Cory Doctorow Explains Why Amazon is 'Way Past Its Prime' (theguardian.com) 116
"It's not just you. The internet is getting worse, fast," writes Cory Doctorow. Sunday he shared an excerpt from his upcoming book Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It.
He succinctly explains "this moment we're living through, this Great Enshittening" using Amazon as an example. Platforms amass users, but then abuse them to make things better for their business customers. And then they abuse those business customers too, abusing everybody while claiming all the value for themselves. "And become a giant pile of shit."
So first Amazon subsidized prices and shipping, then locked in customers with Prime shipping subscriptions (while adding the chains of DRM to its ebooks and audiobooks)... These tactics — Prime, DRM and predatory pricing — make it very hard not to shop at Amazon. With users locked in, to proceed with the enshittification playbook, Amazon needed to get its business customers locked in, too... [M]erchants' dependence on those customers allows Amazon to extract higher discounts from those merchants, and that brings in more users, which makes the platform even more indispensable for merchants, allowing the company to require even deeper discounts...
[Amazon] uses its overview of merchants' sales, as well as its ability to observe the return addresses on direct shipments from merchants' contracting factories, to cream off its merchants' bestselling items and clone them, relegating the original seller to page umpty-million of its search results. Amazon also crushes its merchants under a mountain of junk fees pitched as optional but effectively mandatory. Take Prime: a merchant has to give up a huge share of each sale to be included in Prime, and merchants that don't use Prime are pushed so far down in the search results, they might as well cease to exist. Same with Fulfilment by Amazon, a "service" in which a merchant sends its items to an Amazon warehouse to be packed and delivered with Amazon's own inventory. This is far more expensive than comparable (or superior) shipping services from rival logistics companies, and a merchant that ships through one of those rivals is, again, relegated even farther down the search rankings.
All told, Amazon makes so much money charging merchants to deliver the wares they sell through the platform that its own shipping is fully subsidised. In other words, Amazon gouges its merchants so much that it pays nothing to ship its own goods, which compete directly with those merchants' goods.... Add all the junk fees together and an Amazon seller is being screwed out of 45-51 cents on every dollar it earns there. Even if it wanted to absorb the "Amazon tax" on your behalf, it couldn't. Merchants just don't make 51% margins. So merchants must jack up prices, which they do. A lot... [W]hen merchants raise their prices on Amazon, they are required to raise their prices everywhere else, even on their own direct-sales stores. This arrangement is called most-favoured-nation status, and it's key to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission's antitrust lawsuit against Amazon...
If Amazon is taxing merchants 45-51 cents on every dollar they make, and if merchants are hiking their prices everywhere their goods are sold, then it follows you're paying the Amazon tax no matter where you shop — even the corner mom-and-pop hardware store. It gets worse. On average, the first result in an Amazon search is 29% more expensive than the best match for your search. Click any of the top four links on the top of your screen and you'll pay an average of 25% more than you would for your best match — which, on average, is located 17 places down in an Amazon search result.
Doctorow knows what we need to do:
He succinctly explains "this moment we're living through, this Great Enshittening" using Amazon as an example. Platforms amass users, but then abuse them to make things better for their business customers. And then they abuse those business customers too, abusing everybody while claiming all the value for themselves. "And become a giant pile of shit."
So first Amazon subsidized prices and shipping, then locked in customers with Prime shipping subscriptions (while adding the chains of DRM to its ebooks and audiobooks)... These tactics — Prime, DRM and predatory pricing — make it very hard not to shop at Amazon. With users locked in, to proceed with the enshittification playbook, Amazon needed to get its business customers locked in, too... [M]erchants' dependence on those customers allows Amazon to extract higher discounts from those merchants, and that brings in more users, which makes the platform even more indispensable for merchants, allowing the company to require even deeper discounts...
[Amazon] uses its overview of merchants' sales, as well as its ability to observe the return addresses on direct shipments from merchants' contracting factories, to cream off its merchants' bestselling items and clone them, relegating the original seller to page umpty-million of its search results. Amazon also crushes its merchants under a mountain of junk fees pitched as optional but effectively mandatory. Take Prime: a merchant has to give up a huge share of each sale to be included in Prime, and merchants that don't use Prime are pushed so far down in the search results, they might as well cease to exist. Same with Fulfilment by Amazon, a "service" in which a merchant sends its items to an Amazon warehouse to be packed and delivered with Amazon's own inventory. This is far more expensive than comparable (or superior) shipping services from rival logistics companies, and a merchant that ships through one of those rivals is, again, relegated even farther down the search rankings.
All told, Amazon makes so much money charging merchants to deliver the wares they sell through the platform that its own shipping is fully subsidised. In other words, Amazon gouges its merchants so much that it pays nothing to ship its own goods, which compete directly with those merchants' goods.... Add all the junk fees together and an Amazon seller is being screwed out of 45-51 cents on every dollar it earns there. Even if it wanted to absorb the "Amazon tax" on your behalf, it couldn't. Merchants just don't make 51% margins. So merchants must jack up prices, which they do. A lot... [W]hen merchants raise their prices on Amazon, they are required to raise their prices everywhere else, even on their own direct-sales stores. This arrangement is called most-favoured-nation status, and it's key to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission's antitrust lawsuit against Amazon...
If Amazon is taxing merchants 45-51 cents on every dollar they make, and if merchants are hiking their prices everywhere their goods are sold, then it follows you're paying the Amazon tax no matter where you shop — even the corner mom-and-pop hardware store. It gets worse. On average, the first result in an Amazon search is 29% more expensive than the best match for your search. Click any of the top four links on the top of your screen and you'll pay an average of 25% more than you would for your best match — which, on average, is located 17 places down in an Amazon search result.
Doctorow knows what we need to do:
- Ban predatory pricing — "selling goods below cost to keep competitors out of the market (and then jacking them up again)."
- Impose structural separation, "so it can either be a platform, or compete with the sellers that rely on it as a platform."
- Curb junk fees, "which suck 45-51 cents on every dollar merchants take in."
- End its most favoured nation deal, which forces merchants "to raise their prices everywhere else, too.
- Unionise drivers and warehouse workers.
- Treat rigged search results as the fraud they are.
These are policy solutions. (Because "You can't shop your way out of a monopoly," Doctorow warns.) And otherwise, as Doctorow says earlier, "Once a company is too big to fail, it becomes too big to jail, and then too big to care."
In the mean time, Doctorow also makes up a new word — "the enshitternet" — calling it "a source of pain, precarity and immiseration for the people we love.
"The indignities of harassment, scams, disinformation, surveillance, wage theft, extraction and rent-seeking have always been with us, but they were a minor sideshow on the old, good internet and they are the everything and all of the enshitternet."
Thanks to long-time Slashdot readers mspohr and fjo3 for sharing the article.
"very hard not to shop at Amazon" (Score:3)
I've bought from Amazon exactly once in the last decade. It was a case for a cheap no-name phone that isn't carried at physical retailers. I could have probably got it cheaper directly from China instead of letting Amazon import it, but a family member already had an Amazon account for me to use.
Apart from that, I haven't even been tempted to shop from Amazon. I'm genuinely curious what it is that makes people feel they don't have another option.
Re:"very hard not to shop at Amazon" (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm genuinely curious what it is that makes people feel they don't have another option.
Busy parent here. When given a choice to spend 3+ hours driving around different stores or shop at Wallmart or order approximately what you want at Amazon and have it delivered to your doorstep, the lesser evil was clear. Not so much anymore, but Amazon still does save you time.
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Every store I go to seems to have a service where they'll shop for you now, many even deliver. This is not an Amazon exclusive. I take it you haven't been inside a store since Covid?
Re:"very hard not to shop at Amazon" (Score:5, Insightful)
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Every store I go to seems to have a service where they'll shop for you now, many even deliver. This is not an Amazon exclusive. I take it you haven't been inside a store since Covid?
Those stores charge more (often a higher item price) for the shopping and delivery than Amazon, and they are less reliable.
What I am wondering about is: Where is this "evil" in Amazon that everyone refers to. Please name it. Is it something that every other national retailer does not do?
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Where is this "evil" in Amazon that everyone refers to. Please name it.
Mixing counterfeits with branded items. (This is indifference rather than maliciousness.) Fake search results (hiding the most relevant items without disclosing that it's not directly a search algorithm). Tricking users into signing up for Prime. (If you click the default buttons during checkout, you will be signed up for Prime.) Making it much harder to cancel Prime than sign up for it. Treating employees like meat packers in The Jungle.
There are surely more examples in the article.
Re:"very hard not to shop at Amazon" (Score:4, Interesting)
I think the question was not Amazon vs Walmart but Amazon vs other online shops that also deliver to your doorstep, and do not cost you much more time.
Not much more time: I mean, you're certainly very busy (like everyone else; I've had an awfully busy Sunday as well) and you're still taking time to reply here (so am I) so you could take the additional 5 min to log into something else than Amazon. So I think "busy" it's not the core reason, maybe it's more on the lines that you don't care enough about avoiding Amazon (which is fine, we don't all have to follow the same obsessions).
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One account instead of hundreds. Amazon is no good solution, but an existing one and a convenient one.
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One shipping charge vs five...
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One shipping charge from Amazon (whether thats covered under Prime, or is free or whatever) vs five shipping charges from buying from non-Amazon websites - no one offers free shipping where I live.
Re:"very hard not to shop at Amazon" (Score:5, Interesting)
...so you could take the additional 5 min to log into something else than Amazon.
That's only after spending the months or years to find a reasonable, trustworthy alternative (Walmart is the only real competitor, with NewEgg being a decent runner-up for computer parts). 99.9% of the time, it goes like this:
1) Hey, StormReaver, I have a great alternative to Amazon and Walmart! It's [fill in alternative].
2) Great! Thanks, I'll check it out!
3) It turns out the alternative has 3-week shipping (that I have to pay for), and a nearly-nonexistent return policy. If it has one, I have to pay exorbitant return shipping, too. Or it has almost nothing I want.
4) Back to Amazon and Walmart I go.
Which is why I stopped asking for alternatives. There aren't any.
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Re: "very hard not to shop at Amazon" (Score:5, Informative)
For electronics specifically, you have lots of online options beyond NewEgg/Walmart including B&H Photo/Video, Adorama, Microcenter, and maybe Best Buy. Since electronics are generally expensive, it's a high impact way to steer money away from Amazon.
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I think the question was not Amazon vs Walmart but Amazon vs other online shops that also deliver to your doorstep, and do not cost you much more time.
That's still a lot more effort, especially since you have to vet each one to figure out if they provide good customer service in the event something goes wrong, and to be confident they won't steal and sell your credit card number (yeah, you aren't liable for the fraud, but getting a new card is a huge PITA). What could make this work well is the existence of a few online shopping aggregators that combine searching across all of the online stores and centralize payment. The problem is that in order to comp
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What could make this work well is the existence of a few online shopping aggregators that combine searching across all of the online stores and centralize payment.
That absolutely exists in Europe (though not all centralise payment). Best known is idealo.de, but I know of kelkoo.fr and kuantokusta.pt
they won't steal and sell your credit card number (yeah, you aren't liable for the fraud, but getting a new card is a huge PITA).
EU mandates that online payments shall have strong authentication (anciently, an SMS code, now phased out and replaced by in-app approvals, most likely through biometrics). Many purchases don't use cards anyway as national payment methods are available; since you need to validate in the app anyway, you just type some codes or read a QR code, no need for cards. For sites th
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So I think "busy" it's not the core reason, maybe it's more on the lines that you don't care enough about avoiding Amazon (which is fine, we don't all have to follow the same obsessions).
I am not the OP, but I will ask: Why are you obsessed with avoiding Amazon? Everyone keeps saying they are "evil" or something, but I have yet to hear any specific thing they are doing wrong? Or at least anything different than what every other national chain does.
In my personal case, it's not TIME, It's that I am disabled and physically unable to go to the store and walk around and shop like a normal person. I have to get almost everything delivered. (Otherwise, I have to hire someone to somehow cart my as
Re:"very hard not to shop at Amazon" (Score:4, Insightful)
I deleted my Amazon account about a year ago. I now use Amazon as a catalog... I search for approximately what I want, and then when I find the exact brand and model number, I search for that and purchase it from a different online store that also delivers, or else I go to a physical store and get it.
It's a bit less convenient than Amazon, but not markedly so, and I'll be damned if I give that company another dime of my money.
Re: "very hard not to shop at Amazon" (Score:2)
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I do not ever go to Whole Foods, correct.
I do not pay for any SaaS products, correct.
It's possible some of the services I use for free are hosted by AWS, but that's a very distant relationship compared to actually sending Amazon money. I also have extensive ad-blocking so those SaaS services that attempt to monetize me via ads are not able to. This is all part of my anti-enshittification defences.
Re: "very hard not to shop at Amazon" (Score:2)
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The closest Whole Foods to where I live is much further away from me than my two closest local grocery stores, so I don't bother to make the trip.
Correct, I do not use Claude code or any other Anthropic products or any sort of AI for that matter. I don't feel like I'm losing anything. FWIW, while I did have a 33-year career in software development, I'm now retired and maintain a few open-source hobby projects. I will not let AI within 100m of my projects. I hate gen-AI but that's a topic for a differen
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Of course, now there's also walmart.com, which now has pretty much the same selection as Amazon, and also will ship a lot of stuff next day or two with no membership required, as long as your order is at least $35.
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1) I have understood on this website they're the better, or maybe the only one, to deliver in some areas of rural USA.
2) Many people just go for the most known shop. Amazon is most known. Like Microsoft for OSes, or Tinder for dating. People don't know better or cannot even conceive something better is possible.
Re:"very hard not to shop at Amazon" (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah... am I the only one who finds the (non Prime) Amazon shopping experience to be horrible? They promise that things will ship in 3 or 4 days, but they take 6 or 7 on average. Hell, they usually don't even bother sending my order out of the warehouse until day 4.
If I order online from another big box retailer like Walmart instead, my orders usually arrive in 2 or 3 days even if I choose the "free" shipping option.So, yeah... I try to avoid getting things from Amazon if another option is available.
Re: "very hard not to shop at Amazon" (Score:3)
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My experience is indeed different from yours, maybe because I live in a suburb of a large city. I don't have Prime. When I order stuff, even selecting the free shipping option, it usually arrives in 2-3 days. Very often, they'll send me a notice that it will arrive "early."
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Less esoteric: every few months, I buy cat treats: buying a 2-pack gets me past the $25 minimum for free shipping, plus the unit cost is still less than my local store. No getting into my car, no driving, no parking, no standing in line.
In some cases, Amazon is both more convenient and less expensive.
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I'm genuinely curious what it is that makes people feel they don't have another option.
It's easy, it's fast, no-question returns, 5% cash back.
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I'm genuinely curious what it is that makes people feel they don't have another option.
Nothing does, they don't, and Cory just made that up so that he could claim to be relevant.
(Speaking as someone who uses Amazon Prime regularly.)
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I'm genuinely curious what it is that makes people feel they don't have another option.
Nothing does, they don't, and Cory just made that up so that he could claim to be relevant.
He's also wrong about Fulfilled by Amazon. It might be more expensive, but there are no comparable fulfillment services. None. Amazon has 1200 fulfillment warehouses and logistics facilities. And assuming the Google summary isn't wrong, FedEx Logistics has 130, and UPS has 250.
That's why I can order a lot of products and get them on the same day or the next day, depending on when I order them. Literally nobody else can do that unless you want to spend a hundred bucks on next-day air shipment. And when
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Kind of with you there. We used to shop for virtually everything at Jeff's Books & More.
First, they had everything, and in the early days of shopping on the internet they were a known reliable broker, often an umbrella corporation for all these little specialty merchants. They offered the Next- and 2nd-day shipping without tripling the cost of something we needed immediately.
Unfortunately, the umbrella corporation used their increasing market dominance to squeeze their venders, crush competition, and gr
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Two Examples, from this weekend.
First:
I've recently decided that I want a copy of Unfinished Tales, as well as The Silmarillion. I haven't read either book in years, and would like to read them again.
The closest book store to where I live is an hour away, because all of the book stores in my quadrant of the city have been closed. So, I went to the store. They don't have in it stock, but they can special order for me and it'll take 2-3 weeks, and the books are $24 CDN each, and I'll have to go back
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Barnes & Noble has The Silmarillion for USD $8.99 and Unfinished Tales for $11.00 on their web site.
Whenever I have ordered from them, it ships the next day and arrives within a week.
Shipping is free once your order hits $40, without any kind of membership fee.
What I personally prefer to do is go to the local used book store, which is typically cheaper still, and also carries LPs and a bunch of other collectibles. Stuff like Tolkien is always on the shelf there. I'm only ordering from B&N if I need
Re: "very hard not to shop at Amazon" (Score:2)
Iâ(TM)m in Canada, B&N shipping to here is a mess.
Indigo (Chapters, Coles) has an effective monopoly on books here, and isnâ(TM)t price competitive at all, and seems to be actively closing stores. I used to have at least 5 locations in NE Calgary, and now there is a single used book store at Marlborough Mall, but I donâ(TM)t really feel like getting stabbed in the Mall parking lot.
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Because Amazon has some excellent applied psychologists with mountains of your juiciest personal data, and they are working hard and even diabolically to make sure you shop at Amazon.
My second and final Amazon purchase was decades ago. I saw what they were doing with my personal data and knew I didn't want any part of that. Nothing I've seen in the decades since then has improved my opinion of the company.
While I agree with Doctorow that Amazon is abusing its leverage over suppliers, from the sales side I s
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I could have probably got it cheaper directly from China instead of letting Amazon import it
It's interesting that you bring that up, because I've been puzzling over why Amazon is so much more expensive than buying things from China. It's usually a 8x factor, except for really premium stuff or brands that are only available in the US. (Though of course being branded is not a guarantee it's good.) 8x seems like too much of a price increase, even accounting for the one month freight time, the need to warehouse, and the risk of buying something that customers won't want or someone else will do a bette
Amazon enshittification (Score:4, Insightful)
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It's actually quite easy to avoid Amazon. First, install uBlock Origin and the video ads go away. Then find the product you want on Amazon, check the reviews and the pricing.
Now go on AliExpress and drag the item image from Amazon into the search box. It will find the same item for you at 1/10th the price. Okay, returns are more of a pain, you have to wait 2 weeks for it to arrive, but it's a 90% discount and you didn't give any money to Jeff Bezos.
Amazon is just a showroom for buying direct from China now.
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The problem isn't so much avoiding Amazon's store-front, that's easy. It's avoiding AWS that's the problem. You basically can't avoid giving Amazon money if you use anything online. A lot of the web runs on AWS, so you are indirectly shopping at Amazon.
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Honestly thats exactly why its genius Amazons inline video ads arent some random annoyance theyre a masterclass in subtle marketing Youre already in a buying mindset actively browsing products so these ads hit when youre most receptive
Hahahahah. Receptive. Sure. When I'm wasting half an hour or more of my time trying to find a very specific product that meets very specific requirements and can be delivered in a tight timeframe, I'm going to be happily distracted by an ad and say, "Oh, maybe I should buy toilet paper, too." If Amazon's search didn't suck harder than a black hole, maybe, but as long as it's an uphill battle just to buy things on Amazon, and as long as 75% of my purchases end up with me doing a carefully tailored Google
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Honestly thats exactly why its genius Amazons inline video ads arent some random annoyance theyre a masterclass in subtle marketing Youre already in a buying mindset...
Maybe that what they intended to happen, but instead I put the tablet aside and went into actual store to buy a product. Amazon doesn't get to mess with me while I am spending my money. No way, no how will I tolerate that.
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Inline videos are only genius if they are in front of a brain-dead consumer. I must be a nightmare for their algorithm guys. I know what I want.
I know not to immediately go for the first two rows of "search results". I go through the first three pages. I don't sort on price, it makes the cheaper options disappear. Video playing? I ignore it, just as I ignore blinky thingies on a web page. I know it is there to feed me crap they want me to see. I have become pretty good at sifting the wheat from the chaff on
Amazon selection (Score:3)
I'm convinced half the shit on Amazon was bought from Amazon buy an individual and that individual then doubles the price of the item and sells it from their Amazon storefront.
I bought some water flavors in a 4 pack and i was $6. A week later I try and buy it again and the same thing is now offered by a different non Amazon seller and its suddenly $15. Normally I buy the Aldi brand but they haven't had any except the flavors with caffeine and awful tasting stevia.
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That's how lots of people make a living... reselling crap on Amazon or eBay for a markup.
They find a source for cheap "edible panties", order a couple cases, sell them on either for $0.30 more and make a total of $50, turn around and do it again with something else and eventually their apartment or garage is nothing but boxes stacked to the ceiling.
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>"I bought some water flavors in a 4 pack and i was $6. A week later I try and buy it again and the same thing is now offered by a different non Amazon seller and its suddenly $15. Normally I buy the Aldi brand but they haven't had any except the flavors with caffeine and awful tasting stevia."
Funny you should mention this. I use the same stuff. Essentially the Propel electrolyte powder. Walmart started making its own brand at 33% less cost for some of the flavors, so I started using those and they we
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95% of stuff sold on Amazon is people buying it fro 1/20th the price on Alibaba and reselling it. Go on Alibaba and look at the prices and the photos. You will find the same stuff on Amazon at 20x the price. The only issue with Alibaba is it's for bulk orders, but you can usually get the same stuff on AliExpress for only double that price, which is still 1/10th the Amazon price.
Re: Amazon selection (Score:1)
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Effort (Score:5, Interesting)
I need to buy some commodity item. A cable. A weird light bulb. Replacement air filters for the furnace. The workflow is simple:
1. Look the item up on Google, check prices at the local places (Home Depot, Target, Micro Center, Wal-Mart, Lowes, etc...)
2. Look the item up on Amazon.
If I must have it immediately, I buy it locally.
If it's a lot cheaper on Amazon and I don't need it right away, I buy it on Amazon.
If Amazon isn't that much cheaper than buying local, I'll buy local.
It's not hard. It takes about two minutes to research this stuff. Shopping around used to involve calling or driving to multiple stores. Now I can do it from my couch.
I'm not sure what's getting worse here.
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I moved from the UK where Amazon and Ebay were widely used, to a county where they don't exist.
There are local equivalents, and they are shit.
8 years later, I still miss Amazon and Ebay. They had their problems, but I prefer a world where I can use them to one where I cant.
Re: Effort (Score:2)
Where did you go to? Congo?
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New Zealand.
Our Ebay alternative is TradeMe, and it sucks. You can use Ebay.com but Ebay forces most sellers to use Ebay Global Shipping, which charges high shipping and also applies import duties to *everything* up front, even when the item falls under the personal allowance for importing into NZ (I remain convinced Ebay are pocketing that).
Our Amazon alternative is MightyApe, and it sucks. At a pinch you can use Amazon AU or US, but its very hit and miss as to what products can be sent to NZ, and shippi
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eBay doesn't force sellers to use Global Shipping anymore than Linux distros use systemd.
Sellers use Global Shipping because it's easy on them - they ship the item to a US address and eBay handles the rest. This lowers the sel
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So you presume to know why I moved and what my personal preferences are?
I definitely prefer a world where I can use them. Having used them for so long and then being forced to not use them cements that for me. And the alternatives have not got any better over the past 8 years either.
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I don't presume. Your preference function is by definition what describes your actions in the world as a rational economic agent. It is such that one cannot act in contradiction to one's preferences, tautologically.
From there you have two options remaining, once your stated preference turns out to be violated by your actions: 1) you are mistaken about your real preference function, or 2) you are not a rational economic agent.
I did not want to presume 2). Whereas 1) can happen to the best of us :)
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The local options in the UK are mostly shit now too. It's got to the point where I don't even bother looking on local shops unless I'm certain they have it, I just get it online. The only high street retail that is worth the effort is charity shops, and even those are often pretty mediocre.
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I'm not in the US, you guys don't have online shops that aren't Amazon? From memory I can choose from 5 marketplaces that operate in Southern Europe (cdiscount, rakuten, fnac, pccomponente, worten), several online petfood stores (zooplus, tiendanimal, miscota, goldpet, zoomalia), same thing for electronics. All of them deliver to my doorstep or to a nearby delivery point (otherwise I wouldn't use them). I'd really need a reason to buy from Amazon and there isn't one, as mentioned in the summary, their searc
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I'm not in the US, you guys don't have online shops that aren't Amazon?
Of course we do. We have a number of options. But in general Amazon's prices are lower, and they ship faster, and they are more graceful about returns. People use Amazon for actual reasons.
as mentioned in the summary, their search engine is shit and their prices higher.
Yes, but IME all search engines are shit now, since Google has enshittified. Most [r]etail sites' search engines are absolute dogshit. Again IME, the best search is eBay's. eBay sellers seem willing to enter more metadata than other kinds of sellers, so you can use the category-specific search options to find products wit
Re: Effort (Score:2)
Ah yes, the old "if everyone wasn't an idiot, because I'm not an idiot, we'd be living in a utopia, and since I have confidently declared this not to be a problem for myself, the problem does not actually exist" rebuttal. I think that accounts for 80% of the posts here these days.
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I need to buy some commodity item. A cable. A weird light bulb. Replacement air filters for the furnace. The workflow is simple:
1. Look the item up on Google, check prices at the local places (Home Depot, Target, Micro Center, Wal-Mart, Lowes, etc...)
2. Look the item up on Amazon.
If I must have it immediately, I buy it locally.
If it's a lot cheaper on Amazon and I don't need it right away, I buy it on Amazon.
If Amazon isn't that much cheaper than buying local, I'll buy local.
That's kind of like mine, but backwards. I need something ASAP, so I look online and figure out if they have it at Lowe's or Home Depot. Then I drive there, find that it is locked in a cage, and either hit a call button or wander around looking for someone to unlock the cage that it is locked in. After about five minutes without getting any help, I check the price on Amazon, find that it is $20 cheaper and I can have it the next day, and I order it from Amazon as I walk out of the store without having ma
The Amazon Fraud/Dark-UX-Patterns makes it worse (Score:5, Insightful)
I need to buy some commodity item. A cable. A weird light bulb. Replacement air filters for the furnace. The workflow is simple:
I'm not sure what's getting worse here.
OK, you find the cable you need. The reviews are EXCELLENT...but you read them and notice it's for a different cable and 10 years old. WTF? Oh, the vendor bundled EVERYTHING they sold into one listing...so you need a USB-C to USB-C cable...but all the reviews are for their USB-A to lightening cable...and the few USB-C to USB-C photos in the reviews don't match the listing because they're 5 years old...yeah....the company...change the entire product line, but kept the old listing...so the review photos show a thick, quality, sturdy robust cable....but your product photo doesn't match...and then you order it and realize it's a completely different color than what you bought and also shittier looking...and that's common and normal. I have no idea why this is legal.
OK, so you decide, I am never buying from brands I've never heard of...until you see that AmazonFuckingBasics does that as well. I can give you a specific example. Their rechargeable AA batteries. They used to be rebranded Sanyo Eneloops...made in Japan...only for an AMAZING price. This is the first phase of enshittification Doctorow talked about. THEY WERE GREAT!!!!! OK. So I bought a bunch...then my kids lose them and I buy some more...only....now the nice black ones I buy are replaced by grey and green ones and they're made in China. And they don't hold a charge...and are shitty...and wear out super fast...but...all the reviews are excellent...you click on them and can see from the photos they're the 1st gen made in Japan batteries...in fact the product photo is still the black label...total fucking fraud...committed by Amazon directly through their AmazonBasics label.
Other Amazon fraud examples?...placing sponsored results in a search that don't match a search. You want your 240w USB-C to USB-C cable and search for it or your weird light bulb at 3500K temperature. You search for it...oh, some POS bought an Amazon ad, so your first result is a 60w sponsored result USB-C cable even though you specifically searched for "6' USB-C to USB-C 240w cable." Your first 6 results for your weird bulb are the wrong temperature despite you specifically searching for it because they're sponsored results....so instead of being a nice white, they're 2700K...which looks like urine to me. I find it common to have the ENTIRE PAGE of first results be wrong because I searched for some minor deviation of whatever people were sponsoring that day.
Amazon is a horrible shitty site with lots of dark UX Patterns...many of which should really be fraud. We've all gotten used to them and work around them. I google Amazon results because they're more honest than Amazon's search. Want to figure out the best selling replacement air filter?...well...you can't find that form the site reliably...so you have to google that...why?...beats me...not even sure how that benefits them.
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...total fucking fraud...
In the last couple years, I've had to return items that were definitely not the specs advertised. One was a USB sound card advertised as stereo input but turned out they just duplicated the left channel to the right. One other item was a SATA DVD recorder that claimed certain speeds, but after 3 burning failures, I checked the specs with "wodim -prcap" and found those claims were complete BS.
The one that was truly dangerous though was the burner replacements for my propane grill.
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It's Cory Doctorow. Cory Doctorow is getting worse here.
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Or even use an LLM Deep Research to look for alterntatives.
D I A T R I B E !! (Score:2)
As for ensh!ttification, is Cory unfamiliar with entropy? Everything, everywhere tends towards lower-value states. Any local contradictions (life) are only explained by greater disorder elsewhere. This applies to communi
Prime all the Time (Score:3)
I am disabled and can't go shopping in real stores like normal people. I therefore use Amazon Prime quite a bit, and they even have good prices (compared to the local stores) on things like laundry detergent and whatever. I get free shipping. They have great return policies and I've never had a problem. For me as a consumer, what is shitty about this?
They''re probably beating up their suppliers, though.
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Lack of competition. Amazon isn't cheap, and they rely on people being locked into their high prices. That's what Prime is, a way to encourage you to pay more for stuff.
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Lack of competition. Amazon isn't cheap, and they rely on people being locked into their high prices. That's what Prime is, a way to encourage you to pay more for stuff.
In my experience, I pay LESS for stuff from Amazon. Compared to the local stores and the big chains. I don't feel "locked in" at all, and occasionally order things - trivial and big-ticket - from other stores (local and national). But Amazon has the best delivery service and the best return policies.
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Compared to local stores, but most of the stuff on there is available cheaper from AliExpress or some other outlet. Often brands have outlets on eBay, for example.
Just to be contrary (Score:3)
Recently, they made a push into groceries. Many of these are priced at or lower than traditional low-cost outlets like Walmart and Aldi. Is it just another tether to keep you attached to the mothership? Probably, but at least there is some good coming from them.
There are plenty of companies that are worse offenders.
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Amazon is the cheapest and most convenient place online to buy groceries with EBT. 12.3 percent of US residents receive SNAP benefits. 10% of them have a disability, and 39% are in a household with at least one member who is elderly or disabled.
There's a word for this process.... (Score:2)
...I believe it's called "enshitification."
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...I believe it's called "enshitification."
Yes. The article writer invented it. It's literally the second line of the TFS.
Duh.
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"The article writer invented it."
No he didn't. He may have coined the term, he sure claims he did, but it's an insight older than the internet. Cory Doctorow thinks it's a clever term and his career is defined by his attempts to convert that word into money.
The Prime Trap (Score:2)
I've seen on multiple types of listings now the "Prime Price" showing up as the default when searching for something and that price that is ONLY good if you have prime is often 20-30% cheaper than the base price.
You can't turn this off either, when you see search results the "Prime Price" is the default and you don't know it till you dig into the listing and have to manually set it to "retail" price.
It's an absolute g
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I've seen on multiple types of listings now the "Prime Price" showing up as the default when searching for something and that price that is ONLY good if you have prime is often 20-30% cheaper than the base price.
You can't turn this off either, when you see search results the "Prime Price" is the default and you don't know it till you dig into the listing and have to manually set it to "retail" price.
If true, that's pretty open-and-shut false advertising, and gas companies have been hit with very large fines for playing very similar tricks. This is arguably tantamount to drip pricing, which is explicitly illegal in California (SB 478). And on the federal level, it also appears to violate my casual reading of Title 16 Chapter 1 Subchapter D Part 464 section 2a. Why? Because if you are non-member, that's not the total price. The total price is the other, higher price, or alternatively, the lower price
EU Ended Amazon’s MFN Clauses Years Ago (Score:5, Informative)
Interesting piece, but worth noting: most of the practices Doctorow cites (MFN clauses, FBA tying, self-preferencing) have already been banned or constrained in the EU for years. Amazon dropped its price-parity (MFN) clauses EU-wide in 2013 after German/UK antitrust probes, and later accepted EU commitments on data use and Buy Box transparency. Under the DMA, gatekeepers can’t use parity clauses (incl. “equivalent measures”).
https://www.alixpartners.com/i... [alixpartners.com]
https://ec.europa.eu/commissio... [europa.eu]
Re: EU Ended Amazon’s MFN Clauses Years Ago (Score:2)
Booking.com still doing it and they're now the subject of a class action suit.
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Indeed, a class action against Booking.com is ongoing, and the CJEU’s 2024 preliminary ruling confirmed that both wide and narrow MFN clauses restrict competition and cannot be justified as “ancillary restraints.” https://www.traverssmith.com/k... [traverssmith.com]
However, Booking.com successively dropped its wide and narrow MFN clauses between 2015 and 2018, following enforcement actions and national bans in several EU countries, so the class action concerns past practices.
He talks about Amazon.com (Score:2)
Amazon.de, Amazon.fr etc have unionized everyones and most 'illegal' practices are just that, ILLEGAL and the only thing I can complain about is that its search sucks dicks.
I use ChatGPT to search for things on Amazon, since it ignores what I enter, looking for a Men's jacket, the first result is usually a woman's, when I search for 240Liter plastic bags, I get 20L, 120L, 80 L and so on, useless.
I know they do it because their marketing slime decided it, so that I see other things that I might like, just li
Re: He talks about Amazon.com (Score:2)
I don't even use and any ai crap, I just Google/DDG with "site:Amazon.com". You get actual relevant results... Amazon's search will just show something that matches a single word high up for some reason.
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Indeed, worst search ever.
That "summary" was so freaking long... (Score:2)
I'm wondering if there's a Kindle version available, so I can read it a little at a time.
Writer promotes what he writes about (Score:2)
I still shop at Amazon, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
...I need to wade through a river of crap before I find anything worth buying
Parts of amazon are no better than Temu
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What's the deal with Temu anyway? I went there expecting to find some bargains and everything I looked up was more expensive than Amazon.
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...I need to wade through a river of crap before I find anything worth buying
This is exactly what killed ebay. No idea why they don't understand that for most people Amazon is about saving time and when they waste your time, the whole reason to shop there goes away.
Cory Doctorow appreciation post (Score:4, Interesting)
I discovered Doctorow via Slashdot back in early 2002 via this article: https://slashdot.org/story/02/... [slashdot.org]
Things have changed a lot since then, but not my appreciation for his writing (both fiction and non), for his righteous efforts with civil/digital liberties and activism, and his ability as a writer to convey those and related issues to his audience with impact and style. A true paragon of a human being.
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I think you don't understand what either of those words mean, or you are just trolling.... Beyond being just plain wrong, Cory Doctorow also gives away most of his books for free with a CC license. Whether you like him or not, he is neither a grifter nor exploiter of human beings, and indeed seems to try hard to be the opposite of those words.
Fact or fiction:screwed out of 45-51 cents (Score:2)
Terrible search (Score:2)
In Amazon's quest to show you *something* to buy, they seem to totally ignore the search keywords you provide. And why on earth would they include items that are "unavailable"?
Re: What a joke... (Score:3)
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Without even mentioning Amazon. Sure. Thanks for making the rest of us above average, moron.
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Correct. Fuck Cory Doctorow and his constant abuse of social media for profit. How many Doctorow-specific articles will it take for /. readers to catch on?
"Cory isn't pitching a solution..."
Cory Doctorow is a grifter.
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Amazon is what it is and what it has always been. What has changed is the increase in grifters trying to profit from negative criticism of it, Cory Doctorow among them. It's more of the same game, Doctorow is just grifting off public resentment, resentment he is encouraging.