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I have Signal as my smile.amazon.com recipient. It's not a lot but it averages to a reasonable monthly membership app cost. Note: your purchases have to be done
by lalos 6y ago
I have Signal as my smile.amazon.com recipient. It's not a lot but it averages to a reasonable monthly membership app cost. Note: your purchases have to be done through the smile.amazon subdomain to be eligible (for mobile apps: https://www.amazon.com/b?ie=UTF8&node=15576745011 https://www.amazon.com/b?ie=UTF8&node=15576745011)
- georgyo 6y agoNever heard of amazon smile before, but there registry of charities to donate to is really hard to ensure you got the right one. I set mine to "Signal Technology Foundation" which I am fairly sure is correct, but there is no link, no description or other method to verify; it doesn't spark a lot of confidence.
- capableweb 6y agoAnd if that wasn't confusing enough, Signal et al call the foundation "The Signal Foundation" while the proper, official name is "Signal Technology Foundation".
- LukeShu 6y agoI've been using smile.amazon.com since August 2019, and to date I've generated $6.01. I guess I don't use Amazon as much as you. It's like, shit, for the amount of trouble I've gone through to make sure I'm on smile.amazon.com instead of www.amazon.com, I should have just given some money to my recipient.
- tokamak-teapot 6y agoThere is some browser plug-in to redirect you there if that helps. I don’t know how smile works on the mobile app. Perhaps it doesn’t.
- lalos 6y agoIt does: https://www.amazon.com/b?ie=UTF8&node=15576745011 https://www.amazon.com/b?ie=UTF8&node=15576745011
- LukeShu 6y agoIndeed, I configured a Redirector[1] rule to do it: Redirect: https?://www\.amazon\.com/(.*) Pattern type: Regular Expression to: https://smile.amazon.com/$1 Applies to: Main window (address bar) [1]: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/redirector/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/redirector/
- draebek 6y agoSmile is available on the iOS Amazon mobile app, but only if you allow Amazon to send you promotional notifications.
- thiagowfx 6y agoBut then you need a browser extension just for that? It’s a bit overkill. I wonder if this works well with /etc/hosts or local DNS.
- stjohnswarts 6y agoSo? The amount of additional memory, disk, and processing it takes up are basically nothing in the greater scheme of things.
- ldrndll 6y agoHow strange. I just checked my Smile account and I've generated £6.01 for my charity (my childrens' school). What are the odds...
- cecilpl2 6y agoFrom my perspective, the odds are fairly high that in a large group of people, two of them happen to have the same Smile account balance.
- ldrndll 6y agoSure, but in this case it was a case of me not knowing one could check their Smile balance. GP posted their balance, prompting me to check mine, and the total was the same. That feels more akin to me going into a room and the first person I talk to having the same birthday as me than just finding 2 people in a room who happen to have the same birthday.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- sillysaurusx 6y agoThe situation is probably closer to this: Lots of people went into a room and asked someone what their birthday is. Only you happened to have the same one, so no one else said anything. But, congrats on using up your luck for the next month or so. :)
- jtsiskin 6y agoIf I posted “Think of a number. 1-100. Got it......... You’re thinking of 17!” some of the hundreds of readers would be amazed by my accurate prediction
- colonelcanoe 6y agoThat's the classical birthday "paradox" but that's not what happened here. Here, a random person in the room announced their birthday, and the question is whether someone else in the room shares that birthday. It's a very different situation, where I'm guessing you need around a thousand people for it to be very likely that their birthdays coincide, compared to the twenty or so for the birthday paradox.
- scns 6y agoI just set z as my search prefix in firefox, send via sync to all devices.
- stjohnswarts 6y agothere are tons of redirectors to smile.amazon.com in the chrome and firefox stores
- kempbellt 6y agoTIL: smile.amazon.com and just added Signal Technology Foundation. Thanks! Note: Signal Foundation is officially "Signal Technology Foundation", so this appears to be the correct recipient in the list on Amazon. Hopefully someone can verify this.
- lalos 6y agoThat's the one.
- corytheboyd 6y agoI’ve always wondered, is there some legitimate reason Amazon doesn’t just apply the non-profit donation functionality to Amazon proper? If not I’m sure we can safely assume “because money”
- stonesweep 6y agoData on how much this can generate in aggregate; I chose EFF for my 2020 donations and Amazon Smile sent a year-end report on 15 Dec. $45,901.14 was donated to EFF in 2020 $655,382.45 donated to EFF in total $217,644,976.48 to all US charities $237,615,915.89 to all global charities Amounts in USD.
- stanford_labrat 6y agoI never thought smile was actually this effective, but I assume based off of these numbers you are doing the vast majority of all your shopping on amazon (groceries in addition to household purchases)?
- computerphage 6y agoThis is for all people who give to EFF.
- JshWright 6y agoI assume those numbers are aggregated across everyone who has chosen EFF as their Smile donation recipient.
- kremi 6y agoSomehow, thinking about how much money Besos earns (is it 78 billions this year? [1]), I find smile's slogan "Experience feel-good shopping" a bad joke at best. [1] https://www.businessinsider.fr/us/what-amazon-ceo-jeff-bezos-makes-every-day-hour-minute-2018-10 https://www.businessinsider.fr/us/what-amazon-ceo-jeff-bezos...
- stjohnswarts 6y agoDid you have to bring politics into it? Smile is better than nothing, people are going to shop with or without it on Amazon why not send a fraction to "charities" ?
- ashleshbiradar 6y agoSmile seems US-only
- tobib 6y agoSmile is nice, I wish they offered it in Canada.
- mynameisash 6y agoAmazon notes[0] that they "will donate 0.5% of the purchase price from your eligible AmazonSmile purchases". Looking at my purchase history over the last six years, that number is closer to 0.25% (presumably because many purchases weren't considered eligible). I still keep my purchases going to my charity of choice, but make no mistake: opting for AmazonSmile contributions won't move the needle on your charity. You have to make contributions directly out of your own wallet. Bonus points if your employer will match them. [0] https://smile.amazon.com/gp/chpf/about/ref=smi_se_dshb_aas_saas https://smile.amazon.com/gp/chpf/about/ref=smi_se_dshb_aas_s...
- dunefox 6y ago> opting for AmazonSmile contributions won't move the needle on your charity It's better than the opposite, which is nothing.
- blacksmith_tb 6y agoWouldn't the opposite be giving to those organizations directly? I'm not opposed to Smile, but presumably it isn't intended to be the only source of funding. Still, like you say, it's better than not giving anything.
- dunefox 6y agoThe opposite of using Amazon Smile is not using it. It costs you nothing and benefits charities.
- mynameisash 6y agoSure, it's better than nothing, but I worry that there will be people who think that their use of Smile is enough and might deter some active giving. I've funneled tens of thousands of dollars through Amazon in six years that resulted in only about $65 of donations, so less than $1/mo. But I also give $100/mo (x2 with my employer match) to the same charity. So Smile donations will barely register compared with active, intentional giving.
- 6y ago
- Wingman4l7 6y agoYou can additionally use an extension to force your browser to always use the smile.amazon subdomain.
- themeiguoren 6y agoThe mobile app requires you to enable notifications to turn on smile donations on in-app purchases. Talk about a dark pattern.
- jtsiskin 6y agoThat’s the whole point though? They’re paying for you to enable notifications, and you can decide if the price is fare