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NuclearArmWrestling ,

Great, instead of one overvalued company, Jeff Bezos will own majority stakes in multiple overvalued companies.

HawlSera ,

God we need a trustbuster

yoz ,

Nothings going to happen. Its just another headline that FTC will do something but we know how it goes.

Pika , (edited )

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

sin_free_for_00_days ,

Wasn’t Microsoft convicted of being a monopoly though? I mean, it was overturned, but they did something.

AphoticDev ,
@AphoticDev@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

Yeah, that’ll happen.

brap_gobbo , (edited )

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.

voidMainVoid ,

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!

Atemu ,
@Atemu@lemmy.ml avatar

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.

brap_gobbo ,

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.

Historical_General ,
@Historical_General@lemmy.world avatar

So perhaps they’ll fart in Amazon’s general direction?

elax102 ,
@elax102@lemmy.world avatar

The FTC is getting ready for the big one

Sounds like it lol

hayes_ ,

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.

Steeve ,

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.

chaosppe ,
@chaosppe@lemmy.world avatar

Absolutely straight, we need a lot more of this too.

chaosppe ,
@chaosppe@lemmy.world avatar

Absolutely. we need a lot more of this too.

UncleGooberleg ,

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.

SCB ,

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.

UncleGooberleg ,

Dream on.

SCB ,

“how dare you be optimistic!” Lol

UncleGooberleg ,

I encourage anyone with a sufficiently smooth brain to ignore inevitabilities, you included. Really, y’all are in an enviable place. If two-hundred million in the USA under heat or flood warnings while scientists say the Gulf Stream is on the verge of collapse means nothing more than “it’s summer” to you, good for you. You win. Seriously.

SCB ,

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.

UncleGooberleg ,

All claims of others’ accomplishments and impossible to prove. Congrats.

SCB ,

Thatsthejoke.jpg

legion ,
@legion@lemmy.world avatar

This is funny, because I literally said “good!” when I read the post title. So I’m right there with you.

MercuryUprising ,

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.

KairuByte ,
@KairuByte@lemmy.world avatar

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.

MercuryUprising ,

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.

Steeve ,

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

Chenzo ,
@Chenzo@lemmy.world avatar

Nice Try, Amazon PR Flunky!

Steeve ,

And I would’ve gotten away with it too, if it weren’t for you meddling Lemmings!

Yewb ,

Repeat after me: amazon deserves to be broken up!

Also I think amazon is responsible for a measurable spike in inflation

Ogmios ,

Any move in the right direction is good, even if it doesn’t prove to be enough on it’s own.

Archer ,

It’s “Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good”

whoisearth ,
@whoisearth@lemmy.ca avatar

“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.

TwilightVulpine ,

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.

whoisearth ,
@whoisearth@lemmy.ca avatar

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.

some_guy ,

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.

whoisearth ,
@whoisearth@lemmy.ca avatar

What came first, people checking out or the system stopping working for us? Or does it even matter?

SwampYankee ,

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.

marmo7ade ,

Obamacare did not change any of the fundamental problems with healthcare: the insurance industry.

Useless health insurance admins are still making 6 figures and you’re still paying $20 for a bag of saline to justify their salary.

ArcticCircleSystem ,

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

flop_leash_973 ,

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.

marmo7ade ,

at least it indicates someone is doing something.

That is the entire point, and that’s where it stops. I have been around long enough to see this happen over and over and over and over again.

Because you’re not actually going to do anything when this doesn’t go anywhere. Right? Most people will make no changes to their life to work towards the goals they want. Thoughts and prayers on social media, then back to netflix, tiktok, youtube, the latest video games, music festival, whatever.

So the government, who is in bed with corporations, knows they just have to tell you what you want to hear.

Someone is doing something! YAY!!

half ,

Shitting yourself is not better than doing nothing.

LexiconBexicon ,
@LexiconBexicon@lemmynsfw.com avatar

So then all the workers lose their jobs? That doesn’t sound good

throws_lemy ,
@throws_lemy@lemmy.nz avatar

We need to do the same with Microsoft and Google

AbidanYre ,

They went after MS in the 90s. Nothing really came of it.

kittenbridgeasteroid ,

Are you high?

Phoenixbouncing ,

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.

Techmaster ,

But not Apple? The most valuable company in history.

herrvogel ,

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.

maynarkh ,

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.

SCB ,

Ideally this is all that will happen with Amazon as well

makyo ,

Eh they should do it anyway

Smokeless7048 ,

I want to see the same happen to Apple, to many fingers in too many pies.

Their app store, + cell phone, computer, publishing, music store, streaming service, ect ect.

Want to see google, Microsoft, apple, and others all broken up.

kittenbridgeasteroid ,

And like the other 10 companies that own pretty much every brand in the country.

ELI70 ,

What about facebook, disney, netflix, twitter, apple, uber, airbnb?

SCB , (edited )

Uber has direct competition in Lyft, among other rideshares and entrenched taxi companies. Disney and Netflix are literal competitors. You’re on an alternative to Twitter right now, and Facebook is yet another. Apple has competitors in every industry. AirBnB has both tons of competition and 26% market share - below Booking.com

maynarkh ,

Oligopolies are still not competitive. We need research into finding out what market share starts distorting competition, and tying antitrust to that.

A market with 2 competitors can still be broken down further.

SCB ,

Oligopoly has an actual meaning and that meaning isn’t “companies I have heard of”

What’s funny is you hate Uber because you’ve heard of them but Yellow Cab had a literal monopolistic chokehold and you didn’t give a fuck at all.

TwilightVulpine ,

Disney too

DragonAce ,

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.

bobs_monkey ,

This smells like fodder just in time for election season

limit ,

Dude, the 80s wasn’t 40 years ago…

Damn I got old…

thereisalamp ,

The 80s will always be 20 years ago. Y2k was ten years ago, the 2010s didn’t happen and we’re both old.

dragonflyteaparty ,

Damn, there might be a group of us.

JollyTheRancher ,

The FTC has actually been crazy busy this administration - www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases - they’re really doing far more than at any other point in my lifetime.

Reverendender ,

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.

SCB ,

I fully support the FTC burning it all down

Lol sayin the quiet part out loud

maynarkh ,

If it’s about burning down the corporate regulatory capture and their stranglehold on markets that killed free market capitalism, then it’s not the quiet part. That’s the literal mission of the FTC that it hasn’t been fulfilling for half a century now.

SCB ,

killed free market capitalism

Citation needed.

asphaltkooky ,

Remember when FTC threw hands with MSFT…like literally last week? Yeah.

bcrab ,

They will settle for increased regulation, knowing their army of lawyers will be able to manage it all while the little guy will get snowed under.

So we’ll see even more small businesses fail while Amazon will continue to grow because the gov’t was lobbied into killing the competition.

SCB ,

How exactly does helping small businesses access a worldwide market they otherwise would never get access to cause small businesses to “fail?”

bcrab ,

This wouldn’t be about small businesses accessing Amazon’s market - although the original point was that Amazon is becoming a monopoly and is taking advantage of that position with ridiculously high fees and commissions. This will be new regulations created and forced on every business (or ones that grow to a certain size).

Amazon will say, “don’t break the company up, we welcome increased regulations to keep us honest” acting like that is a good compromise that solves the problem.

The intent of the regs will be to stop Amazon from gaining an even bigger monopoly, but the affect will actually be smaller businesses will not be able to manage the increased red tape and change of laws (whereas Amazon has an army of lawyers to find loopholes, and waste time in the courts and not change a thing).

This will stop small business growth and eliminate Amazon’s competition, further cementing the monopoly.

SCB ,

Yeah I’m all about regs, but the idea Amazon somehow stifles small business is shaky at best

prince_equis_49 ,

Does this need to happen? By God yes, a thousand times over. Will it actually happen with a positive effect? Big doubt.

Yondu_the_Ravager ,

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

JollyTheRancher ,

The FTC has had a spine since 2020, they have been really busy - www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases

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