Should we compromise and use Amazon Affiliates

[Update]

The conclusion that we have come to is that we should not compromise. Instead we are going to be doubling down on leaving all the Billionaire controlled social media sites that profit from our personal data, track us everywhere and exploit their workers. So the affiliate links and all links to Amazon will be going.

[End Update]

Ethically we have concerns about Amazon (among others: they don't pay enough tax; their pay & conditions for staff are poor; they are too dominant in the marketplace).

However, in practical terms we do still buy from them as lots of items we need are specialist and just not available in local shops (or would require us to visit lots of different shops over a wide area). When buying online we do have a preference for small businesses, but their delivery options are rarely as good. For example since the privatisation of the Post Office we do not get post daily, parcel delivery is very haphazard and the local collection point is now only open for 1 hour per day. Amazon can deliver to home, local shops, the nearest post office to the boat and the boatyard (the delivery tracking is good enough that we can watch for them to be a couple of stops away and walk over to the yard entrance to meet the driver even when the office is closed).

We have deliberately steered away from linking to shopping sites as that seems to contradict our Sustainability goals (which include buying less and buying second hand).

What I'm wondering is about using Amazon Affiliate links, especially in posts such as the ones about Rasberry Pi's (eg Starting towards a Smart boat, Pi time, Building our OpenWrt firewall on a Raspberry Pi 5). Does this seem problematic? Or a concern?

I'm thinking that if we do this then

• We will always show when a link is an affiliate one
• We will always try to also show an alternative supplier that is not an affiliate link

What do you think?