I really hate to admit it, but I do use amazon quite a bit. It’s not “like me” to use a company or service I despise, despite the truth of “no ethical consumption under capitalism,” some businesses are just so evil that I feel it is wrong to support them in any way, even at the cost of convenience.
Here’s the situation though. I rely on foodstamp benefits to be able to afford food. Amazon allows me to buy food in bulk online with my ebt card. I also have a disability that makes it prohibitively difficult to go to the grocery store as often as I would need to, and bulk buying online also stretches the benefits I get much further than regular grocery visits. Walmart and Target also now allow ebt cards for online food shopping, but they didn’t used to, and they are evil as well!
I rationalize using amazon by telling myself that since mostly the only thing I get from them is food via ebt card, then it’s really just money going straight from my state government to amazon, and my state government (just like most others) gives amazon free money anyway, so I may as well get something out of their capitalist sweetheart deal too.
I see someone already listed a bunch of hexbear comms, maybe as a half joke, but seriously some of them are the most active and fun if you’re a lefty. But a couple non-hexbear comms worth suggesting are
!piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com
&
!privacy@lemmy.ml
Perhaps also !memes@lemmy.ml if you want not just leftist memes but also the drama of indignant, sometimes enraged libs (even an occassional frothing chud) coming into the comments and usually proving the accuracy of the meme they’re upset about. It’s one of the best
comms for that reason.
If you want great news analysis I would also suggest not just a news comm, but more specifically the newsmega thread at hexbear. It will change url every week since its a single post thread, not a comm. But it stands on its own so well I think its worth mentioning along with entire comms or instances. Hexbear has a certain reputation, some of it deserved (much of it not), but the bulletins and international news thread (aka newsmega) is, regardless of what you may think of the rest of the instance, one of the best places on the internet to get serious leftist/anti-imperialist analysis of current news and events as far as short form “reddit-like” (I hate to phrase it that way but you know what I mean) commentary and discussion.