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Corey Protin
Nintendo is dropping the price on several games through its eShop during their Mar10 Day sale.
Numerous titles, including “Super Mario Maker 2,” “Super Mario Odyssey,” and “Yoshi’s Crafted World,” are currently down to their lowest prices ever through March 13.
Buying outside of Nintendo’s eShop offers one major benefit: more Gold Points.
Shoppers can find popular titles, like “Super Mario Maker 2,” “Super Mario Odyssey,” “Luigi’s Mansion 3,” and “Yoshi’s Crafted World” down to their lowest prices ever during Nintendo’s MAR10 Day sale.
Suffice it to say, this is a perfect opportunity to fill up your Switch’s digital library. However, shoppers should consider shopping on Amazon, Best Buy, GameStop, Target, and Walmart first.
Here’s why: If you buy a digital game through the retail giant instead of Nintendo’s proprietary eShop, you’ll get the maximum amount of Gold Points even if you purchased it on sale. eShop, however, will only credit you for the price you paid.
For those unfamiliar, Gold Points are a digital currency that can be earned by purchasing eligible games or downloadable content. Nintendo says points are awarded based on “5% of the amount you pay,” and can be used as credit for future, eligible purchases.
This sale ends March 13.
Here are the best Nintendo Switch digital games on sale now
Product Cardfor Nintendo Switch (medium)for Nintendo Switch (medium)Super Mario Odyssey (medium)Super Mario Maker 2 (medium)Yoshi’s Crafted World (small, Preferred: Walmart)for Nintendo Switch (small, Preferred: Walmart)Ring Fit Adventure (medium, Preferred: Amazon)
California’s labor commissioner fined Amazon and Green Messengers, a contractor used by Amazon to deliver packages, $6.4 million for stealing wages from 718 delivery drivers, the regulator announced in a press release Monday.
Its investigation found that the drivers, who were employed by Green Messengers to work 10-hour shifts, often had to work more than 11 hours and skip their meal and rest breaks in order to complete their Amazon delivery routes due to the high volume of packages.
But the investigation also found that, between April 2018 and January 2020, Green Messengers failed to pay them correctly for that extra work, which “resulted in frequent minimum wage, overtime, meal break, rest period and split-shift violations,” the release said.
Amazon did not respond to a request for comment on this story. As of Monday evening, Green Messengers’ website had been taken offline and a phone number listed for the business had been disconnected. According to the release, both companies have appealed the fines.
While Amazon owns a massive fleet of delivery vehicles, it relies on a complex network of regional contractors like Green Messengers to employ many of the drivers who operate those vehicles.
The arrangement typically allows Amazon to avoid certain labor costs and legal liabilities that come with hiring employees directly, but a California law that went into effect in 2015 prevents companies like Amazon from shifting blame to contractors by allowing them to still be held liable for labor violations.
“Contracting out services does not release employers from their duty to ensure workers are being legally compensated,” California labor commissioner Lilia García-Brower said in the release. “In this case, both Green Messengers and Amazon.com Services are responsible for the wage theft that these workers suffered.”
The fines included more than $5.3 million in damages, wages, interest, and other penalties owed to the drivers, plus roughly $1.1 million in civil penalties owed to the state, according to the release.
Amazon has come under fire before for the working conditions it imposes on delivery drivers, both directly and indirectly through its delivery service partners, which investigations from multiple outlets including Insider and BuzzFeed News have found contributed to increased injury rates.
Jeff Bezos has been awarded $218,000 in legal fees, the latest development in the high-profile legal drama surrounding the Amazon CEO.
What began as a tabloid scoop two years ago revealing the relationship between Bezos and his girlfriend, Lauren Sanchez, has since resulted in investigations into her brother, Michael, the National Enquirer, and even the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, as well as a protracted legal battle between Michael Sanchez and Bezos.
Here’s where the conflict began and everything that’s happened since.
In January 2019, Bezos and his then wife, MacKenzie, announced they were divorcing.Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and writer MacKenzie Bezos, now MacKenzie Scott.
Their announcement was followed soon after by bombshell reporting from Page Six and the National Enquirer: Bezos was in a relationship with Lauren Sanchez, a helicopter pilot and former TV anchor.
Jeff Bezos with Lauren Sanchez and her husband Patrick Whitesell.
At the time, Sanchez was married to Patrick Whitesell, the co-CEO of WME, a Hollywood talent agency. The couple had been friends with Jeff and MacKenzie Bezos because they had houses near each other in Seattle, according to Page Six.
The Enquirer said it had conducted a four-month investigation into the relationship between Bezos and Sanchez, tracking the couple “across five states and 40,000 miles” and tailing them on hikes and dinner dates.
Beyond its own surveillance of Bezos and Sanchez, the Enquirer reported it had acquired “raunchy messages” the couple had sent each other, some of which the tabloid published. The Enquirer also said it had racy photos of both Bezos and Sanchez, including one that was too explicit to describe in print.
Soon after, The Daily Beast reported that Bezos was funding an investigation – headed up by his personal head of security, Gavin de Becker – into who had leaked his private messages to the Enquirer. De Becker said at the time that he thought the leaks were “politically motivated,” which AMI denied.
In February 2019, Bezos responded to the scandal in an explosive blog post, in which he accused National Enquirer publisher AMI and its then CEO, David Pecker, of trying to blackmail him.
Bezos wrote that AMI had been threatening him with the publication of explicit pictures he’d taken of himself unless he stopped investigating who leaked his photos and texts to the tabloid. In response, Bezos published the emails he’d received from AMI.
“Rather than capitulate to extortion and blackmail, I’ve decided to publish exactly what they sent me, despite the personal cost and embarrassment they threaten,” Bezos wrote.
De Becker told The Daily Beast that Michael Sanchez was “among the people we’ve been speaking with and looking at” during the investigation and that “strong leads point to political motives” for leaking information to the Enquirer.
Sanchez had described himself as a supporter of President Donald Trump, who had a longtime ally in Pecker. De Becker told the Washington Post in February 2019 that he thought the Enquirer had published its scoop about Bezos and Sanchez in order to embarrass Bezos, and that members of Trump’s 2016 campaign were involved.
A feud has simmered for years between Trump and Bezos, who also owns the Washington Post. Trump has made the Post a target over the years and has lumped together Amazon and the Post as a way to cast doubt on the paper’s credibility.
For his part, Sanchez denied de Becker’s allegation, accusing him of telling “lies, half-truths, sloppy tabloid leaks, [and] crazy conspiracy theories” in a statement to the Washington Post. He told Fox News that “all of the investigations thus far have cleared me of any involvement in the below-the-belt selfies.”
Sanchez told Business Insider that he did not leak Bezos’ “penis photos” to the Enquirer, but did not specifically deny leaking text messages between his sister and Bezos. “I’m not saying I didn’t do something,” he later told Vanity Fair, but said his only goal was to protect his sister and Bezos’ relationship.
Sanchez had worked as a Hollywood talent manager, and he told Fox News that Bezos had asked him for help handling the scandal around his divorce. “He said that he didn’t think the Amazon PR team was equipped to handle this kind of story,” Sanchez said of Bezos.
In March 2019, de Becker wrote in The Daily Beast that he believed the Saudi Arabian government had hacked Bezos’ phone in order to gain access to his private messages in retaliation for the Post reporting Saudi agents killed Post columnist, Jamal Khashoggi.
Jeff Bezos attends the opening ceremony for a monument for journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
Arif Hudaverdi Yaman/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
In January 2020, that assertion was backed up by reports by the Guardian and United Nations investigators, who said they had “reasonable certainty” that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was involved in a hack of Bezos’ iPhone.
Throughout it all, AMI has insisted that Michael Sanchez is the single source behind its reporting on Lauren Sanchez’s relationship with Bezos. According to a New York Times report from January, Lauren Sanchez shared the texts and photos with her brother, who then licensed them to the Enquirer for $200,000 in October 2018.
In February, Michael Sanchez filed a defamation lawsuit against Bezos that claims Bezos and de Becker falsely accused him of providing the nude photos to the Enquirer. Sanchez claimed in the suit that Bezos told journalists he had handed over the images to the tabloid, but Sanchez said he never had the photos in his possession.
John Sciulli/Getty Images; Mark Wilson/Getty Images; Samantha Lee/Business Insider
Following the lawsuit filing, Lauren Sanchez said in a statement to TMZ that her brother “secretly provided my most personal information to the National Enquirer – a deep and unforgivable betrayal. My family is hurting over this new baseless and untrue lawsuit, and we truly hope my brother finds peace.”
Bezos quickly filed a motion to dismiss the suit under a California law that’s intended to protect against frivolous lawsuits. Bezos said Sanchez’s suit amounted to “extortion” and directly threatened free speech.
In November 2020, Los Angeles County Superior Court ruled in favor of Bezos, striking down Sanchez’s defamation suit. “Here, there is no admissible evidence that Defendants published the subject statements. Plaintiff’s declaration merely discusses what he was told by reporters, which is inadmissible hearsay,” Judge John P. Doyle wrote in his ruling.
Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images
“We respectfully disagree with the trial court’s ruling and look forward to vindicating Mr. Sanchez’s claims on appeal,” Tom Warren, Sanchez’s attorney, told Insider in an emailed statement at the time.
William Isaacson, an attorney representing Bezos and de Becker, said in an emailed statement to Insider that “journalists will surely take the Court’s ruling into account when considering Michael Sanchez as a source.”
“My clients are pleased that the judge has thrown out the baseless case filed by Michael Sanchez,” Isaacson said. “When it comes to frivolous lawsuits seeking money or attention, the law is clear — and the law worked.”
Source: Superior Court of California, County of Los Angeles
In January, Bezos filed a motion to compel Sanchez to cover $1.7 million in legal fees following his unsuccessful suit.
Sanchez and Bezos at the Tom Ford runway show in February 2020.
Kevin Mazur/Getty Images
Bezos and de Becker requested that Sanchez reimburse them for $1,676,919.50 in attorney fees and $36,019.26 in other costs they racked up while defending the suit.
Tom Warren, an attorney for Sanchez, told Insider in a statement that “Mr. Bezos’ fee request is obscene, even grotesque, on many levels.”
The court ruled in March that Bezos would be awarded money to cover the fees, but only a small portion of what he originally requested: $218,385, plus an additional $36,000 in legal costs.
Jeff Bezos.
Shannon Stapleton/Reuters
The judge ruled that the amount of hours billed (more than 2,070) and the number of lawyers put on the case was “not reasonable,” according to Bloomberg.
“This was not a matter that required seven partners and 11 associates,” Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge John Doyle said.
The recent slide in stocks has wiped out the “frothiness” in some of Wall Street’s hottest spots, said market research provider Bespoke Investment Group. The firm also said its analysts see some mega-caps as trading at “attractive” entry points following last week’s market sell-off.
Major US stock indexes have been knocked back as investors price in expectations for economic growth and higher inflation as the world’s largest economy recovers from the COVID-19 pandemic. Some Treasury yields, notably the 10-year yield which influences a range of lending programs, have been quickly pushed higher. This has triggered a selloff, particularly in technology stocks whose values have run higher since hitting a bear-market low in late-March 2020.
Over the last few weeks, “the air has completely come out of the frothiest parts of the market that saw mind-boggling moves to the upside in the 2-3 months prior to their recent peaks. In areas like SPACs, software, AI, solar, EVs, and cannabis, we’ve seen declines across the board ranging from 25%-60%,” Bespoke wrote in a note released late Friday.
“These areas could certainly continue lower, but for now the “frothiness” is completely gone,” it said.
The “extreme” selling in momentum stocks has left a number of previously high-fliers down by a third to a half in a matter of weeks, the group said. The note displayed a list of stocks on the Russell 1000 index that have recently traded the farthest from their 52-week highs. The list included exercise tech and equipment maker Peloton, solar microinverter producer Enphase Energy and cloud infrastructure company Cloudfare.
Some of the stocks on the list have traded the farthest below their analyst price targets. “Most of these look like ‘falling knives’ still to us, but we’ll let you decide if you like any of these from a technical perspective,” wrote Bespoke in the note.
Meanwhile, special purpose acquisition companies, or SPACs, “are getting hammered,” it said, noting that in aggregate, “a broad snapshot of names is down 20% from recent highs, with similar performance for SPACs that have announced deals,” while those that haven’t announced deals have been down 10%.
Turning to mega-caps, the 30 largest stocks in the Russell 1,000 have combined lost more than $1 trillion in market cap since the February 12th closing high for the Russell 1,000 and the S&P 500.
The five largest Russell 1,000 stocks — Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet and Facebook — were at least 15% below their average analyst price target, paced by Amazon’s drop of 28%.
“It will be interesting to see if analysts stick to their guns and keep their price targets for these mega-caps, or if they decide to start lowering them,” said Bespoke. “For now, based on analyst opinions, the mega-caps are trading at attractive entry points.”
Jeff Bezos has been awarded $218,000 to cover legal fees he incurred fighting an unsuccessful defamation lawsuit brought by his girlfriend’s brother, a small portion of the amount he requested.
Judge John Doyle of Los Angeles County Superior Court ruled Friday that Bezos would receive $218,385 to cover his legal fees, plus an additional $36,000, rather than the $1.7 million he requested in a motion filed in January.
According to Bloomberg’s Malathi Nayak, Doyle said that the more than 2,070 hours billed were “not reasonable” and that Bezos put too many lawyers on his case.
“This was not a matter that required seven partners and 11 associates,” Doyle said.
A lawyer for Bezos did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment. Tom Warren, an attorney for Sanchez, told Insider in a statement that Bezos’ original request was “grotesque.”
“When Mr. Bezos filed his motion for $1.7 million in attorney’s fees, we discussed how grotesque the request was, on many levels,” he said. “Last Friday, the court resoundingly rejected his request.”
Bezos and his personal security chief, Gavin de Becker, wanted Sanchez to reimburse them for $1,676,919.50 in attorney fees and $36,019.26 in other costs they racked up while defending the defamation suit, which Sanchez filed against Bezos and de Becker in February 2020.
The suit alleged that both men falsely accused him of providing nude photos of the Amazon CEO to the National Enquirer. Sanchez alleged in the suit that Bezos told journalists Sanchez had handed over the images to the tabloid, but Sanchez said he never had the photos in his possession.
Bezos quickly filed a motion to dismiss the suit under California’s Anti-SLAPP law, which is intended to protect against frivolous lawsuits.
Last November, Doyle ruled in favor of Bezos, calling the evidence “inadmissible hearsay” and striking down Sanchez’s suit.
Lauren Sanchez and Jeff Bezos.
Simon Stacpoole/Offside/Getty Images
The most recent development in the case seems to close the book on the tabloid drama between Bezos and Sanchez that began more than two years ago.
In January 2019, hours after Bezos and his wife, MacKenzie, announced they were divorcing, Page Six and the National Enquirer reported Bezos was in a relationship with Lauren Sanchez, a helicopter pilot and former TV anchor.
The Enquirer said it had conducted a four-month investigation into the relationship between Bezos and Sanchez and acquired “raunchy messages” the couple had sent each other, some of which the tabloid published. The Enquirer also said it had racy photos of both Bezos and Sanchez, including one that was too explicit to describe in print.
Bezos funded an investigation into the leaked messages, which was headed up by de Becker. De Becker told The Daily Beast at the time Michael Sanchez was “among the people we’ve been speaking with and looking at” during the investigation and that “strong leads point to political motives” for leaking information to the Enquirer, which Sanchez denied.
Bezos, who announced last month that he would step down as CEO of Amazon later this year, is the richest person in the world with a net worth of $177 billion, according to Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index.
David Tepper told CNBC’s Joe Kernen that Amazon’s stock price looks attractive after the recent mega-cap tech pullback.
Amazon is currently trading at $2,999, narrowly above last week’s five and a quarter month lows.
The Appaloosa Management founder said Amazon’s stock now looks inexpensive, according to Kernen.
The e-commerce giant has fallen nearly 10% in the last month as investors rotate out of mega-cap technology stocks and into names that benefit from rising yields and a recovering economy.
Tepper said he still likes Amazon and other “bellwether stocks.” He added that Amazon has permanently changed aspects of consumer behavior. For example, people are less inclined to buy products like t-shirts in retail stores if they can just shop on Amazon.
The hedge fund manager also said it’s difficult to be bearish on stocks right now because rates have now stabilized and the $1.9 trillion pandemic relief package that was just approved by the Senate will be bullish for the stock market.
A friend and associate of Tony Hsieh on Wednesday filed creditor’s claims for millions of dollars against his estate, according to court records and reports.
Hsieh, former chief executive at Zappos, died after being injured in a house fire in Connecticut in November. Investigators in January said the fire may have been caused by “carelessness or even an intentional act.”
He sold Zappos to Amazon for $1.2 billion in 2009.
Jennifer Pham in January and February filed multiple lawsuits against Hsieh’s family. In them, she said she was Hsieh’s “right-hand person.” She alleged in part that Hsieh’s family had breached a contract.
The Las Vegas Review-Journal and KTNV Las Vegas reported that LLCs associated with Pham had filed creditor’s claims on Wednesday that listed more than $93 million owed by Hsieh’s estate.
Documents filed on Wednesday in Clark County District Court included $75 million in anticipated profit from a documentary streaming service launched by Pham and Hsieh, the reports said.
Local network KLAS TV reported Pham’s creditor’s claim was seeking 10% of the anticipated total, or $7.5 million.
Clark County District Court records viewed by Insider list a creditor’s claim against Hsieh’s estate from Mr. Taken LLC and Baby Monster LLC.
Baby Monster was registered in Nevada on July 13, 2020 with Pham as one of its managers, according to state records. Mr. Taken was registered on July 17, 2020, also with Pham listed as a manager.
According to court records, Pham also filed a separate creditor’s claim listing several items, including a “2002 Yamaha G20A Golf Cart, 2010 Club Car Golf Cart and 2016 Apache Utility Trailer.”
Back in 1984, when he was 43 books into his career, Theodor Geisel, a.k.a. Dr. Seuss, told a reporter from The San Diego Union-Tribune that most of his stories didn’t have serious messages, but were rather “just plain pleasant tommyrot.”
The newspaper described the author at home in La Jolla, California. He was leaning back in his desk chair, discussing whether his newest book, “The Butter Battle Book,” was a “children’s books for adults or an adult book for children.”
“There are so many leaders who think in a childlike manner, I thought it wouldn’t make any difference if it was a children’s book or not,” Geisel said.
Dr. Seuss’s books have meant a lot to both children and adults in the eight decades since he published his first one. Perhaps that’s why, this past week, they became a focal point in an ongoing conversation about so-called cancel culture.
Political commentators on the right, including Donald Trump Jr. and Senator Ted Cruz, jumped to the defense of Dr. Seuss as six of his books were pulled because of offensive or racist imagery. Trump said the move was a clear sign that the “woke mob” had come for the author, who died in 1991.
“I literally know ‘The Cat in the Hat’ by heart without the book there because I read it so many times to my children,” Trump said on Fox News. He added: “These things are not racist.”
Trump Jr and others placed the blame on their political opponents, liberal lawmakers, and the media. On Twitter, Rep. Matt Gaetz said: “At what point does our society reach cancel culture herd immunity?”
But the decision to stop publishing the six books came from Dr. Seuss Enterprises, which controls the author’s estate, a fact that seemed to get lost in the conversation over so-called cancel culture. The call, you might say, was coming from inside the house.
Dr. Seuss Enterprises said it sought to further the author’s mission of “hope, inspiration, inclusion, and friendship,” according to a statement released Tuesday.
“Ceasing sales of these books is only part of our commitment and our broader plan to ensure Dr. Seuss Enterprises’s catalog represents and supports all communities and families,” the company said.
The six books removed from its catalog were: ‘And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street,’ ‘If I Ran the Zoo,’ ‘McElligot’s Pool,’ ‘On Beyond Zebra!,’ ‘Scrambled Eggs Super!,’ and ‘The Cat’s Quizzer.’
“These books portray people in ways that are hurtful and wrong,” the company said.
According to researchers, Geisel also published hundreds of racist cartoons and drawings during his career.
A copy of the children’s book “If I Ran The Zoo” by author Dr. Seuss, which the publisher said will no longer be published, is seen in this photo illustration taken in Brooklyn, New York, U.S., March 2, 2021.
Brendan McDermid/Reuters
By late afternoon on Friday, about half the books on Amazon’s bestseller list were either Dr. Seuss originals or spinoffs by other writers.
On Thursday, eBay told The Wall Street Journal it was scrubbing its site of the six pulled books. Late Friday, however, some of the pulled books could still be found for sale.
A copy of “The Cat’s Quizzer” listed on eBay had more than 50 bids, putting its price well about $200. Several copies of “Mulberry Street” were listed at about $150, plus shipping.
President Joe Biden this week left Dr. Seuss books off his reading list for Read Across America Day. The fact-checking site PolitiFact said Biden’s decision wasn’t connected to the decision made by Dr. Seuss Enterprises. The shift had been years in the making, it added.
When asked about the omission at the White House, Jen Psaki, press secretary, said: “And as we celebrate the love of reading and uplift diverse and representative authors, it is especially important that we ensure all children can see themselves represented and celebrated in the books that they read.”
On Twitter, Cruz posted a screenshot of Amazon’s bestseller list full of Dr. Seuss titles, adding: “Could Biden try to ban my book next?”
Last week, Ann Coulter, the political commentator and author, focused her attention on “The Butter Battle Book,” and called for it to be removed from shelves.
“If Dr. Seuss’s estate is going to pull any of his books, it should be the embarrassing one suggesting that the difference between the USSR and U.S.A was just that we buttered our bread on different sides – published in 1984, as Reagan was winning the Cold War,” Coulter wrote on Twitter.
Back in 1984, when Geisel had just finished “The Butter Battle Book,” he told the Tribune reporter that the book was one of his only books to make a political statement. He was against the one-upmanship that had made Americans fear all-out nuclear war with the Soviet Union.
“It is a departure, but I figure in all kids’ books, even the nonsense, the author is saying something,” Geisel said at the time. “And he might as well say something important once in awhile.”
So, all in all, the backlash over the company’s decision did seem to be behind a retail buying frenzy that sent Dr. Seuss books to the top of Amazon’s bestsellers charts, particularly as on Telegram, some members of alt-right groups implied they’d ordered Dr. Seuss books because of the controversy, according to screenshots seen by Insider.
It should be noted, though, that the books that led sales – “The Cat in the Hat,” “Oh, the Places You’ll Go!,” and “Green Eggs and Ham” – weren’t the ones that had been pulled by Dr. Seuss Enterprises.
Amazon plans to set up more delivery stations in New York City to power the last-mile of its order process and provide faster deliveries to customers, the company said.
The tech giant will launch ten delivery stations in the Big Apple throughout 2021 and beyond, two of which are now operational, an Amazon spokesperson confirmed to Insider in an email this week.
The new sites will be located in the Bronx, Brooklyn, and Queens.
Amazon has five operational delivery stations across the five boroughs including two in the Bronx, one in Brooklyn, one on Staten Island, and one in Queens, according to the spokesperson. It also has two operational delivery stations on Long Island and a sortation center and a fulfillment center on Staten Island.
As online shopping surged during the pandemic, with people staying home to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus, Amazon went looking for warehouse space to expand its footprint in New York City, the country’s biggest market, the New York Times reported this week. None of Amazon’s competitors, including Walmart and Target, have a warehouse in the city, the Times said.
It is at least 22% more cost-effective to deliver to New Yorkers from a city-based facility than from a facility located in New Jersey where packages typically came from, according to a report by Deloitte.
“We want to get as close to the customer as possible to ensure we can offer fast shipping speeds to customers,” the Amazon spokesperson told Insider.
Each delivery station will offer around 100 to 150 jobs with a wage of $15 per hour and work benefits, the spokesperson said.
Amazon has had a fraught history trying to set up in New York City. In 2018, Amazon announced it would build part of its second headquarter in New York, saying the project would provide 25,000 full-time jobs and a $2.5 billion investment in the Long Island City neighborhood of Queens. The company would have received an estimated $3 billion in tax incentives.
However, the tech company faced backlash from local politicians, New Yorkers, and labor union representatives who argued that the project could increase rents, overcrowd schools, and congest the subway system.
Later in 2019, Amazon confirmed to Insider that it signed a lease for a new 335,000-foot office in New York City that is set to open in 2021. Located in the Hudson Yards area, the new office will employ over 1,500 people, Amazon said.
Amazon plans to continue benefitting from the online shopping surge throughout 2021 as it looks into ways to facilitate delivery and reshuffle inventory such as boosting its air cargo operations.
It launched over 200 new sites across the US in 2020, including fulfillment and sortation centers, and delivery stations, according to the spokesperson.
By late 2020, Amazon announced its plans to set up 1,000 small delivery stations in cities and suburban areas across the country to meet high shopping demands, Bloomberg reported citing people familiar with the matter.
Governments from Australia to the US are cracking down on big tech companies. Employees are working to form unions at firms like Google and Amazon. And consumers appear to be more distrustful of the world’s biggest platforms than ever before.
The increased level of scrutiny on Big Tech marks a reckoning of sorts for the industry, one borne out of an increasing understanding of the power these companies wield and a shifting cultural mood toward activism and holding the powers that be accountable.
Experts say it will result in a seismic shift in the industry and one that is already affecting governments, tech companies, and consumers alike.
“There was a golden era when people focused on the enormous good technology could do to connect users to one another and democratize access to information,” Alexandra Givens, president and CEO at the Center for Democracy and Technology, told Insider. “Now, there’s increasing recognition that with this great power comes great responsibility.”
Governments are ratcheting up the pressure on Big Tech
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos testifying during the House antitrust hearing last summer.
Pool/Getty
Last summer, something unprecedented happened: the CEOs of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google testified before Congress at the same time over concerns they engaged in anticompetitive practices – and they got grilled.
It marks a turning point, not only in how lawmakers on both sides of the aisle view the tech giants, but also in how prepared they are to scrutinize them. As Givens noted, lawmakers staffed up ahead of the hearings in order to be better prepared to question tech CEOs, an effort she expects will continue to “bear fruit” in 2021. (The most recent tech-focused government appointee is Tim Wu, a Columbia University law professor and outspoken critic of Big Tech, who will serve on the National Economic Council.)
State governments are also now beginning to probe tech giants’ business practices on numerous fronts: A group of dozens of states have filed their own antitrust complaint against Google; the Arizona House recently passed a bill that would allow app developers to use their own payments systems, circumventing the tariffs imposed by Google’s and Apple’s app stores; and Maryland is imposing a new tax on revenue from digital ads sold by tech giants.
The US isn’t the only one taking action over how tech companies behave. Just in the last month, the UK Supreme Court ruled that Uber should count its drivers as workers, an issue Uber, as well as Lyft, Instacart, and DoorDash, have fought against in the US as well. And in Australia, the government passed a new law that requires Google and Facebook to pay publishers in order to display their news content in search results and on news feeds.
“It reflects a growing recognition of the fundamental role that technology plays in people’s lives: from how we discover new information to how we connect with friends and family, to how we access job opportunities, find housing, access government benefits,” Givens said.
And, of course, there’s the issue of Section 230. The law, officially known as the Communications Decency Act of 1996, is a point of contention for both Republicans and Democrats – it states that internet platforms like Facebook or Twitter can’t be regulated as publishers, meaning they can’t be held accountable for speech on their platforms.
Givens said this issue, and the issue of misinformation on social media platforms more broadly, is more top of mind than ever before following the 2020 election, which she described as a turning point for many people in realizing the effects online public discourse can have on democracy. As a result, Facebook and Twitter actually changed their policies and instituted bans they had previously been reluctant to impose.
“We suddenly saw this flourishing of far more creative ways to try and improve the health of information on these online services, and you could tell that was the companies really trying to rise to the moment and importantly, rise to public pressure about the moment,” she said. “This didn’t all happen in a vacuum. This was from civil society, organizations, community, activists, employees, all calling on them to do more.”
Consumers and employees are holding tech companies accountable
Amazon workers protesting the company’s policies during the coronavirus pandemic on May 1 in Hawthorne, California.
Tommaso Boddi/Getty Images
But government crackdowns are just one piece of the puzzle: there’s also been a noticeable shift from in thinking among both tech employees and the customers they serve.
Two Pew Research Center surveys from the last two years show that Americans have a much less rosy outlook on Big Tech than they did in the past. A 2019 survey showed that the percentage of Americans who believe that tech companies have a positive impact on society plummeted more than 20 percentage points from 2015, from 71% to 50%. On the flip side, those who felt tech companies have a negative impact rose from 17% to 33% during this same period.
And last year, a second Pew survey found that 72% of adults in the US believe social media companies have too much power and influence in politics, with about half of respondents on both ends of the political spectrum saying the government should regulate tech companies more than they currently do.
Givens chalked up the increased consumer distrust partly to increased awareness among consumers about how their information is being used and shared, which is inspiring tech companies to make changes to their products – Apple, for example, has long touted its commitment to privacy, but it will soon roll out a new software feature that goes one step further: It will allow users to opt out of tracking for advertising purposes, a tool that caused an uproar from app developers, and from Facebook.
“There’s an appetite for businesses to compete on privacy as an asset that they can market to users,” Givens said.
Facebook has been hit with that consumer pressure as well in the form of outrage over its messaging app, WhatsApp. In January, WhatsApp issued new terms and conditions that revealed to many users that the app shares user data with its parent company, Facebook. It sent users into a frenzy and caused many of them to switch to a different messaging app, Signal, which resulted in WhatsApp delaying the date by which users would need to accept the new terms and conditions. Still, WhatsApp and Facebook haven’t adjusted their ways as a result of users’ frustration, at least not yet.
But beyond consumer skepticism, there’s another powerful force brewing inside tech companies: employee activism.
In January, more than 200 employees at Google formed a union known as the Alphabet Workers Union. The union, a rarity among Silicon Valley tech giants, has a stated goal to promote more inclusive working conditions at the company and ensure executives act in the best interests of both society and the environment.
Sonny Tambe, an associate professor of operations, information, and decisions at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, told Insider he believes the newfound energy around this initiative is a spillover from the activism around social justice in the US last summer. And tech companies can’t afford to ignore that momentum, he said, because of how competitive the industry is.
“I think part of the halo effect for tech has been, they’ve been some of the best places to work, and this is important to them,” Tambe said. “These firms are competing, not just for customers, but also for workers, and workers are not going to stop having strong opinions about the way the world works and the way that their employer impacts the world around them.”
Tambe said he believes there’s a growing understanding among tech workers that because they are highly skilled and have a lot of agency, it is incumbent on them to be part of the larger conversation about how their companies are held accountable.
“These forces that are converging on Big Tech, they’re substantial,” he said. “A lot of stakeholders are realizing at a similar time that not all tech is moving us forward in positive ways, that these firms are very large and powerful, and that as consumers, as customers, as regulators, we need to be quite cognizant of this.”
