Amazon's changing policies and leaving Kindle
Perhaps you’ve already heard the news. As of 26th of February Amazon will remove the ability for you to download kindle books as files to store locally. If you haven't, this is your cue to go download them. This, of course, sucks. It doesn’t feel like a sudden change, but rather a continuation of the common trend in platform economics as we continue to fall further and further into chokepoint capitalism.
Luckily, I don’t have that many books on kindle, so it’s not too painstaking to download everything. But this news has led me to rethink my reading practices. I still have my Kindle 3 since 2010. It has served me well and it helped me grow my reading habit. I use it to this day, although now it has its days numbered as the battery has begun to swell. I will have to get a new reader.
I have a conflicting relationship with Amazon and Kindle. On the one hand, they were the only way I could get legal access to certain books in my country as a lot of niche books just don’t reach there. However, the way Amazon leverages their position to exploit authors by giving them bad deals that they can’t refuse (along with broader anti-trust practices with competing products on their platform) make me uncomfortable, at the very least, about continuing to support.
Ultimately, I’m tired of participating in systems that take more and more control away from you to keep you hooked on their IV drip and dependant on them for your needs. The sooner you get out, the better. And this news, plus the fact that I will need a new eReader, was a good wakeup call to finally try to get out. Yes, it will be less convenient. But the price of convenience is too high.
I’m under no illusions that this will “show them” or cause them to reconsider their practices. The people who will chose to leave their ecosystem because of this change are not even gonna leave a dent in their overall customer base. But I still don’t want to continue to use a convenient yet harmful system just because it seems inevitable at this point. It's with changes in your local practices that you can begin to construct alternatives.