42 ms·

Amazon staffers took bribes, manipulated marketplace, leaked search algorithms

141 points by Saad_M 6y ago

sofargone00 6y ago
not really surprised about this and almost impossible to isolate with a company consisting of 1m employees and growing.
mikece 6y ago
Good to see that something is being done but when there's money to be made and humans are in the decision loop there's going to be an opportunity for social engineering and corruption. Amazon is the biggest target but I suspect this is going on anywhere else there's a large enough cohort of shoppers (eBay?).
Saad_M 6y ago
I guess this effects all companies that run a platform whether it be social or market based. The question is what can a company do prevent bad internal actors without put their employees under draconian rules?
dalbasal 6y ago
Note the scale here: Conspirators paid $100k in bribes. "Products and merchants earned in excess of $100 million in sales revenue." I haven't heard the job titles of the amazon employees yet, but presumably these are not very senior people. In terms of corruption dynamics, Amazon is now like a planning authority where a friendly official can rubber stamp a large fortune into a real estate developer's pocket. Also note that, like with government corruption a lot of corruption stays just to the left of criminal red lines. Many former employees of large marketplaces (amazon, FB ads, adwords) move into the more lucrative seller side, either as employees or consultants. They are expected to bring inside knowledge and contacts to the table. There have already been serious antitrust cases (eg the EU adwords case) concerning these marketplaces. More are coming. Meaningful fines or enforcement is yet to be seen. Now, $100m corruption incidents. I'm putting my money on the table now. Tech monopolies are the major political-economic issue of the 2020s.
- Jsharm 6y ago
  I was thinking this, $100k for taking on that level of risk?
  - snovv_crash 6y ago
    It's amazing what a disgruntled employee will do, and how little it takes to make them do it.
    - WrtCdEvrydy 6y ago
      A survey says the you can compromise most employees for $500. I wanted to do a website called "Ransom Rewards" allowing you to sign up to ransomware your own employer and you could set your own price to pick up data for a research paper but it was considered unethical to even imply you could get paid to fuck over your employer :(
      - dalbasal 6y ago
        Maybe you should start by surveying the ethics board, and then just pay them $500 to find it ethical. Bootstrapping.
  - dogma1138 6y ago
    $100K for a staffer that reviews merchants and product listings is probably more than their yearly salary, in fact it wouldn’t surprise me if it’s not even about double. This aren’t people on high comp packages the bulk of Amazon’s workforce even if you discount the warehouses isn’t paid SV salaries.
  - dalbasal 6y ago
    Corruption cases are often like this. You look at the case itself and think "this money for that much risk?" Ehud Olmert was removed from office as Israel's Prime Minister for taking bribes (in exchange for rezoning) years earlier as mayor of Jerusalem. The amounts seem very petty. About $25k IIRCC. We actually went from Prime Ministership to jail over it. I suspect the reason these bribes always seem petty is that only a fraction are uncovered. These people take bribes regularly, sometimes for decades. They get busted for one or two.
tolbish 6y ago
"Your Honor, I was taking bribes merely out of customer obsession!"
Waterluvian 6y ago
Do large companies basically create an “eggs all in one basket” risk? If the market supplied by Amazon was instead supplied by 10 smaller companies, the attack surface would be higher but the impact would be lower, right? Feels like large corporations could be seen as a national security risk (and not just “guns and ammo” security but “economic stability” security)
- lotsofpulp 6y ago
  Amazon already has many competitors for their retail business. Costco, Target, Home Depot, Lowes, Bed Bath Beyond, Walmart, eBay, Overstock, Wayfair, Aliexpress, etc. The barrier to entry for retail is very low, and reflected in the low profit margins.
  - BoorishBears 6y ago
    Part of me wants to believe this comment is satire, but the better part of me knows this is HN, so conceivably someone would call the barrier to entry for competing with Amazon's retail unit "very low"
    - shiftpgdn 6y ago
      It IS very low because anyone with a few hours can put together a shopify or woocomerece store and instantly start selling whatever their heart desires. Competing against Amazon's scale is tough as it would be a huge challenge to be able to offer next day shipping for free anywhere in the US, but you can add value other places.
      - lotsofpulp 6y ago
        Amazon doesn’t offer free shipping, it’s simply included the price of the product. It’s also not next day many times in my experience, and other companies online ordering experience and shipping times are comparable. What’s not comparable is that Amazon doesn’t stand behind stuff purchased from their flea market of a store, whereas I can have more trust in the supply chain at pretty much any other retailer.
dlgeek 6y ago
Previous Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24520462 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24520462
- dalbasal 6y ago
  re: dupe. FWIW, this does contain some new/different information. IDK what the dividing line is for dupes, but would like to see new information as it's released.
ctdeneen 6y ago
Maybe any major change to a system, for example turning on an seller's account that was banned, should require a small explanation that is reviewed by additional employees. For example 1,user x disables account, fraudulent health products 2,user y enables account, ???? Seems like many major changes almost never require a user to justify them with a written explanation.
StreamBright 6y ago
I think Jeff has become inactive of managing Amazon's online retail business unit and stopped caring few years ago. The results: - fake products - fake reviews - ad based search - massive scale bribery scheme
wegs 6y ago
I think one of the problems Amazon suffers -- and this is not a condemnation of the company as a whole -- is that it treats employees like garbage and runs a sweatshop. There is zero loyalty among Amazon employees I know. Some are very highly-compensated sweatshop workers, but sweatshop workers nonetheless (a lot of fintech and quant work the same way, and even more extreme -- you get a lot of money, but you have no work/life balance, are on call 24/7, and if your performance slips for a moment, even due to a family emergency, and you get the pink slip). That sets a strong environment for corruption. Why is this not a condemnation of Amazon? Turns out each corporate structure has problems. You pull on one lever, and you get a dozen unwanted consequences. But it's important to recognize the faults of such structures.
- stingraycharles 6y ago
  To turn this in a more broad discussion, are there any examples of “great” corporate structures for tech firms that scale well? Google has its problems (unwanted side effect being abandoned projects because of how they promote internally), I’ve heard quite a few bad things about Netflix as well. Apple and Microsoft seem to be faring quite well in this regard?
  - wegs 6y ago
    Last I looked, Microsoft's culture was toxic -- much more so than Amazon, Google, or most any other major tech organization. A ton of in-fighting, and decisions made for political reasons. They were working hard to clean it up, but I'm not sure how far they got. Organizational design is a complex problem. It's like finding a great employee or a great spouse. They don't exist; it's a question of fit-to-function. Linus Torvalds would be a lousy doctor, and my doctor would be a lousy programmer. You really can't get everything. If you try, you fail. It's a question of aligning organizational structures to what you're trying to do. If you're running a sweatshop in India like a corporate R&D lab, or vice-versa, you're gonna fail. I would argue Amazon has a great corporate structure which scales well for the purpose it's designed for. Amazon has been winning for alignment to profit/growth, for innovation, for customer-focus, and loses on the employee sweatshop front. That ain't bad. I think it's cracking a bit under COVID19, but at least for two decades, it's done really well for both customers and growth. Google was a great org structure for its first decade, and then grew complacent in hiring, and when bad employees came in, it started failing in virtually everything else; I'm not sure it's coming back, but I hope it does. For now, it's been sailing on its (very significant) momentum, but that eventually wears off. It doesn't seem to have the right executive team in place anymore, though, so I'm not sure how it might come back.
ilamont 6y ago
I reported a violation of Amazon's community guidelines and Seller TOS for a popular electronics product I purchased earlier this month (details: http://leanmedia.org/amazon-is-broken/ http://leanmedia.org/amazon-is-broken/). Here's the thread with support: Me: Hi. The box for this product contained a card that says "Amazon $20 gift card" and looks like a gift card, but the back says I have to give a 5 star review and send my order information to an outlook email address. Is this legitimate? Is it really a $20 Amazon gift card? Amazon: Thank you so much for your information on this, I will certainly pass it along here so that we can check this promotion or offer directly with the seller Because I am not seeing that advertised on the item at all And would not be capable of confirming if that is a legit Amazon gift card because, I do not see that offer on the item Me: So what should I do? Amazon: My best suggestion would be to contact the seller directly for this through this link [redacted] So that you can confirm directly with them if this is legit or not Certainly giving away gift cards for good reviews is not professional And I have to report the seller for that Me: I thought this type of offer was forbidden by Amazon's own policies for sellers. But I will contact them using the link you sent to ask them if that's what you recommend. So I contacted the seller through Amazon's closed system. This is what happened: Me: I received your product and inside the box is a card that says "Amazon $20 gift card" and looks like a gift card, but the back says I have to give a 5 star review and send my order information to an outlook email address. Is this legitimate? Seller: Thanks for your contact. Could you please follow the instruction and contact us on the email? Please be rest assured that we will fulfill our promise. So, to summarize: - Amazon has strict rules in place that forbid asking for 5 star reviews or paying for reviews (https://sellercentral.amazon.com/gp/help/help.html?itemID=1801&language=en_US&ref=ag_1801_cont_200336920 https://sellercentral.amazon.com/gp/help/help.html?itemID=18...) - Amazon's own support people have a difficult time telling the difference between violations of this policy and legitimate promotions, and leave it up to customers to contact these sellers on their own to figure it out. - The rule-breakers are all too willing to lie through their teeth, brazenly using Amazon's own communication system to do so. - Nothing happened to the seller, they are still selling this equipment without penalty on Amazon and will continue to violate the rules knowing nothing will happen. Amazon is completely broken.
- wincy 6y ago
  I wrote a 1 star review for similar behavior and my review was removed. Amazon is either corrupt or stupid.
swalsh 6y ago
I'm generally against the 20th century solution of breaking companies up when it comes to tech companies... but Amazon's problems are not Facebooks or Google's. It's way simpler, and it fits the mold perfectly. First of all, Amazon should absolutely not be allowed to operate both a retailer and a marketplace. Second of all, this marketplace is way too large. It is clearly not in the consumers favor for such a large marketplace to exist. Fortunately Amazons service oriented architecture should make this break up a breeze.
one2know 6y ago
Management is very corrupt at Amazon. Lets just say the teams tasked with catching theft are strongly pointed to the lowest level employees like dock workers, pickers, and stowers. Lets also just say the managers are the ones shoving product over the fence.
ilaksh 6y ago
I'm sure it's just a few rogue staffers rather than being a structural issue. Because of course it's not problem for the company that owns and controls the marketplace to compete with most of the products in it. It's only a few bad apples. That was sarcasm by the way. There is a sane alternative and it's called distributed protocols.

141 points by Saad_M 6y ago

not really surprised about this and almost impossible to isolate with a company consisting of 1m employees and growing.

Good to see that something is being done but when there's money to be made and humans are in the decision loop there's going to be an opportunity for social engineering and corruption. Amazon is the biggest target but I suspect this is going on anywhere else there's a large enough cohort of shoppers (eBay?).

Saad_M 6y ago

I guess this effects all companies that run a platform whether it be social or market based. The question is what can a company do prevent bad internal actors without put their employees under draconian rules?

dalbasal 6y ago

Note the scale here: Conspirators paid $100k in bribes. "Products and merchants earned in excess of $100 million in sales revenue." I haven't heard the job titles of the amazon employees yet, but presumably these are not very senior people. In terms of corruption dynamics, Amazon is now like a planning authority where a friendly official can rubber stamp a large fortune into a real estate developer's pocket. Also note that, like with government corruption a lot of corruption stays just to the left of criminal red lines. Many former employees of large marketplaces (amazon, FB ads, adwords) move into the more lucrative seller side, either as employees or consultants. They are expected to bring inside knowledge and contacts to the table. There have already been serious antitrust cases (eg the EU adwords case) concerning these marketplaces. More are coming. Meaningful fines or enforcement is yet to be seen. Now, $100m corruption incidents. I'm putting my money on the table now. Tech monopolies are the major political-economic issue of the 2020s.

Jsharm 6y ago
I was thinking this, $100k for taking on that level of risk?
- snovv_crash 6y ago
  It's amazing what a disgruntled employee will do, and how little it takes to make them do it.
  - WrtCdEvrydy 6y ago
    A survey says the you can compromise most employees for $500. I wanted to do a website called "Ransom Rewards" allowing you to sign up to ransomware your own employer and you could set your own price to pick up data for a research paper but it was considered unethical to even imply you could get paid to fuck over your employer :(
    - dalbasal 6y ago
      Maybe you should start by surveying the ethics board, and then just pay them $500 to find it ethical. Bootstrapping.
- dogma1138 6y ago
  $100K for a staffer that reviews merchants and product listings is probably more than their yearly salary, in fact it wouldn’t surprise me if it’s not even about double. This aren’t people on high comp packages the bulk of Amazon’s workforce even if you discount the warehouses isn’t paid SV salaries.
- dalbasal 6y ago
  Corruption cases are often like this. You look at the case itself and think "this money for that much risk?" Ehud Olmert was removed from office as Israel's Prime Minister for taking bribes (in exchange for rezoning) years earlier as mayor of Jerusalem. The amounts seem very petty. About $25k IIRCC. We actually went from Prime Ministership to jail over it. I suspect the reason these bribes always seem petty is that only a fraction are uncovered. These people take bribes regularly, sometimes for decades. They get busted for one or two.

tolbish 6y ago

"Your Honor, I was taking bribes merely out of customer obsession!"

Waterluvian 6y ago

Do large companies basically create an “eggs all in one basket” risk? If the market supplied by Amazon was instead supplied by 10 smaller companies, the attack surface would be higher but the impact would be lower, right? Feels like large corporations could be seen as a national security risk (and not just “guns and ammo” security but “economic stability” security)

lotsofpulp 6y ago
Amazon already has many competitors for their retail business. Costco, Target, Home Depot, Lowes, Bed Bath Beyond, Walmart, eBay, Overstock, Wayfair, Aliexpress, etc. The barrier to entry for retail is very low, and reflected in the low profit margins.
- BoorishBears 6y ago
  Part of me wants to believe this comment is satire, but the better part of me knows this is HN, so conceivably someone would call the barrier to entry for competing with Amazon's retail unit "very low"
  - shiftpgdn 6y ago
    It IS very low because anyone with a few hours can put together a shopify or woocomerece store and instantly start selling whatever their heart desires. Competing against Amazon's scale is tough as it would be a huge challenge to be able to offer next day shipping for free anywhere in the US, but you can add value other places.
    - lotsofpulp 6y ago
      Amazon doesn’t offer free shipping, it’s simply included the price of the product. It’s also not next day many times in my experience, and other companies online ordering experience and shipping times are comparable. What’s not comparable is that Amazon doesn’t stand behind stuff purchased from their flea market of a store, whereas I can have more trust in the supply chain at pretty much any other retailer.

dlgeek 6y ago

Previous Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24520462 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24520462

dalbasal 6y ago
re: dupe. FWIW, this does contain some new/different information. IDK what the dividing line is for dupes, but would like to see new information as it's released.

ctdeneen 6y ago

Maybe any major change to a system, for example turning on an seller's account that was banned, should require a small explanation that is reviewed by additional employees. For example 1,user x disables account, fraudulent health products 2,user y enables account, ???? Seems like many major changes almost never require a user to justify them with a written explanation.

StreamBright 6y ago

I think Jeff has become inactive of managing Amazon's online retail business unit and stopped caring few years ago. The results: - fake products - fake reviews - ad based search - massive scale bribery scheme

wegs 6y ago

I think one of the problems Amazon suffers -- and this is not a condemnation of the company as a whole -- is that it treats employees like garbage and runs a sweatshop. There is zero loyalty among Amazon employees I know. Some are very highly-compensated sweatshop workers, but sweatshop workers nonetheless (a lot of fintech and quant work the same way, and even more extreme -- you get a lot of money, but you have no work/life balance, are on call 24/7, and if your performance slips for a moment, even due to a family emergency, and you get the pink slip). That sets a strong environment for corruption. Why is this not a condemnation of Amazon? Turns out each corporate structure has problems. You pull on one lever, and you get a dozen unwanted consequences. But it's important to recognize the faults of such structures.

stingraycharles 6y ago
To turn this in a more broad discussion, are there any examples of “great” corporate structures for tech firms that scale well? Google has its problems (unwanted side effect being abandoned projects because of how they promote internally), I’ve heard quite a few bad things about Netflix as well. Apple and Microsoft seem to be faring quite well in this regard?
- wegs 6y ago
  Last I looked, Microsoft's culture was toxic -- much more so than Amazon, Google, or most any other major tech organization. A ton of in-fighting, and decisions made for political reasons. They were working hard to clean it up, but I'm not sure how far they got. Organizational design is a complex problem. It's like finding a great employee or a great spouse. They don't exist; it's a question of fit-to-function. Linus Torvalds would be a lousy doctor, and my doctor would be a lousy programmer. You really can't get everything. If you try, you fail. It's a question of aligning organizational structures to what you're trying to do. If you're running a sweatshop in India like a corporate R&D lab, or vice-versa, you're gonna fail. I would argue Amazon has a great corporate structure which scales well for the purpose it's designed for. Amazon has been winning for alignment to profit/growth, for innovation, for customer-focus, and loses on the employee sweatshop front. That ain't bad. I think it's cracking a bit under COVID19, but at least for two decades, it's done really well for both customers and growth. Google was a great org structure for its first decade, and then grew complacent in hiring, and when bad employees came in, it started failing in virtually everything else; I'm not sure it's coming back, but I hope it does. For now, it's been sailing on its (very significant) momentum, but that eventually wears off. It doesn't seem to have the right executive team in place anymore, though, so I'm not sure how it might come back.

ilamont 6y ago

I reported a violation of Amazon's community guidelines and Seller TOS for a popular electronics product I purchased earlier this month (details: http://leanmedia.org/amazon-is-broken/ http://leanmedia.org/amazon-is-broken/). Here's the thread with support: Me: Hi. The box for this product contained a card that says "Amazon $20 gift card" and looks like a gift card, but the back says I have to give a 5 star review and send my order information to an outlook email address. Is this legitimate? Is it really a $20 Amazon gift card? Amazon: Thank you so much for your information on this, I will certainly pass it along here so that we can check this promotion or offer directly with the seller Because I am not seeing that advertised on the item at all And would not be capable of confirming if that is a legit Amazon gift card because, I do not see that offer on the item Me: So what should I do? Amazon: My best suggestion would be to contact the seller directly for this through this link [redacted] So that you can confirm directly with them if this is legit or not Certainly giving away gift cards for good reviews is not professional And I have to report the seller for that Me: I thought this type of offer was forbidden by Amazon's own policies for sellers. But I will contact them using the link you sent to ask them if that's what you recommend. So I contacted the seller through Amazon's closed system. This is what happened: Me: I received your product and inside the box is a card that says "Amazon $20 gift card" and looks like a gift card, but the back says I have to give a 5 star review and send my order information to an outlook email address. Is this legitimate? Seller: Thanks for your contact. Could you please follow the instruction and contact us on the email? Please be rest assured that we will fulfill our promise. So, to summarize: - Amazon has strict rules in place that forbid asking for 5 star reviews or paying for reviews (https://sellercentral.amazon.com/gp/help/help.html?itemID=1801&language=en_US&ref=ag_1801_cont_200336920 https://sellercentral.amazon.com/gp/help/help.html?itemID=18...) - Amazon's own support people have a difficult time telling the difference between violations of this policy and legitimate promotions, and leave it up to customers to contact these sellers on their own to figure it out. - The rule-breakers are all too willing to lie through their teeth, brazenly using Amazon's own communication system to do so. - Nothing happened to the seller, they are still selling this equipment without penalty on Amazon and will continue to violate the rules knowing nothing will happen. Amazon is completely broken.

wincy 6y ago
I wrote a 1 star review for similar behavior and my review was removed. Amazon is either corrupt or stupid.

swalsh 6y ago

I'm generally against the 20th century solution of breaking companies up when it comes to tech companies... but Amazon's problems are not Facebooks or Google's. It's way simpler, and it fits the mold perfectly. First of all, Amazon should absolutely not be allowed to operate both a retailer and a marketplace. Second of all, this marketplace is way too large. It is clearly not in the consumers favor for such a large marketplace to exist. Fortunately Amazons service oriented architecture should make this break up a breeze.

one2know 6y ago

Management is very corrupt at Amazon. Lets just say the teams tasked with catching theft are strongly pointed to the lowest level employees like dock workers, pickers, and stowers. Lets also just say the managers are the ones shoving product over the fence.

ilaksh 6y ago

I'm sure it's just a few rogue staffers rather than being a structural issue. Because of course it's not problem for the company that owns and controls the marketplace to compete with most of the products in it. It's only a few bad apples. That was sarcasm by the way. There is a sane alternative and it's called distributed protocols.