There's a lot of Shopify stores out there, all with pretty good shopping experiences. Of course it's near impossible to escape the hegemony of mega e-commerce platforms entirely (because they offer a valuable service), but spreading interactions among them is, I suppose, the best we can do.

Product searches outside of Amazon (e.g. Brave, DuckDuckGo, Google, etc) tend to be littered with Amazon results by default (use "-amazon" to remove them), which can actually be handy for model numbers to help refine searches.

Keeping data & payments secure needs some planning as you end up sharing info with many more stores. Using a disposable c/c, unique email alias, and a second phone number (cheap PAYG) helps limit the blast radius of lax vendor practices. Been bitten by this, and learned a lesson! Easy once set up.

You can stumble upon some great stores, offering great customer experiences. I now have a favourite online bakery store and I don't even bake!

In some cases it's much more convenient. I can browse a forgotten high street store's website, reserve a product, and collect it right away. Again, a little more expensive, but happy for those pennies to skip big A's coffers.

Convenience and cost are the most obvious sacrifices. However, I've found it mentally cleansing to experience delayed gratification again (only 1 or 2 days extra wait), and am happy for the extra ~5-10% markup to land in pockets other than Amazon's.

Agree with the sentiment, not the tone. Your Ben Z vid was hopeful messaging. This playground stuff ages poorly when you get into power and face distasteful decisions. Don't play their game Zack! Would be great to hear about Greens' alliance building in Europe/US as a taste of what we can hope for 💚