Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Amazon tax

seths.blog

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

481–490 of 731 posts

Re: The Amazon tax

#481

Post by whilenot-dev »

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…

It's called the Gruen Effect[0], and everything is becoming a product of marketing.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gruen_transfer

Re: The Amazon tax

#482

Post by autoexec »

muvlon wrote: post #270
micromacrofoot wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ah but what they can manipulate around you is the price , which is a behavior some places are trying to get ahead of https://www.nj.gov/governor/news/2026/20260723a.shtml

Has that actually happened in retail stores? All I can find on the topic is about online purchases (or ordering/paying online and picking it up at the store). To do this in brick-and-mortar, you'd have to use remotely programmable price tags and detect who is looking at what, which seems doable, but then you still run into all kinds of tough questions with no good answers. If I happen to see the price tag change from…

Yes, it's happening in brick-and-mortar. They've been conditioning people to accept the idea that prices will differ depending on who is doing the buying through the use of apps and loyalty cards (https://web.archive.org/web/20201111164410/http://www.nytime...)

They've known for a long time now that their profits will go through the roof if they can get away with it, but the fact that consumers find the practice offensive has held them back along with the cost of initial investments in things like digital price tags and facial recognition systems (https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1057/s41272-019-002...) but all of it is coming. The big chains have already started. By the end of this year Walmart should have digital price tags in every store. Facial recognition is spreading too (often using loss prevention as an excuse). The grocery chain Kroger announced they'll be using facial recognition to offer different prices to different people. Their digital price tags scan faces, and your track appearance and behaviors, like how long you spend looking at various products.

It'll be simple for stores to do things like charge people more when their cameras see them wearing expensive clothes, or when the data collected from their app shows that they live in rich neighborhoods or when they can use the data they collect on you in combination with information from data brokers to learn what your income level is. I fully expect things to get even weirder like stores setting higher prices for people with the wrong opinions or political views. Algorithms will be caught "accidentally" discriminating on things like skin color and gender.

There's a little bit of pushing back against that kind of things in some places, but with the massive amounts of money on the table I expect that politicians will be bribed to allow it.

> If I happen to see the price tag change from $3.49 (perhaps set for the person in front of me) to $4.49 and I put that item in my cart, which price am I getting charged at the register?

The store shelves have cameras in them. You won't see your price until the system detects you. They can even display your photo/avatar next to the price so you know that it's for you. Facial ID at the register tells them who you are when it's time to pay up. That's just for now though. Eventually it'll likely all happen in a cell phone app and you won't be able to as easily look over someone else's shoulder to see what price they're paying.

Re: The Amazon tax

#483

Post by Sivart13 »

InsideOutSanta wrote: post #8

See also: ads for apps in app stores. These companies effectively monopolize app distribution on their platforms and then make discovery so poor that developers who try to sell apps in their stores must pay for ads in those same stores.

It's completely insane to me that the first search for Okta in the app store isn't the actual Okta app, it's a half-page ad for something that could easily be confused with the Okta app

substitute for literally any business name

Sure, I know the right one to click on, if I'm in a sound state of mind. What if I'm sleepy? Stressed? 65+ years old?

Re: The Amazon tax

#484

Post by alexashka »

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…

It's been true my entire adult life.

When I came to Canada almost 30 years ago, IT-job immigrants, let alone people who've grew up in this system were already doing 'buy real estate, rent it out, profit' and their day job was just a means to finance becoming a permanent rent seeker.

Pikachu surprise face that a culture that thinks rent seeking is great ends up doing it everywhere, all of the time, including Amazon.

Re: The Amazon tax

#485

Post by thaumasiotes »

> When there are plenty of ads, the maker of the best air fryer now has to bid on ads as well, if only to protect the sales they were entitled to in the first place. Businesses continue to buy the ads—not because they’re dumb, but because the system has created a situation with few options.

Sure, this is probably accurate in many situations.

> The highest-yielding ad my publisher has tested so far [for Seth Godin's new book, The Knot] is the search "Seth Godin The Knot".

But not that one. If you cut spending on that ad to zero, you would lose an immeasurably small number of sales. The ad is high yield because people who search for "Seth Godin The Knot" are already planning to buy Seth Godin's The Knot. Letting other people display ads on top of that search won't dissuade them.

Re: The Amazon tax

#486

Post by jrs100000 »

gretch wrote: post #378
qurren wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Related: I've seen several local restaurants offering extremely good food come up and die simply because they could never get attention. People only look at recommendations now, they don't look with their eyes anymore. So now restaurants have to focus on growth hacking rather than food quality.

This really isn't a new problem. That's why the mantra in running restaurants has been "location, location, location". Location was a proxy for marketing and attention, based on foot traffic. So yes it does need to be updated to be the 2026 version for what gets peoples' attention on trying your new thing. I think almost all good restaurateurs know that. The rest, who hyper focus on food quality, are tragically doome…

And its still location. Marketing will get get people to come try your food, but location gets them to come back every week.

Re: The Amazon tax

#487

Post by Retric »

autoexec wrote: post #447
toddmorey wrote: post #441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, this is a horrible practice. Not just Amazon… most major e-commerce platforms set up fake pages for products they don’t offer to try to get you to the products they actually do. Google needs to ban this practice because it makes their results garbage.

Google doesn't care about you. If you have to close one website that is infested with Google's ads/tracking because it doesn't actually have the product what you want and you're forced to search for another website that's also infested with Google's ads/tracking that's much better for Google's bottom line. That's what Google cares about.

Until you stop using google search, which I and many other people I know have done.

Losses and gains on the order of 0.5% market share may not sound like much, but at this scale it’s a vast amount of money. So being slightly more hostile needs to be offset by meaningful increases in revenue.

Re: The Amazon tax

#488

Post by thaumasiotes »

luke5441 wrote: post #282

For a while Amazon was good at discovering new books to read. Nowadays my ad-blocker blocks everything except for the book I am directly navigating to from the page. No discovery of new books is happening for me there anymore. Another place to discover new books was Goodreads. Bought and left to rot by Amazon. I don't buy many books anymore.

You could... change your adblocker? I use uBlock Origin, which doesn't block "customers also bought" widgets at all.

Re: The Amazon tax

#490

Post by autoexec »

SoftTalker wrote: post #377
micromacrofoot wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's the other way around, the shelf prices can be stable and they decide which discounts you can get based on your shopping profile which they built using surveillance

Well,,, OK? If I buy a lot of Scott toilet tissue, I'm happy to get a discount on Scott toilet tissue. Though mostly, the discounts I use are already posted on the shelf, I just need to "clip" an e-coupon in the app to get it. They do send me emails and even postal mails with coupons too, but those all go in the trash.

> If I buy a lot of Scott toilet tissue, I'm happy to get a discount on Scott toilet tissue.

Don't expect discounts on what you buy often. They know they have you hooked on those already and they'll drive up the price on those items (for you) the minute they can. They'll give discounts on brands you don't buy to entice you to switch (if those other brands pay them enough to do it). These surveillance pricing systems are not for your benefit. They aren't there to save you money. They only exist to take more of your money away from you.

Post reply on HN