So many of our conveniences depend on someone else doing work we wouldn’t want to do ourselves.

Hear hear. Ring is a creepy company, and we shouldn’t support them.

Look, this is the kind of book that I bought knowing already that I’d agree with its thesis, so maybe you shouldn’t read my review of it. Nonetheless, I think Caine does an excellent job of bringing together many of the arguments against Amazon. This company is bad news, and while it’s hard to escape it entirely, I think the world would be a better place if more of us did less to support it.

As I’ve blogged about a couple of times recently, I’m currently reading R. Sikoryak’s Terms and Conditions, a graphic novel adaptation of the 2015 iTunes Terms and Conditions document, which no one ever reads.

I was struck (if not surprised) by something stated explicitly in the document, which appears on p. 59 of Sikoryak’s volume:

The software products made available through the Mac App Store and App Store (collectively, the “App Store Products”) are licensed, not sold, to you.

Someone’s paying the price for the convenience of shopping on Amazon.

I missed the vertical integration aspect of this in earlier reporting I’ve read. It makes this story even worse.

Such a bad idea. Normalizing Ring won’t make it any better—only worse.

Doctorow convinced me years ago that Audible was terrible, but here, he showed me just how bad they are.

Kiddo starts at a new school on Wednesday, and I’ve been putting off signing the Acceptable Use Policy and Chromebook Policy because I want to read them carefully. I don’t know how much I can do about anything that I’m really concerned with, but I’m a tech researcher when I’m not being kiddo’s dad, so I feel an obligation to be informed and raise a fuss when something is fussworthy.

Some good points about how Amazon owning Roomba is scarier than just Roomba existing on its own—even if I didn’t realize that Roomba was creepily mapping houses.

Amazon keeps getting bigger, and I don’t think that’s for the better.

It’s concerning to see private surveillance prop up public surveillance like this.

This is why I’m trying to buy more physical copies of things—or at least DRM-free stuff. I have lots of regrets about the size of my Kindle library, for example.

I’ve been plenty spooked by Ring’s video capabilities, but apparently I haven’t been worried enough about its audio surveillance.

Amazon already has too big a footprint here. Don’t feel great about this.

Grumpy about DRM today. So much content I’ve purchased but am forever beholden to Amazon to access.

So much ugh. Big Amazon presence here in KY, so wonder when we’ll start to see this.

Why shut down Alexa rankings???

Very scary stuff here.

The more pies Amazon has its fingers in, the more concerning it becomes.

Well played, The Onion. Well played.

Happy to say that my local indie bookstore does not have this problem.

Nope nope nope nope. If plate readers are going to become more common, I’ve got to start biking more places. Not that that will protect against Ring. 🤮🤮🤮

Since the beginning of the pandemic, I’ve spent a lot of money at my local bookstore and bikeshop, and it kills me that Amazon is threatening both. Granted, I haven’t been able to completely cut the Amazon cord (and I have friends who have only survived the past 18 months because of the company), but there has to be a better way.

Amazon is just too big. This line stood out: “Amazon is now in the odd position of replacing stores that it helped kill off.”