So I made a post recently about my new commitment to Privacy. I’ve made the choice, that I’m going to delete my Amazon. Before I do though I would like some feedback on alternatives, and more privacy friendly places to buy things
I’d recommend just buying from smaller and local shops. Instead of going on Amazon and searching for a product, search the product on Google/DDG and see what comes up. Hopefully you’ll get some decent prices from smaller sites or maybe come across a good local shop that you can pay a visit to periodically.
Aliexpress is a decent alt, if you’re looking for something simple. If you want to be more ethical in your online shopping, it’s best to try to find the retailer sites for the sellers you’re wanting to buy from. Buying directly from retailers helps them a lot more, and you often don’t have to deal with the side effects of buying through a site like Amazon - that being shitty labour practices.
Otherwise, go to Etsy and eBay.
I have to disagree with you on eBay. They’re extremely far from an ethical company, they also own the scourge of small financial transactions, PayPal. They also own Kijiji and GumTree. I’d say you should go with Craigslist when possible if you’re trying to buy used but eBay owns shares of them too. Not as bad as eBay itself, but obviously still not ideal so IDK.
Craigslist is dying in some places, with people using facebook’s marketplace instead. Also, I’m not saying eBay is an ethical company, but they are an alternative to Amazon.
Honestly, if your options are Craigsist, Facebook or Ebay, I’d go with Craigslist. If it’s Ebay or Amazon, then yeah, Ebay is the lesser of two evils.
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Privacy friendly… doesn’t really exist in the land of credit cards. Though credit cards have to be PCI compliant so your data can’t be shared beyond your credit union or your credit card provider.
As Heck said, pretty much and widget/clothing/electronic item you can get on Amazon you can get on AliExpress (though likely not the same brand name.) But there’s also Gearbest, JD.com, etc.
Shopify is building a network to compete with Amazon that gives power to the vendor (ie. Shopify isn’t getting into the game of selling any products, just providing the platform for stores to sell their goods.) - you can check it out here: https://shop.app/
I don’t know of any specific privacy focused online retailers but I would suggest getting your groceries from a local co-op instead of the Joe Traders, etc. and clothing from Shopify, etc. (Though Simwood on Aliexpress can’t be beat for quality/price.)
hmm that is really interesting. Never heard of shopify. Is there a way/interface to buy things through webbrowser like amazon?
Not yet. I’ve heard they’re building it since every business using the Shopify platform is using the same code. It’s a matter of aggregating it and how to do so effectively because every store is setting its own variables on products, etc.
Have you done any research on the matter? There are hundreds of alternatives online, offline and some even more philosophical like going minimalist. What types of things do you plan on buying?
I’m beginning to. I figured asking a community dedicated to privacy might be a good start.
It’s a tough question because if you are talking strictly about privacy (and not values like supporting small businesses, etc) you might want to consider how you pay. Financial institutions often collect data in non-privacy friendly ways, so could go down a whole path of anonymous debit cards, but that is a fair amount of effort and not failsafe. There was an interesting idea raised recently about creating a federated bartering system to acquire goods online but local.
if such a system existed i would definitely be interesting. Lately I am invested in all things fedivers. There is always crypto currency and blockchain tho
here’s the post if you are interested https://lemmy.ml/post/46268
hmm ya that was interesting. A federated Shopping system really would be an ideal use of federated technology.
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