this post was submitted on 28 Oct 2024
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579
Over 200,000 subscribers flee 'Washington Post' after Bezos blocks Harris endorsement (www.npr.org)
submitted 1 week ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
44 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Get fucked, Bezos.

top 44 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 13 points 6 days ago (2 children)

Serious question, but what stops the editors and writers who feel differently from just telling him no and printing what they want?

I understand he owns them and could fire them, but I think that would be more telling and a much bigger story internationally if he just fired or shut down WaPo for not doing his bidding rather than this subscriber loss being what we see. Journalists used to do real reporting and expose huge things (some still do), so if they actually feel this way about the candidate then they should’ve just printed what they wanted anyway.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 6 days ago

I mean, that's kind of what they did. The Post was absolutely flooded with opinion columns calling out the paper and Bezos for their cowardice, and most of their editorial board has resigned at this point.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Not much considering that's what the entire editorial staff did anyway.

But they don't get to control the headline at the top of the front page.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 days ago (1 children)

As I’m not in journalism, why couldn’t the most senior editor control the top headline and push out the views of the also believe the same?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 days ago

I'm sure he could. But I'm guessing he's a corporate bootlicker.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Ugh. I cancelled my subscription about 2 years ago after being a subscriber for almost a decade. Frankly, the quality of their reporting had taken a sharp nosedive. There was more and more opinion pieces and less actual facts. Which is a shame, because the WaPo used to be a really reliable source.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 days ago

Although in this case, it allowed pretty much every opinion columnist to endorse Harris after Bezos blocked it.

[–] [email protected] 99 points 1 week ago (3 children)

It would hurt this sociopath Bezos a lot more if people also canceled Amazon services en mass

[–] [email protected] 61 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Oh, if only. AWS is fucking huge and dominates.

[–] [email protected] 39 points 1 week ago

AWS is pretty far from dominating these days. Ms in particular has eaten up a lot of the cloud marketshare. It is huge but definitely not the overwhelming share that they used to have.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 week ago (2 children)

There are alternatives with better APIs. Or, you know, don't buy into the bullshit and rack up a few servers yourself.

Tired of this "oh, but I can't 😢😢😢."

[–] [email protected] 50 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Most people using AWS literally can't switch because most people work for someone else...I don't think corporate really gives a shit if I don't like the cloud platform we use

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago

The "business" people in charge. Aka the people who don't contribute and mostly fuck shit up.

It's on us engineers to fix their shit thinking. You know they won't.

It does not have to be this way. Stop pretending it does so that you don't have to worry about it.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

That mentality only works in the "adopting cloud" stage. Vendor lock-in is real, and AWS was doing what it does long before there even were competitors, let alone ones with feature parity.

If you start a job somewhere of any reasonable size with incumbent AWS infrastructure, switching to another provider will be an uphill struggle in the best possible circumstance and in most cases it will be a Sisyphean exercise that'll probably end up with you out of a job before the AWS bill goes down

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago

This is one of the reasons I recommend using any provider that provides you with OpenStack when moving to the cloud.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 week ago (2 children)

And go where, Azure? GCP? They're still run by the same club.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 week ago

The OpenStack website has a list of cloud providers who use OpenStack for their clouds. https://www.openstack.org/marketplace/public-clouds/

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago

Leave the cloud.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

He’s no longer the CEO. By your statement, I’m guessing he still has a controlling stake?

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 week ago

He makes the full valuation of the WSJ every few weeks via Amazon stock. It could be assumed, then, that he cares about Amazon’s stock price

[–] [email protected] 76 points 1 week ago (1 children)

The Post could lose all its subscribers and Bezos could still easily cover costs. He isn’t in the newspaper business for the money. He bought it for exactly moments like these. 8% is how much he just paid to hedge his bets

[–] [email protected] 31 points 1 week ago (1 children)

No point covering costs if no one is reading.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 week ago

Yeah I was being hyperbolic for effect, but the point is that he owns the WaPo so that he can use it for his own personal social and political gain, not to make money off of it. I doubt the WaPo readership will substantially drop from this. And I have many questions about the people who still read his rag

[–] [email protected] 67 points 1 week ago (4 children)

Cancel Prime.

Cancel Prime.

Cancel Prime.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 days ago

I mean, Bezos doesn't run that either. Might as well just stop using every stock in his portfolio by that logic.

Get Amazon employees to unionize and take back the ship is the answer there. Amazon is annoyingly too big to be affected by even a large grassroots protest.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 days ago

If only there was reasonable competition, or basically anywhere else I could get certain things without paying a crap load for shipping small things. Even in large cities there just aren't stores that sell certain things like electronics parts, high quality brand tools, etc. The big box stores just don't carry a lot of stuff. Not to mention soaps that I use for sensitive skin which places like Walmart doesn't carry, but the drug stores all got bought out and closed down and the few left now have mostly empty shelves, too. Without Amazon, I just can't get a lot of things I need or want without traveling hundreds or thousands of miles, and I live in a major city.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 days ago

That does little if people keep buying fom amazon store, and they will

[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 week ago (1 children)

So, uhh, I got prime when the pricing is glitched and it only cost me less than 2 dollars. If I sub to a twitch streamer Amazon is actually losing money 🗿

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago

The subscription costs then a fraction. They still make money off you

[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I can't believe they have this many subs tbh

[–] [email protected] 35 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

This is a huge number too. Apparently the NYT leadership was crowing about gaining 4000 subscriptions over a few months recently.

If gaining 4000 is considered a lot in the industry, losing 200,000 and growing is a roaring statement of disapproval.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 6 days ago (1 children)

As of 2023 they had like 2.5 million subscribers, so it's like almost 10% That's pretty huge.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

Decimated!

(it's rare that I get to use this term accurately, let me have this)

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Who tf was subscribed to that rag and was somehow not aware it was Bezos' propaganda factory? Or were they aware of it and just now decided to draw the line?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 week ago (4 children)

The paradox: if, instead, 200,000 newcomers were to subscribe, the WaPo might be economically viable and then it could fire its owner.

The WaPo is currently losing tens of millions of USD a year. That is not so much its fault as our fault. We are the ones who prefer to pay for Netflix and Amazon Prime than for quality journalism.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 week ago

fire its owner

Ummm, pardon? How does that work?

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 week ago

Most old media are loss-makers. The owners are fine with that because owning a newspaper allows you to influence public perceptions.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 week ago

That's not how it works

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Why would I pay for news controlled by a billionaire? My tax money already goes towards CBC who are... probably better than WaPo.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Well sure, if you're Canadian then none of this is your problem.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 week ago

For now. But the whole world consumes US media which is allowing fascism to spread like a malignant cancer