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Illustration by Tyler Comrie
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Hi Revealer,
You scroll and click, and then your Amazon package with its iconic smile logo arrives at your doorstep.
While online shoppers benefit from this convenience, who pays the price? Since 2019, Reveal reporter Will Evans has been investigating what's really going on behind the scenes, and Behind the Smiles, of Amazon. He’s done stories for the web and print, for video and radio, and was named a Pulitizer Prize finalist in 2020.
He’s revealed that Amazon’s obsession with speed has turned its warehouses into injury mills – and, thanks to confidential records we obtained, we now know the rates of injury only intensify during times like Cyber Monday. Not only were Amazon’s injury rates far worse than the national average for the warehousing industry, but Will uncovered how it has also deceived the public about this problem.
For his latest Amazon story, out now, Will moved from reporting on what went on inside warehouses to what went on inside corporate conference rooms. Using internal records, we collaborated with WIRED to expose the tech giant’s failures to safeguard the private data of its customers and the small businesses that rely on its platform.
Amazon had thieves in its house and sensitive data streaming out beyond its walls. Employees snooped on the purchases of celebrities. Others took bribes to help shady sellers sabotage competitors’ businesses, doctor Amazon’s review system and sell knock-off products to unsuspecting customers. Millions of credit card numbers had sat in the wrong place on Amazon’s internal network for years. A Chinese data firm harvested millions of customers’ information in a scheme reminiscent of Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica debacle.
Our stories hold institutions like Amazon accountable for the problems they’ve caused and benefited from. As a nonprofit newsroom, we’re free to expose corporate wrongdoing. Without corporate ties, we rely on the generosity of our listeners, readers and viewers to fund this work.
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Thank you,
Missa Perron
Membership Manager
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