They are paid by advertisers that want to sell you things and ideas. Google and Meta’s job is to keep you on their platform as long as possible so you can be served more advertisements. And to keep you dependent on their free platform to gather more data about what you like and your behavior patterns to easily influence and predict what advertisements grab your interest.

And because they have the data on you to know exactly who you are and what you may like, it’s valuable for advertisers because they know their cat litter advertisement is going to be shown to someone who very obviously has a cat through all their activities and interactions on the platform.

The more time I live on this earth, the more I see so many aspects of it is that “different strokes for different folks” apply to. So much conflict has been started because people wanting to force some ideal/correct/only way of doing things on another.

I sometimes think about how we got here. How now this has become some people’s only option. Amazon banked on people relying on them and scooped up market share, and destroyed small businesses so they became the only option. People don’t even look for alternatives or discover businesses around them anymore. I had to help a few friends understand this. I had a friend buying toilet paper from Amazon, that’s literally sold everywhere.

When I say don’t use Amazon, it’s not to shame the people who can’t, it’s to have them think of an alternative, train out their reliance. Don’t continue to give Amazon that reliance.

There are not many times you need that specific obscure part, most of the time it’s things that will have alternative sources. So it’s about taking a moment to just consider.

Target Jeff Bezos because he is literally top of the list of billionaires, he does not need the money. You can use this as a measurement. Newegg is a better option. A small electronics store that delivers in your country if their brick and mortar store is not near you, even better.

And like you pointed out, perfection is the enemy of progress.

This combined with just considering if you actually need something or just want junk advertised to you. It’s a way to break from frivolous consumption as well, which Amazon also relies on. Also consider that you don’t need things this fast. I feel like Amazon broke our perception. We used to not get things delivered for up to 2 weeks and that was fine. But somehow it’s unacceptable if it’s not there the next day. Most things you buy are not emergencies. Waiting does not waste your time, your life goes on while you wait.

Perfection is the enemy of progress. Make a different choice where you can. It’s all good.