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Amazon Caught Destroying Rare Books to Train AI
(futurism.com)
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this post was submitted on 17 Aug 2026
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I read the article and don't see what you're seeing. Can you point out the "false pretenses". It seems the order was placed via a site that intentionally allows anonymous purchases.
As a sidebar:
Emphasis mine.
That seems sketchy to me. I'm not confident it's illegal, but I'm guessing a website that intentionally allows anonymous purchases isn't going to take kindly to a vendor putting a tracking device in an order.
Oh no. Won't somebody think of the billionaire whose monopoly that got exposed by some independent journalists who couldn't be bought or bribed. How tragic.
If Amazon is behaving ethically, they don't need to hide what they're doing.
Hindsight makes people come to very foolish conclusions.
Hint: what if it didn't turn out to be Amazon?
404 media was already thorough in its previous research before actually tracking a book order. Despite your insinuation, there was no foolishness.
But if we follow your billionaire defense to its logical conclusion, they should not have bothered verifying their leads, and left the space billionaire alone.
The foolishness was yours. "The ends (in hindsight) justify the means" is not a particularly wise stance.
Like I said, what if it wasn't Amazon that was ordering the books; would it then be okay?
I understand the dislike of billionaires, but don't let it stop you from thinking.
You don't need to stoop to insults.
Then the responsible journalists wouldn't publish the story. I don't know why you have so much disdain for this independent group.
I'd hate to hear your takes when Ed Snowden "illegally" leaked files to journalists.
I'm thinking about how your concern (which is borderline concern trolling) leaves no way to hold billionaires and their unethical companies accountable.
Like you said:
Just imagine if we applied this to the AI weirdos.
My concern isn't the story, it's the "hiding a tracking device in an order with an anonymous party". That's an invasion of privacy no matter who it's done to. You're presumably only okay with it because you dislike who it was done to, which is why I'm asking you to consider it without hindsight. What if it were done to someone other than Amazon? Do you still support that invasion of privacy? Why or why not?
Amazon isn't a person, no corporation is. They should be subject to far more exposure.