7 ms·

Amazon has a team called "Amazon Profitability Group". I used to work for said team, albeit only briefly. The purpose of the team is to calculate the proper pr

Amazon has a team called "Amazon Profitability Group". I used to work for said team, albeit only briefly. The purpose of the team is to calculate the proper price to sell items for, the "discount" to vendors, and the items to put in the "buy box" in order to make the most profit for Amazon. I think the what is described here in the article is only the tip of the iceberg. Amazon isn't doing something as simplistic as cutting out the competition with low prices... they are feeding all the numbers into neural networks and analyzing and predicting competition and profits, and then doing what the systems tell them is the most profitable. That is, anything that Amazon can predict will make them more money or gain more market share... they are doing. I have full confidence that they are doing all of the terrible things outlined and more. The bigger question is whether government and law allow them to continue doing this. I think that it will continue to be allowed, despite being super shady and destroying both small and medium size businesses. It cannot easily be proven that there is anyone orchestrating the monopolistic processes, because Amazon has essentially turned the process of dominating the market into an equation and they just do what the equation tells them to. Amazon will claim "we are just being smarter; we mean no harm", and without providing open minutes of their internal discussions it will be impossible to prove wrongdoing. What is needed is open accountability for internal plans, but that is against the "American way" so I doubt it will happen anytime soon.

ajhurliman 7y ago
"and then doing what the systems tell them is the most profitable." ...so, not predatory pricing then?
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- microcolonel 7y ago
  It seems to me that, by this description, Amazon is admirably fulfilling its legal and fiscal duties, and to a greater degree than I thought before receiving this information.
  - warent 7y ago
    Maybe to the shareholders but definitely not to the consumers or the businesses on the platform.
    - microcolonel 7y ago
      > definitely not to the consumers Amazon always ships packages ahead of time, at my leisure, and often cheaper than retail. They always process returns and complaints in my favour, without contest. They reach out to local logistics companies in order to improve delivery, and I can tell by the fact that those companies now have branded vehicles (and much happier and more attentive personnel than UPS!), and better verification processes (they found a logistics provider that actually emails the signature given at the door to you when the delivery is processed) that they've done well out of that. I feel they're serving me very well as a customer, and every ordinary person in my life who isn't competing with Amazon is richer and happier because of Amazon's services. > definitely not ... the businesses on the platform The businesses fulfilling through Amazon would absolutely not have received my business were it not for Amazon; in many cases they do not have the expertise to handle the orders correctly, and I do not trust all of them to process the payments securely to the degree that I trust Amazon to. They have every opportunity to improve their ordering and fulfillment systems, but they choose Amazon because it's where the customers are comfortable already. I dreamt of a logistics integration system much like Amazon Marketplace when I was 16, and every year they make it closer to that dream, I think it's great. I'm willing to accept an argument from concrete evidence that they have somehow deliberately and systematically broken the law in so doing, but I've yet to see it.
      - darpa_escapee 7y ago
        I get free shipping from Walmart.com and AliExpress, the latter of which 90% of electronics on Amazon are sourced from. Walmart offers free 2 day shipping and in-store pickup. AliExpress offers the same items on Amazon without having to give middleman their expensive cut. I don't trust Amazon not to send me fake items or cheap Chinese knockoffs. There is absolutely no quality control on Amazon's end. Amazon has the resources to fight fake reviews, yet fake reviews are still rampant. As a result, I cannot trust Amazon's rating system at all.
- lostmyoldone 7y ago
  That doesn't follow. If predatory pricing is effective, an algorithm can be taught, or learn to, exploit it if fed with the right data. This, quite obviously, shouldn't change anything regarding the potential legality, as it's entirely self evident that a sufficiently powerful machine learning algorithm will exploit any patterns not expressly forbidden. As always, the responsibility for following the laws, and making sure these extensions of our own agency we call machines also follow the same laws fall on whomever is making the machine act in their stead. One can however be assured that several companies will argue otherwise, argue as if they were simply a victim of some sort. Which might be true in a sense. Victims of their own devices, both figuratively and almost literally at the same time.
  - goliatone 7y ago
    “A slightly more grey area arises where, with no human involvement or instruction, a price-setting AI algorithm teaches itself to coordinate with competitors – otherwise referred to as tacit algorithmic collusion. While it is unclear the extent to which current AI technology allows for this tacit coordination, a 2018 University of Bologna study found that if two competitors both employ pricing algorithms, and each gives its software total autonomy to set prices, those two algorithms would reach collusive, price-fixing arrangements more often than not.” [1] https://www.russellmcveagh.com/insights/march-2019/ai-and-price-fixing-collusion-by-machines https://www.russellmcveagh.com/insights/march-2019/ai-and-pr... [2] https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3209781 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3209781
    - TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago
      > no human involvement How does it come about that that is that a concept? Does the thought go something like: "We neglected to instruct the algorithm not to collude, and failed to monitor outcomes for collusion, therefore we're not responsible?" > and each gives its software total autonomy to set prices Ah, yep.
      - Nasrudith 7y ago
- MereInterest 7y ago
  Depends. Did they intentionally go out of their way to teach the model that predatory pricing, despite being profitable, is not allowed?
  - chii 7y ago
    why does it matter that the decision came out of an AI model? Predatory pricing is either legal or not (in the eyes of the court, or legislations).
    - MereInterest 7y ago
      We are in agreement on that. The point that I was attempting to make was that an AI model will do exactly what it was trained to do. If a model is trained to maximize profit without consideration for the law, then it will find all the unethical and illegal ways to price goods.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
- pertsix 7y ago
  luckily, predatory pricing does not have to consider intent. see Brooke Group Ltd. v. Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp., 509 U.S. 209. essentially, all you have to do is prove that there is "dangerous probability" that a monopolist can recoup their losses after all competitors have been priced out.
- darpa_escapee 7y ago
  Predatory pricing is still predatory if a human does it or if a giant Rube Goldberg machine does it.
tyingq 7y ago
I do believe these sorts of "Amazon is amazingly smart" posts. But they are hard to reconcile with why Amazon keeps showing me a rice cooker ad, after I buy a rice cooker from them.
- sokoloff 7y ago
  Amazon seems to think that I’m a real vacuum aficionado/collector as well. It’s quite possible that those are still the best items to recommend to us, to mop up any “unhappy with the one they got, so save them with a return/rebuy” sales.
  - Declanomous 7y ago
    I wouldn't be surprised if the actual reason was they are capturing extra sales from people who bought something, liked it a lot, and then bought another to give to their kids or for their second home. My mom buys me random chotchkies all the time after she bought them and liked them, and if my parents were well off I could easily see her buying me a vacuum or a new mattress after she got herself one. For 99% of people that probably doesn't happen, but the people with the money to do that probably spend a TON of money, so they are worth targeting with ads.
    - dearrifling 7y ago
      So they are misattributing the additional sale to their suggestions instead of the product being an advertisement for itself.
      - TeMPOraL 7y ago
        I suspect adtech industry would shrink down half its size if it could accurately attribute sales to ads. It sometimes smells as if it was standard practice to convince the client (intentionally, or unintentionally by also convincing yourself) that correlation is causation and therefore their success is attributed to ad spending.
    - imtringued 7y ago
hbosch 7y ago
What is different — generally — between the way Amazon determines prices, in your example, and the way Google determines the best search results? It seems they both use massive knowledge and technology advantages to determine something that’s in the best interest of the company... In fact almost all large businesses use these types of data to maximize profits, I would assume. Is there a functional difference between changing a digital page to optimize return and changing a store shelf configuration at Wal Mart to do the same? Because of course Wal Mart uses analytics to determine their store layouts and deal placements etc.
- rrix2 7y ago
  > What is different — generally — between the way Amazon determines prices, in your example, and the way Google determines the best search results? The fact that the US only cares about how action like this effects the price an end-consumer pays in a good
rorykoehler 7y ago
It's a pretty interesting example of the pitfalls of ML. It's a clever and exciting use of ML and when observed in a silo is the correct thing for any company to do. The law wasn't designed for such sophisticated modelling of the domain. Screwing over small and medium businesses was never the goal, it's just an inevitable consequence. The flip side is the algorithm cannot model what happens once they screw over businesses so badly that it causes a mass migration away from Amazon (because they've not seen that data before). Fascinating to see how this plays out.
brobdingnagians 7y ago
IIRC, there was a science fiction story where a supercomputer that humanity used for efficient logistics took over the world simply by changing the orders and sending things to the appropriate places. Can't remember the book, but might have been by Heinlein or Clarke... Seems like the Amazon AWS servers could do that quite nicely if they were sentient... or just had enough data.
- shagie 7y ago
  I suspect you are thinking of The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. Though, it has been a long time since I’ve read that book.
- steventhedev 7y ago
  Asimov wrote one like this[0], but the theme is pretty common and shows up in many science fiction stories. I only call out Asimov's version because it also has the Machine screwing up orders on purpose to remove otherwise competent people from power who don't trust it. [0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Evitable_Conflict https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Evitable_Conflict
  - brobdingnagians 7y ago
    Yep! That's the one
thedailymail 7y ago
I'm not sure offloading its decision-making to the neural network will be an effective legal protection for Amazon against anti-trust claims. The key question in the US is whether "predatory" pricing results in financial harms (higher prices) to US consumers. As I understand the logic put froth by Bork in the 70s, the general idea is that "the market" will solve this problem in most cases, under the assumption that if a single big company tries to gouge consumers, rival firms will emerge that are able to outcompete them, thus restoring (or at least reapproaching) the idealized price equilibrium. The law article cited in ths news story seems to be saying that even though Amazon's practices haven't visibly hurt consumers in terms of retail prices, this is due to the ability to play legal games with corporate accounting that conceal the present and future anticompetitive effects of Amazon's business model, and that its status as the dominant platform for online retailers presents some degree of threat to competition. Lina Khan published a very informative and influential review on Amazon and antitrust in 2017. https://www.yalelawjournal.org/note/amazons-antitrust-paradox https://www.yalelawjournal.org/note/amazons-antitrust-parado...
- 3xblah 7y ago
  "Sussman constructed his theory as something a company harmed by Amazon could use to file a lawsuit, even if no antitrust laws are changed. If it survives an initial motion to dismiss in the courts, Amazon would have to reveal unit costs in a discovery proceeding, which would settle the controversy." What Sussman actually wrote was "In addition, [this paper] calls for the establishment of a viable framework under which a case may be brought against such firms [as Amazon] by injured competitors." The journalist says no antitrust laws need be changed. What he fails to mention is the small matter of this framework Sussman says is needed before any case can be brought. It does not exist. Sussman did not describe the framework in any detail or how it would work. All one can find in the paper is this single sentence: "It is, therefore, necessary to develop some means of oversight that will allow the public to determine whether firms such as Amazon are engaging in such activities." "Linda Khan published a very informative and influential review on Amazon and antitrust in 2017." I can remember when a story on the Khan paper was posted to HN. I thought at the time the journalist seemed just a tad overly optimistic. It felt odd to see a law review article being so "hyped" by a journalist. It almost seemed like he/she did not want the reader to actually read the paper. There was so much paraphrasing that the risk of the journalist getting something wrong would be very high. In 2018, there was another paper in Yale LJ by Baker and Morton that discussed Amazon's anticompetitive activities. This paper was actually influential.1 Unlike Sussman's single sentence calling for "some means of oversight" and a framework under which cases can be filed, the authors included an entire section on "US Enforcement Challenges", about five pages devoted to how enforcement might proceed. The paper was cited by US Sen. Blumenthal in a letter to DOJ and FTC urging them to open investigations of Amazon's predatory pricing.2 (He did not cite Khan's paper.) Not sure if the Baker and Morton paper received any hype from journalists, but it is indisputable the paper and the letters to DOJ and FTC had an impact. Amazon finally removed the MFN clauses from its agreements with US sellers, as it had done for sellers in Europe in 2013.3 1 https://www.yalelawjournal.org/feature/antitrust-enforcement-against-platform-mfns https://www.yalelawjournal.org/feature/antitrust-enforcement... 2 https://www.blumenthal.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/12.19.18%20-%20DOJ%20-%20Price%20Parity.pdf https://www.blumenthal.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/12.19.18%20-... https://www.blumenthal.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/12.19.18%20-%20FTC%20-%20Price%20Parity.pdf https://www.blumenthal.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/12.19.18%20-... 3 https://www.bbc.com/news/business-23881202 https://www.bbc.com/news/business-23881202 https://www.axios.com/amazon-price-practice-antitrust-elizabeth-warren-d802ba71-d376-4316-b9dc-cca4540959ac.html https://www.axios.com/amazon-price-practice-antitrust-elizab...
amelius 7y ago
What is it that enables companies to seek the boundary of what is allowed by law, whereas when humans do it they are called assholes?
- ionised 7y ago
  Greed has become something we celebrate instead of condemn.
- Fnoord 7y ago
  Because corporations are publicly owned. They're treated like humans in many ways, yet when it comes to responsibility they're protected by a facade of faceless leaders and shareholders. The 2003 documentary "The Corporation" covers this subject in detail: "Documentary that looks at the concept of the corporation throughout recent history up to its present-day dominance." [1] [1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0379225/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0379225/
- TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago
  The two are not mutually exclusive. The general consensus around these parts seems to be that Amazon is a dog of a company.
d4nt 7y ago
I think the problem might be even more complex than that. From what you’ve said they seem to be training AI to predict what people want and how valuable it is to them. This problem used to be the role of the giant distributed computational process know as the Free Market. Communism/Socialism famously found that problem too hard to solve and collapsed as a result. If there’s a new way to solve it, it’s both hard to argue that’s a bad thing, and a major threat to many of society’s institutions.

ajhurliman 7y ago

"and then doing what the systems tell them is the most profitable." ...so, not predatory pricing then?

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
microcolonel 7y ago
It seems to me that, by this description, Amazon is admirably fulfilling its legal and fiscal duties, and to a greater degree than I thought before receiving this information.
- warent 7y ago
  Maybe to the shareholders but definitely not to the consumers or the businesses on the platform.
  - microcolonel 7y ago
    > definitely not to the consumers Amazon always ships packages ahead of time, at my leisure, and often cheaper than retail. They always process returns and complaints in my favour, without contest. They reach out to local logistics companies in order to improve delivery, and I can tell by the fact that those companies now have branded vehicles (and much happier and more attentive personnel than UPS!), and better verification processes (they found a logistics provider that actually emails the signature given at the door to you when the delivery is processed) that they've done well out of that. I feel they're serving me very well as a customer, and every ordinary person in my life who isn't competing with Amazon is richer and happier because of Amazon's services. > definitely not ... the businesses on the platform The businesses fulfilling through Amazon would absolutely not have received my business were it not for Amazon; in many cases they do not have the expertise to handle the orders correctly, and I do not trust all of them to process the payments securely to the degree that I trust Amazon to. They have every opportunity to improve their ordering and fulfillment systems, but they choose Amazon because it's where the customers are comfortable already. I dreamt of a logistics integration system much like Amazon Marketplace when I was 16, and every year they make it closer to that dream, I think it's great. I'm willing to accept an argument from concrete evidence that they have somehow deliberately and systematically broken the law in so doing, but I've yet to see it.
    - darpa_escapee 7y ago
      I get free shipping from Walmart.com and AliExpress, the latter of which 90% of electronics on Amazon are sourced from. Walmart offers free 2 day shipping and in-store pickup. AliExpress offers the same items on Amazon without having to give middleman their expensive cut. I don't trust Amazon not to send me fake items or cheap Chinese knockoffs. There is absolutely no quality control on Amazon's end. Amazon has the resources to fight fake reviews, yet fake reviews are still rampant. As a result, I cannot trust Amazon's rating system at all.
lostmyoldone 7y ago
That doesn't follow. If predatory pricing is effective, an algorithm can be taught, or learn to, exploit it if fed with the right data. This, quite obviously, shouldn't change anything regarding the potential legality, as it's entirely self evident that a sufficiently powerful machine learning algorithm will exploit any patterns not expressly forbidden. As always, the responsibility for following the laws, and making sure these extensions of our own agency we call machines also follow the same laws fall on whomever is making the machine act in their stead. One can however be assured that several companies will argue otherwise, argue as if they were simply a victim of some sort. Which might be true in a sense. Victims of their own devices, both figuratively and almost literally at the same time.
- goliatone 7y ago
  “A slightly more grey area arises where, with no human involvement or instruction, a price-setting AI algorithm teaches itself to coordinate with competitors – otherwise referred to as tacit algorithmic collusion. While it is unclear the extent to which current AI technology allows for this tacit coordination, a 2018 University of Bologna study found that if two competitors both employ pricing algorithms, and each gives its software total autonomy to set prices, those two algorithms would reach collusive, price-fixing arrangements more often than not.” [1] https://www.russellmcveagh.com/insights/march-2019/ai-and-price-fixing-collusion-by-machines https://www.russellmcveagh.com/insights/march-2019/ai-and-pr... [2] https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3209781 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3209781
  - TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago
    > no human involvement How does it come about that that is that a concept? Does the thought go something like: "We neglected to instruct the algorithm not to collude, and failed to monitor outcomes for collusion, therefore we're not responsible?" > and each gives its software total autonomy to set prices Ah, yep.
    - Nasrudith 7y ago
MereInterest 7y ago
Depends. Did they intentionally go out of their way to teach the model that predatory pricing, despite being profitable, is not allowed?
- chii 7y ago
  why does it matter that the decision came out of an AI model? Predatory pricing is either legal or not (in the eyes of the court, or legislations).
  - MereInterest 7y ago
    We are in agreement on that. The point that I was attempting to make was that an AI model will do exactly what it was trained to do. If a model is trained to maximize profit without consideration for the law, then it will find all the unethical and illegal ways to price goods.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
pertsix 7y ago
luckily, predatory pricing does not have to consider intent. see Brooke Group Ltd. v. Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp., 509 U.S. 209. essentially, all you have to do is prove that there is "dangerous probability" that a monopolist can recoup their losses after all competitors have been priced out.
darpa_escapee 7y ago
Predatory pricing is still predatory if a human does it or if a giant Rube Goldberg machine does it.

tyingq 7y ago

I do believe these sorts of "Amazon is amazingly smart" posts. But they are hard to reconcile with why Amazon keeps showing me a rice cooker ad, after I buy a rice cooker from them.

sokoloff 7y ago
Amazon seems to think that I’m a real vacuum aficionado/collector as well. It’s quite possible that those are still the best items to recommend to us, to mop up any “unhappy with the one they got, so save them with a return/rebuy” sales.
- Declanomous 7y ago
  I wouldn't be surprised if the actual reason was they are capturing extra sales from people who bought something, liked it a lot, and then bought another to give to their kids or for their second home. My mom buys me random chotchkies all the time after she bought them and liked them, and if my parents were well off I could easily see her buying me a vacuum or a new mattress after she got herself one. For 99% of people that probably doesn't happen, but the people with the money to do that probably spend a TON of money, so they are worth targeting with ads.
  - dearrifling 7y ago
    So they are misattributing the additional sale to their suggestions instead of the product being an advertisement for itself.
    - TeMPOraL 7y ago
      I suspect adtech industry would shrink down half its size if it could accurately attribute sales to ads. It sometimes smells as if it was standard practice to convince the client (intentionally, or unintentionally by also convincing yourself) that correlation is causation and therefore their success is attributed to ad spending.
  - imtringued 7y ago

hbosch 7y ago

What is different — generally — between the way Amazon determines prices, in your example, and the way Google determines the best search results? It seems they both use massive knowledge and technology advantages to determine something that’s in the best interest of the company... In fact almost all large businesses use these types of data to maximize profits, I would assume. Is there a functional difference between changing a digital page to optimize return and changing a store shelf configuration at Wal Mart to do the same? Because of course Wal Mart uses analytics to determine their store layouts and deal placements etc.

rrix2 7y ago
> What is different — generally — between the way Amazon determines prices, in your example, and the way Google determines the best search results? The fact that the US only cares about how action like this effects the price an end-consumer pays in a good

rorykoehler 7y ago

It's a pretty interesting example of the pitfalls of ML. It's a clever and exciting use of ML and when observed in a silo is the correct thing for any company to do. The law wasn't designed for such sophisticated modelling of the domain. Screwing over small and medium businesses was never the goal, it's just an inevitable consequence. The flip side is the algorithm cannot model what happens once they screw over businesses so badly that it causes a mass migration away from Amazon (because they've not seen that data before). Fascinating to see how this plays out.

brobdingnagians 7y ago

IIRC, there was a science fiction story where a supercomputer that humanity used for efficient logistics took over the world simply by changing the orders and sending things to the appropriate places. Can't remember the book, but might have been by Heinlein or Clarke... Seems like the Amazon AWS servers could do that quite nicely if they were sentient... or just had enough data.

shagie 7y ago
I suspect you are thinking of The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. Though, it has been a long time since I’ve read that book.
steventhedev 7y ago
Asimov wrote one like this[0], but the theme is pretty common and shows up in many science fiction stories. I only call out Asimov's version because it also has the Machine screwing up orders on purpose to remove otherwise competent people from power who don't trust it. [0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Evitable_Conflict https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Evitable_Conflict
- brobdingnagians 7y ago
  Yep! That's the one

thedailymail 7y ago

I'm not sure offloading its decision-making to the neural network will be an effective legal protection for Amazon against anti-trust claims. The key question in the US is whether "predatory" pricing results in financial harms (higher prices) to US consumers. As I understand the logic put froth by Bork in the 70s, the general idea is that "the market" will solve this problem in most cases, under the assumption that if a single big company tries to gouge consumers, rival firms will emerge that are able to outcompete them, thus restoring (or at least reapproaching) the idealized price equilibrium. The law article cited in ths news story seems to be saying that even though Amazon's practices haven't visibly hurt consumers in terms of retail prices, this is due to the ability to play legal games with corporate accounting that conceal the present and future anticompetitive effects of Amazon's business model, and that its status as the dominant platform for online retailers presents some degree of threat to competition. Lina Khan published a very informative and influential review on Amazon and antitrust in 2017. https://www.yalelawjournal.org/note/amazons-antitrust-paradox https://www.yalelawjournal.org/note/amazons-antitrust-parado...

3xblah 7y ago
"Sussman constructed his theory as something a company harmed by Amazon could use to file a lawsuit, even if no antitrust laws are changed. If it survives an initial motion to dismiss in the courts, Amazon would have to reveal unit costs in a discovery proceeding, which would settle the controversy." What Sussman actually wrote was "In addition, [this paper] calls for the establishment of a viable framework under which a case may be brought against such firms [as Amazon] by injured competitors." The journalist says no antitrust laws need be changed. What he fails to mention is the small matter of this framework Sussman says is needed before any case can be brought. It does not exist. Sussman did not describe the framework in any detail or how it would work. All one can find in the paper is this single sentence: "It is, therefore, necessary to develop some means of oversight that will allow the public to determine whether firms such as Amazon are engaging in such activities." "Linda Khan published a very informative and influential review on Amazon and antitrust in 2017." I can remember when a story on the Khan paper was posted to HN. I thought at the time the journalist seemed just a tad overly optimistic. It felt odd to see a law review article being so "hyped" by a journalist. It almost seemed like he/she did not want the reader to actually read the paper. There was so much paraphrasing that the risk of the journalist getting something wrong would be very high. In 2018, there was another paper in Yale LJ by Baker and Morton that discussed Amazon's anticompetitive activities. This paper was actually influential.1 Unlike Sussman's single sentence calling for "some means of oversight" and a framework under which cases can be filed, the authors included an entire section on "US Enforcement Challenges", about five pages devoted to how enforcement might proceed. The paper was cited by US Sen. Blumenthal in a letter to DOJ and FTC urging them to open investigations of Amazon's predatory pricing.2 (He did not cite Khan's paper.) Not sure if the Baker and Morton paper received any hype from journalists, but it is indisputable the paper and the letters to DOJ and FTC had an impact. Amazon finally removed the MFN clauses from its agreements with US sellers, as it had done for sellers in Europe in 2013.3 1 https://www.yalelawjournal.org/feature/antitrust-enforcement-against-platform-mfns https://www.yalelawjournal.org/feature/antitrust-enforcement... 2 https://www.blumenthal.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/12.19.18%20-%20DOJ%20-%20Price%20Parity.pdf https://www.blumenthal.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/12.19.18%20-... https://www.blumenthal.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/12.19.18%20-%20FTC%20-%20Price%20Parity.pdf https://www.blumenthal.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/12.19.18%20-... 3 https://www.bbc.com/news/business-23881202 https://www.bbc.com/news/business-23881202 https://www.axios.com/amazon-price-practice-antitrust-elizabeth-warren-d802ba71-d376-4316-b9dc-cca4540959ac.html https://www.axios.com/amazon-price-practice-antitrust-elizab...

amelius 7y ago

What is it that enables companies to seek the boundary of what is allowed by law, whereas when humans do it they are called assholes?

ionised 7y ago
Greed has become something we celebrate instead of condemn.
Fnoord 7y ago
Because corporations are publicly owned. They're treated like humans in many ways, yet when it comes to responsibility they're protected by a facade of faceless leaders and shareholders. The 2003 documentary "The Corporation" covers this subject in detail: "Documentary that looks at the concept of the corporation throughout recent history up to its present-day dominance." [1] [1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0379225/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0379225/
TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago
The two are not mutually exclusive. The general consensus around these parts seems to be that Amazon is a dog of a company.

d4nt 7y ago

I think the problem might be even more complex than that. From what you’ve said they seem to be training AI to predict what people want and how valuable it is to them. This problem used to be the role of the giant distributed computational process know as the Free Market. Communism/Socialism famously found that problem too hard to solve and collapsed as a result. If there’s a new way to solve it, it’s both hard to argue that’s a bad thing, and a major threat to many of society’s institutions.