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Comment by thecombjelly | Hacker News Reader

Seeing as this isn't close to the first report on Amazon treating its workers horribly, why do people continue to use AWS? There are alternative companies that provide AWS like services and don't put workers in a sweatshop. So if you continue to use AWS aren't you just encouraging Amazon to do more of the same?

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I use AWS because it's a choice my company has made that I can't overturn. But I've phased buying from Amazon out of my personal life.

It wasn't even difficult. If you just look a bit and stop assuming Amazon is always the best deal, you'll find it's not.

Recently I wanted to buy some cheap $7 earphones. At Amazon they would have been 30 cents cheaper but I had to buy $35 worth of stuff to get free shipping. (Or pay $100/year, which would amortize to very expensive shipping for me.)

Elsewhere I paid 30 cents extra for the product but got free shipping for just the one item. That's a great tradeoff.

Same reason they continue to buy clothes made in actual sweatshops, because most people don't care as much about the workers making their products as they do about the cost (and sometimes quality) of those products.

This isn't the same. In this case we know Amazon does it whereas with many products we don't know exactly how the item is produced. As well, AWS is not the best value whereas with commodity products the item may be the best value, from a monetary to quality standpoint. Not to mention, in most cases, technology companies can afford to pay more for a more ethical product even if AWS was the best value whereas for many people the price of a commodity is very important.

Using AWS is either laziness, the "we use Java because everyone uses Java" syndrome, or internal inertia. The only partially excusable reason is internal inertia.

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