August 29, 2022
According to Evan Greer, director of the non-profit advocacy group Fight for the Future, Amazon is more of a surveillance company than an online marketplace, because it monitors both consumers and employees with AI cameras. He says Amazon has all the data and tracks searches, clicks, and more, and even collects data from other platforms.
Their doorbell cameras, eavesdropping devices, and the purchase of iRobot, which provides consumer health information and can navigate within homes, have raised privacy concerns. Greer compared the company to the mystical hydra that makes two heads grow when you cut one, because they used data breaches to reach their estimated value of $1357.19B value.
Amazon has continued its quest to dominate the market by buying multibillion-dollar entities One Medical and iRobot, raising concerns about its business model, which relies on data breaches to gain dominance.
There are bills in Congress that would prohibit digital platforms like Amazon from discriminating against competitors and ensure that shoppers have access to competitive app ecosystems as part of ways to reduce privacy violations.
The sources for this piece include an article in BusinessInsider.
