Originally published at: Dying for a pee? Amazon sells bottled driver urine as energy drink | Boing Boing
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When you thought gig economy and capitalism could not get low enough…
I mean, what next? Soylent Green?
Tell me you haven’t read the OP without telling me you haven’t read the OP …
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Drummond says this was a “crude stunt”
Inspired by the crude business practises of the company that employs this pecksniff.
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In the UK, we’d call this “taking the piss”.
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…so is Drummond saying the pee based drink is safe to drink? Or did they foolishly state they have tools to prevent genuinely unsafe products from being listed when they should have used the almost content free weasel phrase “we are constantly improving our industry-leading tools to prevent genuinely unsafe products from being listed”?
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I read this in Cory’s newsletter this morning and he suggested that they actually have world leading tools in union busting and customer spying.
Not wrong.
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industry-leading tools to prevent genuinely unsafe products being listed
And yet, it was listed…
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Exactly! Which is why I was surprised to see the “we have tools that stop this” as opposed to “we are constantly improving the tools that stop this” (implying that “it can’t happen again” while admitting that “yeah it did in the past” as opposed to the other statement which implies “this product isn’t genuinely unsafe, drink it if you want!”)
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In case this wasn’t clear, Amazon has long since become a marketplace, similar to Ebay or Alibaba, rather than the vendor it started out as. Yes, it is a clever stunt to use Amazon itself to criticize Amazon’s policies, but this shift has real effects – the general public still trusts Amazon over Ebay and Alibaba to sell them safe and non-counterfit goods, but they really shouldn’t.
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It says caffeine free, but if you are chugging energy drinks during the day, doesn’t your urine still contain some caffeine?
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Also coming to this after reading Cory’s newsletter - this stunt shows that they’re better at finding an undercover journalist working inside their warehouse than finding bottled piss on their listings.
Before he pulled the ‘product’ he got an offer from Amazon to buy the product and for them to take over distribution. Gag.
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the company has “industry-leading tools to prevent genuinely unsafe products being listed.”
Suuuuuure you do…
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They might. “Industry leading” doesn’t necessarily mean “good”
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Industry-Leading: All the members of the “industry” that used actually effective vetting techniques (human staff, actually planned product releases, etc…) got drummed out of the industry by our race to the bottom, so we became the leaders by default.
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Everything you do is industry-leading if you’ve bought or starved all the competition.
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I don’t trust Amazon all that much, but I do put a bit more trust in products sold by Amazon instead of a third party. A lot of the Amazon Basic items aren’t bad, but I do lump random products sold by sellers like XYLZ to be the same Chinese or Asian produced cheap products as found on Ebay or Alibaba.
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Really? I mean, really? I think that you are speaking bullshit, my friend.
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When he saw the product listed for sale, Butler felt “initially really excited and found it very funny,” he says.
Might be against guidelines posting this… but there’s something fucking wrong with this fucker’s fucking brain.
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Operative word: Industry. The actual target “good” could be “bad”.
“Amazon Basic” products that were found to be defective are:
- USB cables that can cause fires or electric shocks
- Microwave ovens that can spark or smoke
- Paper shredders that can overheat and catch fire
- Space heaters that can melt or ignite
- Battery chargers that can cause burns or explosions
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