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Comment by cryptozeus | Hacker News Reader

In other words, company is promoting its own product on its own platform. Some people don’t like it.

In other words, something I paid for lies to me and misdirects me in order to make more money from me. Damn right I don't like it. Do you like it?

I don't like it, but I don't fault them for it. My exact thought when browsing their Cyber Monday deals was: "Oh, looks like they're mostly promoting their own stuff. Meh." close tab

I don't get all the fuss over it I suppose. I don't expect Amazon to be impartial. If I want an unbiased source for the best deals, there are plenty of shopping blogs that aggregate that information.

EDIT: Actually, I guess I could see the argument that 3rd party sellers are getting the shaft due to this behavior. I'm not sure what the solution is though, as I still feel Amazon should be able to promote their own products on their own platform. Tough call.

Are 3rd party sellers entitled to fairness? They choose to use Amazon as a platform, they could use ebay, etsy, woocommerce, shopify, bigcommerce? There is also not much but complexity and time stopping them from using a bunch of those services. Theres also things like ecomdash.com that let you treat all the platforms as just another sales channel of your business.

Im not sure how much I feel for the "I sold my soul to the devil for a quick buck and he turned on me, woe is me" crowd. If you dont like the deal, and you dont want to list your product at one of the biggest stores in the world, nobody is forcing you to.

There may absolutely be some anti-competitive behavior happening. Im not sure how I feel about amazon watching trends and then cloning products. Being paid by their competitors to be fed market research. But its not a unique business model to Amazon, Wal-mart has been doing it forever. If this behavior type needs correcting, correct the rules, not haphazard sanctions after the fact.

I'm honestly not sure if they're entitled to fairness. Sure, I guess they choose to use Amazon so they could just as well choose not to. But Amazon's massive market presence means that small sellers could take a huge hit by not being a part of it. Sometimes their livelihood depends on their Amazon sales.

But now that I brought it up, I feel like that's a different issue than what's being mentioned in the article: Amazon gadgets getting promoted on Cyber Monday. By itself, the whole issue the article gets after doesn't seem like a big deal to me.

>But Amazon's massive market presence means that small sellers could take a huge hit by not being a part of it.

Does Amazon have a social responsibility. Do they own people the opportunity to profit as reseller

>Sometimes their livelihood depends on their Amazon sales.

Get a different job? Not trying to be too curt but, if you cant be profitable without amazon, maybe something else is wrong. If you want to dance with amazon for MORE profit, that is your choice.

I tend to agree with you, but I think this lends itself to a bigger philosophical debate of how much social responsibility a company has when it wields the incredible amount of power that Amazon does. And to that I have no answer.

the set of folks with a legal obligation to give you good answers to questions is very small and doesn't include amazon.

> misdirects me in order to make more money from me

literally the entire sales profession.

if you want everyone around you to be under some moral obligation to tell you the absolute truth at all times, you've got a larger cultural battle to fight.

> the set of folks with a legal obligation to give you good answers to questions is very small and doesn't include amazon.

Poster didn't say anything about legal obligation.

The linked article heavily implies that legal action could be taken against Amazon for this, by bringing up other antitrust investigations that are happening. Hence the debate about legality.

I'm not compelled to like something just because it's not illegal.

No one is saying you should be compelled to like it, they're saying that the fuss over it is moot because it's not as big a deal as it's made out to be.

Alexa pretends to be a data service. Sold that way. Nowhere said "Oh, we lie about best deals, and shim in our own stuff".

If I pay for a data service, and its slanted, I want my money back. Maybe not rises to the level of fraud, but certainly flawed.

Stop shopping at Amazon. they are no longer consumer friendly like they were a few years ago.

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