Cancelling Your Amazon Prime Membership to Protest Bezos’s Bootlicking at the Washington Post Is Like Pissing in the Ocean

Ellen Cushing, in a well-meaning piece for The Atlantic:

NPR, citing internal Post correspondence, reported that “more than 1,600 digital subscriptions had been cancelled less than four hours after the news broke.”

It was a reasonable impulse. But if Bezos is indeed why the Post is no longer endorsing candidates, and if people are worried about his outsize influence on our society, they should not be canceling their newspaper subscriptions. They should be canceling their Amazon Prime subscriptions.

Cushing wrote that Saturday; NPR yesterday reported that the Post had lost over 200,000 subscribers in the wake of Bezos blocking the paper’s endorsement of Kamala Harris. Today that number has grown to a whopping and still-growing 250,000.

I understand the sentiment but I disagree that it would be, in any way, an effective protest for two reasons. First, the Washington Post did this, not Amazon. Bezos isn’t even Amazon’s CEO anymore. I get it — he’s Amazon’s founder, and his personal wealth is largely based on his Amazon stock. But unsubscribing from the Post right now sends a direct message to the organization that prompted our collective ire.

Second, the number of Post readers and subscribers who are justifiably outraged by this constitute a significant number of the Post’s entire audience. NPR’s story pegged the Post’s pre-protest subscriber base at 2.5 million (including both print and digital). Amazon has about 200 million Prime members.

  • 250,000 un-subscriptions from The Washington Post = 10% of their base
  • 250,000 un-subscriptions from Amazon Prime = 0.1% of their base

Those of us who care about this constitute no more than a tiny insignificant sliver of Amazon’s Prime subscriber base. 250,000 lost subscribers in a weekend is a shocking slap in the face for The Washington Post. It’s a significant chunk of their entire base. 250,000 lost subscribers to Amazon Prime is like taking a piss in the ocean. It doesn’t matter.

If you feel better personally cancelling your Prime membership, do it. But don’t think for a second it will matter one iota to Amazon’s bottom line. The Post, on the other hand, is reeling.

★ Tuesday, 29 October 2024