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The reason this phenomenon exists is because Amazon tried to block generic products from their site by saying the product must feature the seller's brand name.

The reason this phenomenon exists is because Amazon tried to block generic products from their site by saying the product must feature the seller's brand name. Solution: make millions of brand names and write them on the product. It's slightly more annoying and expensive for everyone involved, but it circumvents Amazon's policy.

mystraline 1y ago
Yep, that makes a lot of sense then. But yeah I call the site Scamazon. Even if you think you buy legit, theres a good chance of counterfeit due to SKU mixing. And weirdly enough, in quite a few areas, Scamazon is like 20% more expensive than other retailers. These days, I ask in discord groups who they recommend. At least I can avoid the AI shitfest and get real humans' expertise.
wat10000 1y ago
The root cause is the unending quest for scale. This could be resolved by having a human person with decent judgment evaluate and approve all products before they can be listed. That's how normal retail outfits operate. Everything you find on a Safeway shelf has been authorized by someone at Safeway corporate. That doesn't mean it's good, but it at least means they consciously intend to sell it. But that scales poorly. This person has to have some sort of skin in the game, so you can't just contract it out or automate it. Amazon leadership is making a conscious decision to allow their store to be flooded with shit in order to reduce their costs of curating it. Given how successful they are, I have a hard time arguing they made the wrong choice, but I certainly don't like it. It's the same reason it's hard to impossible to reach customer service at many of these places. Google would much rather lose you as a "customer" than spend the money it takes to have a person available who can get your gmail account unfucked.
Workaccount2 1y ago
There is slightly more nuance than that, the brand had to be trademarked, and the fastest way to get trademark approval is to use an unambiguously bad/random name. It also means that people have no brand recognition, and junk brands just blend in, or if you have to discharge your brand for some reason, nothing is lost.
IncreasePosts 1y ago
Why don't they just make more plausible sounding brand names, especially with the advent of LLMs which can just barf out reasonable sounding ones that you can trust even if you don't speak English, and is almost as easy to do as smashing MIZOUW on the keyboard? Gemini just gave me these as novel brand names for a sleep mask - some are not bad, all are better than random capital letters. Umbra, Somnia, Driftdown, Ocula, Night Plume, Hushcover, Stillpoint, Aetheria

mystraline 1y ago

Yep, that makes a lot of sense then. But yeah I call the site Scamazon. Even if you think you buy legit, theres a good chance of counterfeit due to SKU mixing. And weirdly enough, in quite a few areas, Scamazon is like 20% more expensive than other retailers. These days, I ask in discord groups who they recommend. At least I can avoid the AI shitfest and get real humans' expertise.

wat10000 1y ago

The root cause is the unending quest for scale. This could be resolved by having a human person with decent judgment evaluate and approve all products before they can be listed. That's how normal retail outfits operate. Everything you find on a Safeway shelf has been authorized by someone at Safeway corporate. That doesn't mean it's good, but it at least means they consciously intend to sell it. But that scales poorly. This person has to have some sort of skin in the game, so you can't just contract it out or automate it. Amazon leadership is making a conscious decision to allow their store to be flooded with shit in order to reduce their costs of curating it. Given how successful they are, I have a hard time arguing they made the wrong choice, but I certainly don't like it. It's the same reason it's hard to impossible to reach customer service at many of these places. Google would much rather lose you as a "customer" than spend the money it takes to have a person available who can get your gmail account unfucked.

Workaccount2 1y ago

There is slightly more nuance than that, the brand had to be trademarked, and the fastest way to get trademark approval is to use an unambiguously bad/random name. It also means that people have no brand recognition, and junk brands just blend in, or if you have to discharge your brand for some reason, nothing is lost.

IncreasePosts 1y ago

Why don't they just make more plausible sounding brand names, especially with the advent of LLMs which can just barf out reasonable sounding ones that you can trust even if you don't speak English, and is almost as easy to do as smashing MIZOUW on the keyboard? Gemini just gave me these as novel brand names for a sleep mask - some are not bad, all are better than random capital letters. Umbra, Somnia, Driftdown, Ocula, Night Plume, Hushcover, Stillpoint, Aetheria