Technologies

Amazon’s Big Year of Thinking Small

Amazon built like our pandemic-fueled shopping spree would never end. Now it has, and the company’s shrinking.

We all came out of the last three years changed. Amazon is no different.

All that online shopping you did during the pandemic added to soaring demand, which combined with other economic forces to push prices higher. Costs got too high for the tech industry, too, driving companies to shrink their ambitions – even the gargantuan Amazon.

Amazon was already the Goliath of US e-commerce before the pandemic, representing more than 40% of the market, according to Statista. With the boom in online shopping, fueled first by lockdowns and then by stimulus cash, the company’s profits shot up for more than a year.

Then came the bust. Amazon’s growth stalled out in the middle of 2021, and it posted its first loss in seven years at the beginning of 2022. By November, Amazon was the first company in the world to lose $1 trillion dollars in value, Bloomberg reported.

The problem wasn’t just that we stopped shopping through our misery. Amazon, like a lot of tech companies, banked big time on our new buying behaviors. As we went back to brick-and-mortar stores and cut our spending this year, the company was left with an oversized workforce and a hulking logistics network it couldn’t support. This year, Amazon and its competitors scrapped large chunks of what they built during the pandemic.

For you, Amazon’s new frugality means its advancements on flashy new gadgets — or the inexpensive ones you use to set timers, create reminders and check the weather — may get less of the company’s devotion next year.

Amazon’s most visible sign of retreat was the planned layoffs, which the company has confirmed will happen without giving the number of employees it plans to cut. Estimates in new reports range from 10,000 to 20,000 people who will lose their Amazon jobs in the coming months, but that’s just the most recent glimpse of trouble. Amazon began telling investors in October 2021 that it had built up its warehousing and air freight capacity too much in response to early pandemic demand.

The middle of this year started to reveal casualties elsewhere in the company. Amazon shut down its physical bookstores and some Amazon Go convenience store locations. It jettisoned its Amazon Care health care service on doubts it would ever be profitable. And departments in charge of customer favorites like Alexa-powered devices took a disproportionate hit from the layoffs so far.

Amazon declined to provide a comment for this story but directed CNET to remarks Amazon CEO Andy Jassy made during the New York Times DealBook Conference. Jassy said then that Amazon wasn’t done making bets on businesses that could have long-term payoffs.

«What we’re trying to do is streamline our costs in a bunch of different areas, while at the same time making sure that we keep betting on the things that we believe long-term could change,» Jassy said.

Still, this year’s cuts at Amazon reflect a turn toward immediate profitability, said Neil Saunders, a retail analyst at GlobalData, noting that the company hasn’t found a way to profit from Alexa devices.

It’s a sign of an industry-wide reckoning with shoppers hitting the brakes on spending, Saunders said, adding, «A lot of companies behaved as if it was a permanent shift.»

Peaks and valleys

E-commerce hit startling heights in 2020. Shoppers dropped earnings and stimulus cash on home furnishings, gardening supplies and electronics, and growth of online shopping was remarkable. It shot up from a steady growth rate of around 16% at the end of 2019 to more than 44% in the summer months of 2020.

E-commerce is still growing today, but the frenzy is over.

But while spending was still at unprecedented levels, Amazon used the extra cash to feverishly build warehouses and air hubs. It doubled its ranks from just under 800,000 employees at the end of 2019 to more than 1.6 million by the end of 2021. And it wasn’t just Amazon. Shopify, the company behind many standalone online shops, also went on a hiring spree. Social media companies like Meta and Twitter benefited too, bringing in extra advertising revenue from merchants who aimed targeted ads at shoppers sitting at home.

Figures from the US Census Bureau show e-commerce spending is now where it would be if it had just kept growing at the same steady clip that it was before the pandemic. Even though the feverish buying started to cool last year, a few tech chiefs have said they thought the shift to online shopping was permanent. It wasn’t.

«Those chickens are coming home to roost,» Saunders said.

When Meta announced layoffs of 11,000 employees in November, CEO Mark Zuckerberg conceded it was a mistake to assume increased revenues would endure. Shopify cut 10% of its workforce in July, with CEO Tobi Lutke saying he was wrong to predict a permanent leap ahead of five to ten years in the growth rate of online shopping.

Amazon’s layoffs will also be significant. Proportionally, they’re on track to represent the company’s biggest workforce reduction since the 2001 dot-com bust, which hit 15% of its staff, according to the New York Times. Nonetheless, Jassy said Amazon made the right decision to scale up rapidly starting in 2020, adding that it was better to get too big than to stay too constrained to meet demand from shoppers and from sellers who use the company’s marketplace.

The slowdown shouldn’t have caught the heavyweights of e-commerce by surprise, said Andrew Lipsman, a retail analyst at Insider Intelligence. We were going to regain access to in-person stores at some point, and stimulus payments weren’t going to last forever. But even if cash-flush tech companies knew there would be an inevitable bust, they couldn’t let the opportunity to scale up and capture all our shopping dollars pass them by.

«They tend to think of it as an arms race,» Lipsman said. «When their major competitor is investing heavily, they don’t want to be the ones not doing it.»

Slowing innovation

That bitter downswing has forced Amazon to pull back on some of its flashy pet projects, like Alexa, where a large portion of the layoffs took place. While Alexa-powered devices like Echo smart speakers and displays dominate the smart home market, they’re priced to lose money. And even though Alexa made huge advances in voice recognition and AI-generated speech, the technology hasn’t succeeded in getting people to shop by voice, analysts say.

Amazon’s health care initiatives are also seeing cutbacks. The company said Amazon Care, a service that offered telehealth and in-home medical appointments, would close down at the end of 2022. (Amazon says it’s pushing forward with its purchase of One Medical, which offers primary care clinics and telehealth services).

Also on the chopping block were Amazon’s brick-and-mortar bookstores and its remaining «Four-star Stores,» which analysts say never found a purpose.

Amazon hasn’t killed the Alexa division or its health care efforts entirely, and Jassy has said the company is still betting on innovations like autonomous vehicles with its Zoox business. But the moves show Amazon is unwilling to sink quite as much money into services just for the sake of destabilizing or owning a market. That’s a contrast to its earliest approaches with selling books and music online, which Amazon pursued while taking a loss for seven years before finally turning a profit in 2001, said Sucharita Kodali, a retail analyst with Forrester.

«The DNA of Amazon was, ‘we’re going to lose money,'» Kodali said. Now the company must invest in things that’ll pay off sooner rather than later, she added.

And just like everything about Amazon, when the company cuts back, it does it in a big way.

Technologies

TikTok’s Sexy Affair With National Parks Isn’t Clickbait. It’s a Wake-Up Call

Social media thirst traps are spotlighting a funding crisis for public lands. And millions of people are paying attention.

National parks, gay country music and thirst traps have a lot in common, at least on the internet.

Hundreds of TikTok posts combining sexually explicit audio, comical memes and stunning views of nature have flooded social media feeds. The viral trend coincides with President Donald Trump’s unprecedented funding cuts targeting federal parks, forests, monuments, seashores and trails.

The message of #ParkTok and #MountainTok is G-rated: to conserve and protect public lands. The raunchy content is merely a wrapper to lure followers and get that message in front of as many people as possible.

At first glance, the TikTok fan accounts for Yellowstone and Joshua Tree — among dozens of other national parks, forests and recreation sites — appear to be competing in an unhinged brawl. Some commenters speculate that federal park rangers or marketing strategists have gone rogue to garner outside financial support.

But the unofficial accounts, which are growing in number daily, are run by independent content creators with no affiliation to the government. According to the National Park Service’s Office of Public Affairs, the NPS has no official presence on TikTok, as there are no terms of service between federal agencies and the platform.

«Viral trends focused on national parks can certainly boost park visibility and drive increased interest and awareness,» the National Park Service told CNET in an email. «We appreciate the enthusiasm for our nation’s parks and the creative ways individuals share their experiences online.»

And millions of social media followers say they’re here for it. Promoting the country’s vast landscape and its preservation for future generations could serve as a kind of spiritual uplift in dark times.

Nature is sexy; budget cuts aren’t

Far beyond the racy adult content, there’s a unifying purpose to posting videos of cascading waterfalls, colossal trees, seductive deserts and enchanting wildlife.

Researchers have noted that national parks are key to conserving biodiversity and supporting people’s well-being. And it seems everyone, not just nature nerds, can get behind these public lands: US national parks saw a record number of recreation visits last year, nearly 332 million.

«If you actually love all this stuff, you get attached to that beauty,» said Kim Tanner, the creator of the Joshua Tree fan account. «And then you realize you don’t want that beauty damaged.»

The Trump administration’s 2026 budget plan includes slashing more than $1 billion from the National Park Service. It also threatens to axe a whopping $33 billion from national recreation management programs and conservation and preservation grants. The grants are critical to maintaining 433 individual areas of public lands covering more than 85 million acres, which are managed by the NPS.

The National Parks Conservation Association says the White House’s budget reductions are the largest proposed cuts to the National Park Service in its 109-year history and could «decimate at least 350 National Park sites.» Many have said Trump is laying the groundwork to sell off public lands and turn recreational areas over to state-level management.

According to Kristen Brengel, senior vice president of government affairs for the National Parks Conservation Association, the NPS has already lost nearly 2,500 employees, or nearly 13% of its staff, in what she calls a «brain trust exodus» of environmental experts.

«What’s happening right now, in trying to dismantle the National Park Service from the inside out, is more horrific than anything we’ve seen before,» Brengel told me.

Getting wild for the wild

TikTok is controversial, and so is sex. That’s precisely why trends like these have political capital, capable of attracting admirers and haters, and bringing everyone else into the conversation.

«The polarization on social media is reflective of our real-life political polarization,» said CNET social media reporter Katelyn Chedraoui.

The #ParkTok and #MountainTok creators, some of whom are former park employees, are all nature lovers who span the political spectrum. Many of the accounts openly denounce the administration’s threats against the parks and direct viewers to demonstrations or fundraisers, but the trend isn’t overtly partisan or activist-driven.

«Most of their posts work on a subconscious level, prompting viewers to think about the national parks and their own experiences with them,» said Chedraoui. «It’s simple but effective.»

In fact, the TikTok engagement around public lands originated before the budget cuts to the parks. The first three fan accounts — Mount Hood, Mount Rainier and Yellowstone — appeared right after the elections last November. Managed by three friends who are avid outdoor enthusiasts, the accounts put up posts early on that were a mix of comic relief and wilderness awe.

There wasn’t much thirst trap content then. «It was just waterfalls and vistas and sunsets,» said Jaime Wash, the creator behind the Mount Hood and Mount St. Helens fan accounts. Then, two of the creators started trolling each other, and folks loved it.

It was fake beef, but the diss-track template became a winning strategy. By January, the trend started picking up speed, with more fan accounts joining the fray. Over the last several months, the popularity of the posts has seen ebbs and flows — until fairly recently, when all of #MountainTok and #ParkTok blew up for their risqué content.

Private parts in public lands became a magic formula, a kind of viral virility, that the creators knew how to play up.

«Social media users are very used to brands acting unhinged on TikTok,» said Chedraoui.

A bridge over troubled water

Some critics have slammed the parody accounts, accusing creators of trying to monetize a legitimate cause, or claiming that the sexually charged content damages the parks’ reputations.

But according to the creators, who collaborate regularly in a group chat, making money wasn’t, and never will be, their intention. Wash told me that if at any point they do collect a payout for the content, they plan to donate the funds to the parks.

After gaining such a huge following, Wash said, she felt it was her responsibility to get people involved. In April, the Mount Hood fan account brought out followers to Portland’s Hands Off protest.

«We’re building a community to show that things aren’t helpless, that change can happen and we’re there for each other,» Wash said. And besides raising the alarm, the posts add comic relief and entertainment to a daily cycle of doomscrolling and anxiety.

Tanner told me that #ParkTok and #MountainTok can open people’s eyes, showing how fragile nature really is. By highlighting endangered animals and the environmental damage from logging, drilling and mining, the posts can help millions of followers understand what’s really at stake.

The stunning power of social media

Social media acts as a cultural barometer, unveiling public sentiment in real time and broadcasting issues that most resonate. Platforms like TikTok also give grassroots movements a megaphone, allowing everyday people to bypass traditional media filters and speak directly to broad audiences.

«We’ve seen digital action lead to tangible action,» said Sheila Nguyen, associate director of communications and engagement for the National Parks Conservation Association. «The more people who see that social media content, the bigger the pool of people who may speak up and the more collective impact we can have,» Nguyen told CNET in an email.

In fact, social media publicity has been shown to boost national park visitation. A 2024 research study found that positive social media posts that include photos or videos drive the biggest increases in visitation.

«The more people we can get into these parks, the better. That way, they can experience it firsthand, see it, fall in love with it, and then want to protect it,» said Tanner.

The National Parks Conservation Association urges people to sign up for alerts on its advocacy page so they can raise concerns with congressional representatives.

«We feel that Congress is the best option right now to get the administration to back off of these bad proposals,» said the NPCA’s Brengel. «Congress needs to be pushed to stop some of these terrible actions.»

Many TikTok creators I spoke with also said they’re advocating ways to hold elected officials accountable.

«It’s heartbreaking to think the places that I absolutely love may never be the same again,» said Wash, «and I want to do anything to stop that.»

Technologies

Today’s NYT Connections: Sports Edition Hints and Answers for May 20, #239

Hints and answers for the NYT Connections: Sports Edition puzzle, No. 239, for May 20.

Looking for the most recent regular Connections answers? Click here for today’s Connections hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle and Strands puzzles.

Connections: Sports Edition has one of those oddball purple categories today, and I think I could’ve stared at the puzzle for a week and not solved it. It’s one of those «play with the letters» categories, and they’re always fun after I see the answer, but I seldom get it right. Read on for hints and the answers.

Connections: Sports Edition is out of beta now, making its debut on Super Bowl Sunday, Feb. 9. That’s a sign that the game has earned enough loyal players that The Athletic, the subscription-based sports journalism site owned by the Times, will continue to publish it. It doesn’t show up in the NYT Games app but now appears in The Athletic’s own app. Or you can continue to play it free online.

Read more: NYT Connections: Sports Edition Puzzle Comes Out of Beta

Hints for today’s Connections: Sports Edition groups

Here are four hints for the groupings in today’s Connections: Sports Edition puzzle, ranked from the easiest yellow group to the tough (and sometimes bizarre) purple group.

Yellow group hint: Your group.

Green group hint: Where the Pope is from.

Blue group hint: All-Star player.

Purple group hint: Change a letter.

Answers for today’s Connections: Sports Edition groups

Yellow group: Team

Green group: Chicago teams

Blue group: Teams Juan Soto has played for

Purple group: NBA teams with the first letter changed

Read more: Wordle Cheat Sheet: Here Are the Most Popular Letters Used in English Words

What are today’s Connections: Sports Edition answers?

The yellow words in today’s Connections

The theme is team. The four answers are club, side, squad and unit.

The green words in today’s Connections

The theme is Chicago teams. The four answers are Bears, Fire, Sky and White Sox.

The blue words in today’s Connections

The theme is teams Juan Soto has played for. The four answers are Mets, Nationals, Padres and Yankees.

The purple words in today’s Connections

The theme is NBA teams with the first letter changed. The four answers are Buns, Gulls, Meat and Slippers.

Technologies

Trump to Sign Bill Banning Deepfakes, Nonconsensual Images: What to Know

The bipartisan ‘Take It Down’ Act passed swiftly in both the Senate and the House, and has been championed by First Lady Melania Trump.

President Donald Trump is expected to sign the bipartisan Take It Down Act into law on Monday, a significant step in regulating the nonconsensual sharing of intimate images, including AI-generated deepfakes. The legislation aims to protect individuals from the harmful effects of such content, which has been increasingly prevalent in the digital age with the expansion of artificial intelligence.

Read more: Jamie Lee Curtis Celebrates Meta’s Removal of Fake AI Ad

What are deepfakes?

Deepfakes are realistic but fake images, videos or audio created using artificial intelligence to mimic someone’s appearance, voice or actions.

One widely reported example was a 2022 viral video of Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. In the altered clip, Zelenskyy appeared to urge Ukrainian soldiers to surrender to Russian forces, a message he never actually delivered. The video was quickly debunked, but it raised serious concerns about the use of deepfakes in disinformation campaigns, especially during wartime.

Deepfakes have also been used to spread sexually explicit content or revenge porn.

Read more: Election Deepfakes Are Here and Better Than Ever

What are the key aspects of the Take It Down Act?

The Take It Down Act prohibits knowingly sharing or threatening to share intimate images of someone without their permission, including digitally altered or AI-generated deepfakes. Here is a breakdown of the bill and what it targets:

Criminalization of nonconsensual sharing: The act makes it a federal offense to distribute intimate images without the subject’s consent. The bill applies to both real and AI-generated content.
Mandatory removal: Online platforms, such as tech and social media sites, are required to remove flagged content, including any copies of the material, within 48 hours of notification by the victim.
Mandatory restitution: Violators will face mandatory restitution and criminal penalties such as prison time, fines or both.
Protection of minors: The legislation imposes stricter penalties for offenses involving minors, aiming to provide enhanced safeguards for vulnerable individuals.
Enforcement by the Federal Trade Commission: The FTC is designated as the primary agency responsible for enforcing the provisions of the act.

Who supports the Take It Down Act?

First Lady Melania Trump has been a vocal advocate for the legislation over the last several months, emphasizing the need to protect children and teenagers from the damaging effects of online exploitation. Her efforts included public appearances and discussions with lawmakers to garner support for the bill.

The bill, introduced by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), gained bipartisan backing, with cosponsors including Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.). It passed the Senate unanimously in February, followed by House approval in April with a 409-2 vote.

What are the criticisms and concerns about the bill?

While the act has been praised for addressing a growing issue, it has also faced criticism from various groups. Some digital rights organizations express concerns that the law could infringe on privacy and free speech, particularly regarding the potential for false reports and the impact on encrypted communications. There are also apprehensions about the enforcement of the law and its potential misuse for political purposes.

For instance, representatives of The Cyber Civil Rights Initiative, a nonprofit that supports victims of online abuse, voiced strong concerns about the bill, according to PBS News. The group criticized the takedown provision as overly broad, vaguely written and lacking clear protections to prevent misuse.

What are the next steps?

Trump is expected to sign the bill Monday at 3 p.m. ET. This act will mark Trump’s sixth bill signed into law so far in his second term. By his 100th day back in office, he had enacted only five, marking the lowest number of new laws signed by a president in the first 100 days of a term since the Eisenhower administration in the 1950s, based on an analysis of congressional records by NBC News.

The signing of the Take It Down Act represents a significant move towards regulating nonconsensual intimate imagery in the digital realm. While it aims to provide greater protection for individuals, ongoing discussions will be essential to address the concerns and ensure the law’s effective and fair implementation.