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Why your Amazon order confirmation emails have become so unhelpful
(www.theverge.com)
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this post was submitted on 18 Aug 2026
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I really wish more people would include short summaries in their posts so I don't have to read 12 paragraphs of bloat on a heavy webpage.
Yet again it's another thing AI is ruining and another way for companies to claw back value for themselves at the expense of their users.
Does the article explain what the "DoorDash problem" is?
Not adequately. They simply say there's some vague "need" to get people to visit the app/site, but they don't outline WHY that's harmful to the company if people can get the information directly.
My guess? It's about data protection. Amazon doesn't want Google via gmail to learn exactly what you're buying. By holding it in house they can better target you than anyone else, and also sell this "high value data" to data brokers
They don't care about email scraping (which would be illegal)
They simply want people to install the app because it exfiltrates a lot of tasty data to them.
An email might "only" contain ab invisible image to track views and unique links for tracking clicks, while if the user opens the app they way more data.
From the APK I see they can get stuff like
Most of this scraping (like Google indexing your emails) is legal if the user is informed (an in EU if they can disable it)
The team problem the article hints at iis doordash and Amazon claims the customer relationships and hides the customer from the real company that actually made the sale. They make themselves a middleman to displace others as much as possible and use their size to manipulate the market in their favor (like demanding higher margins than other retailers)
Yes
fuck amazon. i literally just built an email scraper so i can use this exact email as a way to understand where my disposable amazon spending is going. because of course they don’t offer any way to export your purchases to analyze your spending.