Thread by @doctorow

The pandemic has made Jeff Bezos - already the world's richest person - $24B richer, but that's not the whole story. Even as Amazon usage has soared to unimaginable heights, another unimaginable thing has happened: its reputation has cratered.

qz.com/1841031/corona…

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From Amazon warehouse workers' plight (50 coronavirus outbreaks and counting) to warehouse worker walkouts, to firing labor organizers and tech employees who support them, to the company's starring role in neutering Seattle's homelessness measures, it's a LOT of bad news.

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It's the moment the @ilsr has been waiting for, along with @athenaforall, and especially @stacyfmitchell, a board member of the former and founder of the latter. Mitchell is the subject of a long, important profile by the @nytimes' @DavidStreitfeld.

nytimes.com/2020/04/18/tec…

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The article makes the crucial point that while Amazon has never been more central, it has alse never faced more critical scrutiny. As Rebecca Solnit wrote, the medical meaning of crisis is a "crossroads of recovery and death."

pluralistic.net/2020/04/08/non…

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We have two futures before us: one where Amazon takes over from the murdered post office and becomes the gate-keeper, rent-seeker and toll-collector for everything lockdown America does, and one in which the immediacy of that threat galvanizes action.

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One thing the article doesn't mention: Amazon has nearly zeroed out its affiliate link system, which encouraged publications large and small to provide free advertising to Amazon in exchange for commissions for the sales these ads generated.

cnbc.com/2020/04/14/ama…

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This is a deathknell for publications that depend heavily on this revenue, but just as importantly, it annihilates an army of tacit Amazon cheerleaders - people who might have felt that they weren't swayed by the payments they got from Amazon but almost certainly were.

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A week ago, putting curbs on Amazon threatened millions of bloggers, vloggers, news organizations, reviewers, etc. Amazon just alienated all those stakeholders forever (at the company's moment of highest-ever profits!).

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That means that Amazon is now in the doghouse with: workers, cities, labor rights groups, environmental groups, trustbusters, homelessness advocates, writers, news organizations, reviewers, small businesses, publishers, writers...

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Yes, it's making more money than ever. But it's also more vulnerable than ever. I'm not saying that this is the moment when we will definitely tame Amazon. I'm saying it's the moment when we have the best chance of doing so -- so far.

eof/