Love being interrupted when my monitor asks me to accept user agreements

I wonder what would happen if Amazon introduced a boycott feature. It could be a list of active boycotts next to the buy button on a product page. Customers can choose to join one of the boycotts instead of clicking the buy button, and then get redirected to a list of alternatives.

It won't ever happen obviously, but I wonder if it would solve these types of problems? Consumers collectively boycotting something is the most powerful way to fight things like this, but I can't think of a successful example of that in recent times. Even "viral" boycotts on social media platforms are likely to get limited reach due to algorithm fuckery. Or is it that nobody but us tech nerds actually cares about stuff like this, and even a blatant in-your-face boycott feature on Amazon wouldn't make a difference?

It would probably be possible as a third party extension. See Fakespot extension for instance.

> I wonder what would happen if Amazon introduced a boycott feature. It could be a list of active boycotts next to the buy button on a product page

A feature that simultaneously discourages sales, encourages retailers to pull products from the platform, and heavily incentivizes abuse from competitors who would benefit from convincing customers to boycott their competitors products? For some reason I don’t imagine Amazon product managers are going to like this idea.

Boycotts are wishful thinking in the modern era of online shopping. The Venn diagram of people who would actively boycott a product like this and the people who would seek it out on Amazon has no overlap. These products are targeted at people who do purchasing for their office or who click the buy button without taking 1 minute to glance at reviews. The people who care enough to actively boycott have already read reviews of a product before they seek it out for purchase.

This would be a fantastic chrome extension because Amazon would never do this. It would be great to vote on the reasons why to boycott, allowing the most egregious reasons at the very top.

I'm on the fence regarding a "likely boycott" for Ooni pizza ovens, specifically the Karu 16 dual fuel. There are many videos about defective or improperly installed thermocouples. Ooni has some really helpful FAQ guides for fixing it on your own, but I was amazed at how many videos exist about this problem for an $800 pizza oven.

Hah, like the ad-block extensions you'll be able to download boycott-lists.

But as Basil Fawlty said... don't mention the war!

If Amazon were competing to win customers, they might do something like this to increase trust in the quality of the products on their store. Of course, that's not Amazon. The only significant threats to Amazon today are anti-trust regulators.

I don't think it's competitive, it's suicidal. No rational storefront would ever tell you all the terrible things about the products they stock, no matter how large or small they are. It's insulting to the suppliers and more importantly, stops people from impulse-buying big-ticket products.

You might argue that showing these "boycotts" would stop people from returning these products, but it would also curtail a whole lot of buyers that would consider it "good enough". Amazon deserves their fair shake by the FTC but if you think this is the reason then you've got pretty bizarre expectations.

Not buying alone sounds a pretty powerful boycott thing.

Unluckily, so many care less than nothing, buying whatever is the cheapest and loudest in praising itself with the biggest lies or misdirection. There is a huge and successful market for these kind of customers. Actually it overwhelms the small group of conscious costumers. So manufacturers are making less and less 'honest' products.

Agreed, sadly comment OP is in dreamland about why an E-commerce company would ever even consider doing anything to stop people from buying things, regardless of quality or any other external factor.

Amazon is part of the _problem_. What you're really looking for is called a "law", and it's something a government does to make people stop doing things that hurt other people. Laws are then enforced so the bad actors stop doing their harmful stuff.

I doubt "boycott" thing would work, but "nerd recommendations" as browser addon would actually be useful.

It takes only a slight mind jump to considering Amazon a marketplace platform like Ebay.