Amazon is a perfect #enshittification parable - platforms subsidize end users, until they're locked in, then make life good for business customers at users' expense, until *they're* locked in, then claw back all the value they can for themselves, leaving just enough behind to keep the lock-in going.
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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/14/flywheel-shyster-and-flywheel/#unfulfilled-by-amazon
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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/14/flywheel-shyster-and-flywheel/#unfulfilled-by-amazon
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Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/2
https://www.somo.nl/amazons-european-chokehold/
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Amazon's European chokehold - SOMO
jenny (SOMO)Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/3
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Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/4
https://vimeo.com/739486256/00a0a7379a
This flywheel creates a vicious cycle, starving local retail so that customers can't get what they need from brick-and-mortar shops, which funnels sellers into offering their goods for sale on Amazon.
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Chokepoint Capitalism extended video (US edition)
VimeoCory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/5
There are 800,000 EU-based sellers on Amazon, and they have seen the junk-fees that Amazon charges them skyrocket, to the point where they have to raise prices or lose money on each sale.
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Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/6
https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/25/greedflation/
It's not hard to understand why Amazon would raise its fees: the company has an effective e-commerce monopoly.
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Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/7
https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2023/06/09/Pixel-4-to-7
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Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/8
https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/02/nonbinary-families/#red-envelopes
It's true of the movie studios, which is why they want to zero out their wage bills by replacing writers with automatic plausible sentence generators that will write stupid movies that they think we'll still pay to see because there won't be anything else:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/06/people-are-not-disposable/#union-strong
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Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/9
https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/12/algorithmic-wage-discrimination/#fishers-of-men
Monopolies "grow" by making their customers and suppliers worse off. But they have to be careful about this: if it's obvious that you're using your market power to screw buyers, you can get in trouble with competition regulators.
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Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/10
https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/10/play-fair/#bedoya
This focus on price-hikes has given monopolists a free hand to squeeze *suppliers* and *workers*, because a monopolist - from #Walmart to Amazon - can claim that squeezing your workers and suppliers is necessary to enhancing consumer welfare.
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Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/11
When a company has a lot of seller power, we call it a monopolist. When it has a lot of buying power, we call it a #monopsonist. No one ever made a bestselling, family-destroying board game called "#Monopsony" so most people haven't heard of the concept.
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Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/12
Amazon is a monopolist, but it's also a very powerful and ruthless monopsonist.
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Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/13
https://pluralistic.net/2022/09/07/audible-exclusive/#audiblegate
For Europe's 800k sellers who rely on Amazon to reach their customers, the monoposony conditions are blatant and shameless.
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Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/14
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Cory Doctorow
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https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/15/finnegans-snooze/#dirty-old-town
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Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/16
The true growth figure might be lower still. Amazon refuses to show the math behind its figures, or even say which sellers and sales are included in the figure.
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Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/17
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Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/18
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Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/19
Amazon has used #excuseflation to hike its FBA prices, blaming higher energy prices for price hikes that predated the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and blaming covid for price hikes that predated the pandemic.
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Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/20
Another notable source of gouging came in response to the UK and France adopting digital services taxes, which were meant to make up for the tax-base erosion enabled by Luxembourg's flouting of EU tax law.
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Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/21
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Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/22
https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/28/enshittification/#relentless-payola
This is how you get a simple search like "cat beds" returning results whose first screen is 100% ads, and whose next five screens are 50% ads, many of them for *dog* products:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/interactive/2022/amazon-shopping-ads/
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Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/23
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Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/24
But even the "winners" of Amazon's gladiatorial combat among vendors can still lose.
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Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/25
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Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/26
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Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/27
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/10/18/amazon-congress-letter-third-party-data/
He *definitely* lied:
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/amazon-india-rigging/
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Amazon copied products and rigged search results, documents show
ReutersCory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/28
The report quotes Thomas Höppner, a lawyer who has represented small businesses that Amazon screwed over.
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Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/29
Amazon had long made amendments elsewhere with the same effect. We require a more holistic approach that considers the entire Amazon ecosystem and the various interdependencies within."
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Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/30
* allowing sellers to offer their products on other marketplaces at different prices (Article 5.3),
* not obliging business users to pay for one of its services in order to use its platform (Article 5.8),
* limiting the way Amazon uses non-public seller data to compete with them (Article 6.2)
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Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/31
The report concludes with a suite of recommendations for improving EU enforcement. First, they argue for a return to traditional competition law, abandoning the "consumer welfare standard" that is so friendly to monopsonies and their abuses of suppliers and workers.
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Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/32
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Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/33
https://doctorow.medium.com/como-is-infosec-307f87004563
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Como Is Infosec - Cory Doctorow - Medium
Cory Doctorow (Medium)Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/34
The technical term for this measure is "#StructuralSeparation" - a rule that bans platform companies from competing with their business customers.
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Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/35
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/05/save-news-we-must-shatter-ad-tech
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To Save the News, We Must Shatter Ad-Tech
Electronic Frontier FoundationCory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/36
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Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/37
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/06/google-may-soon-be-ordered-to-break-up-its-lucrative-ad-business-eu-warns/
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Google risks forced breakup of ad business as EU alleges shocking misconduct
Ars TechnicaCory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/38
With Amazon dominating online sales, and with in-person retail cratering, Amazon's decisions have the power to determine the outcome of whole swathes of Europe's economy.
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Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/39
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File:Gladiator with sword-Louis Ernest Meissonnier-MG 1216-IMG 1223-white.jpg - Wikimedia Commons
commons.wikimedia.orgAmish Cyborg
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/19
Amazon, as an PRIMARILY INTERNET company, should NOT require you to fucking CALL them in order for you to reset your password. I changed my password and had an 2FA, and then I tried to log in with my old password and with a correct 2FA code, and they locked me out.
Fuck them. They need to BURN to the ground until they disappear.
Jona 🐳
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/7
Exandra
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/2