“Unlike Facebook and Google, that have to wrestle with the possibility that your name and data may be false, and do all they can to get your telephone number because they didn’t request it when you opened your account, from the very start Amazon has all your data—real, physical and legal. Even your credit card number. Perhaps they don’t have such ease of access to your emotional and intellectual profile as Google or Facebook do, but, conversely, they do know almost everything about what you read, eat or give as presents. It is then simple enough for them to deduce the profile of your heart or brain from the goods you buy. And this empire was born from the items that enjoy most cultural prestige: books. Amazon appropriated the prestige of books. It built the world’s biggest hypermarket behind a huge smokescreen shaped like a library.”
—Jorge Carrión. “Against Amazon: Seven Arguments, One Manifesto.” Translated by Peter Bush. Literary Hub. November 15, 2017.
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