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The Amazon tax

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Re: The Amazon tax

#91

Post by apercu »

forestrywat wrote: post #14
simonebrunozzi wrote: post #2

This is sad, but true. And true for other giant companies, not just for Amazon - Meta/Facebook is another good example. What can we do about it? Not much. This is something that happens when in a "free" market you have a near monopoly, and the antitrust is too weak to even try to fine these companies. One might think that there's a "conspiracy" of a few powerful people / billionaires, but I don't believe it it the ca…

It's eminently solvable. Make the practice illegal. Or break up big companies. Or you progressively tax on revenue, so it becomes increasingly inefficient to a mega corporation. Or require companies above a certain size become increasingly worker owned. Amazon doesn't need to be so big and in so many industries. My pharmacy doesn't also need to be a movie studio. My cloud provider doesn't also need to be a self publi…

Yea, we really only need to enforce the laws and regulations on the books.

Re: The Amazon tax

#92

Post by charlie-83 »

bartek_gdn wrote: post #62

"If you’re searching for an air fryer, Amazon already knows quite a bit. They know the best-reviewed, least-returned, best-priced model. The only purpose of the ads is to get you to pick an air fryer that isn’t that one (or for the best air fryer, to keep you on track to buy the one you wanted in the first place)" I don't get this part. Aren't those things unrelated? The aim of ads is to convince to buy regardless of…

Yes. Technically, there are situations where the air fryer which is best for you and the air fryer that makes Amazon the most money are the same. However, with the number of airfryers on Amazon it seems safe to assume this is a rare coincidence.

Re: The Amazon tax

#93

Post by jordanpg »

automatic6131 wrote: post #5

Amazon is almost completely unusable for search at this stage. I think perhaps 3/4 of the results are sponsored ads. Three in four. Trying to find a good deal on a product, even if you know precisely what you're looking for, is a real headache of trying to dodge the advertisement minefield.

Also, even after you find precisely what you're looking for, there is no guarantee that what arrives will not be a cheap imitation or reduced-quality version of what you purchased.

Re: The Amazon tax

#94

Post by bko »

astonex wrote: post #79
bko wrote: post #71

> The only purpose of the ads is to get you to pick an air fryer that isn’t that one (or for the best air fryer, to keep you on track to buy the one you wanted in the first place). The ads make the search worse. "The best" is not a static product. If Amazon had no way for vendors to showcase their product, the best would be a stale product that accumulated decades of reviews. Maybe it's still the best , maybe not. Bu…

Isn't that what independent reviews are generally useful for? To try all the options and share feedback for someone to make their own choice.

How do you get someone to review your product if you're one of N? Paid reviews? Not independent anymore. Paying money to get some exposure and sales is the best of all bad options.

Re: The Amazon tax

#95

Post by frereubu »

I'm in the UK, and I've found that pretty much anything I can get on Amazon I can also get at John Lewis. It's probably more expensive - I'm in the lucky situation that I'm not particularly price-sensitive - but I much prefer the feeling of buying from JL. Very occasionally I'll buy something from Amazon like photo paper or some small gizmo that's difficult to find elsewhere. The one kind of physical shop I really miss is the kind of place where you can buy one screw, nail or picture hook etc. I hate the number of 10-packs of things I get where I only need one. (Luckily I live in a block of flats where there's a good community, so often I get those for free just by asking on our Signal group!)

Re: The Amazon tax

#96

Post by troupo »

mohamedkoubaa wrote: post #66
troupo wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> other online platforms, including Etsy. For the past decade Etsy has been a rebranded Temu/Ali Express. There's almost nothing local, or original, or worth anything on it. All large online shopping services converge onto the same Amazon model.

There are people who rent time at my local makerspace who sell on Etsy. Maybe the issue is that Etsy doesn't make it easy to find them?

This, too. Amazonification/Enshittification

Re: The Amazon tax

#97

Post by kccqzy »

yuck39 wrote: post #56
automatic6131 wrote: post #5

Amazon is almost completely unusable for search at this stage. I think perhaps 3/4 of the results are sponsored ads. Three in four. Trying to find a good deal on a product, even if you know precisely what you're looking for, is a real headache of trying to dodge the advertisement minefield.

I imagine most readers haven't tried tiktok shop (or similar Chinese consumer shopping platforms). ByteDance has reimplemented their now infamous video suggestion algorithm for shopping and it is _very_ effective. Once the infrastructure and logistics of the Chinese eCommerce platforms improve in the US, it will be so much better that I imagine that Bezos only recourse will be to have congress ban them (a la the Chin…

I hate videos when shopping. Videos are not skimmable. I don’t want to watch and listen to a salesperson sell the product to me. I want at least a modicum of individual agency and choice. I already skip all product videos on Amazon. I hate the product images too as they have become too salesy and they sometimes no longer even show important facts printed on the packaging itself (like the ingredient list or Nutrition Facts / Supplement Facts).

Re: The Amazon tax

#98

Post by robotresearcher »

bko wrote: post #71

> The only purpose of the ads is to get you to pick an air fryer that isn’t that one (or for the best air fryer, to keep you on track to buy the one you wanted in the first place). The ads make the search worse. "The best" is not a static product. If Amazon had no way for vendors to showcase their product, the best would be a stale product that accumulated decades of reviews. Maybe it's still the best , maybe not. Bu…

> Would you want to live in a world in which you CAN'T bump your placement?

Yes. I’d rather compete on quality and customer satisfaction than who can burn the most money on ads.

By making it almost necessary to buy their ads, Amazon is harming my margin.

I don’t hate all advertising, but I do hate this form, where it’s perverting search.

Re: The Amazon tax

#99

Post by devin »

snarf21 wrote: post #40
abixb wrote: post #29

I've slowly shifted all my consumer purchases from Amazon to local shops and other online platforms, including Etsy. I'm now seriously contemplating deleting my Amazon account of 15 years in one whole swoop. The quality degradation is painfully apparent, and the value add of Amazon in my life has been steadily declining for a while. I've also had terrible experiences with AWS, but that's a different story. Amazon's o…

Generally curious but a lot of the stuff I find on Etsy is the same crap from Alibaba/Amazon .. What are you buying from Etsy that isn't this?

Etsy suffers from the same review astroturfing and product category crowding that Amazon does, but the product categories tend to be narrower so it's never quite as bad.

Etsy is certainly _bad_, but getting to Amazon levels is a whole other animal.

Re: The Amazon tax

#100

Post by abeppu »

siliconc0w wrote: post #61

I'm hoping AI will disintermediate most retail and we'll finally get an aggregator that isn't going to add a tax on both sides of the market. "Buy me the best Air Fryer" -> finds the best given my preferences and constraints and directly purchases it from the cheapest distributor

Why do you expect an AI developed in the same economic system would optimize for your preferences rather than their revenue? I think this only works if people can run, fine-tune and update their own models -- otherwise the giant AI vendors have every incentive to nudge you towards whichever retailer is bidding most on your Sponsored Responses, right? I think the only difference will be that instead of advertising to target a query, they'll eventually need to target a vector and its neighborhood, and there will be some greater opacity facing advertisers trying to match "middle-income US users shopping for airfryers who have product height limits posed by kitchen upper cabinets" or something.
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