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Amazon sellers ‘hijack’ listings to sell face masks despite new rules
- sneak 7y ago> We use sophisticated tools, including machine learning, to combat them, and we are making it increasingly difficult for bad actors to hide. So sophisticated that some reporter for wired could find them in the top few hundred bestsellers in a few minutes with a quick visual scan. Let’s be clear: Amazon should not be censoring legal items on their platform. However, their efforts at stopping it are purely a PR matter, not a real effort.
- kdnvk 7y ago> a quick visual scan Yeah a quick visual scan from a human is super easy to automate.
- sneak 7y agoAmazon is one of the largest employers in the world. It’s lip service, as further evidenced by the tons of fakes on their website. https://www.racked.com/2018/1/8/16849298/amazon-counterfeits-global-entry-customs https://www.racked.com/2018/1/8/16849298/amazon-counterfeits... Anyone who wishes, Amazon staff included, can go and see the $10 “1TB” usb flash drives that are just 16GB drives with hacked firmware to report a different size. It takes about 2 minutes to find them. They don’t bother. The evidence is there if you want it.
- TheSpiceIsLife 7y agoYes: you can give a human the tools and instructions and they'll sit there for ~8hrs a day doing it autonomously.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- anamexis 7y agoAmazon literally has a tool for this (Mechanical Turk)
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- kube-system 7y agoOr just a plain old text search. One of the examples in the article has "50 pcs disposable surgical mask" in the product name. I just searched that myself on Amazon and got 178 results, and most are at inflated prices.
- maxerickson 7y agoWhat's the difference between a platform that censors and a platform that sorts in a useful way?
- liability 7y agoAsk Amazon; they're the ones who said they'd remove these listings, not derank them. I assume that means they understand the difference.
- maxerickson 7y agoThat's not the question. The question is if you object to a platform having a listing standard, can you at the same time not object to them having a ranking standard. Because sophistry aside, being ranked 15,000 for "column 298" reasons is the same thing as being removed. And then being ranked by "column 298" is the same thing as being ranked by orangeness or whatever, it's a subjective score.
- theamk 7y ago"sort in a useful way" benefits consumer of information "censoring" benefits someone else The easy indicator is an ability to control: you can do "Sort by price" to disable sorting, but there is never a "do not censor" checkbox
- TrumpMyGuns 7y agoThey love PR speak and buzzwords. I'm still waiting on my "Amazon Executive Support" person to explain how I was sent previously opened and seemingly washed socks. How about all the other opened products I get listed as new? The fake reviews that are oh-so obvious and have been around for years without a dent? They are top tier BS. I take advantage of them as much as I can ;) After all the stuff they've made me return or sold me as new, I don't feel bad at all.
- gentleman11 7y agoIt seems to be that a single intern whose only job was to search for prohibited items and unlist them could do better Really, just use Mechanical Turk. Their inability to handle this is obviously showing they intend to not fix it
- FireBeyond 7y agoFor exactly the same reason as you can't report an item as counterfeit on return. They have no intention of fixing.
- toasterlovin 7y agoFWIW, the real reason is that sellers abusing mechanisms like this to create issues for their competitors is a huge problem on Amazon's platform.
- j-c-hewitt 7y agoYou can create hundreds of thousands of listings almost instantly through the API or by uploading a spreadsheet to Amazon. It's not possible for manual review for all of them because of this. That is why they lean so heavily on both automation and armies of cheap contractors.
- Symbiote 7y agoSuspend/delete accounts (and all listings) for anyone with a single violation. Problem solved.
- matharmin 7y agoAnd then you'll get the "My account has been banned by Amazon after misclassifying a single listing" posts. There are two sides to the problem, and changing criteria for suspension just shifts it to the other side.
- birdyrooster 7y ago
- Reedx 7y agoThey remove massive numbers of products, though. Millions have been removed related to Coronavirus alone: https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazon-battles-counterfeit-masks-400-hand-sanitizer-amid-virus-panic-11583880384 https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazon-battles-counterfeit-mask...
- nitwit005 7y ago> Amazon should not be censoring legal items on their platform. Price gouging during a disaster or emergency is often illegal. And I suspect they're violating laws exporting them in the first place as most countries don't want medical supplies leaving just so people can make a quick buck.
- homero 7y agoThey're not legal if they're fakes, most of those look like fakes
- slezyr 7y ago> We use sophisticated tools, including machine learning We do nothing, but to dodge any possible legal liability related to the price gouging. We'll say that we use "machine learning" so we could respond to any critique with "oops, algo is bad, but we do our best efforts" while doing nothing.
- xwdv 7y agoWhy don’t people just fire up their own domain drop in an e-commerce store and sell these face masks while answering to no one? It should be fairly easy for such a site to go viral given the pent up demand.
- sneak 7y agoWhat is “just fire up” for you and I is an insurmountable hurdle for most people who use computers, either due to skills or ignorance, and is one of the main reasons that people use hosted, censorship platforms as default.
- 55555 7y agoAmazon brings you the customers as opposed to you needing to find them. Many ad networks are banning mask ads due to "price gouging" for political/PR/legal reasons. True story: yesterday I got a downtime notification for my ecommerce store. It turns out Shopify pulled it down with no warning because their automated scan detected we were selling face masks. We sell fashionable face masks, and it was actually a test listing that failed our testing phase so we never stocked the product or sold them. The price was also super reasonable and would have supported, at most, 30% margins (but in reality it failed testing, meaning the margins were negative). I am transitioning off the platform and will never use Shopify for anything serious. What a POS company. They seem to think they are running a marketplace when they are actually selling a completely replaceable and somewhat buggy software-as-a-service that treats their customers like idiot children. They had no idea if we were buying thousands of dollars of traffic per hour and they are lucky we weren't.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- olalonde 7y agoIf only we could get rid of this widespread notion that price gouging is bad/evil...
- epr 7y agoIt is truly painful to see how little people seem to understand or appreciate the living organism that is human action in the aggregate. Large surges in demand which are inevitably met with price increases are signals to other parts of the organism to send goods where they are needed. Higher prices encourage a balance of needs and responsible budgeting so individual cells don't simply take all that is available to the detriment of the organism as a whole.
- wtallis 7y ago> Higher prices encourage a balance of needs and responsible budgeting so individual cells don't simply take all that is available to the detriment of the organism as a whole. Aren't you making a fairly unreasonable assumption that need is also accompanied by ability to pay elevated prices?
- epr 7y agoNot at all, hence the word "encourage" instead of something more absolute like "enforce". The distinction between a "want" and "need" is very tough to make beyond physical reality bound calculations of measurable requirements for survival like calories or materials required to build a shelter that could keep a human alive under adverse environmental conditions. I mean nothing specific like that by the use of the word "need".
- wtallis 7y agoThe distinction between "want" and "need" can be made in practice. Doctors have been publicizing what they know about risk factors for COVID19. If you don't fall into one of those categories, you're in the "want" crowd, not the "need" crowd. Which of those classifications you fall into has no correlation to your ability to afford personal protective equipment. Price gouging can easily make a scarce critical good unobtainable to poor people who need it before the price is high enough to discourage all the rich panicking hoarders/preppers.
- fortran77 7y agoThis guy got a "hand sanitizer" copper disk (??) listed as an "Amazon's choice!" https://www.amazon.com/Sani-Disc-GK95D-Cleaner-Wherever-Problem/dp/B07SN6GW3B/ref=sr_1_15?crid=T4ILT1RNX4QD&dchild=1&keywords=hand+sanitizer&qid=1584659043&sprefix=hand+%2Caps%2C215&sr=8-15 https://www.amazon.com/Sani-Disc-GK95D-Cleaner-Wherever-Prob...
- TheSpiceIsLife 7y agoMany metals are contact-antimicrobial See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antimicrobial_properties_of_copper https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antimicrobial_properties_of_co... -: Copper and its alloys (brasses, bronzes, cupronickel, copper-nickel-zinc, and others) are natural antimicrobial materials. And https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oligodynamic_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oligodynamic_effect -: The oligodynamic effect (from Greek oligos "few", and dynamis "force") is a biocidal effect of metals, especially heavy metals, that occurs even in low concentrations.
- fortran77 7y agoYou're welcome to rub your hands with a copper disk after going out in public. I'm going to wash them with soap and water for 20 seconds.
- TheSpiceIsLife 7y agoTotally agree.
- SkyPuncher 7y agoTo be fair, this would be a great fidget toy while out in public.
- DenisM 7y agoHow about Copper-Spinner? Made from organic anti-viral copper. Heals the soul and the hands.
- 7y ago
- lulula 7y agoMachine learning my foot! I think Amazon has just admitted to the fact that they can't control bad actors from taking over their listings.
- luxuryballs 7y agoGood, let people buy face masks. Better than not being able to find any.
- fortran77 7y agoThat's not what this article is about. It's about people listing face masks as books or other items. And then there's the issue of items not being as described, like photos of 20-mask packages, but what arrives are single masks repackaged under unsanitary conditions: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ETU-_paU0AIjwnK?format=jpg&name=large https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ETU-_paU0AIjwnK?format=jpg&name=...
- eru 7y agoIndirectly, it is. These shenanigans are only in place to circumvent the rules the grandparent commenter complains about.
- threeseed 7y agoMy favourite is this one: https://www.amazon.com/Dukal-900610-Reflections-Earloop-Pleated/dp/B07SYJBBS4 https://www.amazon.com/Dukal-900610-Reflections-Earloop-Plea... $46 for 100 and the "newer" version is $170 for 50. If you look at the reason for this massive price jump: "high price caused by 1) price spike of non-woven fabrics, 20K up to 200K/ton, due to capacity issue caused by coronavirus. 2) till now, US custom will block or expropriate large quantity of mask, so we have to ship this product through small airmail package, which 5 time cost of logistic fee vs shipment in container"
- ecommerceguy 7y agoI've got a decent amount of n95 (both 3M and HDX HD Brand) masks that we lucked into more than a significant amount of time ago. We are afraid to list them, at any price, because I'm afraid ebay/amazon will kill our listings at any price. I'm ready to ship them for free, of all costs, I just don't want my amazon "privileges" revoked. who do i give n95 masks too? edit: they are 2024 exp dates
- TeMPOraL 7y ago> who do i give n95 masks too? Donate them to your local hospital. Hospitals everywhere are running short on masks and other PPE, and a lot of doctors and nurses are going to die because of it. Italy is already hemorrhaging medical staff trying to stop the virus.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- wmeredith 7y agoPlease do this. I had a few unused leftover N95’s from a furniture refinishing project. I gave them to my neighbor who is a nurse at a local hospital. They’re desperately needed. If “regular” civilians get sick that’s bad, but when nurses and doctors start going down it’s much much worse.
- jianshen 7y agoWhat area do you live in? Like the other comment, best to donate locally and not delay with more shipping logistics. Search #GetMePPE or #PPEshortage on Twitter and you'll find a bunch, possibly where you are. I'm in the Bay Area & Hospitals are ready to receive (a couple examples): https://vmcfoundation.org/covid19list/ https://vmcfoundation.org/covid19list/ https://www.facebook.com/ingrid.lim.56/posts/10158308358023628 https://www.facebook.com/ingrid.lim.56/posts/101583083580236...
- celticninja 7y agoany hospital will gladly take them from you, if they won't try old people care homes
- popotamonga 7y agoI bought an n99 anti pollution mask last year on amazon $9.99 2 filters. Checked the same listing now, $40
- radu_floricica 7y ago4x price increase? That's ... reasonable? Considering the shortages and that the original price is quite low, I can't even call it price gouging, that's just normal adjusting. That's the level of price increase that would convince companies to up production and people to look into their garage for those few boxes they bought and never used.