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Amazon sellers ‘hijack’ listings to sell face masks despite new rules

wired.com

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Re: Amazon sellers ‘hijack’ listings to sell face masks despite new rules

#31

Post by maxerickson »

liability wrote: post #22
maxerickson wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the difference between a platform that censors and a platform that sorts in a useful way?

Ask Amazon; they're the ones who said they'd remove these listings, not derank them. I assume that means they understand the difference.

That's not the question. The question is if you object to a platform having a listing standard, can you at the same time not object to them having a ranking standard.

Because sophistry aside, being ranked 15,000 for "column 298" reasons is the same thing as being removed. And then being ranked by "column 298" is the same thing as being ranked by orangeness or whatever, it's a subjective score.

Re: Amazon sellers ‘hijack’ listings to sell face masks despite new rules

#32

Post by heelix »

TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #17
fortran77 wrote: post #14

This guy got a "hand sanitizer" copper disk (??) listed as an "Amazon's choice!" https://www.amazon.com/Sani-Disc-GK95D-Cleaner-Wherever-Prob...

Many metals are contact-antimicrobial See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antimicrobial_properties_of_co... -: Copper and its alloys (brasses, bronzes, cupronickel, copper-nickel-zinc, and others) are natural antimicrobial materials. And https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oligodynamic_effect -: The oligodynamic effect (from Greek oligos "few", and dynamis "force") is a biocidal effect of metals, especially heavy metals, tha…

I believe copper will kill off this one in about 4-5 hours, compared to the 10+ hours of other materials. Not super useful as a hand sanitizer, but nice to know a copper door handle has a nice longer term self cleaning over shorter time frames.

Re: Amazon sellers ‘hijack’ listings to sell face masks despite new rules

#33

Post by FireBeyond »

gentleman11 wrote: post #27
sneak wrote: post #2

> We use sophisticated tools, including machine learning, to combat them, and we are making it increasingly difficult for bad actors to hide. So sophisticated that some reporter for wired could find them in the top few hundred bestsellers in a few minutes with a quick visual scan. Let’s be clear: Amazon should not be censoring legal items on their platform. However, their efforts at stopping it are purely a PR matter…

It seems to be that a single intern whose only job was to search for prohibited items and unlist them could do better Really, just use Mechanical Turk. Their inability to handle this is obviously showing they intend to not fix it

For exactly the same reason as you can't report an item as counterfeit on return. They have no intention of fixing.

Re: Amazon sellers ‘hijack’ listings to sell face masks despite new rules

#34

Post by triceratops »

olalonde wrote: post #13

If only we could get rid of this widespread notion that price gouging is bad/evil...

It absolutely is evil. Buying out local inventory and selling it for a profit to the same people who would have bought it anyway isn't doing anyone a service. It's not "adding liquidity" to the market. It's not bringing more supply. It's adding a pointless middleman to a transaction that would have happened anyway - it's an inefficiency.

It would be a different matter if these people were actually sourcing masks from places where they are plentiful, and sending them on to places where they are not. Right now, masks are in short supply everywhere.

Re: Amazon sellers ‘hijack’ listings to sell face masks despite new rules

#35

Post by epr »

olalonde wrote: post #13

If only we could get rid of this widespread notion that price gouging is bad/evil...

It is truly painful to see how little people seem to understand or appreciate the living organism that is human action in the aggregate. Large surges in demand which are inevitably met with price increases are signals to other parts of the organism to send goods where they are needed. Higher prices encourage a balance of needs and responsible budgeting so individual cells don't simply take all that is available to the detriment of the organism as a whole.

Re: Amazon sellers ‘hijack’ listings to sell face masks despite new rules

#36

Post by tryptophan »

triceratops wrote: post #34
olalonde wrote: post #13

If only we could get rid of this widespread notion that price gouging is bad/evil...

It absolutely is evil. Buying out local inventory and selling it for a profit to the same people who would have bought it anyway isn't doing anyone a service. It's not "adding liquidity" to the market. It's not bringing more supply. It's adding a pointless middleman to a transaction that would have happened anyway - it's an inefficiency. It would be a different matter if these people were actually sourcing masks from…

Theoretically, its the stores that should be raising the pricing immediately when panics like this happen.

It would dissuade people from buying more than they need, possibly in hopes of reselling, as the prices would already be elevated.

Re: Amazon sellers ‘hijack’ listings to sell face masks despite new rules

#37

Post by epr »

triceratops wrote: post #34
olalonde wrote: post #13

If only we could get rid of this widespread notion that price gouging is bad/evil...

It absolutely is evil. Buying out local inventory and selling it for a profit to the same people who would have bought it anyway isn't doing anyone a service. It's not "adding liquidity" to the market. It's not bringing more supply. It's adding a pointless middleman to a transaction that would have happened anyway - it's an inefficiency. It would be a different matter if these people were actually sourcing masks from…

Regardless of if they make a profit, they saw a discrepancy between current prices and what they considered more accurate prices and to the extent they made a profit they were correct. There is still the huge benefit that now these masks will be purchased in more reasonable quantities by customers, ensuring more people get the masks they need.

Re: Amazon sellers ‘hijack’ listings to sell face masks despite new rules

#38

Post by olalonde »

triceratops wrote: post #34
olalonde wrote: post #13

If only we could get rid of this widespread notion that price gouging is bad/evil...

It absolutely is evil. Buying out local inventory and selling it for a profit to the same people who would have bought it anyway isn't doing anyone a service. It's not "adding liquidity" to the market. It's not bringing more supply. It's adding a pointless middleman to a transaction that would have happened anyway - it's an inefficiency. It would be a different matter if these people were actually sourcing masks from…

I would perhaps grant you "evil", but "bad", definitely not. This is one of those rare things economists seem to agree on. [0] The scenario you described would be unlikely if price gouging was legal/encouraged as the extra profit would largely be captured higher up in the chain (e.g. by the production factories). This would incentivize the re-purposing of factories to manufacture the high demand products, discourage hoarding, etc.

[0] https://www.econlib.org/archives/2017/09/a_poll_of_econo.htm...

Re: Amazon sellers ‘hijack’ listings to sell face masks despite new rules

#39

Post by sneak »

xwdv wrote: post #8

Why don’t people just fire up their own domain drop in an e-commerce store and sell these face masks while answering to no one? It should be fairly easy for such a site to go viral given the pent up demand.

What is “just fire up” for you and I is an insurmountable hurdle for most people who use computers, either due to skills or ignorance, and is one of the main reasons that people use hosted, censorship platforms as default.

Re: Amazon sellers ‘hijack’ listings to sell face masks despite new rules

#40

Post by wtallis »

epr wrote: post #35
olalonde wrote: post #13

If only we could get rid of this widespread notion that price gouging is bad/evil...

It is truly painful to see how little people seem to understand or appreciate the living organism that is human action in the aggregate. Large surges in demand which are inevitably met with price increases are signals to other parts of the organism to send goods where they are needed. Higher prices encourage a balance of needs and responsible budgeting so individual cells don't simply take all that is available to th…

> Higher prices encourage a balance of needs and responsible budgeting so individual cells don't simply take all that is available to the detriment of the organism as a whole.

Aren't you making a fairly unreasonable assumption that need is also accompanied by ability to pay elevated prices?

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