Why I Can’t Quit Amazon
Even if I wish I could
When I moved to Berlin a few months ago, I didn’t anticipate everything that would get in the way of carrying out my daily life. The moment I left California, I lost the ease with which I moved through the world by way of knowing a place so well. Instead, I found language barriers, cultural differences, unfamiliar brands, and the general challenges of learning a new city, all of which make it hard to do simple things like buy groceries and household items or even little luxuries like a new book.
So I did what everyone confronted with inconvenience does these days: I turned to Amazon.
Being in Germany forces me to confront data privacy issues every time I use the internet. With the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which came into effect in May 2018, every website now produces an annoying popup prompting users to change their privacy settings, read the site’s privacy policy, or simply consent to being tracked and traced. I consent 100 percent of the time just to get that banner out of my way as fast as possible.
Like millions of other humans, I’m all too willing to accept these pitfalls, because who the hell has time to read a privacy policy?
