This was a potential explanation as to why Bezos did that https://lemmy.haley.io/post/1058450
this post was submitted on 29 Oct 2024
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I can honestly count myself as one but also never using prime again either.
Billionaires never do anything benevolent. I speculate Bezos is refused the endorsement in case Trump wins and holds a grudge.
Nah, Bezos wants Trump. Lower taxes, less regulation. He knows the backlash would be even worse if he forced an endorsement.
It really is all about the fuckin money.
I really wish his wife had gotten the WaPo in the divorce.
I gotta be honest... I don't think news papers should officially endorse a candidate. Report on the issues accurately and call it a day. It reduces the perception of bias.
Editorial boards are strictly segregated from the objective reporters. Except for right wing media anyway.
True. I guess I can't read... Editorials are open season.
There is literally an entire section called "Opinion", where various columnists give their interpretation of the latest news.
And if they are giving opinions, they should give an opinion about who should be president.
Totally agree on the opinion section. I think if they want to they can opine on their candidate of choice, but I don't see it as a necessity.
Clearly I can't read....
They want to, but Bezos (who is not a journalist) is preventing them. That's the problem.
Direct your money towards better journalism.
I suggest ProPublica.
This is key. Follow journalists and editors who leave WaPo and support them wherever they go.
Otherwise this may just be playing into the hand of Bezos to cripple yet another outlet that speaks truth to power.
ProPublica does phenomenal work.
It’s good to see the system working like it should for the free press for once; they made a terrible decision and they’re paying for it. Now, if we can just collectively turn our backs on all the disreputable sources and start promoting the reputable ones, we might fix a broken system.
Besos wipes his ass with those 250K subscribers. What he needs is to be stripped of his wealth.
Sure he needs to be taxed into dust. But he doesn't own the WaPo because it's making him rich. He runs it because it's a propaganda machine for him.
He lost 10% of his subscribers, almost immediately, when he tried to use it that way openly. Which says:
- it's now a 10% less effective propaganda machine (and that number will keep growing)
- it's possible that it was never effective in the first place
Given those two propositions, he might just unload it, which would be nice for the rest of us.
I don’t imagine they thought that this would literally decimate their subscriber base.*
- ~yes I made the same joke twice in two different communities. It’s not often you get to use the literal definition of decimate.~
Unless the former subscribers were executed, that's not the literal definition of decimate.
In a way this is better than an endorsement would've been. Especially because it's acknowledged who the would-be recipient of the endorsement would have been.
So not only has he quite literally decimated their readerbase but he's also made every other newspaper run the story that they were going to endorse Harris anyway, instead of likely just limiting that information to the handful of Washington Post subscribers that cared enough to check. Great quash, Jeff, you really shut that one down.
So not only do they loose the direct revenue from the subscribers, but because the readership has fallen significantly & publicly, advertisement revenue is going to fall, too, as the advertisers know the paper isn’t reaching as many readers.
I have commented how that decision led me to cancel my WaPo subscription which then snowballed into cancellations of Audible, Kindle Unlimited, Prime Video (ad-less), Amazon Photos, etc. Today I was chatting with my wife and she has now discarded the idea of using Blue Origin's satellite based internet access over Starlink. That's fifteen mobile response units where Jeff's space junk won't be considered.
Wait… your wife is ditching Kupier, which doesn’t exist yet, because of a single stunt Bezos pulled, but Starlink, run by the guy funding Trump’s election campaign, is still in the running?
Ditching the idea of transitioning to Kupier once available, yes. For now, most of the units are suspended (zero cost) until needed. My hope is that other options become available.
Oh man wait until you learn about Buc-ees
Bucees going into satellite internet? I'm lost.
Giant squirrel satellites with glowing red eyes staring down at Earth
Blue Origin isn't planning any satellite internet projects.
There is Amazon's Project Kuiper, which aims to bring Starlink-like Internet using a constellation of 3,000 satellites, but currently they have zero satellites in orbit (and the two prototypes they launched were ULA launches).
If/when Kuiper matures, Bezos owns less of Amazon than Musk owns of SpaceX, so if your goal is to keep as little of your money out of these men's hands as you can, Kuiper might be the way to go.
Great information, thank you. My use of the Blue Origin name is my mistake. Regardless, the original goal was to ditch Starlink. Hopefully we will be able to do so.
Isn't Starlink Musk's outfit?
Yes, it is. It is very hard to escape having relations with capitalist conglomerates in most sectors, in some it is impossible. That is why having political control of the State is the only way of the working class to control the billionaires, if the economy side of society is not radically altered.
We need to go back to guilds. Imagine a worker owned and managed rocket guild
Yes, and we are desperate to ditch it. The idea was to switch to ~~Blue Origin~~ Amazon's Project Kuiper as soon as it became available. Now it's fucked if we do and fucked if we don't.
That said, fourteen of the Starlink units are suspended until needed, which means no monthly payments.
EDIT: I mistakenly called the satellite project Blue Origin.
Totally fair. And there are definitely reasons to dislike Bezos but on the which of the two is worse... Going Musk over Bezos feels a little.like the folks claiming trump will be better for Palestineans. Bezos didn't let his paper endorse trump, Musk is full on bribing people, campaign rallying for trump etc.
But to each their own, like I said, plenty of reasons to dislike Bezos.
To him, I’m sure it’s an acceptable loss.
If Amazon Prime and AWS cancellations hit a significant level over this, that would have more of an impact.
He also knows most companies won’t cancel their AWS
Yup, he'll lose more revenue than those 10% WaPo subscribers under Harris. If Harris raises Amazon's taxes half a percent, this loss would become rounding error. Bezos wants Trump to win and wants to be Trump's friend for his own financial gain.
Sadly, that's chump change for him. 250k sub's at $120/yr comes out to $30M/yr. That's ~ 0.015% of his net wealth. Better than nothing though.
I believe that the main reason for people as wealthy as him to own newspapers is not the money, it's the influence. This does hurt that
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