Under the Influence (with Jo Piazza) - Prime Domination： Amazon's Holiday Shopping Conquest with Dana Mattioli

00:00:00.000 Hello, everybody. Happy Thanksgiving. You know what? I'm grateful for all of you. I

00:00:12.740 really am. All of the gratitude up in this joint. So much freaking gratitude. So Thanksgiving,

00:00:21.560 tis the season to eat all of the side dishes because I don't like turkey, and also tis

00:00:25.860 the season to try to get all of our holiday shopping done in the next 24 hours. But I want

00:00:32.920 to remind you that you don't have to, that you still have a whole month and you don't have to

00:00:37.300 get it all done on Friday. If you want to just lay on the couch and watch Something's Gotta Give

00:00:41.200 or Love Actually, that is fine. You can check out of Black Friday sales all together. It is your

00:00:48.520 choice, you do you. But in honor of Black Friday, we are going to talk a little bit about shopping

00:00:55.920 and retail and how the internet has completely changed the way that we buy things.

00:01:01.000 My guest today is Wall Street Journal reporter Dana Mattioli. Dana is the author of The Everything

00:01:06.760 War, Amazon's ruthless quest to own the world and remake corporate power. One of the reasons I want

00:01:13.740 to talk about this today is because I know just how easy it can be to get a lot of our holiday

00:01:18.960 shopping done on Amazon. We are all doing our best to get it all done. We are. But I do think

00:01:25.920 it's important to be mindful about where and how we're spending our money. So today, Dana's going

00:01:30.880 to break some of it down for us. We all know the story about how local bookstores have been

00:01:35.520 struggling to survive against Amazon's competitive pricing. But we're also going to talk about how

00:01:40.840 Amazon has decimated a lot of the stores that we used to see on Main Street, and how the company's

00:01:46.540 power is extending into industries way beyond retail. There will probably always be a place

00:01:52.520 for Amazon in our lives. I like convenience. I'm never going to pretend that I don't.

00:01:59.520 And I think supporting local businesses can also coexist with Amazon. I truly do.

00:02:04.320 So before we engage in Black Friday madness, let's just get into it a little bit.

00:02:10.840 Hi, Dana.

00:02:16.260 Hi, Jo. So nice to meet you.

00:02:18.380 It's so nice to meet you. I am so excited to have you here today. We've got a ton to talk about,

00:02:25.100 but first, could you introduce yourself to our audience without telling people what you do for

00:02:30.340 work? Oh, OK. I am a mother to a toddler, a boy mom. I love reading, soccer. I feel like my job

00:02:41.540 is so core to my identity. So without saying my job, I'll tell you I'm a very nosy person.

00:02:47.180 I like that. I like that. And our job is core to all of our identities. That's why I make people

00:02:51.580 do this, because, you know, I just like I just like it to get weird from the very beginning.

00:02:55.600 to to your world of what you just worked on i'm sicilian oh yes sicilian women unite we we find

00:03:03.280 each other we just love me to um yeah i think that sums me up in a nutshell great i love it

00:03:12.240 i love that you're nosy that brings me so much joy i'm so nosy oh it's the best it's the best i

00:03:18.200 totally i mean i also like i i unapologetically poke around people's houses when they invite me

00:03:22.760 over. So if you're inviting me over, I'm totally going to look in your drawers. Sorry. Keep that

00:03:27.300 in mind. You should. You actually really should. Because I don't pretend to be who I'm not. It's

00:03:33.020 all out there. People tell you who they are. Your latest book is The Everything War, Amazon's

00:03:38.580 ruthless quest to own the world and remake corporate power. It's a bold ass statement. 0.64

00:03:45.580 Tell me about it. Yeah. So this book was born of, I'm a Wall Street Journal reporter, 0.96

00:03:50.660 investigative reporter. And I was investigating Amazon's business practices and found out that

00:03:57.340 Amazon always seems to win, not just in retail, but in 10 or 11 different industries, largely by

00:04:04.440 cheating, largely by putting its fingers on the thumb and self-dealing. And that's what this book

00:04:10.160 was born out of. It's an investigation into Amazon's anti-competitive, sometimes illegal

00:04:15.660 business practices, its toxic culture, and how that wreaks across, you know, society,

00:04:24.180 economies, business, competition. I mean, even like your local bookstores, which I love

00:04:29.140 how that comes into play there. It's interesting. I think about Amazon a lot. As an author,

00:04:37.400 it's impossible not to think about amazon uh the numbers are are startling uh 90 of my books are

00:04:46.140 sold through amazon i yeah they are and as much as i i do so much work with local bookstores okay

00:04:55.380 like i am in a local bookstore pretty much every single week at this point and still still the

00:05:06.680 majority of my sales come from Amazon. And they also control what is being shown to readers. I

00:05:14.200 mean, right now, Amazon, for some reason, has been showing the large print version to readers

00:05:19.560 instead of the hardcover. So people who think that they're buying the latest version of the

00:05:24.620 Sicilian inheritance are being sent the large print version. They don't realize it. And then

00:05:30.020 getting kind of frustrated because the large print version is not always that lovely to read.

00:05:34.620 But I asked my publishers about it, and they're like, yeah, there's nothing we can do about it.

00:05:38.560 They just have too much power.

00:05:41.420 Reporting on this book about the bookstores, this was just staggering to me.

00:05:45.460 I detail a lot of the plight of the booksellers in the book and how it's just not tenable for most of them to run or open a bookstore.

00:05:54.240 And what I found is that bookstores, by and large, all lose money.

00:06:00.840 Many of them are just benevolent people in society that have money and they're doing this as a pet project and they're losing millions of dollars a year on their independent bookstores.

00:06:10.900 And largely, the only time a bookstore does make any money is if someone like you comes in and does an event or if they sell coffee or wine.

00:06:20.200 They don't make money the other six days of the week selling books, which is just a tragedy to me because of Amazon.

00:06:26.300 Yeah, well, and that does. I believe that. I believe that as a person who is constantly thinking about opening a bookstore. We're always looking for space in our neighborhood, but we are well aware that it would have to be a bookstore slash something. So a bookstore slash wine bar, a bookstore slash cheese shop, which would fulfill all of my dreams of becoming a cheesemonger.

00:06:49.880 um because and my you know my friends who run bookstores tell me too they're like we sell

00:06:55.800 dresses because we make all of our money on dresses and we sell books and make no money on

00:07:00.980 them um so yes yes yes and yes because a hardcover book costs 28 they just do uh and they are sold

00:07:11.900 online for about $18. And it's also hard to fault the consumer. People apologize to me all the time

00:07:21.720 for buying on Amazon, but I'm like, I get it. If something is just, this is economics. If something

00:07:28.580 is cheaper somewhere else, you're going to buy it there. And that sucks. That sucks for the entire 0.99

00:07:34.200 publishing ecosystem. It does. And that was like the canary in the coal mine for Amazon. They came 0.97

00:07:38.180 in to books, sort of wreaked havoc on publishing and on the bookstores. And it was just the canary

00:07:43.880 in the coal mine. From there, they did predatory pricing in other areas. And it really decimated 0.71

00:07:48.780 main streets, malls, local retailers, big, big retailers, publicly traded ones. And then they

00:07:55.560 started getting into other industries and sort of copying that playbook. Yeah, yeah, exactly,

00:08:00.860 exactly. And so the other thing that I do want to say is that a lot of authors I know are very

00:08:07.260 scared to say anything negative about Amazon because of the control that they have over our

00:08:12.220 books. I mean, I have I have books coming out once a year now and I'm terrified. I'm terrified of

00:08:18.580 of of saying, oh, my gosh, this is this is a bad thing because when this is how everyone's

00:08:24.600 getting your books, it's how we're making our living. Yeah, I have to credit my publisher

00:08:29.960 because this is the most critical investigation into Amazon business practices ever written.

00:08:35.520 And not one of the publishing houses that I met with when we were doing the proposal blinked an eye at that.

00:08:42.140 They understood it on a cellular level because they lived it.

00:08:45.740 And they almost had like a pride in like taking on this giant that controls a lot of their destiny, right?

00:08:52.100 Because they had seen it firsthand.

00:08:54.280 And my publisher was sort of wondering if when we came out with the book, I came out, I think the book published a few weeks after your book, actually.

00:09:02.200 if they would suppress us on the website or play any games like that.

00:09:07.500 And I said, you know, they're kind of too smart for that

00:09:09.460 because that would have been a whole news cycle in and of itself.

00:09:11.840 It would have driven more publicity.

00:09:13.720 So we haven't seen any evidence of that.

00:09:16.220 But it's funny, you know, I've been doing a book tour too.

00:09:18.780 And any time I speak somewhere publicly, at the end,

00:09:22.120 sure enough, someone comes up to me and they whisper very softly like,

00:09:25.720 hey, didn't want to ask in front of everyone else.

00:09:27.740 But were you worried about like your physical security writing this book?

00:09:30.800 Oh, wow. Yeah. Yeah. I'll ask in front of everybody. Were you worried about your physical

00:09:35.920 security writing this book? I wasn't. I wasn't. I mean, I think the book came out around the time

00:09:40.560 of that Boeing whistleblower mishap on people's minds, but that hasn't been something I was

00:09:46.180 worried about. But, you know, you do worry about them playing tricky games with the algorithm or

00:09:50.480 suppressing you or, you know, playing fast and loose in that way. Well, I mean, I also think

00:09:55.480 about how big Amazon is and how little they care about me on a regular basis, too. I'm so tiny and

00:10:04.080 insignificant in the grander Amazon universe. And also, at the end of the day, this is a massive

00:10:11.620 corporation, and the job of journalists is to create a system of checks and balances. That is

00:10:18.600 simply true. You are doing your job. So I want to move beyond books a little bit to talk about

00:10:25.360 going after other kinds of industries and because this is a pursuit of total domination

00:10:31.480 talk to me a little bit about how amazon truly has destroyed main street yeah that's a great

00:10:39.940 question um so there's an anecdote in the book that i sort of think speaks to jeff bezos's

00:10:44.480 ambitions it's uh 2006 amazon's mostly just a book widget retailer they're not really in

00:10:51.800 apparel yet. And there's this big CEO gala in Manhattan with all the apparel CEOs like

00:10:57.800 Diane von Furstenberg, the CEOs of Saks Fifth Avenue, Macy's, Nima Marcus. And in walks Jeff

00:11:03.780 Bezos that year. And he does not fit into this clubby crew of apparel people. And one of my

00:11:09.620 source sees him at the bar and he says, you know, what are you doing here? And Jeff tells him, well,

00:11:14.480 your margin is my opportunity. And sure enough, they're the biggest apparel seller in the country

00:11:20.420 today and a lot of the companies at that 2006 gala are now bankrupt and out of business and

00:11:26.440 we've seen that play out in the malls um you know department stores there's been more department

00:11:32.740 store jobs lost in the last decade than coal mining jobs which is just staggering oh wow

00:11:37.640 i didn't i had no idea actually eight times more in department stores than coal mining and then

00:11:43.460 also our main street and i think about like what's so special about main street and i think people

00:11:48.400 have taken it for granted is that these are people that are creating local jobs. They are creating

00:11:55.140 actually sales tax benefits that go back into your local district. And, you know, these are

00:12:00.580 the people sponsoring your child's little league teams, right? And, you know, in the last 10 years

00:12:07.280 plus, 40% of independent toy stores, apparel retailers, bookstores have gone out of business.

00:12:14.700 And that leaves these gaping holes on Main Street and your local communities that they don't come back, these jobs, right?

00:12:20.260 These companies don't come back.

00:12:21.740 And a lot of it is because of showrooming, you know, people going into the local bookstore, the local apparel store, finding something.

00:12:28.800 Actually, there's a woman in the book called Kathy who had this amazing little boutique in Pennsylvania.

00:12:35.160 And Kathy actually was the only time in the book that I cried reporting something out because she's just this bubbly, amazing, energetic woman.

00:12:41.220 and she told me the story about how this was the place where everyone shopped in her little town

00:12:47.020 and she employed 20 ladies as she called them and she'd come in and hug all her workers and stuff

00:12:52.020 and starting in 2013 her sales revenues start declining declining she starts seeing people

00:12:57.860 taking out their phones taking pictures leaving buying an amazon and then 2018 comes and she has

00:13:03.900 mother of the bride dresses and she spends two hours with this mother of the bride trying on

00:13:08.580 dresses, giving her champagne, finding the perfect dress for her. The woman just glows when she finds

00:13:13.640 it. And then at the end of those two hours, after drinking a half a bottle of champagne, the woman

00:13:18.120 says, this is so great. Let me just see how much it costs an Amazon. And by that time, you know,

00:13:25.120 Kathy's barely holding on. You know, the revenues have declined to a point where she's not making

00:13:32.620 money. And she calls everyone in after that holiday and says, I'm sorry, ladies, I have to

00:13:36.420 let you go and it's just that scene is playing out main street after main street right right no i mean

00:13:43.140 i i i see it constantly i see it in you know downtown philadelphia um where really a lot

00:13:51.480 of the only stores that we have left are no longer those boutiques but um the internet first brands

00:13:58.480 where this is just a showroom this is just a showroom for someone to come like it's glossier

00:14:03.060 it's lululemon um which i mean i guess is still kind of a chain but um love sack that portable

00:14:11.100 couch company all of these just so people can see them and then order online exactly and that's i

00:14:17.740 mean the bc-backed companies that have money that could maybe outrun amazon for a certain amount of 0.98

00:14:21.720 time but it's really hard for the kathies of the world to stand up a business and make it viable 0.99

00:14:26.900 And, you know, people, and I understand the temptation to want to showroom and, you know, it's convenient to shop online, especially if you have a prime, 200 million people have a prime membership and they want to get their money's worth out of it, right? 0.99

00:14:39.000 So that's part of what's at play here.

00:14:41.880 I mean, 200 million.

00:14:43.360 Yeah, I have a prime membership.

00:14:44.620 I mean, I, and I also shop at Amazon.

00:14:47.000 I will say I do feel cornered in a way now at this point, because as much as I would like to go to a shop down the street and buy something, they're no longer open.

00:15:03.100 And you're busy. You have three kids, right?

00:15:04.600 So it's hard to stop.

00:15:05.380 True, true. But I also live, well, and we don't drive that much, right?

00:15:09.300 So, like, we live in Center City, and we rarely drive.

00:15:14.140 I don't like driving. And so I don't really I don't feel like going to a Target. I don't I don't

00:15:19.020 want to go out to the strip malls. And but the lack of stores within walking and biking distance

00:15:26.520 kind of forces us to use it. One of the many things about writing this book is getting like

00:15:32.240 the reader feedback. And I've had the stream of emails from people who read the book who then

00:15:36.780 send me a screenshot of them canceling their prime memberships. Oh, my God, that's so fun.

00:15:41.660 That must be so fun for you.

00:15:43.080 A lot of it for the business practices, but a lot of it because I think a lot of shoppers don't realize that it's an unbedded marketplace and they sell things like carbon monoxide detectors that don't work.

00:15:51.980 Oh, wait.

00:15:52.480 I want to get into that.

00:15:53.640 I want to talk about all that.

00:15:54.380 Let's take a quick break.

00:15:55.460 We'll talk about that when we get back.

00:16:02.700 Hungry now.

00:16:05.940 Now.

00:16:08.100 What about now?

00:16:09.920 Whenever it hits you, wherever you are,

00:16:12.820 grab an O'Henry bar to satisfy your hunger.

00:16:16.620 With its delicious combination of big, crunchy, salty peanuts

00:16:20.300 covered in creamy caramel and chewy fudge with a chocolatey coating.

00:16:25.160 Swing by a gas station and get an O'Henry today.

00:16:28.060 O'Henry, O'Henry.

00:16:35.080 Okay, we are back.

00:16:36.780 This is what I really want to hear about

00:16:37.960 because this is my fear a lot of times.

00:16:41.380 When I'm ordering online, full stop,

00:16:43.100 that I'm going to order something that just doesn't work.

00:16:47.220 And so talk to me a little bit about the vetting process.

00:16:50.640 Well, Amazon is this marketplace.

00:16:52.440 And what most shoppers don't realize

00:16:54.080 is that 60% of what's sold in there is not sold by Amazon.

00:16:57.380 It's sold by people from around the world.

00:16:59.800 Sometimes people selling it out of their garage or their basement.

00:17:02.740 And we actually did a test at the Wall Street Journal

00:17:04.580 where we set up an Amazon seller account

00:17:06.560 And then we dumpster dived for like jelly and jams out of garbage bins at Trader Joe's and we were able to resell them.

00:17:16.260 OK, so it's not that that stuff easily goes on their platform.

00:17:20.000 And the book chronicles this toxic culture.

00:17:22.000 I've covered companies for 18 years.

00:17:23.320 I've never seen a culture like Amazon's.

00:17:25.600 It's the most toxic, where people, in order to keep their jobs and get to their stock units, are doing things that are just wrong, that are illegal, that are unsafe.

00:17:37.180 And there's this push-pull.

00:17:38.760 The people in the marketplace side of the business want to get sales.

00:17:41.520 They want to get revenues.

00:17:42.240 They want to expand selection.

00:17:43.800 So in some cases, they're letting things through that they wouldn't themselves buy.

00:17:48.940 I have stories in the book where Amazon is selling toddler hoodies with strings around the neck, which are banned from being sold in the U.S. because they could strangle children.

00:17:59.900 They're there in proliferation.

00:18:02.140 You know, they're selling carbon monoxide detectors that don't detect carbon monoxide.

00:18:05.940 Can you imagine having that in your home and, God forbid, having an incident?

00:18:10.060 Selling electric scooters that their batteries are blowing up and burning people's homes down.

00:18:14.520 And what's fascinating to me is that they put selection and profits over safety, and whenever those people have taken Amazon to court, they hide behind a very convenient shield, which is, oh, we're just the marketplace.

00:18:30.140 We facilitate the sale, but we didn't sell it, so that's not our liability. 0.59

00:18:33.380 Good luck tracking down the obscure Chinese seller who sold that to you and suing them. 0.86

00:18:37.180 Right, right, right. 0.78

00:18:39.120 Yeah. I mean, look, a legal loophole that is indeed a classic, classic loophole, right?

00:18:46.920 Totally. Facebook does this. Uber does this, right? We're just the marketplace.

00:18:50.000 We're just the marketplace. We're just the go-between. Yeah, absolutely. And you're

00:18:53.500 never going to track down that seller the majority of the time.

00:18:59.140 Totally. Yeah. We actually have a Prime account. I don't really shop on it because of these

00:19:05.480 concerns and i feel like i know too much at this point but my husband the other parts of amazon my

00:19:09.940 husband's a big sports fan and watches thursday night football which they now own so they're

00:19:13.280 there's so much bigger than retail they're so much bigger than retail i mean and when when we're

00:19:18.960 talking about everything that amazon owns for me as someone who's making television shows uh and

00:19:26.900 movies out of my book properties and podcast properties uh they're a very big seller prime

00:19:33.480 is a very big seller uh or prime is prime is a very big buyer when it comes to these properties

00:19:39.160 charlotte walsh likes to win was originally purchased by prime you know they paid to create

00:19:44.500 the writer's room um they were they were going to be our streamer for a long time we're constantly

00:19:49.960 pitching them shows so and this is more than book sales and suitor and and scooter sale yeah this is

00:19:56.800 more than book sales and scooter sales are you like do you dive into that in the book i do actually

00:20:02.140 make the case that Amazon's like this modern day standard oil, this, you know, that Gilded Age

00:20:06.700 monopoly, but maybe bigger in power. And that its power lies in having many different tentacles.

00:20:14.660 Retail is one of them. Cloud computing, advertising, Hollywood studio, healthcare,

00:20:20.980 where they're the number one or two biggest player. Logistics is another one. And they're

00:20:25.000 able to synthesize that power throughout their tentacles and squeeze their competitors,

00:20:29.100 their partners and leverage their power in a way that we don't see in corporate america

00:20:33.320 we're able to use the dominance and all of those different tentacles to get terms that no one else

00:20:37.820 can get and that's a big part of the book and also a big problem with the remedies here because

00:20:42.720 when standard oil was broken up for being a monopoly and um it just became bigger power

00:20:48.760 because it's already so big and right now what for and for our audience members who don't know

00:20:53.460 about standard oil could you just give us a little tldr about it yes this is john rockefeller's

00:20:58.460 Gilded Age, giant company to trust. And it was an oil producer that at one point controlled 90%

00:21:05.320 of oil refinery in the U.S. But it also had these deals with the railroad. And it was one of the

00:21:10.220 first major cases that the antitrust authorities levied and had this giant breakup of it into 34

00:21:15.800 different companies, which John Rockefeller fought tooth and nail, but it was the best thing for him

00:21:20.860 because it just increased his wealth because each of those companies quadrupled and market-sized.

00:21:25.060 So it wound up being a good thing.

00:21:26.360 And that's the analog here.

00:21:28.220 The Federal Trade Commission has now sued Amazon for being a monopoly.

00:21:31.140 It could, you know, result in this breakup.

00:21:34.500 But you could see something similar playing out there, too, because it's already so big.

00:21:39.360 Mm-hmm.

00:21:39.860 Mm-hmm.

00:21:40.300 Yeah.

00:21:40.600 I mean, and where do you think that case will even go?

00:21:43.820 Do you think it will follow the path of Standard Oil?

00:21:46.560 It's really tenuous right now because there's, you know, there's an election, right?

00:21:51.240 Yes.

00:21:51.680 You don't know if the head of the agency, her name is Lena Kahn. 0.97

00:21:55.940 She's the youngest FTC chairwoman in history.

00:21:59.340 How do I not know that?

00:22:00.600 How do I not know that we have the youngest FTC chairwoman in history?

00:22:04.000 Yeah. 1.00

00:22:04.460 And she's been, you know, she's tried to reinterpret antitrust law because she thinks it's screwing all of us.

00:22:12.640 We don't know if, I mean, Trump likely would not keep her. 0.99

00:22:15.260 It's questionable if Kamala will.

00:22:17.120 I mean, Biden probably would have.

00:22:19.740 This will go to court in 2026, assuming that the, you know, the lawsuit doesn't change.

00:22:25.780 And I think there'll be a lot of fireworks if it goes to court.

00:22:28.000 We'll see, you know, Jeff Bezos on the stand, I'm sure.

00:22:30.500 And it could be pretty fascinating on that front.

00:22:33.440 But I think if it were to be broken up, it'd probably be the logistics arm, you know, where

00:22:38.060 pride is shipped, would be, you know, split off from the rest of it.

00:22:42.460 Right, right.

00:22:43.140 Of course.

00:22:43.800 Of course.

00:22:45.140 Talk to me a little bit about the reporting process for this book.

00:22:48.560 was it hard to get people to talk to you? It was in some ways. Amazon has really

00:22:54.340 leveraged NDAs. Everyone, whoever comes across them, signs an NDA. They tried to make me sign

00:23:00.220 one my first time I visited their campus, which was a no-go. So all their employees have it. And

00:23:04.720 they are not shy about suing. So this is also a company that's very contentious. They punch back

00:23:12.720 at narratives they don't like about them. And I knew that they would do that with my book.

00:23:16.040 so I went overboard on reporting I spoke to 600 people for this book and I had hundreds of pages

00:23:21.720 internal documents because I knew I had to be bulletproof average book you know narrative

00:23:26.160 non-fiction book you speak to like 150 or 200 people but I really does so many people so that's

00:23:31.300 why it's one of the reasons I started writing fiction um as much as I do once I had kids

00:23:35.360 because I'm like oh I can just make this shit up in my head it sounds so freeing it is yeah so I

00:23:42.660 you know, I really had to come armed with the receipts. And at first, some people are, 0.96

00:23:47.560 you know, gun shy about speaking. What I would do is rely on some of the, you know,

00:23:52.780 the internal documents I had where I saw their emails. I could say, hey, you said this on this

00:23:56.480 date. I want to know why. And that would kind of smoke them out a little bit. There's an element

00:24:02.180 of that. And then, you know, I spoke to a lot of their competitors as well. And it was important

00:24:05.680 for me to try to get as many people as I could to go on the record, because that to me is just

00:24:09.120 indisputable. The American public has become a little bit wary of background sources or off the

00:24:15.720 record sources. And so I did try to get as many on the record as I could. Yeah, which is so

00:24:22.800 important. And I get it. I mean, as a journalist, I understand the wariness, but also we can't do

00:24:30.000 our job without, you know, off record and background sources. We cannot do our jobs. And

00:24:36.700 And I think it's just gotten harder and harder with the growing mistrust of journalism and the media in general. 0.99

00:24:44.020 But the irony of this to me is that we look at social media accounts that people completely trust who are just blowing things out their ass. 0.99

00:24:53.840 Totally. 0.96

00:24:54.400 I mean, it's really sad as a journalist right now that just the level of media illiteracy where people don't understand the vetting that goes on at major news organizations before a story goes out.

00:25:05.960 and how buttoned up they are, how legal gets involved, right?

00:25:08.640 And I don't know, we're at a weird crossroads

00:25:12.000 when it comes to how the public understands how media works.

00:25:17.120 I think about this a lot.

00:25:19.340 I would love to see media literacy classes in public schools,

00:25:23.780 in all schools, but, you know, starting in kindergarten.

00:25:28.340 I agree.

00:25:29.460 Some curriculums are doing that in other countries.

00:25:31.320 My dad was just telling me, I think, in one of the Nordic countries.

00:25:33.580 I was about to say Denmark? Definitely Nordic. Yes, yes, I just saw that. I think it is so

00:25:41.240 important, so valuable. I've actually talked to a couple of the communication schools about this,

00:25:46.240 and they kind of blew me off about it. And I was like, I think this is the most important issue of

00:25:49.760 our time. I agree. I was just talking to my husband. My son is three. And he said,

00:25:53.540 isn't it sad that we're raising our son in America for the first time where there's no

00:25:58.720 agreed upon truth, where people could just create a narrative and that's my narrative and I'm

00:26:02.840 sticking to it no one could agree on what the actual truth is yeah yeah well and also i mean

00:26:07.980 just i this this is also something that i say all the time but growing up i saw my parents consume

00:26:14.740 news i saw them consume a newspaper i saw them watch the local news or the national news and

00:26:22.740 then you know of course the the stream the networks the bigger networks came about but

00:26:28.080 my kids see me just stare at the phone. They don't know what I'm doing. They don't know if

00:26:34.020 I'm answering an email, if I'm texting with my mom chain, or if I'm reading the New York Times

00:26:39.640 or the Atlantic. They don't know. And so news consumption isn't modeled for them as much.

00:26:46.000 One of the things that I love so much, and I cannot talk enough about how much I love it,

00:26:50.660 is The Week Junior. What is this? Oh my goodness. I'm going to change your life. Okay. You've got

00:26:57.340 a three-year-old so you're like about two years out from it it's like it's the week magazine but

00:27:03.160 in junior form so it is a news magazine that comes every week for physical form we love this already

00:27:12.120 it's magical okay my seven-year-old reads it now cover to cover every single week we started

00:27:20.360 getting it um i think probably a year ago and at that point he was mostly into it for the puzzles

00:27:25.960 OK, the puzzles and the like weird animal pictures, a drug puzzles.

00:27:31.160 Look, I open my puzzles first on The New York Times app.

00:27:33.720 OK, the puzzles are always going to get us.

00:27:35.980 When we were at the New York Daily News, our biggest complaints were that we fucked up the crossword or the comic section.

00:27:45.980 But now he reads all of the news stories and they just they had and it's it is truly nonpartisan media, too.

00:27:53.940 OK, they just had a great cover story on the Electoral College and just breaking down in

00:28:01.060 graphics what like which states get which votes.

00:28:05.700 And it is so smart.

00:28:08.200 And it's a way for them just to see news from a really early age.

00:28:12.440 I'm not being paid by the week junior, but I love them.

00:28:14.500 Maybe you should.

00:28:16.300 No, I love that.

00:28:17.140 And I agree.

00:28:17.620 I struggle with the optics of it, too, because I'm on my phone all the time sending emails

00:28:20.940 and I actually read books on my phone like a psychopath.

00:28:23.240 path. I don't know how anyone reads books on their phones. I love it. I have my library app

00:28:28.740 there. I download stuff and I have to tell my, I make an effort to tell my son I'm not, you know,

00:28:33.520 mama's reading a book on her phone. Totally. Totally. I try to narrate my activities. I'm 0.65

00:28:38.260 like, right now I'm just responding to your teacher in an email as opposed to right now

00:28:43.620 I'm scrolling Instagram and ignoring you. In the middle of book reporting, my son, who was

00:28:49.140 then a year and a half came over to me and goes mama loves me i said yeah i do love it and then

00:28:54.140 he goes mama love computer oh god that's that's that's a gut punch that is a gut punch all right

00:29:02.200 well speaking of social media i want to take one more quick break and when we get back i want to

00:29:05.140 talk about how the world of influencers and one click buying have really served to just i mean

00:29:13.400 continue Amazon's, Amazon's domination in a lot of ways.

00:29:29.780 Okay, we're back. Because this is ostensibly a show about influencing, although we talk about

00:29:35.860 all the things, all the things in the world, I do want to talk a little bit about influencers and

00:29:40.000 the impact that they've had on on pushing these Amazon links and and not just with the Amazon

00:29:46.680 links, but in pushing impulse buying like that you must you can't wait to go out and go on your

00:29:52.300 shopping day or weekend. You need to buy this now. You must get this immediately. I mean, has that

00:29:57.380 had an impact? Well, fun fact, Amazon back in the early 2000s created the first ever affiliate

00:30:05.540 links. They are the creator of the beast. It was called Amazon Affiliates. It was very crude at

00:30:10.420 first. And they got these salespeople essentially all over the world to use their links in their

00:30:16.660 blog posts or in their emails at the time. There wasn't social media, of course. They sort of

00:30:21.740 created this. And they're still a very big affiliate network. In order to compete better

00:30:30.500 with TikTok and some of these Chinese upstarts, they're now getting into more of like a scrollability 1.00

00:30:35.640 sort of app that goes head to head with TikTok shopping. So they're very much about, you know,

00:30:41.900 leveraging this one click patent that they created where you could click on something and have it

00:30:46.380 shipped to your door pretty immediately through your Prime program. And that's definitely part

00:30:50.540 of their strategy here. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, I still get emails asking

00:30:56.780 me to sign up for the Amazon affiliate program. Fun fact, I've never figured out how to sign up

00:31:01.180 for any affiliate program. So anytime I recommend anything, I just like it. It's just a thing.

00:31:07.760 Sure. So pure. This is not surprising if you read my book. There's other, obviously,

00:31:13.960 affiliate networks. Amazon apparently pays like a fraction what anyone else pays. So if you're

00:31:18.620 getting 10% on like reward style or something, it's like Amazon, you're getting like a half percent

00:31:22.620 for the referral that sucks that just sucks everything sold on online is on amazon so they

00:31:28.220 don't really need your link they actually don't need your link they don't it's true it's true and 0.95

00:31:33.080 i mean i just bought something on amazon last night i'm just gonna admit it my daughter for

00:31:38.300 halloween wants to be a kangaroo i would not try to make that costume no i tried to make costumes

00:31:45.440 last year because my husband god bless his heart was like we can make halloween costumes and then

00:31:49.900 i realized that by we it was gonna end up being me at michael's two days before halloween buying 0.77

00:31:54.880 some fucking felt okay and a glue gun and everything was actually my son still wears that 0.77

00:32:01.680 dilophosaurus dinosaur costume to this day sometimes it was wearable it was wearable but 0.97

00:32:07.500 it did not look good it did not look good um you know i'm not making a kangaroo i don't want to

00:32:12.840 make a kangaroo and i i went to spirit i went to whatever other junkie halloween shop had taken

00:32:19.640 over an old Rite Aid down the street. And there are no kangaroos to be had. So I had to order

00:32:26.660 what looks like a kangaroo costume from the Amazon. And you found it. It's here already.

00:32:36.960 Okay. My daughter's wearing it right now. There's a Joey in the pouch. And do I feel good about it?

00:32:42.260 No. Did I get it done? Yes. And I know it's hard. It's hard. I mean, so

00:32:49.640 when people when we have these conversations and you know authors too because we love indie

00:32:55.460 bookstores we want them to survive but then at the same point we want to sell books like we

00:32:59.600 if you are an author i say this i'm like you have to unapologetically want to sell books because

00:33:04.120 otherwise you can't keep doing this uh so what are your recommendations for people

00:33:11.660 who are going who want to continue who want to support smaller businesses but also want to

00:33:16.860 continue using amazon like can we have nice things is there a middle ground i think i think you can

00:33:22.340 do both things you know um if you think about just ways to help your main street like we've made we've

00:33:27.600 made a point of it now anytime we buy a birthday card greeting card instead of going to cvs or

00:33:32.900 ordering online we buy their local bookstore because they have stuff like that and it's a good

00:33:36.220 right think more creatively about shopping local it doesn't mean you have to cancel your prime

00:33:41.880 account right um right well things and just make sure that you're also taking care of what's in

00:33:46.100 your backyard. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And I mean, that's one of the things that I try to do.

00:33:53.920 I mean, I've got like little strategies, right? Like if I see a greeting card that I love in a

00:33:58.200 local bookshop or anywhere, I'll buy 10 of them. OK, because then I've got them. So then I'm going

00:34:03.720 to be less apt to do this impulse buy. I also I mean, if I'm in a cute little boutique and I see

00:34:10.640 like a kid toy or something interesting, I will also buy a bunch of them. So then I have birthday

00:34:14.220 presents for kids like for the next year of of holidays i mean i think that like little little

00:34:20.000 mindfulness tricks like that um they really they really do help you know and i don't think amazon

00:34:28.580 is going anywhere um you know if you're into the convenience and you really can't shop local i will

00:34:34.220 say that other companies have marketplaces or two-day shipping now like i tend to use target.com

00:34:41.700 when I need to do something that I can get on Amazon

00:34:43.660 because also it's a more vetted supply chain.

00:34:45.680 That's important to me.

00:34:47.060 They're not selling the things

00:34:48.480 like the carbon monoxide detectors that don't work.

00:34:51.280 Pretty comparable in price.

00:34:53.140 So that's sort of how I think about things too.

00:34:55.960 Yeah, yeah.

00:34:56.680 And I mean, I think about that too.

00:34:58.260 I actually, I just ordered some sneakers online

00:35:00.400 because there's no shoe stores, okay?

00:35:02.420 There's really no shoe stores around anymore.

00:35:04.560 Also, try getting kids shoes these days.

00:35:06.780 Impossible, freaking impossible.

00:35:09.020 But I just ordered directly from REI, right?

00:35:11.700 Yeah, and that's a great company.

00:35:13.340 Yeah, it's a great company.

00:35:14.740 They're a co-op.

00:35:15.620 You also get REI points, which means that Nick Astor can go in there and buy some weird 0.98

00:35:19.120 camping shit that he's never going to use. 0.86

00:35:23.140 Yeah, I mean, I think, again, we're living with this. 1.00

00:35:25.620 I feel the same way about AI in a way.

00:35:29.360 I mean, maybe this is a leap, but I'm like, we're living with it now.

00:35:31.860 And so there are ways of taking advantage of the things that AI can help us with.

00:35:37.800 And there's ways of not letting it take over our life and ruin the world.

00:35:41.140 Completely.

00:35:41.180 I mean, we're thinking about that every day in the newsroom.

00:35:44.160 Like, how is this?

00:35:46.200 Did this write our earnings report story?

00:35:48.940 Yes, maybe.

00:35:50.540 Maybe.

00:35:50.980 I mean, I think there are going to be certain stories that it can write, right?

00:35:54.000 I mean, I think about that.

00:35:55.000 I'm like, it's not going to be able to replace reporters, but things that mine data, it's

00:36:00.220 probably going to be really good at that.

00:36:01.720 Commodity news, it probably could do that.

00:36:03.780 It probably could do that.

00:36:05.160 I mean, yeah, that's a whole other conversation, okay?

00:36:07.800 because i can talk about i can talk about ai all day long but but can it write the trashiest

00:36:13.940 murder mystery of all time about trad wives no sure can't sure can't because i asked it to

00:36:22.860 and it didn't did you try it on there oh yeah i messed around with a lot i mean mostly because

00:36:28.800 um of the premise of the book right so i mean this is a book about technology um and there's

00:36:35.020 There's threads in everyone is lying to you because we all want to sell books.

00:36:39.560 Everyone is lying to you. 0.95

00:36:40.580 The greatest tradwife murder mystery of all time coming at you July 1st. 0.98

00:36:45.040 There's threads about influencers using AI. 0.96

00:36:47.960 So I thought it would be interesting to do an experiment.

00:36:50.240 Be like, all right, I want a scene that does this and this and this.

00:36:52.680 First off, ChatGPT and most of the AI bots won't write murder for you.

00:36:57.280 It's against their ethics.

00:36:59.480 I guess it makes me happy.

00:37:01.300 Yeah, they won't write.

00:37:02.620 Sure.

00:37:03.660 They won't write murder and they won't write spicy scenes.

00:37:09.540 Oh, fascinating.

00:37:10.180 They have no chance in hell.

00:37:12.960 No, massive limitations.

00:37:14.440 Massive limitations on my wheelhouse right now.

00:37:17.060 So, yeah, yeah.

00:37:18.920 And also, I mean, the things that it can write aren't good.

00:37:23.820 It's so evident to me when it comes to fiction that it is being written by a robot.

00:37:30.540 That's going to change.

00:37:31.360 But for right now, it's not right in my trashing murder mystery.

00:37:37.140 I'm like the last millennial not to use chat GPT.

00:37:39.760 I still haven't.

00:37:41.860 Tell everyone where they can find you and where they can find this wonderful book of yours.

00:37:46.020 Great.

00:37:46.780 So I am on Twitter at Dana Mattioli.

00:37:49.960 I'm on LinkedIn.

00:37:50.920 I'm on Instagram.

00:37:52.040 Same handle.

00:37:53.200 And the book is sold wherever books are sold.

00:37:55.880 Barnes & Noble, bookshop.com, your local bookstores.

00:38:00.540 it's also on Amazon. It's on all the places. All the places, friends.

00:38:30.540 Thank you.

Under the Influence (with Jo Piazza) - November 27, 2024

Prime Domination： Amazon's Holiday Shopping Conquest with Dana Mattioli

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