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Congress is going to throw the kitchen sink at big tech

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Re: Congress is going to throw the kitchen sink at big tech

#111

Post by jdeibele »

zer00eyz wrote: post #73
frumper wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon claims it doesn't have liability if those Twinkie's cause harm like the grocery store would.

The sale of contaminated beef has happened many many times in my lifetime, leading to massive recalls, even lettuce has seen contamination and outbreaks. The liability has not been on the store, rather the supplier/manufacturer of those products. The local ford dealer wast at fault for your pinto exploding of the tires blowing off your SUV. You didn't get to sue the store that sold you cigarets or round up that gave…

Welcome to the concept of "joint and several liability". Say you were in a phone booth and a car jumped the curb and ran you over but didn't manage to kill you.

Your attorney would sue the motorist but maybe they don't have insurance. Maybe they borrowed the car - the owner would get sued. The city would get sued because the curb was too low. The gas station would get sued because there weren't protective barriers around the phone booth. The phone company would get sued because the phone booth was too close to traffic. The maker of the phone booth would get sued because it wasn't made properly. And probably other things that I can't think of.

Fortunately for gas stations there basically aren't phone booths anymore. But be careful loaning your car or gun to somebody else.

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/j/joint-and-several-liabi...

Re: Congress is going to throw the kitchen sink at big tech

#112

Post by tedunangst »

dannyr wrote: post #67
fhrow4484 wrote: post #4

> Jeff Bezos, this one’s for you. This provision aims at Amazon’s practice of using data it collects from third-party merchants to enhance its own private label offerings. If it passes, the practice would be blatantly illegal. Would it equally apply to physical stores like Safeway, Kroger, Costco's private labels like "Private Selection", "Simple Truth", "Kirkland", ... What makes Amazon different in this regard? Is…

It's the scale! A lot of things that Big Tech is doing is usually fine if you're a company with a small market share.

Good thing there's an exception for mom and pop stores like Walmart.

Re: Congress is going to throw the kitchen sink at big tech

#113

Post by what_ever »

N1H1L wrote: post #84
Cerium wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trader Joe's is the closest to Amazon in this regard. They introduce new products as the name brand, the best sellers are cloned and then replaced with the store brands.

Costco does too - Kirkland is their own brand. Same with Kroger's - Private Reserve

I think Kirkland is just Costco making a bulk deal with one of the manufacturers and slapping Kirkland brand on it.

Re: Congress is going to throw the kitchen sink at big tech

#114

Post by billjings »

fhrow4484 wrote: post #4

> Jeff Bezos, this one’s for you. This provision aims at Amazon’s practice of using data it collects from third-party merchants to enhance its own private label offerings. If it passes, the practice would be blatantly illegal. Would it equally apply to physical stores like Safeway, Kroger, Costco's private labels like "Private Selection", "Simple Truth", "Kirkland", ... What makes Amazon different in this regard? Is…

"What makes Amazon different in this regard? Is Amazon doing it differently?"

Nothing, and they aren't. Except they're maybe the biggest.

The intellectual foundation of this new movement isn't specifically anti big tech. It's anti all kinds of anticompetitive business practices, many of which have had huge negative effects outside of tech. Grocery stores are one of them, but one can point to any area of the economy and find businesses engaging in what is currently standard practice that the new movement is seeking to outlaw, or in many cases just restore the teeth to laws that have been ignored for years, or just so narrowly interpreted that they're meaningless.

Re: Congress is going to throw the kitchen sink at big tech

#115

Post by legitster »

legitster wrote: post #92
legitster wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked for Frito Lay as a salesperson and yes perhaps only 20% - 40% of grocery store inventory is maintained by the store staff. The rest was space that we were allocated to sell our stuff. Stores would pay for the inventory, but we would rebate them for what would not sell as an incentive to make sure we put out products that actually sold. But I would literally come in every day to the larger stores and put prod…

Also, continuing on, grocery stores are a very apt comparison. Foot traffic and purchase behaviors are very heavily tracked. Firstly in an analogue ways - managers are always watching were customers are going/ what they are looking at/etc. The security team at a one co-op bragged that their cameras could read the time on your watch. Secondly, there are all sorts of new tools stores are trying out to automate this. So…

If you want to learn more about some of the platforms out there:

https://www.getblix.com/retail-foot-traffic

https://www.aislelabs.com/products/flow/

https://documentation.meraki.com/MR/Monitoring_and_Reporting...

Re: Congress is going to throw the kitchen sink at big tech

#116

Post by tedunangst »

bogota wrote: post #33
Aissen wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only difference is this: > ‘covered platforms’ (companies that have a half-million monthly U.S. users and more than $600 billion in market cap) There are only 8 companies in the world that match the market cap. Probably 6 if you add "users": Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Facebook, and probably Tencent.

Sounds like this would be easily defeated by spinning amazon out into different companies? Maybe that is a good end result though.

Spinning off AWS, which is pretty independent, might be enough.

Re: Congress is going to throw the kitchen sink at big tech

#117

Post by nerdponx »

Somewhat OT, but I love how this "kitchen sink" idiom has become so warped over the last several years.

As far as I know (native AmE), the original expression was "everything but the kitchen sink", which evokes the idea of taking everything in the kitchen and using it all in a recipe, only stopping short of dismantling the kitchen itself.

Whether through mishearing or laziness, the "everything but the" part has been dropped. I only noticed it in the last few years, but maybe it's been happening for a lot longer than that. So it's now totally the opposite: the only thing in the expression is the kitchen sink, i guess suggesting that there's a bunch of junk in the sink?

But this title is even better. We have abandoned all pretense of caring about the meaning of the expression. In 2021, Chuck Schumer is going to call Mark Zuckerberg in to testify, and he is going to physically hurl a big metal sink at him.

I know that language evolves and stuff, but it's pretty funny to see such a silly corruption of an already-kind-of-silly idiom in a "serious" title.

Re: Congress is going to throw the kitchen sink at big tech

#118

Post by TheCapn »

Jaygles wrote: post #43
fhrow4484 wrote: post #4

> Jeff Bezos, this one’s for you. This provision aims at Amazon’s practice of using data it collects from third-party merchants to enhance its own private label offerings. If it passes, the practice would be blatantly illegal. Would it equally apply to physical stores like Safeway, Kroger, Costco's private labels like "Private Selection", "Simple Truth", "Kirkland", ... What makes Amazon different in this regard? Is…

Another difference between Amazon and physical stores is that Amazon has pagination. If a product ends up on the second or third page, it will likely not be seen by the vast majority of customers. With physical stores, your options are always all right in front of you.

The closest example I've seen used before is the notion that you get to the shelves and go to grab a case of Coca-Cola, but as you reach to grab it a voice beams at you from your side saying "Wouldn't you prefer instead? Its $1 cheaper!"

Now, which kind of works as an analog to these companies prioritizing their products on the search algorithm, but I don't really think applies to the practice of gathering such data.

Re: Congress is going to throw the kitchen sink at big tech

#119

Post by dantheman »

billjings wrote: post #114
fhrow4484 wrote: post #4

> Jeff Bezos, this one’s for you. This provision aims at Amazon’s practice of using data it collects from third-party merchants to enhance its own private label offerings. If it passes, the practice would be blatantly illegal. Would it equally apply to physical stores like Safeway, Kroger, Costco's private labels like "Private Selection", "Simple Truth", "Kirkland", ... What makes Amazon different in this regard? Is…

"What makes Amazon different in this regard? Is Amazon doing it differently?" Nothing, and they aren't. Except they're maybe the biggest. The intellectual foundation of this new movement isn't specifically anti big tech. It's anti all kinds of anticompetitive business practices, many of which have had huge negative effects outside of tech. Grocery stores are one of them, but one can point to any area of the economy a…

These aren't anti-competitive, they increase competition. The help the consumer get better prices.
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