The Secrets of Amazon review – Alexa, why are you so disturbing?

You don’t have to have an Alexa device in your kitchen to worry that Amazon might be monitoring you. You don’t have to work for the company, either. You don’t even have to shop with it, although, obviously, all these things help.

The presenter of Dispatches: The Secrets of Amazon (Channel 4), Sophie Morgan, investigated some of the more immediately troubling aspects of our relationship with what is now the most valuable public company in the world, a retail behemoth that accounts for a third of all online purchases in Britain.

One of Amazon’s bigger PR headaches is the ongoing concern about working conditions in its fulfilment centres, so much so that the company has mounted an advertising campaign featuring employees saying stuff like: “I bake cakes every Tuesday!” The undercover investigator dispatched by Dispatches to work as a “stower” (scanning and distributing products across a vast warehouse) failed to uncover much evidence of this one-big-happy-family vibe.

The motivational sign on the wall said: “Work Hard. Have Fun. Make History”, but one employee had a pithier slogan: “Every second you stow, they know.” Workers were expected to stow an item every 10 seconds, for a total of about 2,000 products a day. The system keeps track of it all.

Toilet breaks obviously slow things down. “Try not to exceed 10 minutes,” said one worker. “Any more than 10 minutes and they might be coming to you.” Amazon says: “We do not monitor toilet breaks.”

The programme also investigated some of the products carried by Amazon, particularly those sold by third parties, which may not meet safety standards. By way of example, Morgan purchased a rubber duck that was 30% DEHP, a plastic additive that by law should comprise no more than 0.1% of the toy, on account of it reducing male fertility. Obviously, once we leave the EU we can have all the toxic bath toys it is our sovereign right to enjoy, but in the meantime Amazon has suspended sale of the ducks while it investigates the show’s claims.

In April this year it was revealed that Amazon was also selling books that promote anorexia. The offending titles were removed, but there remains a whole “breatharian” genre – potentially dangerous – that the retailer seems happy to continue to flog (I easily found a book on the site written by a woman who claims not to have eaten in five years). “There needs to be some accountability,” said a dietician. Amazon said: “As a bookseller we provide our customers with access to a variety of viewpoints, including books that some customers may find objectionable.”

This is the way of watchdog programmes: cautious accusation followed by mealy-mouthed denial. But Amazon’s unprecedented market dominance means that we are probably legally unequipped to deal with its misdeeds. What else can you say about a company that complies fully with UK tax law and still only pays 2% direct tax on revenues of £11bn?

The creepiest stuff about Amazon’s reach is also, unfortunately, the hardest to understand. As well as being a retailer, it is the third largest advertising company in the world, behind Google and Facebook, and your data is one of its top products.

I tend to think that if you have an Alexa in your house, you don’t care enough about privacy to deserve any, but Amazon does not just collect data from you through your purchases or browsing habits. “Amazon places tracking software called cookies across a range of sites to learn more about us,” said Morgan. I am capable of being alarmed by that without quite knowing what it means, but third-party trackers can and do know when you visit a website about mental health. “You do not expect Amazon marketing services to know that you’re depressed,” said Frederike Kaltheuner of Privacy International. “It’s just not acceptable.”

Amazon is not the only online retailer to do this, but the alarming thing is that it is well on its way to being the only online retailer, and more. It already owns companies such as Whole Foods. It also provides web hosting services to the government. And it is always going to have the cheapest socks.

This investigation could not exactly illuminate all the dark corners – devoting 30 minutes to the subject of Amazon is like writing a four-page pamphlet called Climate Crisis, but it was, nevertheless, deeply worrying, and a little wearying. Perhaps what was missing was a little of our own stupid complicity. We let all this happen, because we wanted those damn socks. And when did we want them? Tomorrow!