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Amazon’s search results are full of ads ‘unlawfully deceiving’ consumers

281 points by nocommandline 5y ago

nocommandline 5y ago
The full title of the article is below but HN says it’s too long so I cut it down.. .... Amazon’s search results are full of ads ‘unlawfully deceiving’ consumers, new complaint to FTC claims....
ceejayoz 5y ago
> The FTC has long held that ads are deceptive if they imply information is being shared by an independent or impartial source, when it’s actually originating from a business trying to sell a product, said Jessica Rich, a former director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection. Such practices could lead consumers to make uninformed decisions about their purchases. I'd love to see this provision torpedo the "Amazon's Choice" labels.
- Kalium 5y ago
  I find myself wondering if "Amazon's Choice" really implies an independent or impartial source. When I'm seeing it, I know it's coming from Amazon and they would like to sell me a thing. They're certainly not pretending it's the choice of anyone other than them, the company that wants to sell me things at a profit.
  - Applejinx 5y ago
    I've been sent a random junky product (in its box: I knew I hadn't ordered the thing) from Amazon as an exploit to use an older Amazon account I'd had, to produce a verified five star review. It was the #1 rated product in its category, and that's when I stopped trusting anything about Amazon. I don't remember if it was also 'Amazon's Choice': seems to ring a bell, it may well have been: showing not that Amazon was intentionally pushing garbage, but that it was purely algorithmic. I don't think it's malice as much as wilful ignorance.
    - justinpombrio 5y ago
      It's a small thing, and doesn't address the root of the problem, but did you consider giving it a verified 1-start review?
- tzs 5y ago
  I don't see how "Amazon's Choice" labels would run afoul of that. According to Amazon, "Amazon's Choice highlights highly rated, well-priced products available to ship immediately". I don't see anything that implies that this is coming from an independent or impartial source. It's right in the name itself that it is coming from Amazon.
  - ceejayoz 5y ago
    The label implies it's an editorial decision, but it's purely algorithmic.
    - tyingq 5y ago
      And it's gameable by hijacking an existing product listing and redoing it as an entirely different product. https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/nicolenguyen/amazons-choice-bad-products https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/nicolenguyen/amazons-ch...
    - frumper 5y ago
      The label doesn't imply an impartial source. I would think that what Amazon recommends on Amazon's website is clearly not impartial. They'd run afoul if they labeled it independent-al's top pick
hateful 5y ago
In my experience the search on the Amazon site is terrible. If I want something, I search there and can browse 100 pages of low quality unrelated items. But I do a Google search and I see results from Amazon that are exactly what I need.
- power78 5y ago
  Google's results are filled with just as much spam, fake listing sites that just link to Amazon, and junk products
- space_rock 5y ago
  Did search technology stall and get outsmarted by the spammers? I'm confused how big tech search from Amazon and Google is so bad. I'm waiting for some startup to challenge Google as their progress has stopped
  - the_snooze 5y ago
    Spammers are part of the equation. But I think Amazon's business model is a big contributor as well. We'd have less of a problem if the entire Amazon store were actual Amazon listings, instead of randos being allowed to put up co-mingled garbage and gaming the search/review systems with no consequence.
  - throwawayffffas 5y ago
    I think it's on purpose, I think they don't want you to be able to search but instead buy the ones they are "recommending" to you.
  - TheCoelacanth 5y ago
    Search technology got outsmarted by their own executives. The goal is no longer to present the best results for the user. It's to present the most profitable results.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
  I agree, searching for products on Amazon and actually finding what you're looking for is a pain, then you still have to try and figure out if it's a quality product or if it's from a reliable seller. I shop on NewEgg these days when I can because their power search is much better for the things it is actually implemented well for. For the things it isn't implemented well for you're not really any better off though. P.S.: If anyone can direct me to a reliable brand for 3-6ft USB 3 A-to-A M-to-M and M-to-F cables that can actually handle SuperSpeed without dropping half the packets, I'd be obliged.
the_snooze 5y ago
There's so much manipulation on Amazon (both of Amazon's own doing and gaming on part of sellers) that I've more or less given up on buying from there completely. Mix in all off-brand Chinese crap polluting the store, and it's just a miserable experience. These days, Amazon is most useful to me just as a price ceiling. I go to brick-and-mortar stores and have them price-match Amazon if the online listing is cheaper.
- bitexploder 5y ago
  Best Buy has been nice lately. I pretty much only buy well reviewed (by a third party, like Wirecutter) and known items unless it’s a random thing I don’t care about or something very commodity, like a network cable. Ive also been trying to spread my $ around to other stores, like Target, etc. Amazon still wins because it’s so easy some of the time though.
  - daniel-cussen 5y ago
    I could see myself buying paperclips on Amazon if I didn't have a visceral reaction from one knockoff they sold me. I didn't realize I would react that way to anything. And they acted in relatively good faith in that transaction with other stuff, they just couldn't not sell me that knockoff.
  - aceazzameen 5y ago
    I started shopping at Best Buy again this year, specifically because I didn't trust whatever I'd get from Amazon anymore. BB is much better than I remember it being, and so far I've been more than happy with my purchases. Combine them with Target, and I don't need Amazon anymore. I only look on Amazon when I'm purposefully looking for cheap Chinese merchandise. Like tea lights to put inside pumpkins or other holiday decorations. I shouldn't really be supporting junk products that won't last though.
    - deleted 5y ago
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JohnWhigham 5y ago
And then right below the ad results, there's thousands of Chinese knockoffs. I've started to just browse big box retailers now. They at least have a merchandising team dedicated to sourcing quality products.
- JKCalhoun 5y ago
  Yes, curated is the word I would use.
deleted 5y ago
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tantalor 5y ago
> company delays labels indicating a search result is sponsored for several seconds after a page loads I don't see this in practice. Does this actually happen?
TruthWillHurt 5y ago
At this point Amazon is effectively dealExtreme or Wish.com . So many sticker brands, ads and house brands..
ItIsWhatItIs2 5y ago
Honestly the buying experience on Amazon is truly dreadful right now. If you are browsing for anything that’s not a name brand you have to sift through pages of garbage 5 star reviews from people paid with Amazon gift cards by the seller. If you look at the 1 star reviews you’ll see the sellers of items will pay people in Amazon gift cards to review the product, and pay to take down negative reviews. If I need to purchase anything I’ve given up on using them and simply go to Best Buy, Target Walmart, etc. Though it seems Walmart is trying to follow in Amazon’s footsteps with third party sellers for its website.
- hvgk 5y ago
  Trick is to only buy branded stuff off Amazon. Everything else is a shit show. Actually whenever you go shopping know what you want before you go to Amazon. That helps.
  - ItIsWhatItIs2 5y ago
    True, the issue is if you are getting a niche item without name brands in the market. For example I was trying to get a TV antenna, which to me doesn’t have a recognizable brand to look towards.
  - ceejayoz 5y ago
    Even then, you've got the risk of it being counterfeit.
  - projectileboy 5y ago
    But a big problem is that because they mix items from third parties with everything else because they’re “the same”, you never know when you’re getting counterfeit goods. Amazon has made it so bad that some manufacturers will now actually have a page on their website showing how to detect counterfeit versions of their product.
    - AlexandrB 5y ago
      This is an especially big problem for items that are differentiated on quality of materials/coatings/construction/etc. My go-to example is always lens filters: https://www.the-digital-picture.com/News/News-Post.aspx?News=22622 https://www.the-digital-picture.com/News/News-Post.aspx?News... It's hard to fake a believable iPhone. It's easy to fake a threaded cylinder with a round piece of glass in the middle that can fool the uninitiated.
hairofadog 5y ago
Anecdotally, the buzz I hear around Amazon has changed from * 2010: this is amazing! You can get anything right away! And I don’t buy anything without checking Amazon reviews first * 2015: it seems like Amazon is an unstoppable behemoth that might be doing harm in the world, but it’s just so easy to order stuff, so… sorry, world! * today: the Amazon shopping experience is so filled with bullshit that it’s actually easier to buy from the producer’s website and pay shipping I’m sure Amazon will be just fine but it seems like they’ll need to do something at some point.
- projectileboy 5y ago
  This mirrors my sentiments exactly. Peak Amazon for me was about 3 or 4 years ago - I would order from Amazon without even thinking about it. Now, you can’t use it unless you know exactly what you want, because their search is unusable, and with the prevalence of counterfeit goods mixed in with all the legitimate stock… It’s become less of a hassle to just order from the manufacturer, if it’s anything I really care about.
  - antoniuschan99 5y ago
    That’s what I been thinking too. Around 2017-18 the no name Chinese brands started massively flooding the site.
    - m463 5y ago
      I suspect a lot of no-name chinese brands are actually amazon. (except with randomized-word brand name)
      - account42 5y ago
        That doesn't seem to fit with them mostly not using FBA and instead shipping directly from China.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
m12k 5y ago
I'm torn between considering this terrible as an end-user, and being happy that this is painful enough that there might finally be enough oxygen in the room for actual competitors again.
dazc 5y ago
We have a couple of online retailers in the UK (John Lewis, Argos) where you can search for a product and get maybe 20 - 30 results, mainly leading brands and some own-brand versions. It's a much better experience, however, you often find many of these items are sold out or not available in the colour (for example) that you want - which is frustrating. Amazon always seem to have stock of the same thing in addition to multiple knock-offs and me-too versions. No surprises they get most of the business.
- dathinab 5y ago
  worse even if you explicitly type in a product name you not only still get the knock-offs you might also get them listed before the product you searched for without any "similar results" indication and without it often being "obvious on the first look" that it is a knock-off. I don't want to know how many people accidentally under time pressure ended up buying the wrong thing, or parents not very familiar with a product accidentally buying the wrong present etc.
andyford 5y ago
As much as I like dunking on Amazon and Bezos, I can't help but wonder if this could be applied to brick and mortar stores where you go in and ask for help finding something and they pitch you the product that's best for their sales commission
- mgas 5y ago
  You can rest assured that if you go into a store and get pitched on a product, if the salesperson works on commission, the product they push the hardest on is the one with the highest profit margin (and consequently the one they make the highest commission on). Generally, stores will offer a low priced option that they are willing to sell by keeping large quantities in stock, but on which their margin is very small. They'll make money by selling those in volume, and you won't get the hard sell for that. If they sense you walking away, they'll make the low-cost argument to at least get a product in your hands. There will be the God-level products with enormous markups that only fools will buy. Nobody really tries to sell those, but they'll happily ring you up for the commission. Then there is the sweet spot in the middle; the products that are moderately high priced that take a value-proposition to sell. You can rest assured these are the money-makers for salespeople. Sadly, Amazon has found out that the three-fold approach is no longer worth it. They already deal in massive volumes, so there is no need to carry the name brands and make advertising pushes to sell those products. Instead, they focus on the low-end garbage and let the third party sellers go to war each with other for your purchase. The odd God-level-priced product still exists and they'll happily sell it to you, but you'd be a schmuck to buy it from Amazon.
jklinger410 5y ago
The United States government gave up on enforcing deceptive advertising a very long time ago. Maybe the EU will do something about it, but of course, those changes will not make it to US consumers.
- theWreckluse 5y ago
  Why would you say this? The US does not require consent to cookies, but we still see it on almost every website. Is this because webmasters are too lazy to prompt it only based on region?
  - jklinger410 5y ago
    Webmasters choose to obey it because their lawyers recommended it. I've never seen a court case in the US over cookie notices or privacy protection. If someone has an example of one, please share it with me. In fact, US companies are constantly mishandling our data with little to no repercussions.
Lamad123 5y ago
Is this washington post defending its owner?!!
excalibur 5y ago
https://archive.ph/iaPmr https://archive.ph/iaPmr
errcorrectcode 5y ago
Amazon's Fire TV and Echo Show are like Samsung TVs: inviting a dystopian wall of chumboxes into your life to hound you with ads.
mdasen 5y ago
> The complaint goes beyond existing FTC guidelines, accusing the company of engaging in “lazy loading.” The “sponsored” label lagged in loading against top banner ads, sometimes by up to three seconds on average Internet speeds, according to the group’s analysis. On slower wireless and wired connections, it could take anywhere from seven to 15 seconds. From what I can see, the search page has the "Sponsored" note in the response (it isn't loaded via JS). Amazon's search page seems to be mostly server-side rendered. Even if I disable my cache and set my browser to throttle to "Slow 3G", the "Sponsored" renders immediately (the "i" image next to it takes a second to load, but loads well before the product images). It's interesting looking at the HTML because the alt tags on the product image use the phrase "Sponsored Ad" while the visual presented is just "Sponsored". I certainly understand the criticism that the "Sponsored" text is small (11px regular vs 16px bold) and a light gray rather than black, but it doesn't seem like they're being lazy loaded in a way that would make them appear after the user had already seen the content. The FTC's guidance says: > We understand that there is not any one specific method for clearly and prominently distinguishing advertising from natural search results, and that search engines may develop new methods for distinguishing advertising results. Any method may be used, so long as it is noticeable and understandable to consumers. Honestly, I think this is mostly wrong. Maybe there isn't one way, but surely one could say that 3-4 very specific ways could be codified. Just saying "clearly and prominently" leaves so much room for companies to test which ways will hold up in court, but that consumers won't notice. For example, Amazon can say "it clearly says sponsored" while potentially knowing that putting small grey text next to large bold black text makes the mind ignore the small gray text. Likewise, the "sponsored" note comes after the picture - after the user has already developed an attachment to the product. To use Twitter as an example, "Promoted" appears below the tweet so that when scrolling, I see the tweet, my mind starts engaging with the tweet, and by the time I continue scrolling to see the "Promoted" notation, it's already done. Even the words "promoted" or "sponsored" don't have the same connotation as "advertisement". The FTC could easily codify things. 1) Creating a logo and specific text for advertisements - "$$ Advertisement $$". 2) Requiring it to be in the same upper-left placement for all ad blocks. 3) Requiring it to have the same size, contrast, and weight against the background as the most noticeable text in the ad. 4) Mandating a different background color from non-ads by 20% (for example, if the background is black rbg(0,0,0) then a background color of rbg(51,51,51) would work. Likewise, if the background were white rbg(255,255,255), an ad background of rbg(204,204,204) would work. (Someone with a better artistic background could certainly refine that rough guideline - to my eyes, even altering one of the three colors by 20% seems to create significant contrast so you might not need to move all three to still maintain a clearly demarcated background). That would make it really easy for consumers to distinguish an ad. The problem is that while the FTC's guidance suggests using backgrounds and borders, they only require that it be "clear". That's nonsense. Maybe keep the requirement at "clear" for small companies, but make the requirement the codified version from anyone making over $X in revenue (if you're worried about stifling small companies). If you don't specify how, companies will make it "clear" while making it as easy to ignore and hard to find as possible - so long as they can stand up in a courtroom and say "c'mon, it says "Ad" right there." If we mandated a specific logo/language, top-left placement, and background color distinction, we'd easily be able to distinguish ads from regular content. But that's the problem. They don't want that. I remember when Google results looked like this: https://i.imgur.com/KAROEnQ.jpg https://i.imgur.com/KAROEnQ.jpg. The yellow and pink background meant an ad. The right side has ads that are clearly ads since they have a blue background. They're all clearly distinct. Another example: https://i.imgur.com/1iO5wuv.png https://i.imgur.com/1iO5wuv.png. All the ads are yellow. It's easy to skip over them and start looking at the first organic result. When ads have the same background color and no border, it's hard to know when the ad ends. If the goal of the FTC is that ads should be easily noticeable (and skip-able) by consumers, there are extremely clear and easy things to mandate. Instead, the FTC simply says it must be "clear". Heck, even if you don't want to mandate how, I think the FTC should come up with examples. For example, take the two Google search images I posted. Let's say the FTC said "you must distinguish your ads as clearly as those two images. Any ad that is not as clearly distinguished as the ads in the examples is illegal." While Amazon/Google/Twitter/Facebook might argue that their labeling is "clear" they couldn't argue it is "as clear as the examples." The FTC should set a standard and then go after companies that don't meet the standard. Just telling someone it must be "clear" means that they only have to make it clear if you're actually examining the content in a courtroom, not if you're scanning/reading like a normal user.
nunez 5y ago
The search results that are ads say "Sponsored" on them. Everything else are not ads. I'm not understanding how that's deceiving. It's similar to Google Shopping.
- mdasen 5y ago
  There's THE TRUTH and the truth (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xc6tmYYhOUU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xc6tmYYhOUU if you haven't seen that Simpsons episode). Let's say that I do an hour-long infomercial on a product and I try and make the infomercial look as much like content as I can. In fact, it's not just about the product. We talk about the news and weather as well. You watch 30 minutes of it and don't notice that at the end it says that it was sponsored. I clearly said it was sponsored. Just because you stopped watching before then isn't my fault, right? John Oliver did a great segment on this on sponsored content on local news: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIi_QS1tdFM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIi_QS1tdFM Google's search results used to use a different background color and borders to distinguish ads from organic results. Now they simply put "Ad" near the paid result. That makes it harder to detect what is an ad and what isn't an ad. I'm not saying that Google is being deceitful. However, they're certainly trying to make the fact that it's an ad less noticeable. If I put photoshopped mockups of a product on a page and then note in the description that they're not actually photos of the product, is that deceitful? That's certainly getting closer to the line (and I'd say crossing it) given extra distance. Amazon has made choices to make the "sponsored" tag less noticeable. It's a light gray and not bold so that it blends in against the background while your eye is drawn to the much larger 45% larger font-size and bold text next to it. Amazon could have chosen to make the "sponsored" tag larger, with better contrast, and bold. They made choices to make it less noticeable. The FTC's guidelines are vague because "clear" is a vague term. If you're looking for it, it's definitely there. If you're just browsing products, do you miss it? In fact, if I search for "waffle iron", I see one large result at the top where the content stops half way through the page. My eyes then go down to the next result. The "sponsored" tag is way off on the right, half a page away from the result I was looking at. Frankly, if I weren't looking for it, I'd probably miss it. Commercials are something that consumers instantly notice as a paid format and they discount the message to an extent. As the John Oliver segment points out, when sponsored content looks nearly identical to regular content, it carries a lot of weight. It's harder for you to filter it out. Amazon doesn't want you to look at sponsored results and think "ugh, an ad. Clearly this company isn't good enough on its own." They want it to seem like an organic result - even if you end up seeing the sponsored tag. I actually think that Google Shopping is very different. Google Shopping presents me with a carousel of ads at the top. They're smaller and scroll to the right. It's a different format than the organic results. Once I've identified that, every time I use Google Shopping I can just skip those if I want. I might need to learn that format for Google Shopping, but they are clearly identifiable even without looking for the "Ads" text. Google Shopping even sets the ads apart from organic results with a horizontal line that clearly separates ad space from organic space. Amazon's sponsored results often have the same size/shape/format as their organic results with nothing distinguishing them beyond the "sponsored" label. Again, I'm not saying it's deceitful, but they certainly want it to be harder to distinguish their advertisements from organic content. As I've pointed out, it's not just Amazon and even local news is falling prey to this. "Clearly" marking something as an ad leaves a lot of room for interpretation. When Terry Crews hawks Old Spice in a commercial, I know what's going on. It's an ad. When a local news show talks about a product, it's easy for it to feel genuine. When Google put ads in different colored boxes, it was easy to see that they were ads. They're still labeled as ads, but it's a lot more subtle and a lot easier to mistake for an organic result if you're just trying to do something quickly. Is it deceitful? I don't think so. Is it less clear than Google Shopping? Yes. Are they hoping that it won't be as clear to people as it could be? Yes. They could make it more clear which results were sponsored by taking steps like giving them a different background color, by having the sponsored text as large as the neighboring text, bolded, and black rather than gray.
summerdown2 5y ago
I don't even mind the sponsored placements in my search. I'd just like a search for X to give me a page full of X, not random junk bearing no relationship to X.
mikkelam 5y ago
I'm really impressed, and quite happy, that The Washington Post is writing such an article when Mr Bezos himself owns it. Great to see this is not a deterrant
Schiendelman 5y ago
It’s incredibly comforting that Washington Post still writes pieces critical of Amazon despite Bezos’ ownership.

281 points by nocommandline 5y ago

The full title of the article is below but HN says it’s too long so I cut it down.. .... Amazon’s search results are full of ads ‘unlawfully deceiving’ consumers, new complaint to FTC claims....

ceejayoz 5y ago

> The FTC has long held that ads are deceptive if they imply information is being shared by an independent or impartial source, when it’s actually originating from a business trying to sell a product, said Jessica Rich, a former director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection. Such practices could lead consumers to make uninformed decisions about their purchases. I'd love to see this provision torpedo the "Amazon's Choice" labels.

Kalium 5y ago
I find myself wondering if "Amazon's Choice" really implies an independent or impartial source. When I'm seeing it, I know it's coming from Amazon and they would like to sell me a thing. They're certainly not pretending it's the choice of anyone other than them, the company that wants to sell me things at a profit.
- Applejinx 5y ago
  I've been sent a random junky product (in its box: I knew I hadn't ordered the thing) from Amazon as an exploit to use an older Amazon account I'd had, to produce a verified five star review. It was the #1 rated product in its category, and that's when I stopped trusting anything about Amazon. I don't remember if it was also 'Amazon's Choice': seems to ring a bell, it may well have been: showing not that Amazon was intentionally pushing garbage, but that it was purely algorithmic. I don't think it's malice as much as wilful ignorance.
  - justinpombrio 5y ago
    It's a small thing, and doesn't address the root of the problem, but did you consider giving it a verified 1-start review?
tzs 5y ago
I don't see how "Amazon's Choice" labels would run afoul of that. According to Amazon, "Amazon's Choice highlights highly rated, well-priced products available to ship immediately". I don't see anything that implies that this is coming from an independent or impartial source. It's right in the name itself that it is coming from Amazon.
- ceejayoz 5y ago
  The label implies it's an editorial decision, but it's purely algorithmic.
  - tyingq 5y ago
    And it's gameable by hijacking an existing product listing and redoing it as an entirely different product. https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/nicolenguyen/amazons-choice-bad-products https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/nicolenguyen/amazons-ch...
  - frumper 5y ago
    The label doesn't imply an impartial source. I would think that what Amazon recommends on Amazon's website is clearly not impartial. They'd run afoul if they labeled it independent-al's top pick

hateful 5y ago

In my experience the search on the Amazon site is terrible. If I want something, I search there and can browse 100 pages of low quality unrelated items. But I do a Google search and I see results from Amazon that are exactly what I need.

power78 5y ago
Google's results are filled with just as much spam, fake listing sites that just link to Amazon, and junk products
space_rock 5y ago
Did search technology stall and get outsmarted by the spammers? I'm confused how big tech search from Amazon and Google is so bad. I'm waiting for some startup to challenge Google as their progress has stopped
- the_snooze 5y ago
  Spammers are part of the equation. But I think Amazon's business model is a big contributor as well. We'd have less of a problem if the entire Amazon store were actual Amazon listings, instead of randos being allowed to put up co-mingled garbage and gaming the search/review systems with no consequence.
- throwawayffffas 5y ago
  I think it's on purpose, I think they don't want you to be able to search but instead buy the ones they are "recommending" to you.
- TheCoelacanth 5y ago
  Search technology got outsmarted by their own executives. The goal is no longer to present the best results for the user. It's to present the most profitable results.
AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
I agree, searching for products on Amazon and actually finding what you're looking for is a pain, then you still have to try and figure out if it's a quality product or if it's from a reliable seller. I shop on NewEgg these days when I can because their power search is much better for the things it is actually implemented well for. For the things it isn't implemented well for you're not really any better off though. P.S.: If anyone can direct me to a reliable brand for 3-6ft USB 3 A-to-A M-to-M and M-to-F cables that can actually handle SuperSpeed without dropping half the packets, I'd be obliged.

the_snooze 5y ago

There's so much manipulation on Amazon (both of Amazon's own doing and gaming on part of sellers) that I've more or less given up on buying from there completely. Mix in all off-brand Chinese crap polluting the store, and it's just a miserable experience. These days, Amazon is most useful to me just as a price ceiling. I go to brick-and-mortar stores and have them price-match Amazon if the online listing is cheaper.

bitexploder 5y ago
Best Buy has been nice lately. I pretty much only buy well reviewed (by a third party, like Wirecutter) and known items unless it’s a random thing I don’t care about or something very commodity, like a network cable. Ive also been trying to spread my $ around to other stores, like Target, etc. Amazon still wins because it’s so easy some of the time though.
- daniel-cussen 5y ago
  I could see myself buying paperclips on Amazon if I didn't have a visceral reaction from one knockoff they sold me. I didn't realize I would react that way to anything. And they acted in relatively good faith in that transaction with other stuff, they just couldn't not sell me that knockoff.
- aceazzameen 5y ago
  I started shopping at Best Buy again this year, specifically because I didn't trust whatever I'd get from Amazon anymore. BB is much better than I remember it being, and so far I've been more than happy with my purchases. Combine them with Target, and I don't need Amazon anymore. I only look on Amazon when I'm purposefully looking for cheap Chinese merchandise. Like tea lights to put inside pumpkins or other holiday decorations. I shouldn't really be supporting junk products that won't last though.
  - deleted 5y ago
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- 5y ago

JohnWhigham 5y ago

And then right below the ad results, there's thousands of Chinese knockoffs. I've started to just browse big box retailers now. They at least have a merchandising team dedicated to sourcing quality products.

JKCalhoun 5y ago
Yes, curated is the word I would use.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

tantalor 5y ago

> company delays labels indicating a search result is sponsored for several seconds after a page loads I don't see this in practice. Does this actually happen?

TruthWillHurt 5y ago

At this point Amazon is effectively dealExtreme or Wish.com . So many sticker brands, ads and house brands..

ItIsWhatItIs2 5y ago

Honestly the buying experience on Amazon is truly dreadful right now. If you are browsing for anything that’s not a name brand you have to sift through pages of garbage 5 star reviews from people paid with Amazon gift cards by the seller. If you look at the 1 star reviews you’ll see the sellers of items will pay people in Amazon gift cards to review the product, and pay to take down negative reviews. If I need to purchase anything I’ve given up on using them and simply go to Best Buy, Target Walmart, etc. Though it seems Walmart is trying to follow in Amazon’s footsteps with third party sellers for its website.

hvgk 5y ago
Trick is to only buy branded stuff off Amazon. Everything else is a shit show. Actually whenever you go shopping know what you want before you go to Amazon. That helps.
- ItIsWhatItIs2 5y ago
  True, the issue is if you are getting a niche item without name brands in the market. For example I was trying to get a TV antenna, which to me doesn’t have a recognizable brand to look towards.
- ceejayoz 5y ago
  Even then, you've got the risk of it being counterfeit.
- projectileboy 5y ago
  But a big problem is that because they mix items from third parties with everything else because they’re “the same”, you never know when you’re getting counterfeit goods. Amazon has made it so bad that some manufacturers will now actually have a page on their website showing how to detect counterfeit versions of their product.
  - AlexandrB 5y ago
    This is an especially big problem for items that are differentiated on quality of materials/coatings/construction/etc. My go-to example is always lens filters: https://www.the-digital-picture.com/News/News-Post.aspx?News=22622 https://www.the-digital-picture.com/News/News-Post.aspx?News... It's hard to fake a believable iPhone. It's easy to fake a threaded cylinder with a round piece of glass in the middle that can fool the uninitiated.

hairofadog 5y ago

Anecdotally, the buzz I hear around Amazon has changed from * 2010: this is amazing! You can get anything right away! And I don’t buy anything without checking Amazon reviews first * 2015: it seems like Amazon is an unstoppable behemoth that might be doing harm in the world, but it’s just so easy to order stuff, so… sorry, world! * today: the Amazon shopping experience is so filled with bullshit that it’s actually easier to buy from the producer’s website and pay shipping I’m sure Amazon will be just fine but it seems like they’ll need to do something at some point.

projectileboy 5y ago
This mirrors my sentiments exactly. Peak Amazon for me was about 3 or 4 years ago - I would order from Amazon without even thinking about it. Now, you can’t use it unless you know exactly what you want, because their search is unusable, and with the prevalence of counterfeit goods mixed in with all the legitimate stock… It’s become less of a hassle to just order from the manufacturer, if it’s anything I really care about.
- antoniuschan99 5y ago
  That’s what I been thinking too. Around 2017-18 the no name Chinese brands started massively flooding the site.
  - m463 5y ago
    I suspect a lot of no-name chinese brands are actually amazon. (except with randomized-word brand name)
    - account42 5y ago
      That doesn't seem to fit with them mostly not using FBA and instead shipping directly from China.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

m12k 5y ago

I'm torn between considering this terrible as an end-user, and being happy that this is painful enough that there might finally be enough oxygen in the room for actual competitors again.

dazc 5y ago

We have a couple of online retailers in the UK (John Lewis, Argos) where you can search for a product and get maybe 20 - 30 results, mainly leading brands and some own-brand versions. It's a much better experience, however, you often find many of these items are sold out or not available in the colour (for example) that you want - which is frustrating. Amazon always seem to have stock of the same thing in addition to multiple knock-offs and me-too versions. No surprises they get most of the business.

dathinab 5y ago
worse even if you explicitly type in a product name you not only still get the knock-offs you might also get them listed before the product you searched for without any "similar results" indication and without it often being "obvious on the first look" that it is a knock-off. I don't want to know how many people accidentally under time pressure ended up buying the wrong thing, or parents not very familiar with a product accidentally buying the wrong present etc.

andyford 5y ago

As much as I like dunking on Amazon and Bezos, I can't help but wonder if this could be applied to brick and mortar stores where you go in and ask for help finding something and they pitch you the product that's best for their sales commission

mgas 5y ago
You can rest assured that if you go into a store and get pitched on a product, if the salesperson works on commission, the product they push the hardest on is the one with the highest profit margin (and consequently the one they make the highest commission on). Generally, stores will offer a low priced option that they are willing to sell by keeping large quantities in stock, but on which their margin is very small. They'll make money by selling those in volume, and you won't get the hard sell for that. If they sense you walking away, they'll make the low-cost argument to at least get a product in your hands. There will be the God-level products with enormous markups that only fools will buy. Nobody really tries to sell those, but they'll happily ring you up for the commission. Then there is the sweet spot in the middle; the products that are moderately high priced that take a value-proposition to sell. You can rest assured these are the money-makers for salespeople. Sadly, Amazon has found out that the three-fold approach is no longer worth it. They already deal in massive volumes, so there is no need to carry the name brands and make advertising pushes to sell those products. Instead, they focus on the low-end garbage and let the third party sellers go to war each with other for your purchase. The odd God-level-priced product still exists and they'll happily sell it to you, but you'd be a schmuck to buy it from Amazon.

jklinger410 5y ago

The United States government gave up on enforcing deceptive advertising a very long time ago. Maybe the EU will do something about it, but of course, those changes will not make it to US consumers.

theWreckluse 5y ago
Why would you say this? The US does not require consent to cookies, but we still see it on almost every website. Is this because webmasters are too lazy to prompt it only based on region?
- jklinger410 5y ago
  Webmasters choose to obey it because their lawyers recommended it. I've never seen a court case in the US over cookie notices or privacy protection. If someone has an example of one, please share it with me. In fact, US companies are constantly mishandling our data with little to no repercussions.

Lamad123 5y ago

Is this washington post defending its owner?!!

excalibur 5y ago

https://archive.ph/iaPmr https://archive.ph/iaPmr

errcorrectcode 5y ago

Amazon's Fire TV and Echo Show are like Samsung TVs: inviting a dystopian wall of chumboxes into your life to hound you with ads.

mdasen 5y ago

> The complaint goes beyond existing FTC guidelines, accusing the company of engaging in “lazy loading.” The “sponsored” label lagged in loading against top banner ads, sometimes by up to three seconds on average Internet speeds, according to the group’s analysis. On slower wireless and wired connections, it could take anywhere from seven to 15 seconds. From what I can see, the search page has the "Sponsored" note in the response (it isn't loaded via JS). Amazon's search page seems to be mostly server-side rendered. Even if I disable my cache and set my browser to throttle to "Slow 3G", the "Sponsored" renders immediately (the "i" image next to it takes a second to load, but loads well before the product images). It's interesting looking at the HTML because the alt tags on the product image use the phrase "Sponsored Ad" while the visual presented is just "Sponsored". I certainly understand the criticism that the "Sponsored" text is small (11px regular vs 16px bold) and a light gray rather than black, but it doesn't seem like they're being lazy loaded in a way that would make them appear after the user had already seen the content. The FTC's guidance says: > We understand that there is not any one specific method for clearly and prominently distinguishing advertising from natural search results, and that search engines may develop new methods for distinguishing advertising results. Any method may be used, so long as it is noticeable and understandable to consumers. Honestly, I think this is mostly wrong. Maybe there isn't one way, but surely one could say that 3-4 very specific ways could be codified. Just saying "clearly and prominently" leaves so much room for companies to test which ways will hold up in court, but that consumers won't notice. For example, Amazon can say "it clearly says sponsored" while potentially knowing that putting small grey text next to large bold black text makes the mind ignore the small gray text. Likewise, the "sponsored" note comes after the picture - after the user has already developed an attachment to the product. To use Twitter as an example, "Promoted" appears below the tweet so that when scrolling, I see the tweet, my mind starts engaging with the tweet, and by the time I continue scrolling to see the "Promoted" notation, it's already done. Even the words "promoted" or "sponsored" don't have the same connotation as "advertisement". The FTC could easily codify things. 1) Creating a logo and specific text for advertisements - "$$ Advertisement $$". 2) Requiring it to be in the same upper-left placement for all ad blocks. 3) Requiring it to have the same size, contrast, and weight against the background as the most noticeable text in the ad. 4) Mandating a different background color from non-ads by 20% (for example, if the background is black rbg(0,0,0) then a background color of rbg(51,51,51) would work. Likewise, if the background were white rbg(255,255,255), an ad background of rbg(204,204,204) would work. (Someone with a better artistic background could certainly refine that rough guideline - to my eyes, even altering one of the three colors by 20% seems to create significant contrast so you might not need to move all three to still maintain a clearly demarcated background). That would make it really easy for consumers to distinguish an ad. The problem is that while the FTC's guidance suggests using backgrounds and borders, they only require that it be "clear". That's nonsense. Maybe keep the requirement at "clear" for small companies, but make the requirement the codified version from anyone making over $X in revenue (if you're worried about stifling small companies). If you don't specify how, companies will make it "clear" while making it as easy to ignore and hard to find as possible - so long as they can stand up in a courtroom and say "c'mon, it says "Ad" right there." If we mandated a specific logo/language, top-left placement, and background color distinction, we'd easily be able to distinguish ads from regular content. But that's the problem. They don't want that. I remember when Google results looked like this: https://i.imgur.com/KAROEnQ.jpg https://i.imgur.com/KAROEnQ.jpg. The yellow and pink background meant an ad. The right side has ads that are clearly ads since they have a blue background. They're all clearly distinct. Another example: https://i.imgur.com/1iO5wuv.png https://i.imgur.com/1iO5wuv.png. All the ads are yellow. It's easy to skip over them and start looking at the first organic result. When ads have the same background color and no border, it's hard to know when the ad ends. If the goal of the FTC is that ads should be easily noticeable (and skip-able) by consumers, there are extremely clear and easy things to mandate. Instead, the FTC simply says it must be "clear". Heck, even if you don't want to mandate how, I think the FTC should come up with examples. For example, take the two Google search images I posted. Let's say the FTC said "you must distinguish your ads as clearly as those two images. Any ad that is not as clearly distinguished as the ads in the examples is illegal." While Amazon/Google/Twitter/Facebook might argue that their labeling is "clear" they couldn't argue it is "as clear as the examples." The FTC should set a standard and then go after companies that don't meet the standard. Just telling someone it must be "clear" means that they only have to make it clear if you're actually examining the content in a courtroom, not if you're scanning/reading like a normal user.

nunez 5y ago

The search results that are ads say "Sponsored" on them. Everything else are not ads. I'm not understanding how that's deceiving. It's similar to Google Shopping.

mdasen 5y ago
There's THE TRUTH and the truth (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xc6tmYYhOUU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xc6tmYYhOUU if you haven't seen that Simpsons episode). Let's say that I do an hour-long infomercial on a product and I try and make the infomercial look as much like content as I can. In fact, it's not just about the product. We talk about the news and weather as well. You watch 30 minutes of it and don't notice that at the end it says that it was sponsored. I clearly said it was sponsored. Just because you stopped watching before then isn't my fault, right? John Oliver did a great segment on this on sponsored content on local news: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIi_QS1tdFM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIi_QS1tdFM Google's search results used to use a different background color and borders to distinguish ads from organic results. Now they simply put "Ad" near the paid result. That makes it harder to detect what is an ad and what isn't an ad. I'm not saying that Google is being deceitful. However, they're certainly trying to make the fact that it's an ad less noticeable. If I put photoshopped mockups of a product on a page and then note in the description that they're not actually photos of the product, is that deceitful? That's certainly getting closer to the line (and I'd say crossing it) given extra distance. Amazon has made choices to make the "sponsored" tag less noticeable. It's a light gray and not bold so that it blends in against the background while your eye is drawn to the much larger 45% larger font-size and bold text next to it. Amazon could have chosen to make the "sponsored" tag larger, with better contrast, and bold. They made choices to make it less noticeable. The FTC's guidelines are vague because "clear" is a vague term. If you're looking for it, it's definitely there. If you're just browsing products, do you miss it? In fact, if I search for "waffle iron", I see one large result at the top where the content stops half way through the page. My eyes then go down to the next result. The "sponsored" tag is way off on the right, half a page away from the result I was looking at. Frankly, if I weren't looking for it, I'd probably miss it. Commercials are something that consumers instantly notice as a paid format and they discount the message to an extent. As the John Oliver segment points out, when sponsored content looks nearly identical to regular content, it carries a lot of weight. It's harder for you to filter it out. Amazon doesn't want you to look at sponsored results and think "ugh, an ad. Clearly this company isn't good enough on its own." They want it to seem like an organic result - even if you end up seeing the sponsored tag. I actually think that Google Shopping is very different. Google Shopping presents me with a carousel of ads at the top. They're smaller and scroll to the right. It's a different format than the organic results. Once I've identified that, every time I use Google Shopping I can just skip those if I want. I might need to learn that format for Google Shopping, but they are clearly identifiable even without looking for the "Ads" text. Google Shopping even sets the ads apart from organic results with a horizontal line that clearly separates ad space from organic space. Amazon's sponsored results often have the same size/shape/format as their organic results with nothing distinguishing them beyond the "sponsored" label. Again, I'm not saying it's deceitful, but they certainly want it to be harder to distinguish their advertisements from organic content. As I've pointed out, it's not just Amazon and even local news is falling prey to this. "Clearly" marking something as an ad leaves a lot of room for interpretation. When Terry Crews hawks Old Spice in a commercial, I know what's going on. It's an ad. When a local news show talks about a product, it's easy for it to feel genuine. When Google put ads in different colored boxes, it was easy to see that they were ads. They're still labeled as ads, but it's a lot more subtle and a lot easier to mistake for an organic result if you're just trying to do something quickly. Is it deceitful? I don't think so. Is it less clear than Google Shopping? Yes. Are they hoping that it won't be as clear to people as it could be? Yes. They could make it more clear which results were sponsored by taking steps like giving them a different background color, by having the sponsored text as large as the neighboring text, bolded, and black rather than gray.

summerdown2 5y ago

I don't even mind the sponsored placements in my search. I'd just like a search for X to give me a page full of X, not random junk bearing no relationship to X.

mikkelam 5y ago

I'm really impressed, and quite happy, that The Washington Post is writing such an article when Mr Bezos himself owns it. Great to see this is not a deterrant

Schiendelman 5y ago

It’s incredibly comforting that Washington Post still writes pieces critical of Amazon despite Bezos’ ownership.