The monopoly of e-commerce

E-commerce. A system that billions of people use everyday, if it ordering if Amazon, buying stuff of eBay or just ordering a Pizza; which of course is its most productive use. We use it everyday without a care in the world for where our money really goes and the routes it takes - we just enter our login or card details and that's it.

Paypal: you've probably heard of it and it was developed 16 years ago to make online payments easier (and possibly) less secure than they have been. A user name and password is all you need to get into your bank account and pay for stuff online with no limitations at all; selling something as being easier and not mentioning how compromising it is just seems unethical in itself.

In 2014 the company made just over 8 billion US Dollars - it's fair to say they have a large share of the e-commerce market with 165m users. However, known to some people, it's a 165m users minus the likes of wiki leaks.

Wait, what?... A company which tried to make payments easier also makes it harder by excluding sites (like wiki leaks) that don't meet up to their standard. This seems logical...

If you don't already know, Wiki Leaks is a controversial website which leaks often government or political information for the public to see, often releasing information about the current level of corruption around us.

Personally, I think this is a good idea, adding a level of transparency of what's going on in this world is needed - however, like anything on the internet should be taken with a pinch of salt and some context.

None the less, paypal issued a statement claiming that it was a website promoting people to engage in illegal activity and they would be closing down the account linking to the Wiki Leaks donation page. Amazon have also made similar decisions and have decided to cut ties with the page.


I'm sure you've had it all before from your parents, but "if you were told to jump off a cliff, would you?"... NO. THE ANSWER IS NO. (If you chose yes, you have some serious issues and I seriously suggest you consider jumping of a cliff sometime...like, today)

You can't question morals and ethics based on an interpretation that a few people take about a site. FYI, Amazon, if we are really going to talk about ethics, perhaps not putting your workers on 0 hour contract and over working them is a good place to start. However, just because I have a question of the ethics involved in your company, it does not mean I stopped using your services - in fact I am a very loyal customer.

Neither do I feel encouraged to employ people and have them slave away - just because that's something you do, does not mean every other person is compelled to do it either.

It's utterly ridiculous that companies that make profit on e-commerce should be limiting where or where not you can spend your money - it's your money and frankly, that level of control should only be coming from the government itself, not a rich-ass CEO.

So there you go, if you haven't already formed an opinion on this, I'm quite happy for you to adopt mine and agree it's unethical to limit where people can and can not spend there money based on a possible interpretation.

- I think that's my rant over, if you got this far, then thank you :-)