They also never supported smile donations from the mobile app for no good reason, so it was always pretty clear to me that it was nothing more than a PR stunt/tax write off.
It was neither. It was a way to get people to go directly to Amazon in their browser rather than search items through Google. Clicking through Amazon from Google results gives Google an affiliate commission on those sales.
Oh, that’s interesting. I always wondered why they didn’t allow me to just have all my amazon traffic get redirected to smile, and that would totally explain it. I probably only remembered to type smile in the browser one out of every 10 times I bought something, so my purchases could have been much more helpful to my chosen charity if it weren’t for this.
Is this observation based on knowledge of their motivations or just a deduction?
Take with a grain of salt obviously, but there was a Reddit post [1] from someone claiming to have worked there at the time and that this was the entire motivation behind it.
Yeah, this was pretty widely known internally at the time (I was there 2012-2017). I didn't have first-hand exposure to the information, but I had a ton of second/third hand.
They did support it from the mobile app, but in a way that always outraged me. They would only allow you to use Smile on mobile if you agreed to turn on all notifications and let them spam you with ads. Turning off notifications -- either through their app or through iOS settings -- resulted in their disabling Smile for you.
> They also never supported smile donations from the mobile app for no good reason
They 100% did
> nothing more than a PR stunt/tax write off
Do you even know what a tax write off is? PR stunt of course, but that is every single company who also donates to charity. Should we instead shame companies for blatant PR stunts so that they donate $0 instead?
I’m aware tax write offs don’t save money if that’s what you’re asking.
> Should we instead shame companies
Companies obviously exist for profit, but companies at the size of Amazon can take the view that doing good things is genuinely good for business on a level deeper than quick PR (creates company alignment, healthier economy).
PR is a competitive, zero-sum game.
> Should we instead shame…
Yeah. This isn’t a purity test for a company who’s genuinely trying to change things for the better. This is shaming using charity to launder human rights abuses, dishonest business practices, anticompetitive behavior and win favor with politicians.
Whoops, looks like it launched on the mobile app in Oct. 2020. I haven’t bought from Amazon for 4 years or so. Should have checked nothing had changed, but I’m unable to edit my comment.
