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Underestimating the power of Jeff Bezos

389 points by nocoder 9y ago

GabrielF00 9y ago
I think this highlights a big difference between media and tech (or at least big tech companies). In tech, leaking is a cardinal sin. Foer chose to send information about a customer pulling an ad campaign to a friend, who then "excitedly" forwarded it to the New York Times. Foer was using internal company information as a weapon in a personal crusade.
- fddr 9y ago
  It may have been a "crusade", but it does not seem to me it was personal.
- lobotryas 9y ago
  You call it leaking, I'd say it's whistleblowing in abusive practices meant to stifle criticism. Same as the red flags raised about Uber's cultural environment can hardly be considered "leaks".
  - notyourday 9y ago
    Don't bite the hand that feeds you, especially if you are not someone in charge.
    - lordfoom 9y ago
      So never reveal abusive practises ever if it's by someone who employs you?
      - GabrielF00 9y ago
        Amazon didn't employ him.
      - notyourday 9y ago
        You can go Tony Li on a door.
    - jackcosgrove 9y ago
      Don't lick the boots that stomp on you, either.
      - notyourday 9y ago
        I don't work for people who stomp on me.
  - mannykannot 9y ago
    It looks more like a precipitate and emotional response that handed the initiative to his opponents. Whistleblowers have to be careful to not let their outrage get the better of them.
  - mcguire 9y ago
    Are you saying that an advertiser deciding not to feed the hand that bites it (wait, that didn't work out right) is somehow the same as institutional employee abuse? Every newspaper, every news magazine has had this same tension between the advertising department and the content department. Every advertiser should understand that; every editor certainly does. This isn't new.
    - lobotryas 9y ago
      The fact that this isn't new doesn't mean we have to condone it. If we do (or are) then all a large corporation has to do to stifle most MSM criticism is to push enough money into advertising with those platforms. Of course we already have cases in this area [1], but hopefully the proposition as a whole sounds as ridiculous to you as it does to me. [1] - https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/aug/30/new-america-foundation-google-funding-firings https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/aug/30/new-ameri...
      - mcguire 9y ago
        No one condones it. However, the solution that was well developed in the 20th century, the "iron curtain" between the advertising and news departments of a publication, worked reasonably well (with editors being put into difficult positions periodically, though). Up until, that is, advertising dollars for news publications dried up almost entirely, creating an existential threat to the news organization. Now, we are back in the pre-20th century world, where every publication is owned and published by someone with a particular viewpoint.
- gcb0 9y ago
  this is kind of irrelevant. why do you bring that up? yes, he might get even more retaliation. but we should care about his message here, that Amazon control the news. NYT could have reported that there is no longer Amazon ads on the magazine that told truths about them, like it used to have before. without ever receiving the "leak". the "leak" just stated the obvious that everyone could see anyway.
  - mannykannot 9y ago
    > Why do you bring that up? Perhaps as a something to learn from? Foer appears to have let his feelings of outrage get the better of him, and went off half-cocked with a pointless and ill-advised gesture that only benefitted his opponents.
    - gcb0 9y ago
      Aren't we having this discussion here because of his actions? I think he got what he wanted. Some people are OK giving up a little comfort for a better world, you know?
      - mannykannot 9y ago
        I greatly appreciate the fact that he made a stand, but he may have rendered himself less effective in doing that by forwarding the message to someone whose judgement he thought he could trust. Maybe the leak turned out to be the best outcome anyway, given the New Republic is still publishing.
superkuh 9y ago
Anyone have a mirror of this text that isn't behind a walled garden?
- relyio 9y ago
  https://pastebin.com/csdzDmah https://pastebin.com/csdzDmah anything for you
- Sean1708 9y ago
  Out of interest, what do you mean by walled garden in this case?
  - tempay 9y ago
    When I open the page it requires me to have a linkedin account and login.
    - lloeki 9y ago
      It's insane, I can't make sense of how it works, here's a rundown of a quick test we did: I have no LinkedIn account. I cannot view the article (nor anything else) on macOS in Safari and Firefox, neither normal nor private mode, and it has been so for months, possibly years. I can view the article in both normal and incognito modes on Chrome. Coworker 1 is on Arch, has a LinkedIn account but has never logged in on his machine on any browser. With Firefox he can only browse a couple times before the wall kicks in, until he throws cookies away (manually or with private mode). About 15 min later, he is locked out and cannot see the page, even in private mode. Clearing every single bit of data from his Firefox profile does nothing at making the page accessible again. Still, Chrome displays the wepbage fine in both modes. Coworker 2 is on macOS. Using Chrome he can see the page in normal mode (he had previously logged in). He cannot view the page at all in Incognito, ever. We all share the same IPv4 but have IPv6 enabled. It has to be some wickedly twisted heuristic possibly involving some evercookie.
      - Jonnax 9y ago
kybernetikos 9y ago
I was shocked that they seem to have got away with bundling a video service almost nobody wanted with a loyalty program for their near monopoly on online goods.
- turk184 9y ago
  It's because the video service is utter crap anyways.
- eterm 9y ago
  The bundling continues, they have now also bundled in "twitch prime" including a free subscription each month. The old twitch prime ('turbo') no longer exists. Am I happy that I suddenly have a free sub? It's nice to have but it worries me that more and more services are bundled until the point where Amazon Prime is no longer a luxury but there is so much bundling where the price isn't worth it for any given service but there's no alternative. If it heads down that route then it'll take something drastic to break it up. It took the internet to break up cable tv bundling.
  - Willson50 9y ago
    I don't think it will take that much to break the amazon subscription model. Netflix is doing fine, Spotify is doing fine, and I'm sure other niche subscription services will continue to be made.
  - Infinitesimus 9y ago
    > m I happy that I suddenly have a free sub? It's nice to have but it worries me that more and more services are bundled until the point where Amazon Prime is no longer a luxury but there is so much bundling where the price isn't worth it for any given service but there's no alternative. Rest assured, that is precisely their goal: "Our goal with Amazon Prime, make no mistake, is to make sure that if you are not a Prime member, you are being irresponsible," - Jeff Bezos src: http://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-ceo-jeff-bezos-says-its-irresponsible-not-to-be-part-of-prime-2016-5 http://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-ceo-jeff-bezos-says-it...
- 9y ago
hardlianotion 9y ago
I didn't understand the segue from author's meeting with Vitra to the main story about Amazon.
- jasode 9y ago
  His previous boss Chris Hughes (the owner) wanted to turn a profit -- but didn't have expertise to do it. Therefore, CH brought in Guy Vidra with a directive to make profits. Criticizing Amazon about the Hachette negotiations triggers Amazon to pull advertising dollars. This conflicts with making profits. (Which points back to why Vidra was brought in: make the magazine profitable.)
  - cafard 9y ago
    Has anyone ever made a profit with The New Republic? It seems unlikely to me.
    - ArchReaper 9y ago
      >The one year we turned a profit, we celebrated with a pizza party that pushed us back into the red. Literally the 3rd line of the article.
- tyingq 9y ago
  Seems just intended to show that the politics at his work place weren't likely to support his crusade against Amazon. Basically that he picked the worst moment to do it. But, he appears to still have his job. So perhaps that part was a bit exaggerated? Edit: Apparently, he was fired, but didn't change his LinkedIn profile to note that. That's odd, especially since your current job shows up in the byline on these posts.
  - mst 9y ago
    Unless I've entirely misunderstood, he was fired, most of the rest of the team quit because they hated the clickbait-happy CEO, the publication was sold to somebody else, and then he got hired back again. There's more discussion on this upthread.
jtmarmon 9y ago
The whole bit about New Republic's reorg seems really strangely out of place to me
- _h_o_d_ 9y ago
  Indeed: although it's part of his upcoming book, they could have excerpted better so as to integrate or give structure to that unfinished part of the story.
feminist17 9y ago
Other possible titles: "I didn't understand that the world's second richest person and publicly the world's most powerful person, who is extremely competitive, quick, intelligent, with little patience, who also controls the majority of the world's publication/data/hosting/streaming (BTW- Netflix and Hulu run on Amazon, so don't give me that Prime ain't everything argument) could affect me." "I significantly underestimated the heat of the sun when I touched it." "I've basically been a hermit for the past 20 years."
- nerdponx 9y ago
  "All those comments on HN on WaPo articles about how they're owned by Jeff Bezos and won't say bad things about Amazon anymore might have some merit."
  - Chris2048 9y ago
    Another rich guy owning a media outlet, another media outlet owned by a rich guy..
- tyingq 9y ago
  He didn't seem to suffer for it much. Still has his job, and still writing about Amazon. Edit: Apparently, he was fired, but didn't update his LinkedIn profile. Odd.
- ramblerman 9y ago
  > When I asked Chris Hughes if I could pick a fight over Amazon’s cancellation, he sent me a curt note instructing me to remain quiet. Unfortunately, I had already forwarded Amazon’s note to a friend—who, in turn, excitedly and unadvisedly forwarded it to the New York Times. From 1 great decision to the next...
- Darthy 9y ago
  You know, for a supposed feminist you're surprisingly accomodating that some men act unethically. Feminism at its heart believes that all people are equal, a notion that was revolutionary in its day. You apparently still believe that we should not aspire to that, and allow certain people to live by their own rules, as long as they are rich enough. I suggest you reconsider your username, and maybe even your values in life.
pwdisswordfish 9y ago
Oh, new medium for quality shitposts - linkedin.
josefresco 9y ago
"Unfortunately, I had already forwarded Amazon’s note to a friend" Dude ... really?
vesche 9y ago
This article is poorly written and the title is pure click bait.
- tankenmate 9y ago
  The article is an excerpt of a book, but still nonetheless I am wondering why you would say it was poorly written?
  - cabaalis 9y ago
    I wonder if that book will be for sale on Amazon? And, sadly, if not, will anyone know it exists?
    - tyingq 9y ago
      https://www.amazon.com/World-Without-Mind-Existential-Threat/dp/1101981113 https://www.amazon.com/World-Without-Mind-Existential-Threat... Doing well, too...has a Bestseller icon.
  - mcguire 9y ago
    Q: Did he get fired? Q: Who won the Amazon-Hachette dispute? Q: How was the situation at TNR different from all the other newsroom-advertising dept. conflicts?
  - vesche 9y ago
    Title: "I significantly underestimated the power of Jeff Bezos" The article never discusses Bezos directly. He has a reputation of being a micro-manager, but was Bezos even involved in what the article details? The whole story seems clunky from that point forward because the title makes no sense.
turk184 9y ago
And right here you see everything wrong with media these days--people who used to inform us are beholden to the money masters and they don't dare step out of line. Journalism is dead, and that's too bad because you can't have a free country without a free press.
lobotryas 9y ago
Interesting followup from The New Yorker on the implosion of TNR: https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/inside-collapse-new-republic https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/inside-collapse-new... I wish I could say the turn of events shocked me, but it all just seems so predictable.
- jventura 9y ago
  “There’s the peacetime C.E.O. and the wartime C.E.O. Not to be overly dramatic about it, but this is sort of a war. This is a wartime period. That just means that we need to change a lot of things. We need to just break shit. Sorry to say, we’ve got to break shit and embrace being uncomfortable sometimes. And it’s scary. It’s definitely a scary thing to do. But it’s also fun: you know, lean up against the wall and break it.” Does these kind of words work with people older than 20? I once had a CTO that also started with these shitty things on the first meeting and he was fired less than 3 months later, as people sabotaged him and his work. Almost nobody gets excited when someone tells you that your professional life is going to change drastically, come on!! When behaviors are entrenched, you have to be diplomatic, smart and cautious..
stepik777 9y ago
Can we please stop posting links to articles that require registration to read?
- feminist17 9y ago
  Massively annoying advertising with crappy content, or you can pay for it as a service- your choice.
  - floatboth 9y ago
    I'm not sure if LinkedIn requires payment, the giant doorslam popup only offered registration/login…
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
michaelt 9y ago
It was at that awkward moment that Amazon decided that it would punish the New Republic. Our ad sales department received a note, informing us that Amazon would be yanking its advertising for its new political comedy, Alpha House. The missive left nothing to the imagination. “In light of the cover article about Amazon, Amazon has decided to terminate the Alpha House campaign currently running on the New Republic. Please confirm receipt of this email and that the campaign has been terminated.” It was signed, “Team Amazon.” This is one of the reasons I really wish there was a decent, widely supported micropayment system for journalism. So long as journalists' jobs depend on the ad money coming in, companies can use that leverage to get negative stories spiked. Amazon is one example in this article; HSBC with The Telegraph (and other newspapers) is another [1]. If we want to avoid this disease spreading, we really need some way to pay journalists that doesn't rely on corporate largess. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/feb/17/peter-oborne-telegraph-hsbc-coverage-fraud-readers https://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/feb/17/peter-oborne-t...
- willvarfar 9y ago
  Private Eye have an interesting model - they are deliberately not online. They do not try and bait and subscribe you. A lot of what they write is too focused on whitehall and fleet street to be terribly interesting to a wider public. I've often wished they'd expand to do serious journalism too.
  - mst 9y ago
    Part of me keeps wishing there was a paid kindle edition of it or similar ... but then I remember that I mostly read the eye as a result of impulse purchases from railway news stands, and suspect that that's why there isn't. Always funny when you see part of an eye page clipped from a photo to post on twitter - the one time that having an image instead of text seems actually suitable ;)
- loceng 9y ago
  As much as I understand a journalist's raison d'etre (reason of being), they hold a lot of power when they can publish to a widespread readership. This is great if everything is balanced and fair (this is of course all relative and must use reason), however I believe companies and people aren't given the opportunity to share their side of the story - or their counterargument. Usually you may see a quote of someone's response in to being questioned about something, or perhaps a company will say "no comment at this time" - neither of these are good IMHO. I feel pre-publishing, a person should be given the opportunity to respond - and at least part of that response be included in the publication - and always there should be a permanent link clearly highlighted to a third-party platform allowing the person's full response (or really all people and organizations mentioned in an article), which a link/response that can be added to/edited later (with version control to view the previous versions - leaving the purpose of editing to expand upon or clarify). Who pays for the wheels to get going on this kind of system? Is it safe to be government supported? This is an important system I believe we must implement as soon as possible. Getting it adopted is possible, it just takes effort which includes needing enough resources for a longer runway. It feels like it would be a similar type of service of importance as Wikipedia.
mack1001 9y ago
With the American election debacle and not being around during Nixon, I have realized the outsized role press has to play. Blogs, citizen journalism do not do it. You need dedicated sharp investigative journalism without fear Of retribution either from the owner or from the government. It actually becomes important if say Bezos plans to run for president and in fact becomes the president.
kristianc 9y ago
The problem here isn't Amazon, but the business model that TNR chose for itself, and the implications of that. This covers a period in TNR's history when Chris Hughes (formerly of Facebook) was in charge, and essentially wanted to turn the site into a 'vertically integrated digital media company' (native advertising / clickbait factory). It shouldn't be a surprise that this had deleterious consequences for journalistic integrity and allowed advertisers to apply undue pressure. Foer (the author of this piece) didn't want to go along with that, and he and almost the entire staff resigned in protest. Hughes ended up putting the magazine up for sale, and Foer was brought back in under the new editor. Oh, and Foer's new book is now available on Amazon. https://www.amazon.co.uk/World-Without-Mind-Existential-Threat/dp/1101981113/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1505739592&sr=8-2&keywords=world+without+mind https://www.amazon.co.uk/World-Without-Mind-Existential-Thre...
- puh744 9y ago
  Why does the term "vertically integrated digital media company" make me picture someone trying to stack bags full of trash on top of each other, seeing how high they can go before it collapses?
  - pdimitar 9y ago
    Why does that sound exactly like what most online media do nowadays?
- fehrm 9y ago
  Amazon is part of the problem, it is not black and white like that.
  - plandis 9y ago
    Where exactly is the moral violation here? Businesses utilize leverage all the time. Nobody is stopping New Republic from publishing but that doesn't mean that a company needs to keep paying them.
    - 9y ago
fictionfuture 9y ago
Does no one else notice the collusion to suppress calls for anti-trust action against Amazon, Google and Facebook? These companies have all been actively suppressing any information that would force a review on this issue. They've effectively closed off the internet, none of these services let consumers follow links off site now and it's made a major difference in the ability to compete.
- blowski 9y ago
  Do you have any specific examples of that happening?
  - aoeuasdf1 9y ago
    Yes, have you seen this article? https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/i-significantly-underestimated-power-jeff-bezos-franklin-foer https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/i-significantly-underestimate...
nocoder 9y ago
Ironically (?) the book is on Amazon & there is some dark humour in the fact that Amazon will probably end up contributing significant in sales to this book. I bet Bezos has a evil smile on his face.
gjcufufucuv 9y ago
For those of you that think this isn't business as usual, I highly recommend Manufacturing Consent which shows how corporate media narrows the range of political discussion through methods like this one.
sunstone 9y ago
Why is that (it seems to me) whenever the discussion of Google's possible use of manipulating its search results for its own benefit there's a vocal response from all corners but Amazon gets a pass when then manipulate their results to similar ends. To my mind both are equally atrocious.
- dingo_bat 9y ago
  I am softer towards Amazon because they are a customer-oriented company. Google doesn't give one shit about me. Amazon gives the impression that it does.
  - chii 9y ago
    > Google doesn't give one shit about me. Amazon gives the impression that it does. And yet, both companies, under the veneer of PR, does not give any shits about anyone except their own bottom line. Amazon just has better PR than google.
  - ghostbrainalpha 9y ago
    That's an interesting perspective. I am also softer towards Amazon because I can easily imagine buying products at a different website. Google scares me a bit more because I so often forget that its services are even products that I can choose not to patronize. Google has become invisible to me.
- munificent 9y ago
  Great great branding and customer service. Almost everyone on Earth has a positive personal relationship with Amazon on the consumer side and it makes us complacent.
mcguire 9y ago
"Neither side struck me as worthy of huge sympathy. But then the battlefront encroached uncomfortably close to home. I watched as Amazon punished Hachette’s writers in its effort to make the publisher feel pain. Books, the products of years of passionate labor, were prevented from reaching the market. Amazon used its bully’s arm to delay their shipments or direct readers to older books on similar subjects, as well as a raft of other vengeful tactics." I see Foer decided which side needed sympathy. There was another side to that story after all. And I take it Foer was fired from the New Republic?
andriesm 9y ago
It's rather silly to think you can publish an outright hostile and disparaging article about a big advertiser and not lose them. The fact that you are forced to choose between making money and speaking the truth, shows your business model is broken (if you are the CEO or shareholders) or that you've really made crap life and career choices if you are an employee (or self employed).
- jhbadger 9y ago
  Not really. I've seen plenty of cases where there's, for example, an article about how McDonald's food is full of salt and calories and is bad for you snd yet on the next page you'll find an ad for McDonald's. To actually be as vindictive as Amazon apparently was is quite extreme.
  - soared 9y ago
    It's a balance. McDonald's would get more hate for pulling ads than for they would for the original article.
  - smokeyj 9y ago
    News outlets have account managers that wouldn't let scheduling conflicts happen. Commercial placements are carefully considered.
megamindbrian 9y ago
He doesn't have the power to make a nice UI.
warent 9y ago
That's odd, I already submitted this one. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15265016 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15265016 I thought HN handled duplicates by redirecting to the existing submission and automatically upvoting it?
- warent 9y ago
  Yikes, I guess I should be ashamed of myself for even asking...
  - mst 9y ago
    One on occasion I saw a second posting of the same article as me from a few minutes apart - commenting on the other one being confused was for some reason taken as some sort of attack on the other person to post it rather than my wondering what the software had done and attracted anger and downvotes in equal measure. People confuse me sometimes.
- sctb 9y ago
  Once a submissions grows old enough without having gotten significant attention those upvotes don't matter anyway, so a repost is allowed. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html
ropeladder 9y ago
Amazon pulling advertising is scary but not entirely beyond the pale. I find the idea that authors are afraid to criticize Amazon to be much more worrisome: these days, writing a book is an important source of income for politicians, academics and many other import leaders. If none of these people are free to criticize one of the largest and most powerful business organizations in the country (and that business is an arbiter of what they choose to sell more broadly), that's a huge loss for democracy.
davidf18 9y ago
Regarding book publishers as mentioned in the article, Amazon is the good guy and the publishers along with Apple (and I'm an Apple fan-boy) conspired to raise prices on ebooks. The Justice Dept agreed which is how they ruled against Apple and the publishers.[1] It would have helped if the writer had been specific about why Amazon was bad when in fact it was Apple and the publishers who acted badly. As I recall, on eBooks, the publishers were taking a far larger share of profits in proportion to authors than in the very same books in hard copy which of course, is profoundly un-fair. Amazon was the good guy here. I, for one, hardly feel sorry for a writer who can't write the truth or be bothered to search it out. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/mar/07/apple-450-million-settlement-e-book-price-fixing-supreme-court https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/mar/07/apple-450...
bllguo 9y ago
When Google does the same with Open Markets they are denounced as evil. Amazon? The response is comparatively muted. Just another example of "the power of Jeff Bezos," or hypocrisy and inconsistent standards?
johansch 9y ago
Since I enjoyed using this bookmarklet on this site, I thought I'd recommend it to others as well: https://alisdair.mcdiarmid.org/kill-sticky-headers/ https://alisdair.mcdiarmid.org/kill-sticky-headers/
Animats 9y ago
The New Republic was a hobby business for some rich guys. It lost money for most of its life. That made it vulnerable. It was sadder seeing the San Jose Mercury News go down. It was an excellent newspaper with a large, effective reporting staff, and profitable. It was sold to the parent organization of the Contra Costa Times, which is one step above an advertising throwaway. Today's Mercury News is one step above an advertising throwaway.
gozur88 9y ago
I don't care much about Amazon playing hardball with TNR - car companies have been doing this for ages. The fact that he owns WaPo is a much bigger deal.

389 points by nocoder 9y ago

I think this highlights a big difference between media and tech (or at least big tech companies). In tech, leaking is a cardinal sin. Foer chose to send information about a customer pulling an ad campaign to a friend, who then "excitedly" forwarded it to the New York Times. Foer was using internal company information as a weapon in a personal crusade.

fddr 9y ago
It may have been a "crusade", but it does not seem to me it was personal.
lobotryas 9y ago
You call it leaking, I'd say it's whistleblowing in abusive practices meant to stifle criticism. Same as the red flags raised about Uber's cultural environment can hardly be considered "leaks".
- notyourday 9y ago
  Don't bite the hand that feeds you, especially if you are not someone in charge.
  - lordfoom 9y ago
    So never reveal abusive practises ever if it's by someone who employs you?
    - GabrielF00 9y ago
      Amazon didn't employ him.
    - notyourday 9y ago
      You can go Tony Li on a door.
  - jackcosgrove 9y ago
    Don't lick the boots that stomp on you, either.
    - notyourday 9y ago
      I don't work for people who stomp on me.
- mannykannot 9y ago
  It looks more like a precipitate and emotional response that handed the initiative to his opponents. Whistleblowers have to be careful to not let their outrage get the better of them.
- mcguire 9y ago
  Are you saying that an advertiser deciding not to feed the hand that bites it (wait, that didn't work out right) is somehow the same as institutional employee abuse? Every newspaper, every news magazine has had this same tension between the advertising department and the content department. Every advertiser should understand that; every editor certainly does. This isn't new.
  - lobotryas 9y ago
    The fact that this isn't new doesn't mean we have to condone it. If we do (or are) then all a large corporation has to do to stifle most MSM criticism is to push enough money into advertising with those platforms. Of course we already have cases in this area [1], but hopefully the proposition as a whole sounds as ridiculous to you as it does to me. [1] - https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/aug/30/new-america-foundation-google-funding-firings https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/aug/30/new-ameri...
    - mcguire 9y ago
      No one condones it. However, the solution that was well developed in the 20th century, the "iron curtain" between the advertising and news departments of a publication, worked reasonably well (with editors being put into difficult positions periodically, though). Up until, that is, advertising dollars for news publications dried up almost entirely, creating an existential threat to the news organization. Now, we are back in the pre-20th century world, where every publication is owned and published by someone with a particular viewpoint.
gcb0 9y ago
this is kind of irrelevant. why do you bring that up? yes, he might get even more retaliation. but we should care about his message here, that Amazon control the news. NYT could have reported that there is no longer Amazon ads on the magazine that told truths about them, like it used to have before. without ever receiving the "leak". the "leak" just stated the obvious that everyone could see anyway.
- mannykannot 9y ago
  > Why do you bring that up? Perhaps as a something to learn from? Foer appears to have let his feelings of outrage get the better of him, and went off half-cocked with a pointless and ill-advised gesture that only benefitted his opponents.
  - gcb0 9y ago
    Aren't we having this discussion here because of his actions? I think he got what he wanted. Some people are OK giving up a little comfort for a better world, you know?
    - mannykannot 9y ago
      I greatly appreciate the fact that he made a stand, but he may have rendered himself less effective in doing that by forwarding the message to someone whose judgement he thought he could trust. Maybe the leak turned out to be the best outcome anyway, given the New Republic is still publishing.

superkuh 9y ago

Anyone have a mirror of this text that isn't behind a walled garden?

relyio 9y ago
https://pastebin.com/csdzDmah https://pastebin.com/csdzDmah anything for you
Sean1708 9y ago
Out of interest, what do you mean by walled garden in this case?
- tempay 9y ago
  When I open the page it requires me to have a linkedin account and login.
  - lloeki 9y ago
    It's insane, I can't make sense of how it works, here's a rundown of a quick test we did: I have no LinkedIn account. I cannot view the article (nor anything else) on macOS in Safari and Firefox, neither normal nor private mode, and it has been so for months, possibly years. I can view the article in both normal and incognito modes on Chrome. Coworker 1 is on Arch, has a LinkedIn account but has never logged in on his machine on any browser. With Firefox he can only browse a couple times before the wall kicks in, until he throws cookies away (manually or with private mode). About 15 min later, he is locked out and cannot see the page, even in private mode. Clearing every single bit of data from his Firefox profile does nothing at making the page accessible again. Still, Chrome displays the wepbage fine in both modes. Coworker 2 is on macOS. Using Chrome he can see the page in normal mode (he had previously logged in). He cannot view the page at all in Incognito, ever. We all share the same IPv4 but have IPv6 enabled. It has to be some wickedly twisted heuristic possibly involving some evercookie.
    - Jonnax 9y ago

kybernetikos 9y ago

I was shocked that they seem to have got away with bundling a video service almost nobody wanted with a loyalty program for their near monopoly on online goods.

turk184 9y ago
It's because the video service is utter crap anyways.
eterm 9y ago
The bundling continues, they have now also bundled in "twitch prime" including a free subscription each month. The old twitch prime ('turbo') no longer exists. Am I happy that I suddenly have a free sub? It's nice to have but it worries me that more and more services are bundled until the point where Amazon Prime is no longer a luxury but there is so much bundling where the price isn't worth it for any given service but there's no alternative. If it heads down that route then it'll take something drastic to break it up. It took the internet to break up cable tv bundling.
- Willson50 9y ago
  I don't think it will take that much to break the amazon subscription model. Netflix is doing fine, Spotify is doing fine, and I'm sure other niche subscription services will continue to be made.
- Infinitesimus 9y ago
  > m I happy that I suddenly have a free sub? It's nice to have but it worries me that more and more services are bundled until the point where Amazon Prime is no longer a luxury but there is so much bundling where the price isn't worth it for any given service but there's no alternative. Rest assured, that is precisely their goal: "Our goal with Amazon Prime, make no mistake, is to make sure that if you are not a Prime member, you are being irresponsible," - Jeff Bezos src: http://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-ceo-jeff-bezos-says-its-irresponsible-not-to-be-part-of-prime-2016-5 http://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-ceo-jeff-bezos-says-it...
9y ago

hardlianotion 9y ago

I didn't understand the segue from author's meeting with Vitra to the main story about Amazon.

jasode 9y ago
His previous boss Chris Hughes (the owner) wanted to turn a profit -- but didn't have expertise to do it. Therefore, CH brought in Guy Vidra with a directive to make profits. Criticizing Amazon about the Hachette negotiations triggers Amazon to pull advertising dollars. This conflicts with making profits. (Which points back to why Vidra was brought in: make the magazine profitable.)
- cafard 9y ago
  Has anyone ever made a profit with The New Republic? It seems unlikely to me.
  - ArchReaper 9y ago
    >The one year we turned a profit, we celebrated with a pizza party that pushed us back into the red. Literally the 3rd line of the article.
tyingq 9y ago
Seems just intended to show that the politics at his work place weren't likely to support his crusade against Amazon. Basically that he picked the worst moment to do it. But, he appears to still have his job. So perhaps that part was a bit exaggerated? Edit: Apparently, he was fired, but didn't change his LinkedIn profile to note that. That's odd, especially since your current job shows up in the byline on these posts.
- mst 9y ago
  Unless I've entirely misunderstood, he was fired, most of the rest of the team quit because they hated the clickbait-happy CEO, the publication was sold to somebody else, and then he got hired back again. There's more discussion on this upthread.

jtmarmon 9y ago

The whole bit about New Republic's reorg seems really strangely out of place to me

_h_o_d_ 9y ago
Indeed: although it's part of his upcoming book, they could have excerpted better so as to integrate or give structure to that unfinished part of the story.

feminist17 9y ago

Other possible titles: "I didn't understand that the world's second richest person and publicly the world's most powerful person, who is extremely competitive, quick, intelligent, with little patience, who also controls the majority of the world's publication/data/hosting/streaming (BTW- Netflix and Hulu run on Amazon, so don't give me that Prime ain't everything argument) could affect me." "I significantly underestimated the heat of the sun when I touched it." "I've basically been a hermit for the past 20 years."

nerdponx 9y ago
"All those comments on HN on WaPo articles about how they're owned by Jeff Bezos and won't say bad things about Amazon anymore might have some merit."
- Chris2048 9y ago
  Another rich guy owning a media outlet, another media outlet owned by a rich guy..
tyingq 9y ago
He didn't seem to suffer for it much. Still has his job, and still writing about Amazon. Edit: Apparently, he was fired, but didn't update his LinkedIn profile. Odd.
ramblerman 9y ago
> When I asked Chris Hughes if I could pick a fight over Amazon’s cancellation, he sent me a curt note instructing me to remain quiet. Unfortunately, I had already forwarded Amazon’s note to a friend—who, in turn, excitedly and unadvisedly forwarded it to the New York Times. From 1 great decision to the next...
Darthy 9y ago
You know, for a supposed feminist you're surprisingly accomodating that some men act unethically. Feminism at its heart believes that all people are equal, a notion that was revolutionary in its day. You apparently still believe that we should not aspire to that, and allow certain people to live by their own rules, as long as they are rich enough. I suggest you reconsider your username, and maybe even your values in life.

pwdisswordfish 9y ago

Oh, new medium for quality shitposts - linkedin.

josefresco 9y ago

"Unfortunately, I had already forwarded Amazon’s note to a friend" Dude ... really?

vesche 9y ago

This article is poorly written and the title is pure click bait.

tankenmate 9y ago
The article is an excerpt of a book, but still nonetheless I am wondering why you would say it was poorly written?
- cabaalis 9y ago
  I wonder if that book will be for sale on Amazon? And, sadly, if not, will anyone know it exists?
  - tyingq 9y ago
    https://www.amazon.com/World-Without-Mind-Existential-Threat/dp/1101981113 https://www.amazon.com/World-Without-Mind-Existential-Threat... Doing well, too...has a Bestseller icon.
- mcguire 9y ago
  Q: Did he get fired? Q: Who won the Amazon-Hachette dispute? Q: How was the situation at TNR different from all the other newsroom-advertising dept. conflicts?
- vesche 9y ago
  Title: "I significantly underestimated the power of Jeff Bezos" The article never discusses Bezos directly. He has a reputation of being a micro-manager, but was Bezos even involved in what the article details? The whole story seems clunky from that point forward because the title makes no sense.

turk184 9y ago

And right here you see everything wrong with media these days--people who used to inform us are beholden to the money masters and they don't dare step out of line. Journalism is dead, and that's too bad because you can't have a free country without a free press.

lobotryas 9y ago

Interesting followup from The New Yorker on the implosion of TNR: https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/inside-collapse-new-republic https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/inside-collapse-new... I wish I could say the turn of events shocked me, but it all just seems so predictable.

jventura 9y ago
“There’s the peacetime C.E.O. and the wartime C.E.O. Not to be overly dramatic about it, but this is sort of a war. This is a wartime period. That just means that we need to change a lot of things. We need to just break shit. Sorry to say, we’ve got to break shit and embrace being uncomfortable sometimes. And it’s scary. It’s definitely a scary thing to do. But it’s also fun: you know, lean up against the wall and break it.” Does these kind of words work with people older than 20? I once had a CTO that also started with these shitty things on the first meeting and he was fired less than 3 months later, as people sabotaged him and his work. Almost nobody gets excited when someone tells you that your professional life is going to change drastically, come on!! When behaviors are entrenched, you have to be diplomatic, smart and cautious..

stepik777 9y ago

Can we please stop posting links to articles that require registration to read?

feminist17 9y ago
Massively annoying advertising with crappy content, or you can pay for it as a service- your choice.
- floatboth 9y ago
  I'm not sure if LinkedIn requires payment, the giant doorslam popup only offered registration/login…
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]

michaelt 9y ago

It was at that awkward moment that Amazon decided that it would punish the New Republic. Our ad sales department received a note, informing us that Amazon would be yanking its advertising for its new political comedy, Alpha House. The missive left nothing to the imagination. “In light of the cover article about Amazon, Amazon has decided to terminate the Alpha House campaign currently running on the New Republic. Please confirm receipt of this email and that the campaign has been terminated.” It was signed, “Team Amazon.” This is one of the reasons I really wish there was a decent, widely supported micropayment system for journalism. So long as journalists' jobs depend on the ad money coming in, companies can use that leverage to get negative stories spiked. Amazon is one example in this article; HSBC with The Telegraph (and other newspapers) is another [1]. If we want to avoid this disease spreading, we really need some way to pay journalists that doesn't rely on corporate largess. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/feb/17/peter-oborne-telegraph-hsbc-coverage-fraud-readers https://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/feb/17/peter-oborne-t...

willvarfar 9y ago
Private Eye have an interesting model - they are deliberately not online. They do not try and bait and subscribe you. A lot of what they write is too focused on whitehall and fleet street to be terribly interesting to a wider public. I've often wished they'd expand to do serious journalism too.
- mst 9y ago
  Part of me keeps wishing there was a paid kindle edition of it or similar ... but then I remember that I mostly read the eye as a result of impulse purchases from railway news stands, and suspect that that's why there isn't. Always funny when you see part of an eye page clipped from a photo to post on twitter - the one time that having an image instead of text seems actually suitable ;)
loceng 9y ago
As much as I understand a journalist's raison d'etre (reason of being), they hold a lot of power when they can publish to a widespread readership. This is great if everything is balanced and fair (this is of course all relative and must use reason), however I believe companies and people aren't given the opportunity to share their side of the story - or their counterargument. Usually you may see a quote of someone's response in to being questioned about something, or perhaps a company will say "no comment at this time" - neither of these are good IMHO. I feel pre-publishing, a person should be given the opportunity to respond - and at least part of that response be included in the publication - and always there should be a permanent link clearly highlighted to a third-party platform allowing the person's full response (or really all people and organizations mentioned in an article), which a link/response that can be added to/edited later (with version control to view the previous versions - leaving the purpose of editing to expand upon or clarify). Who pays for the wheels to get going on this kind of system? Is it safe to be government supported? This is an important system I believe we must implement as soon as possible. Getting it adopted is possible, it just takes effort which includes needing enough resources for a longer runway. It feels like it would be a similar type of service of importance as Wikipedia.

mack1001 9y ago

With the American election debacle and not being around during Nixon, I have realized the outsized role press has to play. Blogs, citizen journalism do not do it. You need dedicated sharp investigative journalism without fear Of retribution either from the owner or from the government. It actually becomes important if say Bezos plans to run for president and in fact becomes the president.

kristianc 9y ago

The problem here isn't Amazon, but the business model that TNR chose for itself, and the implications of that. This covers a period in TNR's history when Chris Hughes (formerly of Facebook) was in charge, and essentially wanted to turn the site into a 'vertically integrated digital media company' (native advertising / clickbait factory). It shouldn't be a surprise that this had deleterious consequences for journalistic integrity and allowed advertisers to apply undue pressure. Foer (the author of this piece) didn't want to go along with that, and he and almost the entire staff resigned in protest. Hughes ended up putting the magazine up for sale, and Foer was brought back in under the new editor. Oh, and Foer's new book is now available on Amazon. https://www.amazon.co.uk/World-Without-Mind-Existential-Threat/dp/1101981113/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1505739592&sr=8-2&keywords=world+without+mind https://www.amazon.co.uk/World-Without-Mind-Existential-Thre...

puh744 9y ago
Why does the term "vertically integrated digital media company" make me picture someone trying to stack bags full of trash on top of each other, seeing how high they can go before it collapses?
- pdimitar 9y ago
  Why does that sound exactly like what most online media do nowadays?
fehrm 9y ago
Amazon is part of the problem, it is not black and white like that.
- plandis 9y ago
  Where exactly is the moral violation here? Businesses utilize leverage all the time. Nobody is stopping New Republic from publishing but that doesn't mean that a company needs to keep paying them.
  - 9y ago

fictionfuture 9y ago

Does no one else notice the collusion to suppress calls for anti-trust action against Amazon, Google and Facebook? These companies have all been actively suppressing any information that would force a review on this issue. They've effectively closed off the internet, none of these services let consumers follow links off site now and it's made a major difference in the ability to compete.

blowski 9y ago
Do you have any specific examples of that happening?
- aoeuasdf1 9y ago
  Yes, have you seen this article? https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/i-significantly-underestimated-power-jeff-bezos-franklin-foer https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/i-significantly-underestimate...

nocoder 9y ago

Ironically (?) the book is on Amazon & there is some dark humour in the fact that Amazon will probably end up contributing significant in sales to this book. I bet Bezos has a evil smile on his face.

gjcufufucuv 9y ago

For those of you that think this isn't business as usual, I highly recommend Manufacturing Consent which shows how corporate media narrows the range of political discussion through methods like this one.

sunstone 9y ago

Why is that (it seems to me) whenever the discussion of Google's possible use of manipulating its search results for its own benefit there's a vocal response from all corners but Amazon gets a pass when then manipulate their results to similar ends. To my mind both are equally atrocious.

dingo_bat 9y ago
I am softer towards Amazon because they are a customer-oriented company. Google doesn't give one shit about me. Amazon gives the impression that it does.
- chii 9y ago
  > Google doesn't give one shit about me. Amazon gives the impression that it does. And yet, both companies, under the veneer of PR, does not give any shits about anyone except their own bottom line. Amazon just has better PR than google.
- ghostbrainalpha 9y ago
  That's an interesting perspective. I am also softer towards Amazon because I can easily imagine buying products at a different website. Google scares me a bit more because I so often forget that its services are even products that I can choose not to patronize. Google has become invisible to me.
munificent 9y ago
Great great branding and customer service. Almost everyone on Earth has a positive personal relationship with Amazon on the consumer side and it makes us complacent.

mcguire 9y ago

"Neither side struck me as worthy of huge sympathy. But then the battlefront encroached uncomfortably close to home. I watched as Amazon punished Hachette’s writers in its effort to make the publisher feel pain. Books, the products of years of passionate labor, were prevented from reaching the market. Amazon used its bully’s arm to delay their shipments or direct readers to older books on similar subjects, as well as a raft of other vengeful tactics." I see Foer decided which side needed sympathy. There was another side to that story after all. And I take it Foer was fired from the New Republic?

andriesm 9y ago

It's rather silly to think you can publish an outright hostile and disparaging article about a big advertiser and not lose them. The fact that you are forced to choose between making money and speaking the truth, shows your business model is broken (if you are the CEO or shareholders) or that you've really made crap life and career choices if you are an employee (or self employed).

jhbadger 9y ago
Not really. I've seen plenty of cases where there's, for example, an article about how McDonald's food is full of salt and calories and is bad for you snd yet on the next page you'll find an ad for McDonald's. To actually be as vindictive as Amazon apparently was is quite extreme.
- soared 9y ago
  It's a balance. McDonald's would get more hate for pulling ads than for they would for the original article.
- smokeyj 9y ago
  News outlets have account managers that wouldn't let scheduling conflicts happen. Commercial placements are carefully considered.

megamindbrian 9y ago

He doesn't have the power to make a nice UI.

warent 9y ago

That's odd, I already submitted this one. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15265016 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15265016 I thought HN handled duplicates by redirecting to the existing submission and automatically upvoting it?

warent 9y ago
Yikes, I guess I should be ashamed of myself for even asking...
- mst 9y ago
  One on occasion I saw a second posting of the same article as me from a few minutes apart - commenting on the other one being confused was for some reason taken as some sort of attack on the other person to post it rather than my wondering what the software had done and attracted anger and downvotes in equal measure. People confuse me sometimes.
sctb 9y ago
Once a submissions grows old enough without having gotten significant attention those upvotes don't matter anyway, so a repost is allowed. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html

ropeladder 9y ago

Amazon pulling advertising is scary but not entirely beyond the pale. I find the idea that authors are afraid to criticize Amazon to be much more worrisome: these days, writing a book is an important source of income for politicians, academics and many other import leaders. If none of these people are free to criticize one of the largest and most powerful business organizations in the country (and that business is an arbiter of what they choose to sell more broadly), that's a huge loss for democracy.

davidf18 9y ago

Regarding book publishers as mentioned in the article, Amazon is the good guy and the publishers along with Apple (and I'm an Apple fan-boy) conspired to raise prices on ebooks. The Justice Dept agreed which is how they ruled against Apple and the publishers.[1] It would have helped if the writer had been specific about why Amazon was bad when in fact it was Apple and the publishers who acted badly. As I recall, on eBooks, the publishers were taking a far larger share of profits in proportion to authors than in the very same books in hard copy which of course, is profoundly un-fair. Amazon was the good guy here. I, for one, hardly feel sorry for a writer who can't write the truth or be bothered to search it out. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/mar/07/apple-450-million-settlement-e-book-price-fixing-supreme-court https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/mar/07/apple-450...

bllguo 9y ago

When Google does the same with Open Markets they are denounced as evil. Amazon? The response is comparatively muted. Just another example of "the power of Jeff Bezos," or hypocrisy and inconsistent standards?

johansch 9y ago

Since I enjoyed using this bookmarklet on this site, I thought I'd recommend it to others as well: https://alisdair.mcdiarmid.org/kill-sticky-headers/ https://alisdair.mcdiarmid.org/kill-sticky-headers/

Animats 9y ago

The New Republic was a hobby business for some rich guys. It lost money for most of its life. That made it vulnerable. It was sadder seeing the San Jose Mercury News go down. It was an excellent newspaper with a large, effective reporting staff, and profitable. It was sold to the parent organization of the Contra Costa Times, which is one step above an advertising throwaway. Today's Mercury News is one step above an advertising throwaway.

gozur88 9y ago

I don't care much about Amazon playing hardball with TNR - car companies have been doing this for ages. The fact that he owns WaPo is a much bigger deal.