Love faded because Amazon removed the ability to filter search results for items shipped and sold only by Amazon.com, and they commingled inventory, so there is no guarantee of supply chain.
They made the decision to reduce their costs as a retailer, and subject their customers to supply chain risk, in order to increase their margins and sit back and earn commission as a platform.
At this point in time, I don’t see anything remarkable about Amazon’s retail operations. If anything, I would say Home Depot is more impressive, with a nice website showing me where the item is in their store, plus offering me various locations to pick it up or ship it to me. In fact, most retailers do this now (but I like Home Depot’s website the most).
Unlike Amazon, however, I don’t have to worry about resellers garbage on other websites (although Walmart is similar but I can still filter results there and I don’t think they commingle).
I think this is consensus amongst the tech elite crowd on HN including myself.
I’ve spoken to my dad who buys all kinds of stuff from Amazon in his retirement in rural area. He loves it. He is still amazed by the fact that someone delivers whatever you want by the press of a button. People of HN are myopic about their position, education and knowledge of technology and try to project that the rest of the world must be the same. I am guilty of that too.
HN is such a monumentally tiny bubble.
That the lay population does not care or is not as informed about the above issue is probably true.
Although, the lay population is very price sensitive, and Amazon’s prices are much higher than comparable in store prices at Walmart/Costco/Target/Home Depot/etc. Especially if the item is a heavy and/or liquid.
I'd say only tech people on HN are gung ho about Amazon's practices and in some sort of an eternal crusade against big corps. We can still criticize big corps for its workers rights and what not, but at the same time praise their technological prowess and incredible work from many thousands of people. They're orthogonal, but HN public does not know how to separate the two. Media fed and bloated minds sometimes.
Honestly, I come to HN for inspiration and motivation. Not activism. There are plenty of places to engage in productive activism on the internet if you wish, but better in person. HN is particularly not suited for it because of downvotes - activism requires people in person debating peacefully to progress and not regress into echo chambers. Activism is a joint affair, not an idealogical war. HN coalesces the worst of both - hive mind idealogical stance + echo chambering through black and grey text colors.