91–100 of 151 posts
Getting rid of the long tail of defects takes a lot more effort than getting rid of the most obvious cases.
Intentionally 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…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, this was my reaction too. They run shitty ads and serve shitty search results: fair enough, take your business elsewhere. I'm not sure what the story is. I feel I must be missing something, because it's the FTC raising a stink and not just Vice. Whether it has merit or not, the FTC presumably is not just trying to get clicks. I'll wait until another (better) news source provides additional context before formin…
Here lies the issue: > take your business elsewhere You can't necessarily do that. Amazon is a pseudo monopoly. But if the FTC is trying to use that as antitrust evidence against Amazon, it feels like a weak angle. Which is not a good sign given their recent history.
I can google a product and get 9 different online storefronts for almost any item.
The 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
few want to explain 'I Went to a Gay Rodeo, and Now I Want to Bone Cowboys' to co-workers.
[0]: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2013/09/quiz-real-vice-headl...
The 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
Earlier quoted context omitted.
(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 normal…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, this was my reaction too. They run shitty ads and serve shitty search results: fair enough, take your business elsewhere. I'm not sure what the story is. I feel I must be missing something, because it's the FTC raising a stink and not just Vice. Whether it has merit or not, the FTC presumably is not just trying to get clicks. I'll wait until another (better) news source provides additional context before formin…
Here lies the issue: > take your business elsewhere You can't necessarily do that. Amazon is a pseudo monopoly. But if the FTC is trying to use that as antitrust evidence against Amazon, it feels like a weak angle. Which is not a good sign given their recent history.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
“Made site shittier to boost profit” describes nearly 100% of online advertising
I don't know what has happened to YouTube ads in the last year or so, but now that YT is cracking down on adblockers, I'm seeing a lot of them. One thing I'm noticing is that most ads are absolutely garbage. It was one thing to see the 'professional' ads for T-Mobile internet and makeup and whatnot, but I'm seeing a ton of clickbait-style ads for things that are very clearly get-rich-quick and/or straight-up scams. "…
Not only is it full of lies, I also love in socal, why the hell would I need an uber heater?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
(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 normal…
Eventually, maybe. But it usually takes far too long and if we speed up the process (and smooth out a boom/bust cycle at the same time) then that seems like a win to me.
If we agree that smaller companies are more efficient then we should actively bias the economy towards them rather than allowing big companies to outcompete them purely because they have market power.
I'd be curious if anyone can explain why the FTC doesn't go after Amazon for using its dominance and profits in AWS to massively subsidize its Amazon.com retail offerings (i.e. movie studio/healthcare/grocery/delivery) and undercut its competition in those spaces. It's seem to have stopped since ZIRP has ended and Bezos has moved on but for awhile the AWS profits seem like they were feeding an ever growing conglomera…
The appetite for this kind of action hasn’t exactly been great the last few decades, and big swings can lead to big misses (like Activision-Microsoft)