@karelbrits We live in the sticks and never though about quitting Amazon, but we have. Hard to find stuff now comes from used stores, Etsy, Ebay and Temu - yeah, it is the exact same stuff that Amazon sells at twice the price. I checked. Other stuff, I fix or improvise.
@karelbrits they're not going to feel it, because the real money comes from Amazon Web Services (AWS).
a more realistic near-term goal might be to pressure companies to stop showing adverts for AWS, which you'll see, for example, at sporting events.
It will take longer to pressure companies to actually migrate from AWS to something else (because that's going to take time & money even if the CEO gave the order to do it immediately), but it should be possible.
Jeff Bezos I shared this note with the Washington Post team this morning:
I'm writing to let you know about a change coming to our opinion pages.
We are going to be writing every day in support and defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets. We'll cover other topics too of course, but viewpoints opposing those pillars will be left to be published by others.
There was a time when a newspaper, especially one that was a local monopoly, might have seen it as a service to bring to the reader's doorstep every morning a broad-based opinion section that sought to cover all views. Today, the internet does that job.
I am of America and for America, and proud to be so. Our country did not get here by being typical.
And a big part of America's success has been freedom in the economic realm and everywhere else. Freedom is ethical — it minimizes coercion and practical - it drives creativity, invention, and prosperity.
I offered David Shipley, whom I greatly admire, the opportunity to lead this new chapter. I suggested
... Show more...
alt text
Jeff Bezos I shared this note with the Washington Post team this morning:
I'm writing to let you know about a change coming to our opinion pages.
We are going to be writing every day in support and defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets. We'll cover other topics too of course, but viewpoints opposing those pillars will be left to be published by others.
There was a time when a newspaper, especially one that was a local monopoly, might have seen it as a service to bring to the reader's doorstep every morning a broad-based opinion section that sought to cover all views. Today, the internet does that job.
I am of America and for America, and proud to be so. Our country did not get here by being typical.
And a big part of America's success has been freedom in the economic realm and everywhere else. Freedom is ethical — it minimizes coercion and practical - it drives creativity, invention, and prosperity.
I offered David Shipley, whom I greatly admire, the opportunity to lead this new chapter. I suggested to him that if the answer wasn't "hell yes," then it had to be "no." After careful consideration, David decided to step away. This is a significant shift, it won't be easy, and it will require 100% commitment — I respect his decision. We'll be searching for a new Opinion Editor to own this new direction.
I'm confident that free markets and personal liberties are right for America. I also believe these viewpoints are underserved in the current market of ideas and news opinion. I'm excited for us together to fill that void Jeff
@__3ve Freedom’s lack of coercion also requires banning bathroom breaks so workers have to pee in bottles, and putting driver-monitoring cameras in delivery vehicles.
Is it a free market when the market itself is "privately owned" like Amazon and where the market owner preys on the sales data of it's own sellers to know where it has opportunities to introduce it's own products in that space? Sounds more like a rigged market. I feel like "marketplace providers" shouldn't be able to self-deal.
the freedumb to betray all your allies, cooperate with genocidal dictators & destroy democracy everywhere you find it, the freedumb for billionaires to steal from the millionaires & the poor, the freedumb to F everyone over, freedumb to steal data from people, to destroy people that dare to question you, US CORPORATE FREEDUMB
This is a powerful "DO NOT APPLY FOR THIS JOB" sign disguised as a hiring announcement. It will put whoever gets the position in a bad light. Or tells a lot about them.
@bodhipaksa again not regretting cancelling my WaPo subscription; however we need someone to bully up and submit “trans rights are a matter of personal liberty” essays to them. And “current day racism is anti-free markets, violating both the mathematics of efficient allocation of resources and the spirit of liberty.”(edited to say “not regetting” rather than “. It regretting”
@jayalane I suspect that Bezos is now Trump's unofficial Minister for Propaganda and that anything like you suggested is just not going to get published.
@bodhipaksa I don’t think trump likes Bezos, I think we are seeing Bezos’ desperate maneuvering to be in the inside. If it’s down to Bezos or Musk to be the Gazprom executive who is imprisoned and his company confiscated, my money is on Bezos. And cancelling news orgs that do good original research I think is tricky. I don’t know who to crowd fund in all the places that Post has bureaus to make up for a lack of institutional support for investigative journalism. still, ∃ limits.
@jayalane I don't think Trump likes Zuckerberg either, but the threat of life in prison got Zuck to toe the line, removing fact-checking and moving to paying those who create most engagement (i.e. right-wing trolls and conspiracy theorists).
the level of doublespeak about "freedom" from him and his bros is far beyond vomit. Let them fuck themselves reciprocally in a billionaire centipede, of course leaving them "free" to choose the order (with mandatory hourly "free" rotations).
“Keep in mind, The news media are not independent; they are sort of a bulletin board and public relations firm for the ruling class-the people who run things. Those who decide what news you will or will not hear are paid by, and“ tolerated purely at the whim of, those who hold economic power. If the parent corporation doesn’t want you know something, it won’t be on the news. Period. “ George Carlin
@Leefellerguy Using the propaganda model...news businesses favoring profit over the public interest succeed, whilst those favoring reportorial accuracy over profits fail — and are relegated to the margins of their markets (low sales and ratings). (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufact…)
@Savvyhomestead Seems to me if super wealthy own the media, people like Bezos profit is not the motive, like Musk X as most of if not all media? They can bankroll the media for ever, you know like politicians.
"Free markets and personal liberties", translated from billionaire-speak, is unfettered "exploit, expand, and exterminate" policy.
For once, I wish one of these white dudes would have grown up in a functioning neighborhood, someplace that would have instilled some sense of our mutual obligation to each other - that I do well when we all do well, or that it "takes a village".
what did Mackenzie Scott ever see in him? Their values seem quite opposite. She is spending millions+ to help the planet, while he is hoarding money and power, no matter who it hurts.
Our Kindle books were already liberated from his stranglehold, and the apps deleted from our mobiles and PCs. Basically our Amazon account is mothballed, and we'll simply won't be using them again.
Can they write in support of the personal liberty of not being bothered by other people's ideas of their "personal liberty"? Can they write in support of a market free of rent-seeking, like Adam Smith intended? Malicious Compliance FTW!
The fact that Pod Save America not only defended WaPo after their decision not to endorse Harris, but they even recently took a sponsorship from them, should be the only example of liberal failure we need.
Well fuck. Our Prime subscription renewed *this morning*. Ugh.
[My husband and I agreed a week ago that this would be our last renewal. We had good reasons for renewing for one last year but now I wish we'd gone ahead and quit.]
“I'm confident that free markets and personal liberties are right for America. I also believe these viewpoints are underserved in the current market of ideas and news opinion.”
Apologies for my language in advance, but…
Bull-fucking-shit. That’s all we hear about in the news these days. Underserved my ass.
Well, let's begin with an easy worldwide answer to this: February, 28 and March, 7 - 14 are already set as boycott dates for Amazon. So even if you are not yet ready to quit Amazon, you can at least boycott it in a big wave action!🧚
translation: “we’re going to be pumping out right-libertarian propaganda even more than usual now.” Cancelled my WaPo subscription and my Amazon prime membership.
Free markets? Trump wants to add tariffs whenever the US fails to compete and demands equal prize-money for losing. That's more like communism, but he only wants it for the obscenely wealthy.
touts the free market while shutting down the free market of ideas. I kinda get why these CEOs are so into gen AI now, it's because every single sentence that AI prints does not logically follow from any previous sentence and it makes the CEOs feel like they've finally found their soulmates in the soulless machines.
Anyone who has even the barest shred of journalistic integrity will have filed their resignation by now. To be honest, they should have done that a long time ago, anyone doing it now are the dregs. Every single person that has a Washington Post byline from now on is never to be trusted to ever provide useful reporting. They no longer report the news, assuming they ever did, they just make it up. They are not journalists, they are propagandists and that's all they'll ever be.
Steve Bellovin
in reply to Kevin Rothrock • • •Kevin Rothrock
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Karel Brits 🔻
in reply to Kevin Rothrock • • •hex reshared this.
Truth Or Consequences ✅ 🇺🇦
in reply to Karel Brits 🔻 • • •We live in the sticks and never though about quitting Amazon, but we have. Hard to find stuff now comes from used stores, Etsy, Ebay and Temu - yeah, it is the exact same stuff that Amazon sells at twice the price. I checked. Other stuff, I fix or improvise.
James Widman
in reply to Karel Brits 🔻 • • •@karelbrits they're not going to feel it, because the real money comes from Amazon Web Services (AWS).
a more realistic near-term goal might be to pressure companies to stop showing adverts for AWS, which you'll see, for example, at sporting events.
It will take longer to pressure companies to actually migrate from AWS to something else (because that's going to take time & money even if the CEO gave the order to do it immediately), but it should be possible.
Kid Mania
in reply to Kevin Rothrock • • •"Fuck this guy."
No, seriously...Fuck This Guy.
Eraserhead
in reply to Kevin Rothrock • • •Tuchowski
in reply to Kevin Rothrock • • •„[…] these viewpoints are underserved […]“
My ass... 🤦🏾♂️🤦🏾♂️🤦🏾♂️
Cainmark Does Not Comply 🚲 reshared this.
Rocketman
in reply to Kevin Rothrock • • •Sensitive content
Hey look, there's a job opening for Chief Bootlicker at the WaPo!
@kevinrothrock
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William Hamilton
in reply to Kevin Rothrock • • •— Sir Peter Ustinov
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agnivesh
in reply to Kevin Rothrock • • •alt text
Jeff Bezos
I shared this note with the Washington Post team this morning:
I'm writing to let you know about a change coming to our opinion pages.
We are going to be writing every day in support and defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets. We'll cover other topics too of course, but viewpoints opposing those pillars will be left to be published by others.
There was a time when a newspaper, especially one that was a local monopoly, might have seen it as a service to bring to the reader's doorstep every morning a broad-based opinion section that sought to cover all views. Today, the internet does that job.
I am of America and for America, and proud to be so. Our country did not get here by being typical.
And a big part of America's success has been freedom in the economic realm and everywhere else. Freedom is ethical — it minimizes coercion and practical - it drives creativity, invention, and prosperity.
I offered David Shipley, whom I greatly admire, the opportunity to lead this new chapter. I suggested
... Show more...alt text
Jeff Bezos
I shared this note with the Washington Post team this morning:
I'm writing to let you know about a change coming to our opinion pages.
We are going to be writing every day in support and defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets. We'll cover other topics too of course, but viewpoints opposing those pillars will be left to be published by others.
There was a time when a newspaper, especially one that was a local monopoly, might have seen it as a service to bring to the reader's doorstep every morning a broad-based opinion section that sought to cover all views. Today, the internet does that job.
I am of America and for America, and proud to be so. Our country did not get here by being typical.
And a big part of America's success has been freedom in the economic realm and everywhere else. Freedom is ethical — it minimizes coercion and practical - it drives creativity, invention, and prosperity.
I offered David Shipley, whom I greatly admire, the opportunity to lead this new chapter. I suggested to him that if the answer wasn't "hell yes," then it had to be "no." After careful consideration, David decided to step away. This is a significant shift, it won't be easy, and it will require 100% commitment — I respect his decision. We'll be searching for a new Opinion Editor to own this new direction.
I'm confident that free markets and personal liberties are right for America. I also believe these viewpoints are underserved in the current market of ideas and news opinion. I'm excited for us together to fill that void
Jeff
Eric Lawton reshared this.
Jeri Dansky
in reply to agnivesh • • •Mike
in reply to Kevin Rothrock • • •George Liquor, American
in reply to Kevin Rothrock • • •Dan: Epstein Ballroom
in reply to George Liquor, American • • •#eattherich
Alice
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in reply to Kevin Rothrock • • •Mark 🇨🇦💪
in reply to Kevin Rothrock • • •Gerrit 🇪🇺🌍🍉🔻
in reply to Kevin Rothrock • • •martin lentink 🇪🇺 🇺🇦📎
in reply to Kevin Rothrock • • •Koen 🇺🇦
in reply to Kevin Rothrock • • •the freedumb to betray all your allies, cooperate with genocidal dictators & destroy democracy everywhere you find it, the freedumb for billionaires to steal from the millionaires & the poor, the freedumb to F everyone over, freedumb to steal data from people, to destroy people that dare to question you, US CORPORATE FREEDUMB
F this US, F all US corporations
use better alternatives:
european-alternatives.eu/alter…
or maybe opensourcealternative.to/
!! Luigi Mangione for president !!
European alternatives for popular services | European Alternatives
European AlternativesEh?!?
in reply to Kevin Rothrock • • •Peter Koopman 🦣
in reply to Kevin Rothrock • • •cerement
in reply to Kevin Rothrock • • •youtube.com/watch?v=x6U2Un5kEd…
reshared this
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kendrazo
in reply to Kevin Rothrock • • •Simon Lucy
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in reply to Kevin Rothrock • • •Casper Jansen 🍉🇬🇶 Antifa
in reply to Kevin Rothrock • • •Chris L
in reply to Kevin Rothrock • • •Bodhipaksa
in reply to Chris L • • •@jayalane I suspect that Bezos is now Trump's unofficial Minister for Propaganda and that anything like you suggested is just not going to get published.
I'm glad you canceled your subscription.
Chris L
in reply to Bodhipaksa • • •Bodhipaksa
in reply to Chris L • • •Giorgio Maone 🚫✊🧅
in reply to Kevin Rothrock • • •I am Jack's Lost 404
in reply to Kevin Rothrock • • •Sensitive content
Freedom is Slavery
Ignorance is Strength
"Free Markets" and "Personal Liberties"
hex reshared this.
DeterioratedStucco
in reply to Kevin Rothrock • • •Johnny Wilson
in reply to Kevin Rothrock • • •Leefeller Guy
in reply to Kevin Rothrock • • •George Carlin
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Truth Or Consequences ✅ 🇺🇦
in reply to Leefeller Guy • • •Using the propaganda model...news businesses favoring profit over the public interest succeed, whilst those favoring reportorial accuracy over profits fail — and are relegated to the margins of their markets (low sales and ratings).
(en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufact…)
1988 book on mass media by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky
Contributors to Wikimedia projects (Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.)Leefeller Guy
in reply to Truth Or Consequences ✅ 🇺🇦 • • •Matthew Reinbold
in reply to Kevin Rothrock • • •ugh.
"Free markets and personal liberties", translated from billionaire-speak, is unfettered "exploit, expand, and exterminate" policy.
For once, I wish one of these white dudes would have grown up in a functioning neighborhood, someplace that would have instilled some sense of our mutual obligation to each other - that I do well when we all do well, or that it "takes a village".
Kenneth John Bardsley
in reply to Kevin Rothrock • • •Michael Seidel
in reply to Kevin Rothrock • • •Thibaultmol 🌈
in reply to Kevin Rothrock • • •not accusing anyone specifically, but there's def going to be people being angry about this and continue shopping with Amazon...
I barely buy anything from Amazon unless there really really isn't another way to get it
Mark Harbinger
in reply to Kevin Rothrock • • •"Democracy Dies in Dick-ness"
Yora
in reply to Kevin Rothrock • • •mroberge
in reply to Kevin Rothrock • • •kcoyle checking the perimeter
in reply to Kevin Rothrock • • •Nicole Parsons
in reply to Kevin Rothrock • • •The thing is, Bezos may **say**.he wants personal liberty & free markets, but his **actions** say otherwise
Everything about his business model screams "Monopoly! Monopoly! Monopoly!" all the time
The opposite of free markets.
forbes.com/sites/stevebanker/2…
washingtonpost.com/technology/…
theverge.com/decoder-podcast-w…
He also doesn't believe in personal liberty either as he funds court cases to end unions
theguardian.com/us-news/2025/j…
epi.org/publication/corporate-…
"What what they do, not what they say"
Bookshop CEO Andy Hunter’s crusade to save books from Amazon
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Dark Phoenix 🇺🇦🇨🇦🇬🇱🇵🇦🇵🇸🏳️🌈
in reply to Kevin Rothrock • • •Mark T. Tomczak
in reply to Kevin Rothrock • • •Feisty
in reply to Kevin Rothrock • • •Angela Scholder
in reply to Kevin Rothrock • • •Indeed!
Our Kindle books were already liberated from his stranglehold, and the apps deleted from our mobiles and PCs.
Basically our Amazon account is mothballed, and we'll simply won't be using them again.
Wilfried Klaebe
in reply to Kevin Rothrock • • •Malicious Compliance FTW!
Inhji, Aspect of Rage
in reply to Kevin Rothrock • • •disky
in reply to Kevin Rothrock • • •The fact that Pod Save America not only defended WaPo after their decision not to endorse Harris, but they even recently took a sponsorship from them, should be the only example of liberal failure we need.
Fuck WaPo and fuck those guys too.
Danny Boling ☮️
in reply to Kevin Rothrock • • •Well fuck. Our Prime subscription renewed *this morning*. Ugh.
[My husband and I agreed a week ago that this would be our last renewal. We had good reasons for renewing for one last year but now I wish we'd gone ahead and quit.]
Fuck.
SpaceLifeForm
in reply to Kevin Rothrock • • •Cainmark Does Not Comply 🚲 reshared this.
Elf Burgerman
in reply to Kevin Rothrock • • •Cainmark Does Not Comply 🚲 reshared this.
Jenkins
in reply to Kevin Rothrock • • •“I'm confident that free markets and personal liberties are right for America. I also believe these viewpoints are underserved in the current market of ideas and news opinion.”
Apologies for my language in advance, but…
Bull-fucking-shit. That’s all we hear about in the news these days. Underserved my ass.
ikeacurtains
in reply to Kevin Rothrock • • •Max Fenton
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in reply to Kevin Rothrock • • •Keith
in reply to Kevin Rothrock • • •Cancelled my WaPo subscription and my Amazon prime membership.
Michael
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in reply to Kevin Rothrock • • •