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

441–450 of 731 posts

Re: The Amazon tax

#441

Post by toddmorey »

stillpointlab wrote: post #430
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…

The dark pattern I've noticed a few times is the exact match I type into Amazon search doesn't even return the item I entered but 2 or 3 entire pages of alternatives. I know the item is there because Google returns it, either as a search response or in their "shopping" widget. I can click through Google to Amazon and see the item, sometimes even from the certified seller. But if I enter the exact search term in Amazo…

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.

Re: The Amazon tax

#442

Post by Paracompact »

Defletter wrote: post #293
vinnymac wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who notices a lot of things, I was talking recently with someone who notices almost nothing. When I spoke about my desire to seek out the truth, they simply replied, "I just want to live a happy life." There’s a perception that those who seek knowledge and truth are somehow less happy. Ignorance, and the willingness to take the path of least resistance, can be seen as an advantage for those who would rathe…

Except that this holds true for everything. For example, I only just today found out about this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8yo7_Inikg&t=1157s , ie, Oracle's apparent complicity in genocide. Now that I know this, I now have to rethink things: what am I using that depends on Oracle that I need to migrate away from? This wasn't something I was concerned about just 24 hours ago. This is not to say it's not a valid…

Conscientiousness is incompatible with monotonicity of capability. That is:

1. We tend to believe "more power/knowledge/choices" is universally a good thing; that we are rational creatures in some sort of game theoretic landscape where we are free to optimize for our own outcomes, and extra options or information can only be to our optimization benefit.

2. We tend to believe that as moral agents, we have obligations to Good. More specifically, knowingly choosing against Good should in proportion produce Guilt.

The bind that results from (1)+(2) is distinctly Christian to me, obsessed as Christianity is with the notion of shame as a moral whip. It is an exercise in religionmaking how to structure one's psychological incentives so that solipsism is avoided while not sacrificing (1).

Re: The Amazon tax

#443

Post by Freedom2 »

alejohausner wrote: post #401
Freedom2 wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not very customer obsessed when their email that they send me doesn't even have which items I've ordered.

That's because you probably are using gmail, and Google is reading your emails and harvesting your shopping history. That's why Amazon is being secretive: to deny Google that information.

I am not using Gmail. I like having the actual order details in my email so I can keep track of various orders without needing to go to Amazon's increasingly sluggish website.

Not to mention that finding previous orders via email is much, much faster than going through their website.

Re: The Amazon tax

#444

Post by autoexec »

stillpointlab wrote: post #430
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…

The dark pattern I've noticed a few times is the exact match I type into Amazon search doesn't even return the item I entered but 2 or 3 entire pages of alternatives. I know the item is there because Google returns it, either as a search response or in their "shopping" widget. I can click through Google to Amazon and see the item, sometimes even from the certified seller. But if I enter the exact search term in Amazo…

Search is just there to show amazon what you want so that they can show you what they want you to buy instead. Companies want everything to be push instead of pull. They don't want you to be able to choose what you buy, they want to push whatever they want (or are paid to push) at you to buy, and you're just expected to take what little you're offered, thank them for it, and be grateful.

Re: The Amazon tax

#445

Post by jcgl »

citizenpaul wrote: post #413
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…

Yes, exactly—the concept of Brand means hardly anything anymore. Certainly due partly to outsourcing like you say, but I think even more generally due to financialization. In a financialized world, brands become purely assets, which can be swiftly created and destroyed on (digital) paper, or packaged and sold to the highest bidder. The brand’s products aren’t the product any longer—it’s the brand itself.

Re: The Amazon tax

#446

Post by shimman »

TaLiTr wrote: post #424
shimman wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Weird, I rather have more government mandated vacation, public healthcare, and a pension system that doesn't mean I have to work in my 60s but I understand people have different priorities in life. Hopefully you move beyond the consumerist phase as it's probably the lowest rung of the human experience.

What a strange and pretentious comment. They're not mutually exclusive, two things can be had at the same time.

Not only are they mutually exclusive, the current neoliberal regime has dismantling the welfare state as its explicit goal.

Wish to live in your reality tho, where I can buy a dozen different brands of hot dogs while visiting the doctor for elevated blood pressure without needing to take out a payment plan on klarna.

Re: The Amazon tax

#447

Post by autoexec »

toddmorey wrote: post #441
stillpointlab wrote: post #430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The dark pattern I've noticed a few times is the exact match I type into Amazon search doesn't even return the item I entered but 2 or 3 entire pages of alternatives. I know the item is there because Google returns it, either as a search response or in their "shopping" widget. I can click through Google to Amazon and see the item, sometimes even from the certified seller. But if I enter the exact search term in Amazo…

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.

Re: The Amazon tax

#448

Post by bahbahbahbah »

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.

It's the opposite in my market and with my store.

I never get coupons for what I actually buy, I only get coupons for things I don't buy. Those things are sometimes related, but if I wanted the other brand, I'd already be buying the other brand.

Re: The Amazon tax

#449

Post by PKop »

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…

Kagi is comparable to pre-semantic, no-ad Google. Because they don't have ads you just pay for the product. It's great.

Re: The Amazon tax

#450

Post by autoexec »

jonhohle wrote: post #324
jambalaya8 wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Searched for jeans a few days ago. I got about 3.3% each, scattered through several dozen pages, of two American brands; 1.65% each another couple of brands; a smattering of one or two results for another couple of brands; the remaining approximately 90% were the almost exact same jeans (maybe the same), under several names... pages and pages of them. It is almost impossible to shop for clothes on Amazon now. It used…

It’s not just clothes. Unless the item is a very specific name brand thing, I find Amazon nearly useless for discovery. It’s effectively Ali Express with much higher markup and much faster shipping. I suppose there’s a market for that. Unfortunately for them, I’d rather buy cheep Chinese crap from a local retailer where there is still a human buyer in the loop choosing something that’s not the lowest bottom of the ba…

> Now they’ve decided to go in the complete opposite direction and it doesn’t matter what type, they’ll show me the items they think I want.

Not exactly, they'll show you the items they want you to buy/are paid to promote. They don't actually think you want the crap their search surfaces, at most they think they can con you into buying that stuff anyway as long as they make it difficult or impossible for you to find what you're actually looking for.

Post reply on HN