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Comment by tracer4201 | Hacker News Reader

Oh boy, another one of the daily anti-FAANG posts. Amazon is evil and should be boycotted - usually coming from people who shop at WalMart and invest in companies like BP (i.e. my in-laws).

Good luck blocking AWS - and whatever percentage of the internet running on it.

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The second sentence of the post clarifies that this is motivated by a one-day boycott in solidarity with Spanish workers striking for improved labor conditions--not by the belief that "Amazon is evil and should be boycotted." Either you didn't care to read up to that point or you're being intentionally obtuse.

Why not both!?

>usually coming from people who shop at WalMart and invest in companies like BP

What weird mental gymnastics are you trying to pull here? You know someone who hates Amazon and invests in Walmart/BP? So what? That doesn't mean there isn't a legitimate reason to hate Amazon.

"ugh, another one of the daily anti-violent crimes posts. Rape is evil and should be boycotted - usually coming from people who jaywalk and overcook their steaks."

They know someone who hates Amazon but shops at Wal-Mart and invests in BP, and is projecting all of that only everyone who has a negative view of Amazon.

> usually coming from people who shop at WalMart and invest in companies like BP (i.e. my in-laws)

If one takes a moral stand, must one then take every moral stand? I avoid using Google products because I think they're an unethical company, but arguably Apple is too. Am I obligated to just not use a smartphone?

When you're boycotting company A for doing bad thing X, but then using the services of company B for doing bad thing X, then that's hypocritical. If company B were doing different bad thing Y, then that's a different story.

It's not hypocritical. It's called "doing your bit"

Just because you can't save the world doesn't mean you can't start somewhere.

Changing your service provider for bad thing X is not “doing your bit”

>Am I obligated to just not use a smartphone?

I've met people who would argue "yes." Not sure that I agree with them, though.

Somewhat north of 70% of internet traffic passes through AWS servers at this point.

note previous post from this user:

> Disclaimer: I’m own about $500K in my portfolio in Amazon.

Yeah and I posted that openly. They’re actually the smallest of the FAANGs in my portfolio. I’m invested heavily in tech, banking, energy, and retail, including WalMart.

It’s hilarious and sad that my post caused you enough grief to dig up content from my post history as if that makes any of my points less valid.

Your point were so absurd that I (correctly) assumed that there was some bias driving it. :)

I would think efforts like this are less about completeness and more about creating a media event around the fact that ICE uses AWS to do harm to people.

ICE uses AWS to help take into custody people who have deportation orders. Can anyone explain why this is even remotely controversial? What is the alternative, open borders? no deportation ever?

The idea behind these actions is to pressure ICE into abiding by international human rights laws in its handling of detained immigrant children. To me, that seems like a very reasonable thing-to-care-about.

By going after the supply chain instead of the actual offenders? That does smell a bit armchair-activisty, to be honest.

Boycotting IBM may have saved lives at Nazi concentration camps if it was attempted... (IBM assisted Nazis in processing big data (of their time) during most of WW2)

But would it? When the war started, IBM was already established in Germany, and upon the US placing trade ban, the German branch essentially split out and worked independently, to be reintegrated into the mothership after the hostilities have ceased.

I have read all the comments below yours and as an immigrant in an Africa country I wonder why no one says anything about why we want to be immigrants in the first place. I have noticed this debate tends to be about Europe, US and Australia and it seems the world has given up on holding dictators to task. I know it is hard but surely as mostly IT people on HN we know you have to fix the root cause. For the record I think it is healthy to have both pro immigrant and also listen to concerns of those against immigrants.

Open borders, and no deportation ever, is a perfectly viable alternative.

There are approximately 500 million that want to come. It would be interesting to see how we would solve the housing needs while making their immigration economically viable for both them and the country as it exists today.

let's say 350 million people have the means + desire to move to the US over the course of a year after the borders open. i think that's low, but whatever.

how do you propose that the "delicate" infrastructure of the US can handle a clean doubling of population over the course of 1 year?

> viable

Not at all viable when you consider the cost of requisite social services to support such an initiative, which is one of the myriad reasons why no country has ever considered the option.

Its not that simple: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/03/world/europe/germany-poli...

Germany's refugee crisis is a good example of the pros and cons.

As a person who came to America legally, as an Immigrant, I seriously do not want this. How is this at all fair to those of us who had to work so hard and wait so long to get in?

> How is this at all fair to those of us who had to work so hard and wait so long to get in?

How is it unfair?

Being in the country and using its services isn't free. It's unfair because low (or no) income immigrants are a burden on everyone in the country.

The unfairness is that the bar for participation is being significantly lowered to the point where it risks the social safety nets for everyone. It's unfair to both native citizens and naturalized ones.

Instead of punching down on the literally the most vulnerable people in our society, why don't you direct energy at all the wealth being accumulated at the top? That situation is much more harmful for our social safety net.

It reminds me of hazing rituals at fraternities - you can't get rid of this bad thing, how would that be fair to us who had to go through it?

I also came to America legally, and that was the second time I legally emigrated from one country to another. As an "experienced immigrant", I've lost count of how many times I've come upon the astonishingly selfish attitude your comment espouses.

Make no mistake, I'm also against completely open borders without deportation, for a variety of reasons. "Fuck you, got mine" is not one of those reasons.

Seeking asylum in America IS legal. What's happened with the Trump admin is they've essentially made traditional routes for seeking asylum nonviable, so people cross the border, and if they get apprehended then instead of being released and assigned a court date like they used to, they're being held indefinitely in concentration camps.

How exactly will entitlements be funded in that scenario?

About half the country disagrees with you. I guess that means we should do it to poke them in the eye.

Why do people always make the"legality" argument. Just because something is legal, doesn't mean something is right. The Holocaust was quite legal, at the time.

Putting people in concentration camps and letting them die there (ICE) should not be legal. This does not even touch on whether deportations should be.

Congress has put ICE and CBP in a pretty impossible situation, they have refused to extend funding for months (since February at least) to fund further border enforcement to stop illegal border crossings, while simultaneously refusing to pass any legislation to further fund the detention centers.

Your implication that they must stop patrolling the border lest they become literally Hitler, is patently absurd and an affront to people who suffered through the Holocaust.

I merely said that legality does not imply that no human rights violations are occurring.

Also I'm talking about deportations (and the associated camps, whatever you want to call them) is a separate issue from border control, in my opinion.

Yes, can anyone explain why concentration camps are even remotely controversial?

Would you please stop posting in the flamewar style and please not use HN for ideological battle? Those things are destructive of what we're trying to do in this community, and your comments have been noticeably more inflammatory than the others I've seen in this thread. You've also done it recently elsewhere.

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the spirit of this site to heart when posting here, we'd appreciate it.

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