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Amazon execs intentionally made site shittier to rake in more profit – Lawsuit

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101–110 of 151 posts

Re: Amazon execs intentionally made site shittier to rake in more profit – Lawsuit

#101

Earlier 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.

Parent's point is that maybe it should be.

Re: Amazon execs intentionally made site shittier to rake in more profit – Lawsuit

#102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is in interesting because Amazon's "Leadership Principles" a are well-known and well-publicized part of Amazon's culture. Number 1 on that list is of course "Customer Obsession", which states: >"Customer Obsession: Leaders start with the customer and work backwards. They work vigorously to earn and keep customer trust. Although leaders pay attention to competitors, they obsess over customers."[1] It's probably…

It really isn't a meme. It's taken pretty seriously at the company, often gets cited in meetings as a reason to do (or not do) something, and is almost always referenced in large strategic projects/planning docs. It's even sometimes included in criteria for determining performance/promotions. The problem lies in the fact that there's no one single definition of who "the customer" is, and no one single definition of w…

Someone who actually knows what they're talking about.

Even with the Customer Obsession LP, it's not too hard of a stretch to arrive at a conclusion where more ads are shown. Better are worse are, in many aspects, quite subjective in these areas.

Re: Amazon execs intentionally made site shittier to rake in more profit – Lawsuit

#103

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. "…

It amazes me how much advertising is literally fraud. Aren’t there authorities that are meant to police this kind of thing?

Re: Amazon execs intentionally made site shittier to rake in more profit – Lawsuit

#104
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is largely true, of course, but also a complete non sequitur? There have been free and donation based things for a long time. Shareware was very awesome, to me. But to pretend Microsoft was not engaging in questionable practices feels very bullshit heavy. And an equivalency game here is very discrediting to both arguments.

What is "questionable" about it?

Questionable about their practices? I remember the effort it used to take to get netscape to be the browser your machine used. It was comically difficult to do, at times. So much so that I was never comfortable going for the paid Opera, as I just didn't think it would stick to my machine.

It is frustrating, because I think it is largely fair to say that netscape was the worse option at the time. Navigator was largely trash. That said, jscript and activex controls were both obvious land grabs on the internet. I'm... not really sure how most any part of what all Microsoft did back then can be defended.

Re: Amazon execs intentionally made site shittier to rake in more profit – Lawsuit

#105
post #21

Am 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…

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…

> take your business elsewhere

There is no where else. Not meaningfully. No, whoever you were about to mention, not them either. Hence, monopoly.

Re: Amazon execs intentionally made site shittier to rake in more profit – Lawsuit

#107
post #21

Am 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…

In other news: Supermarkets put high profit items up front, and inconveniently hide low profit items back.

Re: Amazon execs intentionally made site shittier to rake in more profit – Lawsuit

#108

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

Vice Makes Their Site Shittier to Rake in More Profit!

Re: Amazon execs intentionally made site shittier to rake in more profit – Lawsuit

#109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

But were you using Netscape or Netscape Gold??

Re: Amazon execs intentionally made site shittier to rake in more profit – Lawsuit

#110
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The case against Microsoft was that they used revenue from other markets to offer a browser for free so that they could prevent a competition in the browser space... There is an argument that the browser is a feature, not a product. But that is not the case for back then.

It wasn't so much offering a browser for free as compelling PC vendors to not bundle their competitor's browser. You might of course argue that a PC should have zero browsers bundled...

Microsoft also bundled a text editor (EDLIN). It didn't impair anybody else from writing and selling editors. They also included a programming language (BASIC) for free. Didn't impair other language creators.
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