlock doesn’t work in Safari
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