If this article is correct, you are not "feeding the beast" by subscribing to Prime, you are taking food from the beast, since Prime is subsidized by Amazon.

If you have prime, you’re ordering a lot from Amazon. (Because otherwise why have prime) so having prime is feeding the beast unless analyzed with an excessively narrow bounding box.

Whereas if one doesn’t have prime, there’s many other retailers.

"The losses Amazon sustains on Prime’s free shipping and selling goods below cost are how it maintains its monopoly power."

According to this article, if you use Prime, you cost Amazon money.

No, that's not what the article says. What the article says is that if you subscribe to Prime and purchase a certain amount, type, and quantity of goods in some configuration you might cause Amazon a loss.

If you subscribe to Prime in any other way, Amazon might make less profit, but you're not costing them money, you're 'feeding the beast.'

As others point out, those “losses” are more than made up by the customer lock in effects and market dominance they bring.

A sale on item “x” is not a loss if it’s net effect is to bring in massive profits. If there was no overall monetary benefit to prime it would be peculiar for Amazon to keep it.

Maintaining monopoly power > losses

Amazon inflates prices to include shipping costs on prime goods, despite the subscription giving free two day shipping. It's most obvious on smaller items that typically only cost only a dollar so, but with Prime free shipping they include the shipping cost in the price.

The customer pays for the prime shipping.

I like mine. Aside from package delivery (which isn't really a big selling point for me, TBH), my family and I watch a lot of content on Amazon Prime Video, and listen to a lot on Amazon Music. I find it good value for money.

Now, rant about Amazon Music incoming!

What I don't like though is all the spam Amazon does in Amazon Music to try to get you to upgrade to Amazon Music Unlimited - honestly, it's absolutely relentless! Multiple times a day it brings up a full-page and/or popup nag, and sometimes even does it in the middle of a track! I've been a member for several years, and must have said "no" thousands of times by now - you'd think the system would have realise by now that all they're doing is damaging good will.

What mechanism would the system have realized it has damaged good will?

You said you haven’t canceled your prime subscription, but have you started using the service less? I think this is a case where the relentless A/B testing ubiquitous in modern tech fails: how would one even measure this long term sentiment that may not affect user behavior for a very long time?

I meant if I was building just a system, it would be obvious to me not to nah that much, or even to provide a means to not be bothered again for 6 months or whatever.

You're right that it's difficult to measure goodwill over long timescales, but IMO not everything needs to be 100% science driven - the team behind Amazon Music must know that excessively, relentlessly nagging already paying customers is going to a not them.

An A/B test should probably measure user complaints. A complaint is an indicator that a user’s usage pattern may change in the future. Of course, it may not.

Although, as a user I’ve learned to complain by canceling (and explaining why when possible).

Thanks for the heads up.

Cancelled mine recently. I had to get back in the habit of shopping from other retailers. It's been just fine.