Amazon's Enforcement Failures Leave Open a Back Door to Banned Goods -- Some Sold and Shipped by Amazon Itself (themarkup.org) 36
The online giant bans products related to drugs, spying and weapons, but news outlet The Markeup found plenty for sale; one of the items bought on the site left a grim trail of overdoses. From a report: Amazon bans pill presses used to make prescription drugs. They're included among 38 pages of third-party seller rules and prohibitions for its U.S. marketplace. Yet an investigation by The Markup found that Amazon fails to properly enforce that list, allowing third-party sellers to put up and sell banned items. Alongside its third-party marketplace, Amazon sells products to consumers directly, and The Markup found it was also selling banned items itself, revealing cracks in the largely automated purchasing system that feeds its massive product catalog. We found nearly 100 listings for products that the company bans under its categories of drugs, theft, spying, weapons and other dangerous items, a virtual back alley where mostly third-party sellers peddle prohibited goods, some of which are used for illicit and potentially criminal activities.
The Markup filled a shopping cart with a bounty of banned items: marijuana bongs, "dab kits" used to inhale cannabis concentrates, "crackers" that can be used to get high on nitrous oxide, and compounds that reviews showed were used as injectable drugs. We found two pill presses and a die used to shape tablets into a Transformers logo, which is among the characters that have been found imprinted on club drugs such as ecstasy. We found listings for prohibited tools for picking locks and jimmying open car doors. And we found AR-15 gun parts and accessories that Amazon specifically bans. Almost three dozen listings for banned items were sold by third parties but available to ship from Amazon's own warehouses. At least four were listed as "Amazon's Choice." The phrase "ships from and sold by Amazon.com" appeared beneath the buy button of five of the banned items we found, which two former employees confirmed means those products are, in fact, sold by Amazon. In addition, one of the sellers we were able to reach also confirmed it sold the items to Amazon.
The Markup filled a shopping cart with a bounty of banned items: marijuana bongs, "dab kits" used to inhale cannabis concentrates, "crackers" that can be used to get high on nitrous oxide, and compounds that reviews showed were used as injectable drugs. We found two pill presses and a die used to shape tablets into a Transformers logo, which is among the characters that have been found imprinted on club drugs such as ecstasy. We found listings for prohibited tools for picking locks and jimmying open car doors. And we found AR-15 gun parts and accessories that Amazon specifically bans. Almost three dozen listings for banned items were sold by third parties but available to ship from Amazon's own warehouses. At least four were listed as "Amazon's Choice." The phrase "ships from and sold by Amazon.com" appeared beneath the buy button of five of the banned items we found, which two former employees confirmed means those products are, in fact, sold by Amazon. In addition, one of the sellers we were able to reach also confirmed it sold the items to Amazon.
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It's a private company so they don't have to follow their own policies.
You mean like how the Democrat national party doesn't have to follow their own rules on nominating presidential candidates? That's how Bernie Sanders lost to Clinton and got taken to court over it. This time around they simply convinced everyone but Biden to drop out, leaving Biden the last man standing against Sanders and therefore leaving Sanders without enough votes for his nomination.
Then there's the rules that "public internet forums" like Twitter and Google/YouTube have but don't follow. They want
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Funny how you use a common right wing pejorative for Dems, then play the Bernie card... You just can't drop that meme, it is strong strong with you gopers, but won't work anymore since you got The Golgothan [youtube.com] elected
Amazon-wise, the article is tripe playing emotional cards about a family who lost a husband/father to opioid abuse. If you haven't figured it out by now, if you are abusing opiods, then you are already dead and just have been lucky so far that your body hasn't showed up cold and foaming
Show me whe
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When you add over a million new products to your catalog per day come back and tell us all how you did it without making any mistakes.
Not illegal because of apps (Score:1)
Widespread phone addiction is a very serious things. Normally level-headed, intelligent people lose all sense of right or wrong if something is done through a phone.
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It's legal when you have billions of pesos in the bank and you liberally lube your politicians and police officers with great frequency.
A pill press for making a transformers logo? (Score:3)
That sounds more like something that would be used by someone practiced in candy/sugar artistry for quickly making tablets out of gumpaste or fondant than something used for actually making tablets out of illicit drugs.
I mean, it's nothing less than sickening to me that some people might actually use it for the latter purpose to give drugs to children, but it is obvious to me that there is likely an entirely legal use case for it for which it seems it was more likely intended.
Of course, I might be biased in this perception, as I know people in the cake decorating and sugar artistry industry.
Re:A pill press for making a transformers logo? (Score:4, Informative)
Think of the children!
Illicit drug manufacturers that produce pills use presses - and they use dies to give their product either a unique design to discriminate it on the black market, or even to counterfeit a competitors design. They are not doing it to appeal to children. They don't "give drugs to children" - they sell drugs to people with money.
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The Smarties we get in Australia are like M&Ms only crappier.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
It has nothing to do with children.
Drugs like ecstasy are stamped to differentiate a batch and seller.
If you're going back for seconds, you want to get what you already had.
Literally any symbol small enough can, and probably has, been used.
Transformers pills aren't dedicated to kids.
Peace sign pills aren't dedicated to hippies.
Star pills aren't dedicated to astronauts or astronomers.
Seashells aren't sold at the gas station
About the only guaranteed "group" the pills are targeted to would be the group "has mo
Re:A pill press for making a transformers logo? (Score:4, Insightful)
What concerns me are the depths these nannies will go to while they "think of the children".
What of a CNC mill that's popular for making handguns? Which also happens to be popular for making car parts. Or parts to repair medical ventilators. Or make water filters. So are we to deny all legitimate users of this CNC mill because some unknown portion of them are making weapons? Even if someone is making weapons then is this necessarily a bad thing? It seems to me that current events have lead a number of law abiding citizens to arm themselves against mobs intent on destruction of property, rape, assault, and even murder. Remember that homicide is defined as the killing of one by another. As a wise person once said there are four kinds of homicide; felonious, excusable, justifiable, and praiseworthy.
The "maker movement" runs on people doing creative things with tools that often did not even exist until a few years ago. If places like Amazon are the target of lawsuits or criminal investigations because of someone getting harmed over the misuse of these tools then this can step into the territory where people in the maker movement can't find the tools they need, or if they do get the tools then they are open to lawsuits or criminal investigations themselves for nothing more than possessing these tools.
People should not fear being under a microscope for making candies. Auto repair shops should not fear being raided by BATFE for upgrading their equipment.
You believe I need to "think of the children"? I am thinking of the children. What happens to the children of today when they fear their government because they know how to repair their own plumbing? What happens in the future when an entire generation knows nothing on how anything is made and merely expect all they need to be shipped to them overnight? We need our "makers". To have the children of today to grow up knowing how to build anything tomorrow means they need to be able to get and use candy presses and CNC mills today.
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Not to mention there is a lot of code out there that is 'unsafe' everything from demonstrations of exploits to encryption decryption algorithms. I suppose we could require permits for it all.
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Remember this incident where a hobby scared the s-t out of the teachers:
https://www.cnn.com/2015/09/16... [cnn.com]
Muslim teen Ahmed Mohamed creates clock, shows teachers, gets arrested
"When Ahmed Mohamed went to his high school in Irving, Texas, Monday, he was so excited. A teenager with dreams of becoming an engineer, he wanted to show his teacher the digital clock he'd made from a pencil case.
The 14-year-old's day ended not with praise, but punishment, after the school called police and he was arrested."
We want th
Re: A pill press for making a transformers logo? (Score:2)
I presume itâ(TM)s used for rave drugs. This idea that because transformers were a kids show this is about giving drugs to kids is just dumb. First, most of us who were into transformers as kids or even were into the movies have grown up and Iâ(TM)d buy e with a transformers logo.
Second, the idea that people are out there trying to give drugs to young kids is as dumb as the idea the first hitâ(TM)s free. Drugs sell themselves and dealers donâ(TM)t want to go put themselves at extra ri
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Quite possibly... but my point was that I would think that it was more likely intended for use for making small candies in less than the bulk quantities that commercial manufacturers might employ using large machinery.
But then again, maybe I'm just naive.
Doesn't change the fact that there are sugar artists that I personally know that would probably be able to find a use for such an apparatus.
Amazon (Score:2)
The internet's new flea market. Their prices aren't that good anymore and they charge sales tax. So buying from them isn't saving anything besides going to an actual store. The reviews are garbage and often don't even match the item being sold. Shady sellers do this by selling a good item and then getting good reviews. Then they edit the listing to be a piece of shit they want to dump. They figure most people won't bother with a review so they unload until it drags down the average. Ever notice how reviews
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In fairness, the product breadth is unbeatable. Very obscure products can often be found there for quick delivery,
But the experience has been deteriorating for a while. Too many counterfeit products and useless clogging things up.
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Very true. Our products are hijacked on Amazon for this reason. Trying to get support to "do the needful" and revert our product often takes multiple requests until you get someone with half a brain cell.
In their infinite wisdom, Amazon stopped sending emails about detail changes to your catalog pages. Without paying someone to use the API, you are expected to revi
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That question should be, 'why would another seller be allowed to change your catalog page?'
Lock picking tools are not illegal per (Score:3)
As per Lock picking Legal Status [wikibooks.org]
EG for the US:
In many states, simple possession is completely legal as their statutes require proof of intent
Or in the EU
Most countries of the European Union don't regulate the possession of lockpicks. All responsibility concerning criminal or legal acts using the picks is taken by the owner of the lockpicks.
However YMMV and I didn't even play a lawyer on TV last night
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These are "banned by amazon" items.
Their list does have "illegal items" on it, but also contains far more.
It should be telling that "illegal items" is a single line entry, yet the list is a 38 pages long.
Pretty sure all retail stores have their own list of things that are fully legal yet they just don't want to sell. Some of those choices may seem silly, but it's their call to make.
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Indeed, I've bought 2 separate sets of lock picks on Amazon. Prime eligible, even. Perfectly legal to own and use in my state, so long as I don't have criminal intent. I've even used them on a fire safe a coworker lost the key to years ago.
I've also toyed with the idea of learning at least basic gunsmithing, to do more than just basic maintenance on my perfectly legal collection of guns (and finally fix one that keeps misfeeding).
I see the problem here (Score:3)
If Amazon had fewer and simpler rules about what products it refused to carry, this "issue" would vanish.
But they are fighting racism, so that's Ok (Score:1)
But, hey, they donate to BLM [aboutamazon.com], so they are fine:
A career criminal had a heart attack during his arrest for yet another crime, which medical condition the arresting officers didn't recognize as such. Sorry, but that's neither "inequitable" nor especially "brutal".
Yet, Amazon is giving millions of dollars to people to fight this bogus "inequity" — trying to buy peace for themselves. They'll have no peace — nor do
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I bought some (Score:2)
These items are illegal? I bought a pill making machine and empty pills to make some for myself. I'm glad they sold it to me because I'm not sure where else I would get something like this.
Meanwhile, they killed my listing for grill parts (Score:3)
Injectable Amazon drugs (Score:2)
Sounds interesting. Can anyone tell me what they are and if they are any good?