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Jeff Bezos can’t promise Amazon employees don’t access independent seller data

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Re: Jeff Bezos can’t promise Amazon employees don’t access independent seller data

#241

Post by sumedh »

newleaf wrote: post #178
spaced-out wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I would hope that anyone entering in to a market that Amazon, or any big player, is in would already be aware of their competition. Who isn't aware of it though? Every major retailer has their own store brand, and it's been like that since before any of us were born. At least Amazon clearly marks their brand, unlike some companies create brands like "Open Nature" which is clearly meant to disguise their origin.

I don’t really have a problem with this (as you mention, stores have had their own brands forever), but you may be interested to know that not all Amazon brands are clearly marked and there are a lot of them: https://qz.com/1039381/amazon-owns-a-whole-collection-of-sec...

Oh wow, that is just evil.

Re: Jeff Bezos can’t promise Amazon employees don’t access independent seller data

#242

Post by sumedh »

Grimm1 wrote: post #80
jjoonathan wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your mother caught you sneaking a cookie from the cookie jar with chocolate and crumbs stuck to your face and a quarter cookie cupped in your palm, would you expect to get away by saying "well I can't prove that I didn't sneak a cookie..."? Given the mountains of anecdata on this subject all pointing to Amazon openly and intentionally mining third party sales data, it seems overwhelmingly more likely that Bezos do…

That's way too simplistic since Amazon is not one person and not every person has the same morals or ethics in the company. I see this a lot -- personifying a company that is. It's not a good mental abstraction for making arguments about companies.

> I see this a lot -- personifying a company that is.

Corporations are people, my friend - Mitt Romney.

Re: Jeff Bezos can’t promise Amazon employees don’t access independent seller data

#243

Post by criddell »

tuna-piano wrote: post #14

First of all, people like to complain about Amazon owned brands. But this is just retailing 101, nothing new here. Walk around a Costco and try and find a non Costco branded product in a variety of categories. People seem to love Costco's Kirkland brand and (personally) I also enjoy the AmazonBasics brand. Why have I never heard a peep about Costco? You can make an argument that Amazon's market power has enabled it t…

Kindle definitely became the most popular ereader through a type of market power. The difference is that Amazon didn't win that market power, they were gifted it by publishers that insisted on DRM that would lock users into the Amazon ecosystem.

Re: Jeff Bezos can’t promise Amazon employees don’t access independent seller data

#244

Post by cryptica »

wiredone wrote: post #100
ashtonkem wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Companies regularly use this trick to get away with crimes. They might explicitly forbid something illegal, not setup the actual guard rails that would prevent it, and then give employees every single possible incentive to break the rules. The moment they're caught they can act shocked, shocked, to discover that gambling was going on in this establishment, and then throw the line level workers under the bus. This is…

I know of many ex amazon employee anecdotes where people were “taken in the night” (didn’t have a job in the morning), and had their credentials and their teams credentials rotated due to a customer or seller data access overstep. As with most conspiracies the facts don’t add up super well in this case for Amazon - their whole company is based on trust. The cost of losing it would be huge, so they’d be super driven t…

This is a poor argument. Just because they get punished sometimes, doesn't mean it's the norm. Even if Jeff Bezos was a perfectly decent, well-meaning guy, intention is not enough.

If a person keeps stealing from other people, do we just slap them with a fine each time they get caught and let them continue operating in society? No! They go to jail! We make sure they can't continue the crime! Because otherwise, the crime can become highly profitable; allowing any entity to profit from crime is simply incompatible with being a participant in a civilized society - If you let one entity get away with it repeatedly, soon enough, it becomes a viable business model and everyone will be doing it and society will implode.

If he and his shareholders are unwilling or unable to personally take responsibility for every single transgression committed by Amazon, then this company is unfit to exist within our society.

I think that corporate personhood is the biggest problem of our time and is a misnomer because not only do corporations have all the rights that people have, they actually have more rights! I don't have the right to influence politicians in Washington! I don't have the right to consistently get away with crimes with only a fine! I don't have the right to evade taxes by claiming that I live in a different country than where I actually live!

Re: Jeff Bezos can’t promise Amazon employees don’t access independent seller data

#245

Post by Lio »

KptMarchewa wrote: post #235
Lio wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the UK they would have to put the person on “gardening leave”. Firing in this way when someone’s done nothing wrong would be constructive dismissal and prohibited by law. The fact that Amazon treats their resigning employees in this way doesn’t increase my trust in them. It actually just makes them look viscous and petty.

What's the difference between this and gardening leave? Does Amazon not pay for those two weeks or what?

Apart from whether Amazon are paying the two weeks notice that they morally owe, one obvious difference would be if your next employer asks have you ever been terminated from a previous position.

Who would want to be placed in the position of saying yes I was fired because I was suspected of being a security risk?

Re: Jeff Bezos can’t promise Amazon employees don’t access independent seller data

#246

Post by Aeolun »

run414 wrote: post #145
wiredone wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know of many ex amazon employee anecdotes where people were “taken in the night” (didn’t have a job in the morning), and had their credentials and their teams credentials rotated due to a customer or seller data access overstep. As with most conspiracies the facts don’t add up super well in this case for Amazon - their whole company is based on trust. The cost of losing it would be huge, so they’d be super driven t…

When I worked at Amazon, I personally knew someone who put in their two-weeks notice, and the next day they found out they were fired when their badge didn't work. From anecdotes I've heard, this happens if Amazon suspects a person is leaving to join a competitor. Amazon is very serious about protecting their data.

They don’t think someone would have taken the data before handing in their notice?

Feels a bit silly to me.

Re: Jeff Bezos can’t promise Amazon employees don’t access independent seller data

#247

Post by Aeolun »

Lio wrote: post #245
KptMarchewa wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the difference between this and gardening leave? Does Amazon not pay for those two weeks or what?

Apart from whether Amazon are paying the two weeks notice that they morally owe, one obvious difference would be if your next employer asks have you ever been terminated from a previous position. Who would want to be placed in the position of saying yes I was fired because I was suspected of being a security risk?

You can just say that you were terminated because your manager at Amazon was insecure and didn’t trust you to not fuck things up?

Re: Jeff Bezos can’t promise Amazon employees don’t access independent seller data

#248

Post by shalmanese »

ashtonkem wrote: post #83
granzymes wrote: post #48

"Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos said Wednesday he can't guarantee employees have never used sales data from individual third-party sellers to develop the company's own products" There's no way he could make that guarantee. How can you prove a negative? The best Amazon can do is have policies, logs and access controls and punish employees if they break those policies. And Bezos committed to doing that.

Companies regularly use this trick to get away with crimes. They might explicitly forbid something illegal, not setup the actual guard rails that would prevent it, and then give employees every single possible incentive to break the rules. The moment they're caught they can act shocked, shocked, to discover that gambling was going on in this establishment, and then throw the line level workers under the bus. This is…

That's not what Wells Fargo did given that it was a massively net unprofitable venture. A tiny minority of the new accounts opened were fee paying ones, the vast majority were fraudulent, free accounts opened so employees could collect bonuses.

It's amazing to me that a fraud perpetrated upon Wells Fargo by its own employees is spun as an act of malice by WF itself.

Re: Jeff Bezos can’t promise Amazon employees don’t access independent seller data

#249

Post by francisofascii »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #233
alasdair_ wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“ their whole company is based on trust. The cost of losing it would be huge, so they’d be super driven to stamp it out.” This was the exact argument put forth by defenders of Goldman Sachs when it was alleged they were screwing over their own customers in the financial crisis.

On the other hand, now people don't trust them and their stock is below where it was in 2007, compared to the market index which is at more than double that.

All bank stocks are down right now. When comparing Goldman, it would be better to use a bank index ETF fund like XLF rather than the overall market.

Re: Jeff Bezos can’t promise Amazon employees don’t access independent seller data

#250

Post by watwut »

wiredone wrote: post #100
ashtonkem wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Companies regularly use this trick to get away with crimes. They might explicitly forbid something illegal, not setup the actual guard rails that would prevent it, and then give employees every single possible incentive to break the rules. The moment they're caught they can act shocked, shocked, to discover that gambling was going on in this establishment, and then throw the line level workers under the bus. This is…

I know of many ex amazon employee anecdotes where people were “taken in the night” (didn’t have a job in the morning), and had their credentials and their teams credentials rotated due to a customer or seller data access overstep. As with most conspiracies the facts don’t add up super well in this case for Amazon - their whole company is based on trust. The cost of losing it would be huge, so they’d be super driven t…

I mean, if you know many amazon employees who overstepped seller data access, then amazon really should do something to prevent seller data access.
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