> Amazon makes enough in search ad revenue to give every single one of their employees a $35,000 cash bonus and still have change left over.

As much as I'd like to agree with the article's point and am critical of Amazon etc etc, you lost me here. $35k cash bonus for every employee does not pass the smell test. I'm sure the delivery driver who famously needs to pee into a bottle because they can't afford a toilet break would love such a bonus, but they don't get one.

This makes me doubt everything in the article. Which is really a shame because such articles are necessary. But you need to keep your facts straight, otherwise you are completely disqualifying yourself from any serious discourse. At least for me.

There is enough to criticise with Amazon. Just keep to the things that are true.

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rjrjrjrj 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

The delivery drivers aren't employees of Amazon, at least in some jurisdictions. They're employees of contract companies that put the Amazon logo on their vans.

But that aside, what part do you disagree so strongly with?

52 weeks * $1B weekly advertising profit / 1.5M employees = ~$35000

I don't know how he's determining profit, but quarterly advertising revenue is ~$20B and margins are presumably very high.

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teiferer 5 hours ago | parent [-]

> The delivery drivers aren't employees of Amazon, at least in some jurisdictions.

Of course hair splitting can make things "technically true" but that doesn't make this any more suitable to a serious debate in which the other side is playing dirty and the main argument against that is that dirty is bad. That argument loses its sting if itself embedded in dirt.

	▲	rjrjrjrj 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Not sure what you're trying to say here. As far as I can tell his estimate is reasonable.

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BeetleB 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

He's not saying they get the $35K bonus.

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teiferer 5 hours ago | parent [-]

Fair, but how easy is it to in that case mistakenly read it like that?

It's not the only questionable figure in Seth's post. He also drops an ad for his new book within 2.5 short paragraphs. While criticising ad practices.

He writes "if only to protect the sales they were entitled to in the first place". Who is entitled to ...what exactly? Maybe you could argue the best air frier should get the top search result spot. Already calling that "entitled" is a stretch though, let alone being entitled to a sale.

He writes "Who ends up paying the more than $50 billion a year spent on these ads? It’s not the sellers. Sellers can’t make heartfelt donations for long. It’s you." It's economics 101 that such overhead, just like taxes, is ultimately split between buyer and seller. Profits go down and paid prices go up. Seth surely knows this (if not then he should not be blogging about economics) but chooses to give you the simplified version to push a narrative. Which is sad. Again, there is enough to legitimately criticise.

I don't want to keep listing more of this, but it's really not feeling particularly honest discourse if you bend things while claiming a moral highground. Cause that makes you lose it.

Unless your goal as an author is just to fuel outrage, no matter cost. Sure, an option, but not part of a serious debate then. Which, again, is a shame.

	▲	BeetleB 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> Fair, but how easy is it to in that case mistakenly read it like that? I had no trouble parsing it, but then again, I'm used to people whining about how they're getting screwed because their employer made so $1M/employee but they're not getting paid $1M. Otherwise - yeah, I was not impressed with the article. Ads are acting just like ads always have. There is nothing special he could point out about Amazon's ads.