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The Amazon tax

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Re: The Amazon tax

#381

Post by wafflemaker »

znort_ wrote: post #349
delegate wrote: post #224

This has been true for years on Amazon and is true for most big services now. Over time the concept of search has mutated from 'locate the exact item I'm looking for' to 'show me a list of semantic search results'. Somehow nobody noticed. Oh and of course those are not random results - you can literally feel how the platform is trying to nudge you into buying what IT wants, not what you wanted. The search is just pur…

> We're back to pre-google, but it's a lot worse now a lot is worse now, but not shopping. on amazon some very specific items may be hard to find, and the search will throw a lot of crap at you, but you're still free to refine, compare and explore. finding exactly what you need and making an informed purchase has never been easier, and you get next day delivery (most of the time) plus exceptional return/refund policy…

>ofc long gone are the times where you could walk into a shop and talk to someone who actually had a clue about what they were selling and most likely was even an expert on the matter. that isn't coming back but that happened long before amazon.

Dude, nearly everytime I'm at a shop that's what happens. Not all are top top experts, but generally they have a very good idea about their subject and perform their jobs as if they liked them.

But that's Norway, not everyone is so lucky to live here.

Re: The Amazon tax

#382

Post by IAmBroom »

WarmWash wrote: post #76

Really Amazon just has to overhaul their ratings system. That ads are fine, it's not difficult to see what is labeled "sponsored". What isn't fine is the hardcore gamification of reviews. If reviews are fixed and you want to pay to advertise your 2-star hand mixer? Sure, but you are probably just paying to show off that you suck.

My favorite is when I leave a one/two star review, and the (always Chinese) merchant writes me, offering anywhere from $50 to a full refund if I change my review to 5 stars.

I do. I like money. Amazon doesn't seem to care when I report them.

And once the money clears my account, I change the review back. I have one on my desktop right now, awaiting a $50 gift card. I mean, I still care about people reading the reviews. They aren't completely immoral liars, like the company writing me.

Re: The Amazon tax

#383

Post by yndoendo »

You have to pay me to engage with Amazon.

They have become so big that they harm the buying power of the consumer and the selling power of the producer.

I know this first hand. Company had to give away 1-2 million in free engineering labor for the opportunity to obtain their business.

Have not bought anything from them in over 10 years and never will again.

Re: The Amazon tax

#384

Post by its_ethan »

dasil003 wrote: post #320
its_ethan wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You raise a very good counter to what feels like the main thrust of the guys article. It put to words something that felt "off" to me while reading it, that there was an assumption made that was never stated and was also incorrect - so thanks for putting that to words. He seems to assume that there is 1 air fryer that everyone on Earth should be getting, and all others are strictly inferior. There are probably no pro…

I don't think that nuance changes the big picture which is that Amazon has a conflict of interest between showing you the best product that you want, and showing you the product that the seller is most willing to pay to advertise. Quibbling over nuance just gives air cover to this fundamentally extractive rent seeking behavior. We really need stronger anti-trust action in the tech era given the extremely low friction…

"Nuance isn't relevant here because I've already assumed what they're doing is strictly bad" is what I'm haering.

Engaging with the nuance means engaging with the fact that rent-seeking can only exist where value (real or perceived) actually exists. Amazon is only able to sell these ads because sellers get value out of them through increasing sales using the infrastructure that Amazon built. The fact that they capitalize on that by creating a market for those ad-buyers to compete in (rent-seeking, as you'd call it) is not remotely surprising, they should be able to profit using the systems they built up. This is akin to paying more to rent a "better" booth to sell at at a trading card convention; or for ads costing more during the Superbowl halftime than at 2am on local news. There's nothing fundamentally wrong with any of that.

As far as a conflict of interest, Amazon is still incentivized to get a potential customer to make a purchase, and (more importantly) to make sure that the customer would want to keep returning to Amazon for future purchases. If Amazon develops a reputation of giving suggestions for junk products that people end up buying, people will stop using Amazon. It's "naturally" regulated in that way. Gibing some governing body the power to regulate what companies are/aren't allowed to suggest to their customers feels like it's only relevant if this was a true monopoly.

Re: monopolies- Amazon is not hiding alternative products to those in the ads; customers are people with the autonomy to find the product that best suites their needs, and they still have full capability of doing that. There are also plenty of other ways to purchase products, I'd guess that 95%+ of products available on Amazon can be sold/purchased elsewhere, it's just that Amazon is the most convenient way (for both buyers and sellers).

Re: The Amazon tax

#385

Post by IAmBroom »

conception wrote: post #130
throw5 wrote: post #126

Some European countries, including UK, have enough of a strong network of local supermarkets and department stores that Amazon is simply not necessary. I have not used Amazon in the last five years. Most of my family and friends rarely use it either. There is little reason to when you can walk into a supermarket or department store, often with three or five of them within 1000 feet, and buy what you need at the norma…

Also prevents food deserts and other dark societal patterns.

Only a magically perfect network would do that. There's no force to "correct" food deserts.

OTOH, Amazon grocery delivery in cities does do a LOT toward reducing their impact on poor people (who are not-poor enough to pay for Amazon delivery) (which might be cheaper than bus tickets). Hate on Amazon and Bezos all you want; some good comes out of it.

Re: The Amazon tax

#386

Post by IAmBroom »

ilaksh wrote: post #254

The solution could be common evolving public protocols to create large alternative non-profit marketplaces.

> non-profit marketplaces

So, um, Marxist utopias? Profit is exactly why all marketplaces exist.

Re: The Amazon tax

#387

Post by butvacuum »

xp84 wrote: post #302
evereverever wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Please scan this item with our app to see YOUR price" -ftfy

Somehow this doesn't scare me at all. Fast food restaurants have been doing this for like 8 years. Almost any order you could make normally, you could get a buck or two off of it if you order through their incredibly sluggish, bloated cross-platform-framework "app" and redeem a "deal." And they tell you this with giant ads. The function is to get incremental sales (and hopefully establish a pattern of repeat business…

It doesn't scare you that $store can decide to double their lrice because they detected a brand new phone in your pocket?

This isn't even a little hypothetical- bluetooth had to anonomyze the MAC address to stop this, and it still fails sometimes.

Re: The Amazon tax

#388

Post by chrismorgan »

delegate wrote: post #224

This has been true for years on Amazon and is true for most big services now. Over time the concept of search has mutated from 'locate the exact item I'm looking for' to 'show me a list of semantic search results'. Somehow nobody noticed. Oh and of course those are not random results - you can literally feel how the platform is trying to nudge you into buying what IT wants, not what you wanted. The search is just pur…

> There are no '0 search results' anywhere.. each search yields thousands of results.

I’ve encountered “no results” on DuckDuckGo at least half a dozen times in the last couple of months when I know there should be relevant results, and Google gives me relevant results (sigh; I think I had gone for more than a year without using !g). Most of these have been exact keyword matches.

Re: The Amazon tax

#389

Post by z_rho_one »

delegate wrote: post #224

This has been true for years on Amazon and is true for most big services now. Over time the concept of search has mutated from 'locate the exact item I'm looking for' to 'show me a list of semantic search results'. Somehow nobody noticed. Oh and of course those are not random results - you can literally feel how the platform is trying to nudge you into buying what IT wants, not what you wanted. The search is just pur…

> Over time the concept of search has mutated from 'locate the exact item I'm looking for' to 'show me a list of semantic search results'. Somehow nobody noticed.

I think many people noticed the change. However, when semantic search first came about, it was useful and not the only option. Being able to see items similar to my search term on Amazon was analogous to browsing products in the same aisle in a physical store, which was helpful when you wanted an item from a category but haven't decided on the exact one.

The enshittifying and infuriating difference now is that the choice of using semantic search have been taken away. It is often the only option, and the definition of things that are "semantic similar" is a mile wide. I appreciate semantic search when I have good use cases for it, but please give me the option to turn it off when I don't need it.

Re: The Amazon tax

#390

Post by weberer »

83457 wrote: post #30

When searching on Amazon I always change sort to Best Sellers. The default is Featured Items which shows ads at the top and throughout results. For some searches that have a small number of real results, the majority of the list will be ads. Sorting by Best Sellers eliminates all ads in the results.

You can also just use an adblocker. uBlock Origin automatically blocks sponsored items out so you don't have to waste brainpower to avoid them.
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