Amazon faces potential break-up as FTC finalizes antitrust lawsuit | The FTC is getting ready for the big one::undefined
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.
Absolutely. we need a lot more of this too.
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.
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.
PR people aren’t stupid. They know how to muddy the water and make efforts like this seem unimportant because it prevents people from galvanizing. Its the divide and conquer strategy.
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
Nice Try, Amazon PR Flunky!
And I would’ve gotten away with it too, if it weren’t for you meddling Lemmings!
Repeat after me: amazon deserves to be broken up!
Also I think amazon is responsible for a measurable spike in inflation
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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This is funny, because I literally said “good!” when I read the post title. So I’m right there with you.
It’s “Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good”
Absolutely straight, we need a lot more of this too.
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.
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I have 3 children and not only don’t feel regret, I’m quite optimistic. Perpetually-online Doomers are the only ones feeling that way.
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“how dare you be optimistic!” Lol
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Im smarter, more successful, more wealthy, and more involved in climate lobbying than you, so I know I win.
Edit: And more attractive. Oh and my Warhammer 40,000 collection is bigger than yours. Oh and I dont mean to brag but my daughter graduates with honors and got a scholarship to college. Also my wife is a smokeshow with a big ol ass.
Edit: Oh also I have good hair.
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Shitting yourself is not better than doing nothing.
Even if it doesn’t actually result in Amazon being broken up, at least it indicates someone is doing something.
Aren’t they just deciding whether or not to do something via the lawsuit rather than actually for sure doing something yet? ~Strawberry
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“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.
Makes me think about how cynicism pervades online communities and media. Seems like a lot of people can’t get themselves to hope. People need hope to accomplish anything.
People are becoming less and less able to be rationalized with.
A lot of valid triggers have put us here. Housing. Inflation. Income inequality. Identity politics. But it’s gotten to the point where people are frothing at the mouth. Daily I see a comment about “eat the rich” and anecdotally they’re getting more and more aggressive.
We are tipping toward bloodshed unless things change drastically soon which I doubt will happen.
Why are those primary on the left unwilling to accept anything that isn’t a fully realized picture of their ideal society?
Because at this point, it seems more like theater than actual intent.
The right sure seems convinced we’re hurtling leftward with communist dictators like Barrack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Joe Biden leading the charge with the tenacity of the Bolsheviks of yore. I’m guessing the reality is somewhere in between that and perennial fecklessness.
What came first, people checking out or the system stopping working for us? Or does it even matter?
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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.
I don’t think you’re the target customer of Amazon. It seems to all be set up for brand-less dayfly companies/scammers reselling shit from AliExpress, not actual long-standing brands.
They do care if you’re a massive brand, to the point where you have a human point of contact to the company, but unfortunately we weren’t at that size. Anything smaller than massive tends to be ignored. Not even sure if they’re still doing that sort of thing, but they did when I started the job.
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!
So perhaps they’ll fart in Amazon’s general direction?
The FTC is getting ready for the big one
Sounds like it lol
Read similar news about meta , google and even microsoft ! Now it feels like a hogwash !
So then all the workers lose their jobs? That doesn’t sound good
Does this need to happen? By God yes, a thousand times over. Will it actually happen with a positive effect? Big doubt.
Remember when FTC threw hands with MSFT…like literally last week? Yeah.
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.
No doubt this is slimy, but does it make Amazon a monopoly? It seems like a tough case for the FTC to win.
Not sure but giving your own products preferential placement on what you present to the public as an open marketplace is an anti-competitive behavior that they have been caught doing.
Contrary to popular corporatist disinformation, anti-trust law isn’t just for literal control-100.000000%-of-the-market “monopolies.” Any company (or colluding group of companies) large enough to unduly influence the market can be subject to it.
That’s why it’s called “anti-trust” law, not “anti-monopoly” law.
Took them ten years to split up AT&T and that was a literal monopoly. Near 100% market share.
Nothings going to happen. Its just another headline that FTC will do something but we know how it goes.
Doubt. If it somehow works out, do Google next
The FTC hasn’t had a spine in decades, I doubt anything will come of this. It would be nice for once if the government actually gave a shit about monopoly busting, but they don’t care anymore. Not when corporations are legally allowed to bribe the ones making legislation, oh and also companies can be people now
The FTC has had a spine since 2020, they have been really busy - https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases
Great, instead of one overvalued company, Jeff Bezos will own majority stakes in multiple overvalued companies.
Yeah I see no way this happens, if they wouldn’t involve themselves in Microsoft being a monopoly /anticompetitive they sure as hell ain’t going to combat Amazon
Wasn’t Microsoft convicted of being a monopoly though? I mean, it was overturned, but they did something.
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.
I meant the Microsoft Activision Blizzard fiasco, I guess I didn’t realize.
Oh yes that too. Microsoft is always been bad though. Always will be always has been.
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.
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There is mods on lemmy? I just found out there is also karma, why are we recreating a toxic authoritarian shit hole but decentralized?
Instances have to be created and run by somebody, so we automatically have a bunch of admins in the loop.
Then somebody has to make communities on the instances. That involves choosing the purpose of the community, and writing any relevant description or guidelines. So again you inherently start with somebody in charge of the community.
But none of them answer to a corporate overlord. Things are run the way the people decide. And if the people disagree, they can run different communities or instances. There can easily be unmoderated communities, and I’m sure there are.
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
Came here to say exactly this. Not going to happen.
Would be great if the US started regulating big tech as harshly as the EU, let’s see how they like that.
