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Corran1138 ,

I will believe it when I see it.

CriticalMiss ,

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.

jeffw ,

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

SpezCanLigmaBalls ,
@SpezCanLigmaBalls@lemmy.world avatar

I think they’re saying even if this goes through amazon will find a way to ignore it

TheBat ,
@TheBat@lemmy.world avatar

Telecom companies are back together, aren’t they?

ELI70 ,

There is mods on lemmy? I just found out there is also karma, why are we recreating a toxic authoritarian shit hole but decentralized?

Zink ,

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.

LEDZeppelin ,

Came here to say exactly this. Not going to happen.

mx_smith ,

Yeah remember when they were going to break up Microsoft? That went great.

chuckleslord ,

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.

Eldritch ,

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.

chuckleslord ,

I meant the Microsoft Activision Blizzard fiasco, I guess I didn’t realize.

Eldritch ,

Oh yes that too. Microsoft is always been bad though. Always will be always has been.

Wr4ith ,
@Wr4ith@lemmy.world avatar

Doubt. If it somehow works out, do Google next

Gyella ,

Lol. What a crock of shit. If anyone thinks the oligarchs that run this country will allow this to happen you’re smoking rocks.

This country leads the world in corruption & greed. Nothing will change that but this is great click bait.

Cranakis ,

You think the oligarchs make more or less money when Bezos has a monopoly?

I think it may well happen because the oligarchs want Amazon broken up. Biden did appoint Lina Kahn as chair of the FTC. Kahn has long been vocal that Amazon needs to be broken up.

jungekatz ,

Read similar news about meta , google and even microsoft ! Now it feels like a hogwash !

Buelldozer ,
@Buelldozer@lemmy.world avatar

Great news! I hope it happens but I won’t be holding my breath. The US has gotten really bad about this kind of action over the past 20 years.

mean_bean279 ,

While I am with you on the frustration, I think it’s important to understand why we got to this point. A ton of those anti-trust rules and laws were written a century ago and were around steel, oil and rail. Industries that provided physical good and services to the country. Tech has been able to skirt all of this as the rules were never written for them. Hopefully we see updates to our anti-trust rules and update accordingly. I’d love to take down Amazon, but I also want to prevent others from getting that big ever again.

dylanmorgan ,

I think it has a lot more to do with the US antitrust doctrine being focused on “consumer welfare” for the last 40 years. Robert Bork argued that monopolies were not inherently problematic, and that antitrust should only go after “bad” monopolies (which he argued could not survive for long.) Khan has explicitly rejected that doctrine.

wbur.org/…/more-than-money-antitrust-monopolies-a…

TIEPilot ,

Closer to 40 years, sorry to say.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakup_of_the_Bell_System

jackfrost ,

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.

joekar1990 , (edited )

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.

reversebananimals ,

No doubt this is slimy, but does it make Amazon a monopoly? It seems like a tough case for the FTC to win.

InfiniteVariables ,

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.

muddybulldog ,

Took them ten years to split up AT&T and that was a literal monopoly. Near 100% market share.

grue , (edited )

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.

zerkrazus ,

If this does happen, I hope they find a way to do it that doesn’t make Bezos and the like richer, like what happened with Standard Oil years ago.

noxy ,
@noxy@yiffit.net avatar

This needs to happen. As skeptical as I am that this will result in a break-up, AWS really needs to be busted up away from the rest of Amazon, and that’s just to start with.

xeekei ,

Would be great if the US started regulating big tech as harshly as the EU, let’s see how they like that.

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

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.

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

asphaltkooky ,

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

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.

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

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