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Am I reading this right? Amazon accepted advertisers hawking junk ads which made ad prices more expensive and gave less relevant ads to their customers. This

• makeitdouble 3y ago
  This also affected ad buyers, as they had to compete with the junk and pay more to get an effect. Ad buyers are also Amazon consumers that got harmed, which matters if we go by the traditional benchmarks for antitrust.
• wlesieutre 3y ago
  “Made site shittier to boost profit” describes nearly 100% of online advertising
  • vivekd 3y ago
    Exactly! I would go further it applies to almost 100% of all advertising from TV to radio to billboards, poster ads ...
  • mynameisash 3y ago
    I don't know what has happened to YouTube ads in the last year or so, but now that YT is cracking down on adblockers, I'm seeing a lot of them. One thing I'm noticing is that most ads are absolutely garbage. It was one thing to see the 'professional' ads for T-Mobile internet and makeup and whatnot, but I'm seeing a ton of clickbait-style ads for things that are very clearly get-rich-quick and/or straight-up scams. "This one new method of heating your house is taking America by storm!" "This new device that cleans your house in five minutes is being called revolutionary by experts."
    • bcrosby95 3y ago
      I'm getting a lot of magical heating unit with obviously wrong information. Not only is it full of lies, I also love in socal, why the hell would I need an uber heater?
    • jrmg 3y ago
      It amazes me how much advertising is literally fraud. Aren’t there authorities that are meant to police this kind of thing?
      • zx8080 3y ago
        It's a multibillion business and helps other businesses grow. And it even pays (some) taxes. Why would any authority even think about killing it?
        • medstrom 3y ago
          Consumers have a limited wallet anyway, and you know how most people are: they will spend most of their income anyway. So the ad business is more about shifting where the money goes, than about conferring any extra value.
          • zx8080 3y ago
            > Consumers have a limited wallet anyway Banks and VCs are laughing on this. Today's economy is not a zero-sum game. It's much more complex than that.
    • tobyjsullivan 3y ago
      You may be seeing the ads but you’re likely still blocking the tracking/targeting. Disable targeted advertising on any platform that allows it and you’ll see the lowest form of generic click bait junk ads. Twitter used to allow this and I disabled only to be fed streams of shock-factor click bait rather than industry-relevant ads. High-quality, expensive, polished ads only go to demonstrably high-value demographics. Turns out there’s at least some merit to the argument that targeted ads create a better experience (for some, at least).
  • mapt 3y ago
    "Raised prices to increase profits" describes many business decisions, but if a company does that after eliminating their competition, policymakers & economists understand that to be a bug of the algorithm 'capitalist market competition' that requires redress, a betrayal of a populace that has been sold a system on its merits (and is willing to tolerate its costs for those merits) but which is not displaying those merits consistently and is failing to improve our lives. Arguably a firm that has established itself as a standard marketplace with strong network effects, should not be allowed to favor certain products with disproportionate placement in exchange for a kickback. They have become more like a government body than a private enterprise, and if they're dumb enough to slaughter that golden goose for temporary boosts ("dinner"), their behavior demands a degree of regulation if we are to ensure market competition & ensure a benefit to consumers and manufacturers. What is the proposition for an independent vendor selling on Amazon? To them, the service of selling their merchandise is essentially a monopoly market, they don't get a choice of whether to participate, and Amazon charges high fees to start with and is now demanding ever-higher fees for reasonable search placement.
• metabagel 3y ago
  It proves they are a monopoly and harming consumers. Consumer harm is a keystone of antitrust enforcement.
  • WillPostForFood 3y ago
    It proves they are a monopoly It might show harm, but in no way does prove monopoly.
    • Groxx 3y ago
      While I largely agree: "knowingly made things worse for consumers and suffered no consequences" does seem like meaningful (but far from sufficient) evidence of excessive control over a marketplace. If things were healthy, you'd expect competition to capitalize on that enshittification.
    • metabagel 3y ago
      It does prove monopoly, because it demonstrates the exercise of monopoly power.
• karaterobot 3y ago
  Yeah, this was my reaction too. They run shitty ads and serve shitty search results: fair enough, take your business elsewhere. I'm not sure what the story is. I feel I must be missing something, because it's the FTC raising a stink and not just Vice. Whether it has merit or not, the FTC presumably is not just trying to get clicks. I'll wait until another (better) news source provides additional context before forming an opinion.
  • taeric 3y ago
    I complained on the first round of this that it is rosy glasses of a good internet in the past. Search and ads suck. Period. Always have. I also find it odd that, on the merits of the case, Amazon is getting worse. Is there some corrective action that will reverse that?
  • brucethemoose2 3y ago
    Here lies the issue: > take your business elsewhere You can't necessarily do that. Amazon is a pseudo monopoly. But if the FTC is trying to use that as antitrust evidence against Amazon, it feels like a weak angle. Which is not a good sign given their recent history.
    • richwater 3y ago
      > Amazon is a pseudo monopoly I can google a product and get 9 different online storefronts for almost any item.
      • cratermoon 3y ago
        https://sell.amazon.com/learn/ecommerce-storefront https://sell.amazon.com/learn/ecommerce-storefront Edit: or they are dropshippers using Amazon fulfillment
    • deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
  • cratermoon 3y ago
• tobyjsullivan 3y ago
  Imagine what the exact same FTC would be saying if Amazon exerted control over which ads were displayed based on what converted to more product sales (and thus revenue for Amazon). Advocating for a less equal ads marketplace seems like such a strange position for the FTC to take. Are they simply throwing out every possible accusation and seeing what sticks?
  • metabagel 3y ago
    I don’t follow your reasoning. Amazon stands acccused of “pay to play” market behavior. If you want to participate as a seller in the Amazon monopsony marketplace, you have to pay. That’s the behavior of a monopolist. Edit: changed “monopoly” to “monopsony”
    • tobyjsullivan 3y ago
      Grocery stores sell shelf space, particularly prime positioning, and that’s a practice that predates the internet. Add to that the fact that most websites sell ad space as a primary or secondary revenue generator. Yes, Amazon is a middleman and they take as big a cut as they can. Is that abusing a monopoly or simply the nature of being the most successful marketplace? That’s for the courts to decide, I guess. (Or not since they’ll obviously settle before it goes to decision.)
      • metabagel 3y ago
        It’s exercising monopoly power. Amazon is not only charging sellers for placement, but they deliberately threw a bunch of fake and shitty products up on their marketplace to force sellers to cough up more money. They also require sellers not to sell their product cheaper anywhere else, which I’ve never understood how they can get away with.
      • Tangurena2 3y ago
        I find Amazon's search to be worthless. Frequently, I search for a book with author's name. Frequently, that book does not show up. On more than a few occasions, it would be on the 2nd page of search "results" (most of page 1 are "sponsored" = adverts). Now, I just use Google and that results in the book I'm looking for. On other things, I find Google returning less than useful results when searching for things.
• WalterBright 3y ago
  The case against Microsoft was based on Microsoft giving away a free browser. That never made any antitrust sense - no consumer harm was ever demonstrated. Ironically, today every platform includes a free browser.
  • metabagel 3y ago
    Consumer harm wasn’t originally a requirement for antitrust enforcement. It was added by conservative jurists mostly to make it difficult to successfully bring antitrust cases. And hey, it worked!
    • WalterBright 3y ago
      > It was added by conservative jurists mostly to make it difficult to successfully bring antitrust cases. Other than harm to consumers, what do you say is the harm from a trust? After all, aren't high prices an indicator of a monopoly? > And hey, it worked! And maybe it should. Imagine the hellfire and damnation stemming from having a free browser! I suppose I'll be damned forever for providing a free implementation of D.
      • metabagel 3y ago
        (sigh) I think you're a lost cause, but maybe someone else will read this. Monopolies tend to keep growing until they are broken up. Monopolies don't have to charge high prices to consumers if they can increase their profits at the expense of sellers. In the case of Amazon, sellers may be authors or publishers who get squeezed. They may be small businesses. They may be big businesses. There is additional harm to the consumer from the distorted marketplace which results. You may not be aware, but Microsoft engaged in a lot of monopolistic activity, including preventing OEMs from including the BEOS operating system as a dual boot operation on systems which shipped with Windows. You may also not be aware that Microsoft tried to get Apple to kill their own browser, a.k.a. "knife the baby". Google it.
        • WalterBright 3y ago
• dylan604 3y ago
  If you knowingly participate in scams, hawking junk <anything>, defrauding customers, or any other thing, then yes, that's some shady shit. Does it break any laws? Not a lawyer, but it damn sure breaks the spirit of law (intentionally leaving out "the").
• jayd16 3y ago
  I guess it depends on what counts as junk. It seems like allowing false advertising or outright malicious scams should be an ethical if not legal issue. However, seeing as Amazon calls them defects, it sounds more like they're just non-relevant ads. Sellers might have a case that they were paying for some level of targeting and and getting worse click through rates than advertised.
• foobarian 3y ago
  Wait until you hear what that other company did. They inserted a whole extra ad slot in the search results! Half the organic results are now below the fold. sob
  • steveBK123 3y ago
    I buy a newspaper and half the pages are ads!!!
• sillypuddy 3y ago
  They might just want to generate bad PR for Amazon even if they lose the case legally.
• Eisenstein 3y ago
  The combination of 'it makes it more expensive for the consumer' added with 'sellers are not allowed to sell their products cheaper on other sites even if it is cheaper to sell on those sites' means they are anti-competitive and harming the market. This is the issue.
• s1artibartfast 3y ago
  In other news: Supermarkets put high profit items up front, and inconveniently hide low profit items back.