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Jeff Bezos can’t promise Amazon employees don’t access independent seller data

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Re: Jeff Bezos can’t promise Amazon employees don’t access independent seller data

#111

Post by lemmsjid »

mc32 wrote: post #89
lemmsjid wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm honestly intrigued as to how this is so morally unambiguous. Walmart, any-given-supermarket, Costco, etc., have in-house brands (for example Kirkland with Costco). These became prominent in the 90's and there was similar discussion at the time about the ethics of a supermarket introducing competitors to the brands it stocks. Such controversy has died down and now it is commonplace. Looking at some updated article…

I wouldn’t be mad if they had their own products without using data mining to compete against their sellers. It’s that they use advanced data intelligence to compete. If they competed naively (had a hard wall between their market place division and their consumer products division, I wouldn’t have an issue.

That sounds ideal to me too, but you have the same data asymmetry in the supermarket example. Supermarkets are pioneering data aggregators, having the ability to observe foot traffic and having the final seller aggregations. They can and do have a bird's eye view that they actively use to choose what to do with Kirkland, Parent's Choice, etc.

I'd be very interested in what comprehensive reform in that area might look like and unintended consequences that might impact the consumer. I'm a big Trader Joe's fan, and they aggressively push out or white label third party brands. Only brands that are seemingly irreplacable, like Roquefort cheese or single malt Scotch-es, are spared the white label (and even then Trader Joe's constantly puts up 'Trader Joes blue', or 'Trader Joe's scotch' in an endless attempt to replicate). Should it be legal for Trader Joe's to do exactly that, but illegal for them to use sales data to optimize? I'm not sure I'd find that a happy outcome.

Re: Jeff Bezos can’t promise Amazon employees don’t access independent seller data

#112

Post by jjoonathan »

lemmsjid wrote: post #104
jjoonathan wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your mother caught you sneaking a cookie from the cookie jar with chocolate and crumbs stuck to your face and a quarter cookie cupped in your palm, would you expect to get away by saying "well I can't prove that I didn't sneak a cookie..."? Given the mountains of anecdata on this subject all pointing to Amazon openly and intentionally mining third party sales data, it seems overwhelmingly more likely that Bezos do…

I think there's a lot of misunderstanding, though, on what constitutes abuse (and thus an anecdote for your assertion). Amazon openly mines third party sales data to bolster its in house brands, just as Costco does with Kirkland, Walmart with Parent's Choice, Trader Joe's does with their house brand, etc.. Amazon has a policy, as described in this article, of not allowing individual seller's data to be used in non-ag…

Aggregating the data doesn't make it one lick less anticompetitive. Carving a distinction based on aggregation is every bit as much of a dodge as hand-wringing over proving a negative.

> that's quite a can of potentially anti-consumer worms.

No kidding.

> an internal investigation is warranted

We agree.

Re: Jeff Bezos can’t promise Amazon employees don’t access independent seller data

#113

Post by gruez »

ponker wrote: post #97
granzymes wrote: post #48

"Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos said Wednesday he can't guarantee employees have never used sales data from individual third-party sellers to develop the company's own products" There's no way he could make that guarantee. How can you prove a negative? The best Amazon can do is have policies, logs and access controls and punish employees if they break those policies. And Bezos committed to doing that.

It's like asking to prove that you haven't been hacked. You can't. The questioner should have been asking about access control, how many people allowed to access, rules about accessing, auditing, how audits are screened for violations, how many people have been caught for violations (if it's zero then you know you have a problem), how they were punished, etc. Of course hard to see how a Congressperson would know abou…

Or perhaps they do know, but they're deliberately being obtuse to score some easy political points.

Re: Jeff Bezos can’t promise Amazon employees don’t access independent seller data

#115

Post by Barrin92 »

scarface74 wrote: post #94
Barrin92 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two options. Don't offer those services for third party vendors that don't want to hand their data to Amazon and tell the customers it's between them and the vendor, which seems like a reasonable trade-off. Alternatively a proper secrecy management system that allows customers/vendors to expose particular data to Amazon for those purposes without handing everything and the kitchen sink over, with fine-grained control…

Disclaimer: I also work at AWS. As a consumer, would you really trust a merchant that opted out of Amazon’s return policy? It’s already to the point where I filter on Amazon Prime eligible and if possible sold and shipped by Amazon.

>As a consumer, would you really trust a merchant that opted out of Amazon’s return policy?

On some purchases I would, I mean this is basically like an ebay purchase with no return policy.

Point being, is there a technical argument against giving the vendor/consumer control over this, as long as the nature of the sale is transparent? I don't think so.

And even if you're saying that's too free-wheeling there's point two. Keeping only a track record of the data for the return period and only making it accessible if a customer demands a refund is technically possible.

The anti-competitive /privacy breaching data-processing that is the topic of the thread can be completely avoided.

Re: Jeff Bezos can’t promise Amazon employees don’t access independent seller data

#116

Post by tehwebguy »

DSingularity wrote: post #106
granzymes wrote: post #48

"Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos said Wednesday he can't guarantee employees have never used sales data from individual third-party sellers to develop the company's own products" There's no way he could make that guarantee. How can you prove a negative? The best Amazon can do is have policies, logs and access controls and punish employees if they break those policies. And Bezos committed to doing that.

I don’t think he needs to “prove a negative”. Just show us that you care about upholding the trust your sellers place in you to act ethically. What if he said “we care about our sellers. To prevent abuse by our Amazon basics team we have isolated independent customer data from our amazon basics team and firewalled the teams with access to the data from the rest of the companies. Independent audits and training are us…

Is it abuse for Amazon to compete with their sellers? I don't think so, it's just like Best Buy selling their own brand of TV mounts & HDMI cables and prioritizing them over other brands they carry.

There should be rules in place to stop them from effectively defrauding sellers (e.g. terminating accounts / promotions / offers without contract-backed cause, canceling wholesale orders outside of contract).

Even outside of the ethics of it, anyone else that wants to can offer a competing product on Amazon even if Amazon doesn't (and this happens like a dozen times a day).

Re: Jeff Bezos can’t promise Amazon employees don’t access independent seller data

#117

Post by pwdisswordfish2 »

granzymes wrote: post #48

"Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos said Wednesday he can't guarantee employees have never used sales data from individual third-party sellers to develop the company's own products" There's no way he could make that guarantee. How can you prove a negative? The best Amazon can do is have policies, logs and access controls and punish employees if they break those policies. And Bezos committed to doing that.

Would the same principle apply to a tech company "privacy policy"?

"We can't guarantee that policy has never been violated."

Perhaps there is a way to make this guarantee: Do not collect the data to begin with.

Re: Jeff Bezos can’t promise Amazon employees don’t access independent seller data

#118

Post by susiecambria »

noitsnot wrote: post #57
granzymes wrote: post #48

"Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos said Wednesday he can't guarantee employees have never used sales data from individual third-party sellers to develop the company's own products" There's no way he could make that guarantee. How can you prove a negative? The best Amazon can do is have policies, logs and access controls and punish employees if they break those policies. And Bezos committed to doing that.

I feel like these panels always try to make you answer 'gotcha' type of questions without providing a full answer or context.

Having been in this world, though on a smaller scale (state level), while the electeds may take every opportunity on the dais to create good soundbites, behind the scenes committee staff work to identify the right questions, get the answers, etc. The public may never see all the information gathered, or know that it has been gathered, staffers are smart.

Re: Jeff Bezos can’t promise Amazon employees don’t access independent seller data

#119

Post by mc32 »

lemmsjid wrote: post #111
mc32 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn’t be mad if they had their own products without using data mining to compete against their sellers. It’s that they use advanced data intelligence to compete. If they competed naively (had a hard wall between their market place division and their consumer products division, I wouldn’t have an issue.

That sounds ideal to me too, but you have the same data asymmetry in the supermarket example. Supermarkets are pioneering data aggregators, having the ability to observe foot traffic and having the final seller aggregations. They can and do have a bird's eye view that they actively use to choose what to do with Kirkland, Parent's Choice, etc. I'd be very interested in what comprehensive reform in that area might look…

If Trader Joe’s were the only supermarket chain or they had an 80% market share, yes I’d have a problem, unless they had always been no frills label only and then decades later decided, you know what, we’ll bring in some independent brands in.

My problem is their using independent brand/seller data to undermine/undersell that brand by leveraging that morally dubious data.

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