Amazon Let Its Drivers’ Urine Be Sold as an Energy Drink
Amazon sold bottles of urine marketed as an energy drink, a new documentary reveals. The company also makes it alarmingly easy to sell dangerous items to children.
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So let me see if I have this right:
A dishonest seller packaged human urine as an energy drink and offered it for sale on Amazon as some kind of weird experiment. The seller then successfully sold the urine to friends through the site but refused sales to others. So the real crime, selling bodily fluids as food, was committed by the seller, but only to friends who knew what they were really getting.
The bit about the seller being also employed by Amazon sounds like a red herring to make it seem like Amazon had some kind of prior knowledge about this.
I love complaining about Amazon and all of their failings as much as the next guy, but I'm having a hard time seeing Amazon as the bad guy in this instance.
You could try reading the article. Almost nothing in your summary is accurate.
Just went and read the entire article. That's pretty much spot on. Journalist sneaks into Amazon warehouse with a camera, interviews drivers, gets caught, and then has the idea to sell bottles of piss (real piss? Fake piss? Empty bottle? It's not specified) on Amazon. Which some people then buy and then an Amazon automated service contacted him about boosting his business.
There's also a bonus bit in there about his daughters being able to buy knives and rat poison from Alexa without any age verification.
It brings up some notable points in the age verification section, and it brings up some notable points about life as a delivery driver, but as far as the actual product is concerned it's hard to paint Amazon as the bad guy this time. This is clearly a ridiculous item. If you're shopping and you click on and order a clearly labeled bottle of piss, when it arrives on your doorstep that's your own problem.
That said though if just anybody can post and sell literally anything, even things like that, and Amazon does nothing to monitor what they're selling through their site - well, Amazon is going to get flooded with garbage and scams sooner rather than later.
well, Amazon is going to get flooded with garbage and scams sooner rather than later.
Where have you been the last decade?
![[HN] Amazon Let Its Drivers' Urine Be Sold as an Energy Drink](https://radiation.party/pictrs/image/f205661f-c10c-41fd-a2b8-bc26cb5cf2b3.jpeg?format=webp&thumbnail=196)
![[WIRED] Amazon Let Its Drivers’ Urine Be Sold as an Energy Drink](https://radiation.party/pictrs/image/4eb6b2c9-5cef-4047-b7ee-866ef7e65e74.jpeg?format=webp&thumbnail=196)