Friendly Social Browser is pretty good for making using Third-Party webapps rather than App Store Apps as seamless as possible
Probably meant this to go somewhere else?
Wat?
Amazon execs intentionally made site shittier to rake in more profit – Lawsuit
81–90 of 151 posts
Re: Amazon execs intentionally made site shittier to rake in more profit – Lawsuit
#82The actual FTC announcement so you don't have to visit Vice: https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2023/09/...
What’s wrong with Vice? The website loads fast and I don’t see any paywalls
Re: Amazon execs intentionally made site shittier to rake in more profit – Lawsuit
#83Intentionally making sites shit to boost profit is pretty routine.
And not just internet rags that bury a tiny slither of content under dozens of ads and popups.
The classic one is insurance sites. It's an open secret that they make the claims process as difficult as possible. The ideal insurance claim platform for an insurer is basically to register all zeros on Lighthouse, with a session timeout 50% less than the observed time taken to complete the process (which of course has umpteen pages with no progress indicator and a super slow page load).
Similar with government websites related to welfare and services. The harder it is to use, the more people will give up, and the greater the cost savings.
Re: Amazon execs intentionally made site shittier to rake in more profit – Lawsuit
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
The correct solution is a no ads marketplace. Where search results return what the user searched for and literally no one (not even Amazon) gets to pay to put their products at the top of the results.
Maybe that’s your preference, but it certainly isn’t against the law to offer advertising.
Yet
Re: Amazon execs intentionally made site shittier to rake in more profit – Lawsuit
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
The correct solution is a no ads marketplace. Where search results return what the user searched for and literally no one (not even Amazon) gets to pay to put their products at the top of the results.
> what the user searched for
How do you define that? Do you exact match on query text? How products that convert better? Have lower return rates? Is a 1 start product that matches the query exactly better than a 5 start that mostly matches? Etc, etc.
Re: Amazon execs intentionally made site shittier to rake in more profit – Lawsuit
#86Intentionally making sites shit to boost profit is pretty routine. And not just internet rags that bury a tiny slither of content under dozens of ads and popups. The classic one is insurance sites. It's an open secret that they make the claims process as difficult as possible. The ideal insurance claim platform for an insurer is basically to register all zeros on Lighthouse, with a session timeout 50% less than the o…
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Re: Amazon execs intentionally made site shittier to rake in more profit – Lawsuit
#87Am 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 can't be a violation of any law or ethical rules... Does anyone seriously think serving only good and relevant ads is an ethical obligation. Can't retailers accept ads from anyone without vetting for quality control. The only thing I can think of here is FTC is…
They might just want to generate bad PR for Amazon even if they lose the case legally.
Re: Amazon execs intentionally made site shittier to rake in more profit – Lawsuit
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
(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…
> Monopolies tend to keep growing until they are broken up
No, they don't. Left alone, they grow until they collapse from internal bureaucracy and inefficiency.
> Monopolies don't have to charge high prices to consumers if they can increase their profits at the expense of sellers.
Microsoft gave away the browser for free.
> In the case of Amazon, sellers may be authors or publishers who get squeezed.
Resellers normally buy at wholesale prices and sell at retail. The same percentage as Amazon takes for providing retail services. As a small business (Datalight and Zortech days) I am well aware of this.
> You may not be aware
I am aware. Microsoft failed to stop Linux, and failed at stopping Apple.
Re: Amazon execs intentionally made site shittier to rake in more profit – Lawsuit
#89Am 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 can't be a violation of any law or ethical rules... Does anyone seriously think serving only good and relevant ads is an ethical obligation. Can't retailers accept ads from anyone without vetting for quality control. The only thing I can think of here is FTC is…
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.
Re: Amazon execs intentionally made site shittier to rake in more profit – Lawsuit
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Classifying what Microsoft got in trouble for as merely "giving away a free browser" shows that their PR campaign was a resounding success. It wasn't just having IE be distributed with the operating system, or even having it be the default (as the EU later got upset about). They would have been perfectly fine in this position had they not attempted to use it anti-competitively: coercing OEMs to not include competing…
I installed and used Netflix for free in those days. Nobody paid a penalty for that.
I later switched to Explorer, not because it was free, but because Explorer crashed far less often than Netscape. Netscape crashed constantly. Only a desperate person would continue to use it.