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Amazon is forcibly upgrading Prime members to Alexa Plus, and users are not happy
(www.androidauthority.com)
this post was submitted on 13 Jan 2026
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They probably need to show investors that the money spent developing it is worth it. “We’ve added X amount of users this quarter alone!”
It worked for Microsoft. The month after they started to force install Teams in windows they published user numbers showing how teams had sprinted ahead of Slack by that metric, and the tech press mostly ate it up.
Maybe, but how do they respond to the followup "Nice! How?"
That's probably not a question that'll get asked, unfortunately. What will get asked is why those numbers dropped off abruptly the next quarter.
Why would it not get asked? It's the most obvious, logical followup
As a shareholder, you are financially incentivised to not question narratives the company presents if they supposedly present the company in a good light.
Suppose you do ask, the narrative unravels and the share price tanks. Congrats, you've just lost a buttload of money. Why would you do that?
No, best option is to applaud loudly, tout it in the press and watch useful idiots buy your shares at inflated prices.
The people who do ask the questions are the people the company doesn't feel obliged to answer.
That doesn't make any sense. Nothing unravels, numbers moved from one chart to another. The big number didn't actually change.
Congrats, you have discovered that the stock market is irrational
Hmm, I'm not sure this is any evidence of that.
The share price might change, as that's largely based on feelings instead of facts. Sure they didn't sell as well, but they presented numbers that look better (even if they aren't) so line go up.
Why would the share price change.
Large Shareholders some care about how the line goes up, just that it does. Constantly. Every quarter.
Then they wouldn't even be the people getting told this information about subscription numbers, so I'm still not sure how it's supposed to work
Subscription info is definitely part of the information provided to investors. The raw numbers may not be in the financial documents, but revenue from subscriptions most definitely is and will give a general idea of changes even if the company doesn't give the numbers directly.
Right, but again, if they're that birds-eye-view, then the bump in subs in one spot is negated by the drop in the other and the net result they're looking at is what they care about.
Shareholders are dumb panicky creatures. As long as the numbers aren't terrible and you say some nice things most of them take it as gospel.
Spinning shit as a positive is a full time career in the corporate world after all.
Right, but I'm saying the "numbers" aren't influenced by this.
They are as far as the shareholders are concerned if Amazon is telling them about different tiers of subscription. The bullshit the company spins is just as, if not more, important than the raw numbers. Especially when companies only report mandated info and the raw numbers they're referencing aren't disclosed for comparison.
Statistics is the art of making up a narrative you want to show via numbers, and finding a way to say it exists regardless of reality.
Which, as I said, means it all comes out in the wash. If revenue is +100% here and -100% there, it's 0%. Either they are looking big picture, and that's what they see, or they're zoomed in and therefore in a scenario where they would ask the follow up.
They care about revenue going up. It doesn't go up, unless it does.
except that the new subscription costs more, and has AI features. now the line did go up, and investors can be told that people want AI
It costs more? People we being automatically switched to a tier that costs more money?
Not usually. These people tend to be really stupid. There's a reason why businesses degrees are made fun of so much.
I mean, do you have any examples of companies trying to pull this? Where they automigrate one base of users to another tier of whatever it may be, and then successfully pretend it was organic growth?
I've worked in many corporate settings where projects have to show their results and that sort of thing would never make it past the middlest manager.
Microslop and automigration to the copilot containing 365 sub rather than the default lower priced sub.
They automatically moved customers to a tier that cost them more money than it did for them previously?
Yes, at least in Europe they did. Went from 59€/y to 99€/y
When was that? I can't find anything about it in a search.
Last year, anyone that had the base tier office 365 got automigrated for the tier including copilot. No one in my circle uses 365 anymore after that, I bought office LTSC 2024 licenses for all on the grey market and Microslop just lost thousands of € yearly in revenue. It's my contribution in the war against Microslop.
Got a link? Also how was it presented to shareholders?
I'm not seeing where they got the option to opt out and switch back to the tier they were on?
Also how much more is Alexa Plus than the original version users were on?
What makes you think I didn't open the link?
I didn't make any non-sequitors...
Yikes. The cognitive dissonance is palpable.
You're talking internal accountability. That doesn't apply at this scale.
The accountability here is to shareholders. And they don't care about why, just quarterly profits and growth.
This is a good one: https://lemmy.world/post/41564641
Amazon also got in trouble for auto enrolling people in prime.
Did you link the wrong post?
In trouble with investors for tricking them?