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I will believe it when I see it.
Yeah remember when they were going to break up Microsoft? That went great.
Yeah, there the FTC was with a clear market that Microsoft would have a monopoly over should the merger go through. They had Microsoft on the ropes, but, before they could finish them, Microsoft pinky promised prices wouldn't go up. And that was that, no threat of a monopoly and the merger could go through.
... the current antitrust ruling guidelines make enforcement basically impossible.
It was more that George w Bush was elected. And cracking down on monopolies is against the code of fascists. Ideally they want to be in charge of all the monopolies. So he more or less called off the suit just as they were about to close in on Microsoft.
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Hell, I won't believe it even when I'll see it. Likely some loophole will be found to dodge this in one way or another.
Not to be pedantic, but isn’t that the same as “I’ll believe it when I see it”? You’re just saying it won’t happen
I think they’re saying even if this goes through amazon will find a way to ignore it
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Came here to say exactly this. Not going to happen.
Damn this thread is negative as hell.
I’m one of the most cynical, pessimistic people I know, but not in here.
Kinda wish people’s first reaction were “good,” not “yeah right, remember Bell in the 80’s?”
Maybe I’m naive, but this seems like good news to me. Even if it doesn’t actually result in Amazon being broken up, at least it indicates someone is doing something.
“Don’t let perfection be the enemy of progress” or something like that.
“Don’t let perfection be the enemy of progress” or something like that.
Brings back memories to when Obamacare was announced. Did it go far enough? Hell no. It was a step in the right direction and it was still derided. Those who are ripping down the system brick by brick have a singular vision and understand it's a series of steps to get to their dystopian hellscape. Why are those primary on the left unwilling to accept anything that isn't a fully realized picture of their ideal society?
In fact I'd argue a large part of why the system is falling apart is those who want to see it improved are unwilling to do those small incremental changes for good.
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I think what people are tired of and endlessly pessimistic about is the baby steps of doing something never seems to end. It never gets to the other side of helping the people. People need to see the end goal of where the baby steps are trying to lead us AND see that the likes of Amazon are not able to move faster than those baby steps to nullify the steps.
A lot of the terminally online have been alive long enough to live through multiple examples of how theses kinds of things tend to work. And thus have to ask themselves "why will this time end any different?" Have to do that enough times and it makes you a jaded cynic.
Astroturfing. Amazon has PR teams that come here and sow seeds of "pff it doesn't even matter" in order to make people cynical and complacent.
Yeeaah nah, I can absolutely promise you that Amazon PR isn't wasting their time trying to make a few hundred thousand Lemmy users apathetic lol. This is such a crazy level of paranoia
I highly doubt that. Regular people have no real ability to effect the outcome, and the majority of people are saying “there’s no way this absolutely bullshit situation gets fixed” not “what is there to fix? Nothing is wrong!”
No company is paying their PR to say “Yeah [we] are real pieces of shit that need to be hacked up and thrown to the wind but [we] are gonna come out of this just fine so suck our cocks.”
That isn’t how PR works. At least not till they hit dictator levels of power.
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Much of the cynicism online right now is due to an avalanche of reporting that shit is hitting the fan with the climate. Anyone with so much as one child is feeling a retro-antinatalist regret. Concerning ourselves with long ago-gutted anti-trust laws seems like worrying about dirty windows in a house that's fully engulfed in flames with no fire department within a million miles. Break 'em up, for sure, but what's the point if the gulf stream collapses next year and we become Mars in a decade. Or sumptin.
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Progress needs actual progress though, a lot of progressive regulation is put up with absolutely no chance (or intention imo) of going through. It's a bunch of tech regulators with no idea how the tech works throwing out drastic proposals to look heavy handed and tough, because that's what people want to see.
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Who in the fuck do they think they're fooling? There hasn't been any sort of large corporate antitrust breakup since Bell Systems in the early 80s. They expect us to believe that after 40 years of inaction, suddenly they're going to do their jobs again? This is nothing but pandering to pad approval ratings. I would love to be wrong, but I'm not getting my hopes up.
This smells like fodder just in time for election season
The FTC has actually been crazy busy this administration - https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases - they're really doing far more than at any other point in my lifetime.
I fully support the FTC burning it all down, but then I read this paragraph, and it did not give me confidence: “The FTC has had Amazon in its sights this year. The company recently agreed to a $5.8 million settlement with the Commission over Ring privacy violations that included employees spying on customers. And in June, the FTC sued Amazon over "deceptive" Prime subscription tactics.”
5.8 million is probably Jeff Bezos’s weekly cheese budget. It’s loose change in his car seat.
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More than half of Amazon's sales come from third-party merchants who this year started paying an average of over 50% commission on every sale, up from 35.2% in 2016, the result of it raising Fulfillment by Amazon fees every year and increasing storage fees.
While paying for Amazon's logistics and advertising services is optional, most merchants consider these, especially advertising, a necessary part of doing business. Moreover, the FTC has reportedly amassed evidence that Amazon disadvantages merchants who don't use the services by giving them lower placements.
Capitalism at its finest... I still remember when Amazon was just a humble online bookstore. How times have changed.
I would be curious if all these influencers pushing FBA (Fulfilled by Amazon) where they got paid for the original thought because there is so much junk flowing into Amazon now especially people trying to use Amazon's logistics.
I can't imagine there is great margin for a product listed on Amazon if half of every sale is given to Amazon for commission.
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We need to do the same with Microsoft and Google
And like the other 10 companies that own pretty much every brand in the country.
But not Apple? The most valuable company in history.
Eeeh. Apple's App Store fees can be a bit much, but all told the company doesn't have enough power on any market to warrant such a huge intervention I think. Just forcing them to make their ecosystem more open would be enough. Like how the EU wants to force them to allow 3rd party package managers on iOS.
Luckily the EU wants much more, and already accepted regulation that will be implemented later this year to open all ecosystems up, completely. iMessage will have to provide an open API that provides the same service levels than the native client for example.
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They went after MS in the 90s. Nothing really came of it.
Yes and no.
The simple fact that you're not using IE6 on MSN with Bing search to access a Windows server is more or less proof that the constraints placed on Microsoft at that time did actually have an impact (even if I felt robbed that the company wasn't split up at the time).
Today the one thing Microsoft is still dominante in is Office software (and even then Google docs is snapping at their heals).
OS? Android is more popular than windows Server OS? Linux rules the roost Browser? Chrome
The company that really needs scrutiny ATM is Google.
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Disney too
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Doubt. If it somehow works out, do Google next
I'll believe it when I see it. I work with (not for) Amazon every day at my job and they are miserable e-commerce partners. One change in a code that suddenly and wrongly flags your entire international product offerings and pulls them? Good luck begging the teams of bots to "help" you.
With Amazon you don't even have the power to handle your own legitimate brand's data management -- changes to our listings go through maybe 20% of the time-- but somehow ASIN hijackers can make wild and dangerous changes to them with little issue. Not only that, but Amazon buttfucks you with fees on top of fees, like FBA fees we pay to entrust them to handle our products and returns well, but are wasted as our products are often stolen, broken, or return scammed.
If you can help it and you like not crying in the bathroom at work, avoid Amazon.
Easily one of the worst places I've ever worked for, and I wasn't even in a warehouse. Highest turnover I've ever seen. The reports about the company culture are no joke!
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God we need a trustbuster
Lol. What a crock of shit. If anyone thinks the oligarchs that run this country will allow this to happen you’re smoking rocks.
This country leads the world in corruption & greed. Nothing will change that but this is great click bait.
You think the oligarchs make more or less money when Bezos has a monopoly?
I think it may well happen because the oligarchs want Amazon broken up. Biden did appoint Lina Kahn as chair of the FTC. Kahn has long been vocal that Amazon needs to be broken up.
This needs to happen. As skeptical as I am that this will result in a break-up, AWS really needs to be busted up away from the rest of Amazon, and that's just to start with.
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this post was submitted on 27 Jul 2023
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