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The Amazon tax

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Re: The Amazon tax

#411

Post by m463 »

GuB-42 wrote: post #171

It doesn't have to do with Amazon. It is just how ads work. Of course when you buy a product that is heavily advertised you know that you are paying for it, Amazon or not. That's why, when I see an ad campaign for a product I may want, it is a signal for me to look elsewhere. Some competitor may use what would be ad budget towards offering lower prices or better quality. As for Amazon, it is not cheap! It is convenie…

> It doesn't have to do with Amazon. It is just how ads work.

It has everything to do with amazon.

Amazon has chosen to embed ads into the navigation used to shop on their site. It is a conflict with the customer's needs in just about every way possible.

I think the only time I saw something so blatant was years ago at the Cheesecake factory, where they had ads in their menu (not really food-related)

Re: The Amazon tax

#412

Post by RobotToaster »

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…

The idea of the price you pay could be far higher because your McSocial Credit Score is too low doesn't scare you?

Re: The Amazon tax

#413

Post by citizenpaul »

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…

To me its a bigger problem. The concept of Brand was highly diminished during the manufacturing outsource phase to cheap countries. You could pay $10 for the brand name of a simple product or get the 100% equivalent for $1 from a Chinese Knock off. So people felt ripped off and abandoned brands. (reasonable since the brands were keeping prices high artificially)

However that has lead to a massive drop off in quality and price/value ratio of all products. Now the brands and the knock offs are in a race to the bottom for the lowest quality product/profit ratio so there truly is no difference and no quality products below "luxury" tier exist anymore.

Even some high'ish tier brands shoes like Hoka/Ons shoes have major quality issues even though they exist at just below the "premium" price point. I had two pairs of the same Ons last year, one lasted 3 months and started falling apart the other pair is still going 1y later. I wore them roughly the same amount switching between them. I looked up online and it turns out both brands avoid long term production contracts to bank profits from the lowest bidder at expense of their own brand they built.

Re: The Amazon tax

#414

Post by citizenpaul »

The amazon tax holds nothing to the credit card tax. Credit cards have been driving prices up for decades with their behind the scenes fees that are passed onto the customer. All for "convenience" of the right to buy something because now they have created a near mandatory purchasing system duopoly.

Re: The Amazon tax

#415

Post by eh_why_not »

amluto wrote: post #208

> The highest-yielding ad my publisher has tested so far is the search “Seth Godin The Knot“ I think it would be interesting to see legal action here. I’m not a lawyer, but I feel like there should be at least three ways to go after this: 1. Trademark infringement. If Amazon is using someone’s search that is clearly searching for a specific product, possibly trademarked, it seems inappropriate for them to serve up an…

> Someone should file the multi-hundred-billion-dollar class actions

Incidentally, last week Amazon changed their TOS [0] and now all disputes with them are to be resolved via Arbitration; class action waiver when you use their services, etc.

[0] https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/amazon-reinstates-b...

Re: The Amazon tax

#416

Post by Arainach »

apparent wrote: post #189

Imagine there's a best-selling toaster. Amazon can recommend it and many people will be happy buying it. Then, one day a new toaster comes out, and it might be even better than the old best-seller. How would it get sufficient traction to be recommended by the algorithm? To send a strong enough signal, it would probably need a level of sales that could only be achieved with some level of advertising. Separately, I'd n…

> Then, one day a new toaster comes out, and it might be even better than the old best-seller. How would it get sufficient traction to be recommended by the algorithm?

This is a solved problem. Recommendation algorithms aren't just "highest average rating", they take into account number of ratings, recent trends, etc.

Even if some ads improve this experience, Amazon is orders of magnitude past that threshold into hostility and toxicity. You have to scroll through pages of sponsored results to find anything worthwhile.

Re: The Amazon tax

#417

Post by dasil003 »

its_ethan wrote: post #384
dasil003 wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 capita…

You're right that I jumped to a conclusion, and it's possible I'm wrong.

One thing that is structurally certain though: Amazon and other major corporations have almost unlimited time and direct incentives to find reasons to justify this point of view, while the people whose interests are being potentially being harmed (all Amazon customers) don't have much concentrated resources or focused, actionable incentives at the individual actor level to put together the counter case. I think it's incredibly important keep this asymmetry in mind before dismissing a take like Godin's in favor of Amazon friendly talking points.

Re: The Amazon tax

#418

Post by its_ethan »

aeturnum wrote: post #405
its_ethan wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there are a lot of cheap air fryers that are not worth buying over a one or more "good value" alternatives OK, but the customer is the only person who gets to decide what that means. "Reversing the idea" is just making the same (imo faulty) assumption that the author is, which is that there is some known "good value" product that everyone should be buying. What you perceive to be "good value" might be "overpaying f…

I don't think that's true. I think deficient or faulty products exist and amazon often sells them. It is not at all assuming that everyone should buy one product - simply that there are psudo-scam products that would be risky for anyone to buy. Like, are you suggesting that when someone tries to buy a brand-name product and receives a counterfeit knockoff instead, that some proportion of those customers prefer to pay…

> I think deficient or faulty products exist and amazon often sells them.

So nothing I said disagrees with this. I agree that "pseudo-scam" products and counterfeits exist on Amazon, but if something is risky/dangerous for someone to buy, Amazon is at least partially liable for this - I got a product recall from Amazon for a water kettle (that Amazon doesn't make) that had some defect that could lead to scalding.

While it's a problem, Amazon is incentivized to make sure that the customer would want to keep returning to Amazon for future purchases. If they develop a reputation of giving suggestions for junk/scam/counterfeit products that people end up buying, people will stop using Amazon - at both the individual, and word of mouth levels. Your concern is "naturally" regulated in that way. Amazon wants to keep it's customers happy so it can keep selling them things, and selling them crap is a bad way to keep them happy.

.

> when someone tries to buy a brand-name product and receives a counterfeit knockoff instead, that some proportion of those customers prefer to pay brand-name prices for knock offs

What did I say that would imply this? No, I am not suggesting that at all. I am suggesting that some people want to pay less ($100 vs $450) for a cheaper product (barebones version) and that's what represents good value to them - not something at the same price that's fake, I really don't know where you think I implied that lol.

Re: The Amazon tax

#419

Post by cm2012 »

butvacuum wrote: post #387
xp84 wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If a store does this, they will eventually be caught and lose business
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