Cory Doctorow

All right.

And then they were able to lock people into their platform through getting them to pay in advance by a year for their shipping with Prime, such that merchants found that they couldn't sell anywhere else.

And then they were able to lard onto those merchants 45 to 51% junk fees on every dollar they brought in.

And then they were able to hit them with this most favored nation deal that says that if you raise your prices on Amazon to recover some of those 45 to 51% junk fees, you have to raise your prices everywhere else at Target and Walmart and mom and pop stores and your own warehouse store so that Amazon started to impose a worldwide tax

on all consumption, right?

And that's not a thing you solve by changing your own consumption habits.

You know, by all means, if you feel that Twitter is bad for your mental health, and it probably is, and you want to go to Blue Sky, you want to go to Mastodon, sure, but just don't fetishize that as the thing that's going to make a systemic difference, right?

The thing that makes a systemic difference is intervening not as an individual, but as a polity.

So, as I've mentioned before, I work at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

We have a national network of grassroots groups, including several here in Seattle, called the Electronic Frontier Alliance.

If you go to efa.eff.org, you can find some of these local chapters.

And they work on things like limiting police use of facial recognition,

buying surveillance technology, privacy for abortion seekers, limitation on the use of digital infrastructure to track down people that ICE is chasing, right to repair laws, Washington's got a really good one.

All of those things start at these grassroots levels and it's getting involved as a polity that makes a difference

I know it's easy to despair if you think you can't solve things individually through your own consumption choices.

We've been told this for 40 years, that you have to vote with your wallet.

The reason rich people want you to vote with your wallet is they have thicker wallets than you.

You are always going to lose that election.

So don't vote with your wallet.

Be a citizen.