I don’t see why one direction is harder than the other. The only thing that makes sense to me is that Amazon is user hostile and tries to dupe people into buying stuff even if they don’t want it.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14149986
We all wanted an experience as simple as interacting with the human at Whole Foods checkout OR the robot at the self-checkout, but what we got was this cacophony of anything but what you came here for that is amazon.com and most modern software design.
People wonder why I long for Amazon Go years after I left Seattle and recommended that approach to various retail executives.
Is there any better way to subvert retail than to promote stealing the merchandise as the ultimate UX?