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US sues Amazon.com for breaking antitrust law and harming consumers (www.reuters.com)
submitted 1 year ago by NightOwl@lemm.ee to c/worldnews@lemmy.ml
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[-] ElleChaise@kbin.social 36 points 1 year ago

I think we may be entering a new era politically. Thank goodness. Maybe we'll see some momentum in antitrust again, it's been 120 years since we last got the ball rolling, and what we got was well worth fighting for in my opinion. The world can always be a little bit better, and antitrust laws help us make it better.

[-] DeathsEmbrace@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

Monopolies are still a big problem. Amazon uses a hostage situation to take a % of everyone. You want to know the best part about corporate capitalism? They will always adapt because they can just make us pay for everything they lose. Any competition to amazon needs an entire database, website and security. How many starters can swim? You need a huge investment to hope you dont sink in the first 2 quarters. I can go on and on but until they make these companies pay for their competition its disencouraging to even try.

[-] makeasnek@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Glad to see this action being taken, Amazon has certainly abused their market position. I would also add that Amazon does have competition in the form of eBay, and Amazon is rarely the cheaper option. And there's a hodgepodge of other online marketplaces which look a lot like eBay but are usually focused on one niche or another. They usually get bought up by one of the big firms if they get big enough.

If there were a viable alternative to eBay, sellers would join en masse and buyers would follow the cheap supply. Buyer fraud is rampant on eBay, every seller has to raise their prices to compensate for it. I have been selling for years but I never sell items > $50 because buyer fraud is so common. Buyer will claim the item didn't work/didn't arrive and even with all the evidence in your corner and spending an hour or two on appeals, there's a very good chance the buyer gets the item without paying for it even if you do everything "by the book".

Crypto integration could help make this a reality, hell, make the whole platform decentralized. I would gladly mail a $200 iPhone to somebody in Nigeria if I knew they couldn't reverse the transaction where they paid me for it like they can with PayPal. Reputation systems and/or escrow options could help protect the buyer and seller, and you could choose if you wanted escrow for each transaction. But unlike eBay, you could choose from hundreds of escrow providers which would insure balanced judgements come out of them. eBay has been undergoing enshittification for like a decade now.

Peer-to-peer markets for everything (like eBay) help encourage and enable re-use and repair, which is great for the environment and low income people. I wish somebody would come disrupt that market and make eBay alternatives.

[-] Mandarbmax@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

What about mercari?

[-] krolden@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago

I remember people like you saying the same thing when Obama was elected.

[-] subignition@kbin.social 11 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

About damn time, hope they don't drag out this litigation for a decade

[-] autotldr@lemmings.world 3 points 1 year ago

This is the best summary I could come up with:

WASHINGTON, Sept 26 (Reuters) - The U.S. Federal Trade Commission filed a long awaited antitrust lawsuit against Amazon.com on Tuesday, and asked the court to consider forcing the online retailer to sell assets to stop what it said was ongoing harm to consumers.

The lawsuit had been expected after years of complaints that Amazon.com and other tech giants abused their dominance of search, social media and online retailing to become gate keepers on the most lucrative aspects of the internet.

Structural relief in antitrust jargon generally means a company sells an asset, such as a part of its business.

FTC Chair Lina Khan said that Amazon had used illegal tactics to fend off companies that would have risen to challenge its monopoly.

During the Trump administration which ended in 2021, the Justice Department and FTC opened probes into Google, Facebook, Apple and Amazon.

The Justice Department has sued Google twice - once under Republican Donald Trump regarding its search business and a second time on advertising technology since Democratic President Joe Biden took office.

The original article contains 621 words, the summary contains 174 words. Saved 72%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

[-] treadful@lemmy.zip 15 points 1 year ago

Some key missed points from the summary:

"The FTC and its state partners say Amazon’s actions allow it to stop rivals and sellers from lowering prices, degrade quality for shoppers, overcharge sellers, stifle innovation, and prevent rivals from fairly competing against Amazon," the agency said in a statement.

[...]

The FTC said that Amazon, founded in 1994 and worth more than $1 trillion, punished sellers that sought to offer prices that were lower than Amazon's by making it difficult for consumers to find the seller on Amazon's platform.

Other allegations include that Amazon gave preference to its own products on its platforms over competitors also on the platform.

[-] SinningStromgald@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago

And it certainly does. The first results are always sponsored then Amazon basic versions of available.

On that note does it piss anyone else off that even Prime subscribers can't turn off sponsored search results? Fucking ridiculous! I'm sure there's a script when browsing on PC but I'm usually browsing on my phone.

this post was submitted on 26 Sep 2023
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