I find this to be the case with most primary sources, not just for court cases. A couple days ago, an American WWII bomb exploded at a Japanese airport and the article linked on HN didn't even show or link the video.
Many popular podcasts would show the video, or pull up fact-checking in real time. If that's what you mean by "newer media" I would say it's 10x better.
Reuters is legacy media, hence why I mentioned legacy media.
Linking the publishing source is needed too. So many videos get reposted and mislabeled.
Like basically any rocket attack I assume happened in like 2006 and between completely different belligerents than whatever a post claims at this point
Well nobody asked me before changing the meaning! And by the way, a “selfie” can only have one person in it, and a “video” is something on MTV. Don’t get me started on “hack.”
A video podcast is distributed over RSS like any other podcast, unlike a talk show which is distributed via television.
Additionally there are far more genres of podcast than one or two talking heads. I wouldn’t call a Dungeons and Dragons podcast a talk show, video or audio.
> Additionally there are far more genres of podcast than one or two talking heads. I wouldn’t call a Dungeons and Dragons podcast a talk show, video or audio.
That's fine with me. In that case, what's the difference between a "video podcast" and a "show"?
> A video podcast is distributed over RSS like any other podcast, unlike a talk show which is distributed via television.
Both of these are obviously false; podcasts need not be distributed by RSS and talk shows need not be distributed by television. Most obviously, radio is well known for the number of talk shows that are distributed over it. Next, podcasts tend to be distributed by providing download links on a web page. Then, talk shows are defined by their content and are distributed via any and all video channels; here's one I follow on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUUc-rp7o3g
That particular video involves asking three guests to discuss the differences between chopsticks in each of their home countries. What would you call it?
I find that most people who criticize legacy media as a monolith are angry at it because it doesn’t meet their own political leanings. I certainly rank legacy media well above 99% of the drivel on social media and podcasts. But I think it is in fashion to only surround yourself by news sources which confirm your (or my) personal bias. I’m certainly not immune to it, but I read multiple sources from right, left, and center and try to pluck out the truth.
I read an illustrious (IMO) Indian newspaper. But their online articles have "continued on page x", infographics are low res images and they insist on yearly subscriptions and dark patterns like a shared web host. They have self imposed the limitations of paper.
Good news reporting is an expensive and dying craft.
These days most articles have one of two sources:
* rewritten from a single prime news reporting source that did the hard yards,
* copied near verbatim from an official Press Release and|or Advertorial Press Material.
The second is the real bane of modern "news" sourcing - eg: straight up disguised advertising- a mega shopping chain pays a network to insert "news" pieces about fighting back against inflation savings that "local" stores are offering up to "stick it to the big guys" and other such template garbage. Perhaps worse; the undeclared "vested interest" news that comes from (say) a mining or energy companies Press Release.
More and more it's hard to find any truly independant journalism (because of cost cutting), and near impossible to find multiple sources and viewpoints.
One answer is for more citizens to become "press aware" and start to distribute their own press kit releases on local issues to spread the side of events that they want aired. That still faces the counter pressure of actual advertisers that spend with networks that would rather see their take get the airtime.
I appreciate your optimism but I think you got the order wrong.
I'm fairly sure that the #1 source of news articles, social media posts, etc, probably by far is "native advertising" aka hidden advertising (this is actually illegal in some countries) aka PR articles posted as if from the news source.
Other than the fact that text is sequential I imposed no ranking, these are the two major sources.
> "native advertising" aka hidden advertising
aka submarine news, aka Advertorial Press Material (as I called it above)
Why do the media keep running stories saying suits are back? Because PR firms tell them to.
This is what I was talking about, perhaps we have differing nomenclature due to differing countries of origin or somesuch but it's the same thing; "news" sourced from preprepared press releases issued by vested interests - either advertisers and|or PR think tanks, etc.
Either way it's "free" professionally prepared copy that costs nothing in paid reporter time and sometimes comes with a carrot (paid advertisement inches), sometimes with a stick (we're thinking of withdrawing | changing contracts, but we have this copy we'd like to see run).
Most of us don’t care about court filing direct links, just that they were filed, to be fair. It’s easy enough to look up on google. I think only the 1% of law nerds who want to read it themselves care if there is a link or not and they already know how to look that stuff up.
For some weird reason, outlinks are to be avoided, because it's seen as "leaving your site". In a store front, I can see that making sense. In a site to provide information... not so much.
It's a stretch to call many many of the stories these sites produce "reporting," I'm thinking in particular about the "Someone posted to Twitter and other people posted angrily to Twitter in response" genre
Lately I think I've been seeing more science news sites linking to source articles, with DOIs usually abstracts-only are viewable) and Arxiv (often with PDFs) for example..
iirc they are soft-walled, or at least they were the last time i checked, about a year ago. I forgot how exactly you could bypass the wall, i think something with cookies and private browsing, and ip-addresses.
No, not in my experience. They usually have less external ads but a lot of other cruft is still there.
Enshittification (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification) is getting so bad, I'd be willing to pay for sites that actually work. So far, paywall offers are just to remove external ads and that's only part of what I want. The rest of what I want is for the fucking site to actually work. For example, both Google and Amazon search have been seriously degraded and de-featured in recent years and it's been done very intentionally and systematically to optimize for their ad or sales revenue.
I suspect this degradation has crept deeper into their stacks than just at the top layer where it could be easily turned off with a flag and sold as a paywall upgrade.
> For some weird reason, outlinks are to be avoided
Because people don't understand metrics other than "optimize this". So they take social media metrics and apply them where they don't belong.
To me fair, news is probably pretty hard to measure. Since the real value is in quality. People want information, quickly available, but accurate and easily readable. I mean isn't a big function of the news to explain complex topics more simply? I don't think there are any half way decent metrics for quality in really any domain.
If You leave the website, your eyes won't catch a headline that's on the side that you might also click, spending more time on your website. Which translates to more money.
This is actually my quickest rule of thumb for any internet article. If it's got links and some actually leave the site, I'll be immediately more invested and read through it. Otherwise I'll barely glance at it and go back to whatever got me to the article in the first place.
People seem to frequently forget that your measurement is always a proxy. A proxy for what? That's for you to decide. But you can't ever measure anything directly.
It's sadly common even in data science but the biggest offenders I see are business people. You can't use metrics without understanding what they're for otherwise you'll just enshitify your product. Be that number of clicks, time on page/site, number of academic citations, whatever. They're meaningless at face value. A good example is time on site. That's great for social media like YouTube where it generally correlates strongly to "using the website for what the website does" but even then it can be "scrolled for 20 minutes looking for something to watch, gave up. But on a news site, no one fucking cares about that. Your job is to provide information, so time on {page, site} might actually be a negative because it doesn't necessarily mean people are reading that whole time but they might be struggling to find the information they are looking for. A confusing UX also optimizes time on site.
No it isn't, but it looks like it is. The same is also true with (abusive) monopolies. They make less money stagnating. The difference in both is that it's easier to be poorer. But you give up a lot of value for easy money, and let's be real, when you're that rich it's no longer about the (utility of) money but the power and high score/bragging rights.
(Markets can work with monopolies, even efficiently, but it's the problem of benevolent dictators. They're never benevolent and eventually abuse their power. Competition is good for everyone involved because a stagnating monopoly is just one overtaken by bureaucrats who don't know how to make money, i.e. it is already dying)
I happened to come across her on 60 Minutes a couple of weeks ago, and that interview seemed awkward and sound-bitey to me. Thinking that she just might not be great at short-form segments I dug a little deeper and found an awesome long-form interview that she did with the Council on Foreign Relations. I highly recommend this to get a feel for what she is actually like as a policy person. She really impressed me.
When Lina took over she wiped her series of interviews, thought pieces, etc from the internet almost over night (I've followed her since she was a fellow). Her long form writing and podcast interviews are incredible. She knows this problem space well in both modernity and history as well as having vision for the future. There is no one else I trust more than Lina to right this ship.
I would think unless her opponents were incompetent they would have made copies of all that when there was a chance she would be appointed. Maybe even before that, if they keep an enemies list.
The FTC has succeeded at a lot of things that just aren't very interesting to report on. I'd recommend reading through FTC press releases. They generally release a statement whenever a major action is started and resolved. By my count in the past year or so the FTC was involved in at least 12 successful anti-monopoly actions (I counted modified mergers, killed mergers, and divestments).
The most consequential merger win was probably the NVIDIA/ARM merger that died under FTC litigation.
Not GP. I would say that her effectiveness is both in Fire and Motion [1], while one wants more Fire, before the status quo was not only no fire, but also no motion. Even the motion is a good starting point that businesses are having management adapt their strategies and plans to account for the motion, just out self-interested risk mitigation in case there is more fire than there currently is today, and that fire gets trained on them.
A good analogy, but I think you swapped the meaning of fire and motion in your usage of it.
In this case, her cases even if lost would be the equivalent of cover fire. Businesses need to re-act to the cover fire and cannot advance (perform their own motion) while she is firing.
The second part is that you would hope/expect her to be able to gain territory in the near future via the "motion" part of the strategy.
So I agree in your framing, just from my perspective you flipped the terminology.
That seems really bad for the government to be doing this. If she is losing, then using the resources of the government to harass businesses that are acting lawfully seems like fascism.
> didn't fail or get shot down as political overreach?
Progress requires testing the system and seeing where the failure points are. It's significantly better than the relative nothing we've gotten from past admins.
Also with the current judicial and congressional makeup it's a wonder anything gets done.
Using public resources to sue companies, force them to pay for expensive defense in court, and then losing when the court decides they did nothing illegal?
Yes, that is how our justice system works. First, the government accuses you of a crime, then they have to prove that you committed it, and you get to defend yourself.
How else could it possibly work? Companies just get to break the law and no one can ever take them to court over it?
I’m not suggesting the justice system should change. I’m suggesting that civil servants who file and lose a ton of suits should be presumed to be doing net harm. Just as we would for prosecutors in criminal law.
And when it’s politically motivated, it is not just harm in the sense of economic inefficiency, but further is unjust and lowers public trust in institutions.
The problem is that what you're suggesting will eventually boil down to useless regulators. And then companies will do a plethora of suspicious things, and then you the consumer will suffer.
It's the FTC's job to do this kind of thing. If we argue it shouldn't be their job then what will we be doing? Nothing? We've tried the "do nothing" approach more times than any of us can count, and it doesn't work.
A plethora or suspicious things? If the companies are breaking the law, the FTC can sue them and win. If the companies are complying with the law, the FTC should indeed do nothing. If the law is bad, congress can pass new laws.
What's not OK is for the executive branch to not like the law, but be unsuccessful at passing new law through the democratic process, and then use the FTC to unsuccessfully sue companies in order to punish them (and threaten others) with costly legal expenses.
It's not that simple, because people don't know if they're breaking the law. The job of the FTC is to clear that up. It's a fallacy that laws can just be followed or not, almost all the time it's in a gray area.
I’m specifically talking about the situation where you lose almost all the cases. When that happens, it’s not called “clearing up the law”, it’s called frivolous lawsuits.
I don’t necessarily disagree with your conclusion, but legislators generally don’t make prosecutorial decisions. Prosecutorial decisions are generally made after legislation is passed, by a different branch of government.
Can you please not break the site guidelines when posting here? You did it twice in this thread unfortunately (the other place was here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41773709).
If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and make your substantive points thoughtfully and respectfully, regardless of how wrong someone is or you feel they are, we'd appreciate it.
Her massive political overreach has achieved the goal. The chilly effect on all the behavior they want to stop but don't have the authority too.
It's basically the executive sidestepping the legislator and blocking perfectly legal behavior by the threat of burying it in such long and expensive lawsuits it's not longer viable.
I don't know if I accept Khan's framing of, even though I haven't won any cases I have scared off potential mergers and that is a win. I think the US already leans too heavily on tying everything up in courts forever.
>I think the US already leans too heavily on tying everything up in courts forever.
yes, because companies have decided to consider courts as a cost to do business instead of a regulator they must not piss off at any cost. the courts in that capacity will simply be abused, especially as these fast moving tech companies can make billions beofore a case shuts it all down.
Definitely needs to be some reform to how punishment works, especially retroactive costs.
Don't fall for the Silicon Valley propaganda that things are on the downswing because the FTC is not allowing mergers or acquisitions. Plenty of both of those have happened this year. DirectTV is in the process of acquiring Dish Network and SlingTV which is one of the largest acquisitions of the year and should alone perish the thought that mergers aren't happening.
The claim that there are less mergers happening is from Khan not Silcon Valley.
“Sometimes, you know, the companies decide that they’re going to abandon the merger,” Khan said. Stahl asked if abandoning a merger amid the FTC’s scrutiny was a win, to which Khan said, “That’s right.”
https://legal-mag.com/ftcs-lina-khan-defends-merger-and-acqu...
Yes, because some mergers are bad. Like really really bad. For you and me, consumers.
If adobe merged with figma that would be catastrophic for that domain. Prices would skyrocket, quality would invariably fall off, and innovation would stagnate due to lack of competition.
Part of having a free market is maintaining it. You can't have a free market if it's constantly consolidating into a monopoly or pseudo-monopoly. This is bad for the products, for the market, and for the consumer.
The keyword in that last sentence is market. Plenty of people will argue what the FTC is doing is stifling economic growth - but it's the opposite. Anti-competitive behavior stifles economic growth in the long run, so preventing it allows smaller companies to grow and innovate. Keeping slow moving giants on life support and de-facto welfare is not good for the economy.
I don't disagree with some of the aims of Lina Khan, mostly just the strategy. Scaring away potential mergers is much, much less valuable than establishing case law or getting legislation passed. It is kinda parallel to overreliance on executive orders over legislative wins.
> Scaring away potential mergers is much, much less valuable than establishing case law or getting legislation passed
There're a few problems with this:
1. Our lawmakers are incredibly inefficient, and many dedicated their lives to ensuring new laws don't get passed. Doesn't matter what the law is, they're career "blockers"
2. Our courts are not unpartisan, and many are conservative-leaning, and they'll simply continually strike down laws until they make it up and up and then the extremely conservative supreme court blocks it. This has been Texas' strategy.
You can't establish case law if you don't take cases. Companies not wanting to go through with mergers because they are afraid of the FTC investigating them sounds like a side effect and not the intent.
It's a mix of both. Some mergers fall through under regulation fear. Others fall through because aquisitions are expensive and it'd take years to make up for the cost (like the activision/blizzard one that was announced when money was cheap and went through when money became expensive).
>DirectTV is in the process of acquiring Dish Network and SlingTV which is one of the largest acquisitions of the year
What's wrong with that? Who still watches TV (either OTA or from satellite) in this age, except for elderly people who haven't figured out how to use the internet? This seems like people complaining about the consolidation of companies in the landline telephone market. It's a dying market, so of course the companies still hanging on are going to merge so they can save costs and squeeze the few remaining customers more.
Yes, Khan has been a disaster for the FTC. Grossly overreaching, media grandstanding and then quickly losing in court in not-even-close rulings is not some kind of win.
Too early to call. At least initially, her FTC was incompetent to the point that M&A lawyers were urging companies to attempt mergers because shit that wouldn’t usually get through would get bungled in court. She was aggressive but incompetent.
She appears to be improving. But the FTC chair isn’t an internship.
I am happy for her to be aggressive and would forgive mistakes in court simply due to the value brought to society by her prominently going after these large anti-competitive companies. And yes she might fail to address that as well, but I wouldn’t ascribe that failure to her competency. The reality is that no one in this seat has even been trying. They’ve been asleep at the wheel as the economy gets increasingly captured by megacorps that don’t really face competition. And if she fails to rein them in, it’ll be because the existing law (antitrust law) is inadequate, more than anything else.
I think the attention she’s bringing to the issue will cause many people to ask why antitrust enforcement has to be so hard. Any company with more than $100B in revenue is a quasi-government, and damages fair competition merely through their existence. Instead of making enforcement rely on years-long court cases, we need more immediate ways to break up or regulate these companies, and what we have today is not enough. If her attempts make more people realize the current laws aren’t enough, that might be its own form of success.
Richard Feynman was brought onto what would become the Manhattan project at age 24. He had not yet earned a graduate degree.
Lina Khan was 32 when she started as FTC chair. Prior to that, she had researched anti-trust at the New America Foundation, received a JD from Yale, worked as a legal director at the Open Markets Institute, worked as a legal fellow at the FTC, and served as counsel to the House Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Antitrust.
I don't disagree that she made some early missteps at the FTC, but this is far from her first rodeo. I also think that, on balance, it's a benefit to hire young, promising voices to positions of power, and that we should get back to a place where we do that a lot more.
RIP. I don't think project 2025 has plans to gut the FTC, just most other federal agencies. It obviously matters a ton who wins, but the outcome may likely be the same regardless.
I would buy a “Wrath of Khan” shirt to support her efforts, 100%. It’s good for innovation and competition to break up these thuggish megacorps.
I wish a POTUS candidate would come out in support of Khan so I could point to that as a reason to support that candidate (it’s definitely a component of how I’d vote).
Monopolistic behavior helped these companies mint thousands of millionaires, including regular employees enjoying stock options. Some of those people are bound to be in this thread.
Amazon currently does not honor its prime shipping agreement with all domestic customers and has no customer service path to get the issue resolved. In some places USPS is unreliable and Amazon insists on using it repeatedly, violating its own promise to customers. This suggests to me that Amazon faces no competitive pressure to deliver good customer service.
I can live with USPS but what made me actually cancel my Prime account was their use of On-Trac shipping in California. They literally missed every single time and had to come back the next day.
I care less who delivers it than whether it actually arrives in <= 2 days.
In my zip code there are various blocks (including my own) where virtually nothing gets delivered in <5 days. This is in one of the biggest cities in the US.
I've contacted customer service and gone through multiple escalations twice and nothing has changed and it appears to reach a black hole. Addresses a few blocks away get normal prime delivery in 1-2 days.
As much as I love Amazon (I've been a customer since the very beginning) this makes me think that antitrust action is needed. Seeing pictures of Bezos partying with the Kardashians doesn't help Amazon's cause very much either.
Dealt with this having a delivery cancelled at a family vacation property out innawoods, and had to get Amazon to put a "no USPS" flag on the delivery.
I had done this a few years earlier bc USPS kept damaging heavy items, but it is apparently no longer possible.
For a while things got delivered via Amazon's subcontracted trucks but that stopped and now it's just whatever level of service USPS offers is what you end up with. Houses a few blocks away get normal prime delivery.
This seems to be to be very regional. Here in Toronto, the shipping speed is truly incredible. I'll often order at night, and it arrives the next day. They've even started offering "overnight" shipping, with packages arriving between 4am and 8am. I do see an incredible push to increase their logistics capability, beyond what would be necessary if they were just coasting on their monopoly power. I do think they see their competition as being from local retailers, as much, if not more so than from other online stores.
As much as I don't want to be a fan of Amazon -- their offering, especially because of the logistics/shipping, combined with generally fair prices, is quite incredible.
It depends where you live and what’s in the closest warehouse. Many things are overnight delivered in the morning for me now, as I have a fulfillment center close by.
> Amazon’s practice of coercing sellers who want their products to be Prime eligible into using Fulfillment by Amazon, which makes it more difficult and more expensive for rivals to offer increased product selection.
How would this even work? It's on Amazon to deliver your stuff in 2 days but they also have to allow 3rd party shipping they have no control over? Are they allowed to require such a seller to fulfill the order by a specific date?
Because to me a lowly customer Prime === Item Shipped by Amazon. That's the whole value.
Fulfilled by Amazon is a 3rd party seller program where you send your items for sale to Amazon to be colocated and commingled with other 3rd party FBA seller items with the same SKU and also 1st party Amazon products with that SKU. If that sounds like a horrible idea for all involved, I would agree.
> When more than one seller has inventory with the same manufacturer barcode, we may fulfill orders with the inventory that’s closest to the buyer, to facilitate faster delivery.
Isn’t that a form of commingling of inventory?
If one of the sellers I selling fakes, I think the other seller would be blamed whenever this happens.
Didn't I read something a few years ago about shitty sellers abusing that system by sending counterfeit versions of products to Amazon, and then legitimate sellers get fucked over when their customers get the counterfeit version (because hey were commingled)?
I seem to remember something like that. Here are some pros/cons for opting out of commingling which I don’t think that is possible with FBA, but would likely make the products ineligible for Prime I would assume, which is one of the main reasons you would want to use FBA in the first place.
> In summary, Amazon's commingling inventory can have serious implications for FBA sellers who are wrongfully accused of selling defective or inauthentic products. While the practice may improve efficiency, it can also make it difficult for sellers to prove their innocence in the event of false accusations. Sellers should be aware of these risks and take steps to protect themselves, such as opting out of commingling inventory or closely monitoring their inventory and customer feedback.
> By default, we use the manufacturer barcode to track eligible inventory throughout the fulfillment process, unless you change your barcode setting or your product is not eligible. When more than one seller has inventory with the same manufacturer barcode, we may fulfill orders with the inventory that’s closest to the buyer, to facilitate faster delivery.
> If your product isn’t eligible for virtual tracking with the manufacturer barcode, an Amazon barcode is required. You may be able to get an exemption to use the manufacturer barcode by enrolling your ASIN in Amazon Brand Registry. To learn more about virtual tracking and see product eligibility requirements, go to,Using manufacturer barcodes with FBA virtual tracking.
By default inventory is tracked by seller specific FNSKU's and is not comingled. Sellers have to explicitly opt in and jump through additional hoops for their inventory to be tracked using GTIN's whereby their inventory will get comingled with inventory with other sellers who opted for the same.
> By default, we use the manufacturer barcode to track eligible inventory throughout the fulfillment process, unless you change your barcode setting or your product is not eligible. When more than one seller has inventory with the same manufacturer barcode, we may fulfill orders with the inventory that’s closest to the buyer, to facilitate faster delivery
All of the federal counts move forward, some of the counts relating to specific states who joined the lawsuit are dismissed.
> Last week, before the order was unsealed, some of the initial coverage called it a “partial victory” for Amazon, but as it turns out, the portion of the ruling in which the company was victorious was relatively slim.
> The areas where the judge granted Amazon’s motion to dismiss were related to specific aspects of state claims, including elements of allegations brought by Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Oklahoma, and Maryland. Eighteen states and one territory, Puerto Rico, joined the FTC in the lawsuit against Amazon.
The ruling is linked in another thread. The last two pages outline what all is dismissed. My naive read is that a lot of the claims were dismissed already. I have no idea if that is normal or not. I also assume nobody really expected the entire case to get dismissed?
Only four of the twenty counts were dismissed (motion to dismiss granted), and only half of one claim was dismissed with prejudice. The remaining three dismissed claims can be amended and resubmitted to the court. All the federal claims stand. This is definitely not a win for Amazon.
I was going on the naive count of GRANTS at the last page of the ruling. So, was about 6 of the 12 parts of the summary at the end. Which makes it sound like a lot. :D
Still, I did not mean to imply it was most or even a majority. I didn't think anyone expected the case to be dismissed in full. I have no idea what the impact of getting States items dismissed is, all told.
One can only imagine how authoritarian regimes look at this from the outside. My guess is "The house of bezos has lost favour at the court of the king and is thus to be disbanded and reliefed from oligarch status"..
Competition is the core tenant that makes capitalism beneficial to broader society.
Consolidation over the past few decades has limited the capacity for firms to compete in many sectors.
So I appreciate the sentiment of what the FTC is trying to do, but they really come across as amateurs bringing far too many lawsuits and often with weak legal reasoning/argumentation.
In many of the cases they've brought there exists alternative, yet stronger arguments that could have been made.
I'd support congress legislating towards more competition (e.g. forcing open standards for things like APIs/chat clients/smart watches etc), or a more active FTC.
But the current approach is far too disorganized and weak.
I mean, I'm not a lawyer so I won't really judge what's a good or bad argument. My impression is that forcing open standards is a much harder argument than an antitrust one. Open standards can come at a later step.
And if you haven't kept up this year, Chevron being overturned is showing that the SCOTUS is more than happy to reduce FTC interference.
I hope they include Amazon's practice of taking popular products on their storefront, making generic "Amazon Basics" versions, and selling them to undercut the popular options. Simultaneously owning a marketplace, approving who can and can't sell products on it, and then putting your own products on it to undercut other sellers is so scummy and muck rake-y.
I hope they also include Amazon allowing thousands of Chinese retailers to stock Amazon's warehouses with counterfeit, faulty products, and potentially dangerous out-of-spec parts - with no way to meaningfully report or bring the offending product to Amazon's attention.
You mean you don't like having the choice between ZOSLRD-branded stuff and TUMACO-branded stuff, both of which have descriptions that look like someone put Mandarin Chinese through an LLM, because that's probably what they did?
Selling on Amazon requires a registered trademark. If you're a random factory in Shenzhen you don't care about branding, you just want to be able to sell your stuff on Amazon, so you just put together random letters in the hope that your registration won't conflict with anything else. You don't want to have to deal with back-and-forth with USPTO, you don't care about having a meaningful, memorable, or interesting name, you just want an Amazon listing.
Coincidentally the majority of USPTO trademark submissions are literally just random strings of letters now for this reason.
> Selling on Amazon requires a registered trademark
This is not true. A trademark is only required for Amazon's brand registry which gives brand owners control over who is allowed to sell their branded products.
if I had to take a blind guess: Chinese doesn't have a concept of casesensitivity. It's a logographic language so casesensitivity is almost irrelevant.
Do I understand that you like/appreciate grocery store brands, but dislike Amazon's store brand? If so, what is the distinction you see between the two?
So let's say they aren't allowed to both own a marketplace and sell their own generic product in that marketplace, and so they have to spin Amazon Basics (AB) off into a separate company that is not treated any differently than any other seller on Amazon the marketplace (AM).
AB can still look at AM listings in a category and note what is popular (just like anyone can do since that is part of the details AM generally includes in listings), and make a generic version (just like anyone can do), and then sell that on AM. AB products are usually pretty good and usually quite reasonably priced and so even if treated exactly the same as everything else in their category are still likely to end up being included in the products that get algorithmically recommended as alternatives.
It's not clear to me how this would improve competition.
As far as your point on Chinese retailers goes, you are arguing that Amazon should allow fewer sellers and those sellers should be more regulated. That may be a good thing but I'm having some difficulty seeing how it is an antitrust thing.
I dont think anyone's arguing against generic alternatives of name brand items. The issue here is Amazon using up-and-coming and popular products as fodder for them to generic-ize and push to the top of results, essentially knee capping the original seller.
All retailers do that. It's called private labels. None of the products are made by the retailer either. As unfortunate to those who might genuinely believe Trader Joes products are unique to them, or that Great Value was Walmart using its massive distribution systems to quickly scale core products like Milk out. It's all private labelling.
Amazon is not a traditional retails, it's a marketplace. Walmart buys stock, puts it on sale, gets data and makes decisions upon that. Amazon just skips the expensive first 2 steps by taking data from other retailers on their platform.
I think the algorithms make the difference here. You can't really make a cereal box stand out on a physical shelf in any unique way (or you can, but it'll be a cost expense. Ruining the point of undercutting). IME with online storefronts for traditional brick and mortar their own brands never seem to come on top.
Meanwhle I will almost always get an AmazonBasics if it exists as a first result.
Consumers like a lot of short term factors that turn against them in the long term. That seems to be the theme of the 21st century.
I'd rather these perverse incentives not exist and simply have a more educated consumer base learn to search "Amazon basics X" instead of maximizing conviniece to enable monopolies. We've clearly been shown that we can't handle the latter
I have no interest in becoming more educated about which seller from which factory run has what kind of quality standards. That’s why I use Costco and Target and Walmart and Amazon and Uniqlo and other brands to go out there and do that work. All I want to know is that I’ll be able to return something if it isn’t satisfactory.
And that's how you later get taken advantage of and how Amazon starts to be as bad as Comcast's customer service. But you can't leave because competition is gone.
You don't have to care per se, that's what the government is for. But taking the time and energy to argue against your long term best interests is disappointing.
I understand, but picking out random six letter brands on Amazon is not the competition most US customers are looking for.
It’s not feasible for people to go to China, inspect the manufacturing processes, and figure out what is worth what. There is a whole business there of purveying goods, which is what brands like Amazon and Kroger and Kirkland all the way up to LVMH.
With the advent of the internet, that business is no longer restricted to physical stores, so technically, anyone can make a superior product and sell direct to anyone. There were stories of Kmart and Walmart and whoever else bullying vendors because the vendors used to get nowhere without shelf space.
Those original sellers mainly just look like drop-shippers to me. So Amazon just going straight to the source and selling at lower margin is better for me as a buyer.
My Amazon Basics RCA cables and many other items are the best versions of those items I own. The quality is very very good. I actually like that feature of Amazon.
I don't think it's part of an antitrust case, but I am tired of seeing every item being sold from 200 chinese companies with randomly generated names and fake/bought reviews. Walmart has started to do something similar with their online store. I'll use their words.
> It's easy to sell online with Walmart.com. Partner with the largest multi-channel retailer and put your products in front of millions of Walmart shoppers.
Americans are used to American storefronts going through American regulations, but now you're essentially being dropshipped hazardous unregulated products. I generally try to buy from companies directly but this hasn't stopped my family from buying chinesium children toys for me that go straight into the trash.
Because Amazons wiped a lot of them out, and the ones that remain are either doing the same thing, or stand zero chance of comign out of it anything less than bankrupt.
Amazon for all its convenience has decimated likely close to if not more than a million businesses at this point across the world.
This is the secret today. Find the product you want, buy straight from that company. Anymore the storefronts are all uniform and shipping (which used to be Amazon's advantage) is the same.
The days of massive online retailers dominating is over at my house. I just wish more people would figure that out.
I find Amazon’s shipping to be fastest about 9 times out of 10—and that 1 is just the direct seller matching, not beating. With Prime, shipping is also “free” (so long as you’ve saved enough on shipping to recoup the cost of Prime itself).
But aside from that, Amazon almost always has a better return process, and you only need to give one site your payment details rather than many.
(That said, I often buy outside of Amazon, because for certain specialty items, Amazon is pretty lacking.)
Every company so far, I send an email or click the return link on the confirmation email they sent when I ordered. Print the label and send it back. I haven't had any problems yet.
>need to give one site your payment details rather than many.
Either use PayPal or your credit card. If it gets compromised, cc companies are really good at making sure you don't get screwed.
I have been doing this for 5 years now and haven't had any problems.
Every company so far, I send an email or click the return link on the confirmation email they sent when I ordered. Print the label and send it back. I haven't had any problems yet.
> I hope they include Amazon's practice of taking popular products on their storefront, making generic "Amazon Basics" versions, and selling them to undercut the popular options.
And competition. One of the ways companies like Walmart hold their popular brand name companies in check on pricing power is through their store brands.
Why should I feel bad about Kraft being under permanent pressure by Walmart's Great Value brand?
More competition is needed, not less. Along with more transparency. Banning Amazon from competing would be a mistake. They need a more level playing field, not fewer players.
Selling carrots is much different than developing a store brand product based on the algorithms only you have access to. Amazon is basically outsourcing R&D and market research to startups then taking the market away once they have a success.
Reminder that a mere 15 years ago, Walmart was the unfair monopolist whose market position rendered competition infeasible.
Also unclear to me why "ecommerce" is a market unto itself that we should be concerned with level of concentration in, as opposed to simply a slice of the broader "retail" market (which is much less concentrated)
Amazon's "favoured nation" policy stipulates that vendors can't sell an item anywhere else for a lower price. This policy seems designed by them to put a moat between them and retail.
Yes, but we don't know when the next technology shift will happen. Amazon might be able to abuse their position for decades if a disruption doesn't come.
Aa for E-commerce, it can have a larger inventory than physical retail. You're not going to find many solar charge controllers or mechanical keyboard parts at Walmart, but Amazon will have tons of options deliverable within 48 hours. Few sites can have comparable shipping cost/speed and you have to research each one, whereas Amazon enjoys the position of being the default.
A decade ago, I helped a small Amazon seller with his inventory, and it was eye opening to see all the fees and risks compared to eBay. But he couldn't sell on eBay without losing a massive portion of his customer base, despite their better shopping/buying UX in my experience.
The original complaint has a number of pages starting at 39 (43 in pdf) dedicated to defining the relevant markets and why they feel brick and mortar isn't part of the relevant market.
This is why pinning anti-trust to monopolies is a mistake. Anti-trust is about competition and creating more of it... and if it's about increasing competition then they both need attention. They are both very big and abuse their dominance in ways that stifles competition. That is, in the last 15 years we added another company that needs anti-trust attention, nothing was replaced.
The issue is that even if you know it's wrong, what are you going to do to. You grow to a certain size, and it then becomes clear that you're inching closer and closer to becoming a monopoly. Do you then stop and inform your shareholders that you unfortunately reached the maximum size for your organisation?
Even if you have no moral issue continuing down your current path, you have very little to fear, because the precedence is that you'll get a relatively mild punishment.
For Amazon, if this was to have any real meaning, the US government could step and an say: Because of the actions of Amazon, the online store, we're no longer able to utilize AWS in good faith. This would force Amazon to split their businesses into two, or lose government contracts, which would both be a real punishment.
Yeah, there's no corruption, graft, or abuse of power in any place without capitalism.
Breaking rules definitely isn't an innate part of human nature at scale.
Edit: more seriously, it doesn't help that the laws are entirely subjective. You're not a monopoly until after the fact. Monopolistic behavior is sometimes rewarded, and sometimes punished. Look at court cases involving Apple and Google. The only real difference between them is scale. You're allowed to be big, up until someone decides that you're actually too big. It's only a question of "too big to fail" or "too big to exist".
More and more, antitrust is a means for people who dislike big, successful companies for no particular reason to attack them. On some level, the government is just throwing its weight around. The message is "don't forget who's really in charge."
Consider all the "Lina Khan fans" you see on HN and elsewhere. They rarely articulate why the government should be suing these companies, which laws that company broke, or if those laws make sense. They just don't like big companies and want them taken down a peg.
The Google suit was particularly egregious. There was no alternative to Google search because no one had built a better product for reasons that have nothing to do with anticompetitive behavior. And the real irony here is that Google appears to be behind on LLMs, which have finally given us an alternative to typing things into Google. So the government picked the exact moment when Google's search market share is seriously threatened to sue!
On the charge of just wanting to break up big companies because they're big, I plead not guilty on the virtue of this not being a crime. The whole point of breaking up large companies is because their size renders them unaccountable quazi-governments. To properly regulate them requires making the government even bigger with ever-more-complicated regulatory apparatus, compliance departments, administrative rulemaking, and "special understandings" (read: giving up) for the largest players.
I'll put it to you another way: if you want smaller government, you need smaller corporations, too.
> There was no alternative to Google search because no one had built a better product for reasons that have nothing to do with anticompetitive behavior.
I would first argue that Google's unparalleled superiority in search is overblown. For one, there's ads in it. As Google's founders themselves stated, ads are a perverse incentive to ruin the search experience in favor of advertisers and I can point to several examples[0] in which this happened.
There are paid search engines that do not have advertising (e.g. Kagi) but they themselves have complained about the struggle that is competing with Google. For example, on iOS, there's only five default search engine options, there's no way to add a different search engine as default, and Google pays $$$ to Apple to be set to the default and for that search engine option to be buried in Settings. I don't see how that isn't anticompetitive.
On a technical level, Google has a supracompetitive advantage, too. A lot of websites have restrictive policies that forbid scraping except for Google and Bing. This means only those search engines can actually return results for those sites.
[0] Product ads in web search, every programming search query giving you four or five ads before the actual StackOverflow answer you're interested in, image search becoming a glorified product search with actual functionality being removed, Gemini
The whole point of breaking up large companies is because their size renders them unaccountable quazi-governments.
Unaccountable to who? I can think of plenty “almost monopolies” that no longer exist or are former shells which would infer they were accountable - at least to the customer.
But the more important question is - how big is too big? Is it the same for every company? If not, who decides? How do you measure it?
If it’s not objective criteria, it becomes a “I know it when I see it” where subjective variables result in a company in the crosshairs. So in the end, the government picking winners and losers.
That's how a lot of laws work. There's always an element of subjectivity. Is that guy a murderer? Well, did he intend to kill the victim or was it an accident? The court is supposed to decide whether he intended to, using the available facts, but nobody involved can read minds so it's really a guess.
If you didn't want to be convicted of murder, you wouldn't walk right up to the line of what constitutes murder. You'd stay far away from that line on the legal side. Same for companies, if the system is doing its job.
* The government should be suing many of the companies FTC is going after because their behavior yields bad outcomes for consumers, such as worse health outcomes after a private equity group captures an entire geography then drives up prices while reducing quality.
* They tend to have broken laws around creating and abusing monopoly positions, usually with various illegal details like kickback arrangements and self-dealing.
* These laws make sense.
* I don't mind big companies and many of the companies FTC goes after are not particularly big.
* Companies that utilize edge cases in market dynamics to produce bad outcomes for consumers should be taken down a peg.
Point taken about the level of discourse on the internet and the mainstream media, no argument there. It is painful, but just because the discourse around the topic is smooth brained doesn't mean that the position is wrong. This is something that I struggle with. Sometimes the discourse is so unimaginably stupid that it pushes you to default to the other side's point of view, but that doesn't actually mean you got to that point of view through any reasoning, you got there from emotion.
There are the standard points around consumer protection. Ticketmaster, Adobe, Amazon, really do engage in anti competitive practices and then burn the consumer once they've consolidated power. People feel that, but to your point, can't articulate all the moving pieces, and that's fine, use the mute button. God help us if Kroger and Safeway get their way and merge.
To your point about "don't forget who's really in charge." - it might feel like there's no upside here, but in reality you do end up with companies that have more power than the government, and that's a dangerous road to go down in a democracy, since there's no real way to hold them accountable. Obviously the government is deeply flawed in a million different ways, but ultimately there are elected officials, which cannot be said of private companies.
Also Lina Khan talks a lot about resiliency. Too much efficiency can make things worse [1]. With mass consolidation, black swan events lead to and outsized impact compared to what they would in an economy where there aren't monopolies everywhere. Climate change, pandemics, instability in Europe and the middle east, etc mean that it's worth trading extreme efficiency for robustness.
Absolutely. Isn't the recent Crowdstrike incident sort of a testament to this? In terms of efficiency it's great for a bunch of systems to all rely on the same tool. But when something goes wrong, it goes wrong for everyone.
>hey rarely articulate why the government should be suing these companies, which laws that company broke, or if those laws make sense.
Because it's not productive and against HN guidelines to say "read the article".
>Last year, the FTC alleged Amazon.com, which has 1 billion items in its online superstore, was using an algorithm that pushed up prices U.S. households paid by more than $1 billion. Amazon has said in court papers it stopped using the program in 2019.
Price fixing is generally an illegal tactic. I'm not a lawyer but there's plenty of legal dictionaries that laymen can understand on the whats, why's, and hows. So yes, the goverment should sue if a law is suspected of being broken.
>The Google suit was particularly egregious. There was no alternative to Google search because no one had built a better product for reasons that have nothing to do with anticompetitive behavior.
did you ignore the point where google was spending 250m a year to Apple to be the default search engine on IOS?
Please actually read the topics before complaining that there is no rationale behind it. You're doing the very thing you accuse others of doing. YOu're not providing an argument you're saying arguments don't exist and inserting a strawman.
>the government picked the exact moment when Google's search market share is seriously threatened to sue!
Googles been under scrutiny since pre-pandemic. There is no such thing as "good timing" for a lawsuit because they take years to bring to court, let alone to resolve.
The entire conceit of capitalism is that competition is good, and that competition forces companies to better address their customers needs. If they're not doing this, then someone can come in and undercut them.
But what happens in the scenario where the person comes in, undercuts them, and then sells to the bigger company? How does this force the larger company to change? This is like antitrust 101.
I don't understand people who claim to be proponents of capitalism and are opposed to antitrust. If you want the free market to determine anything with fewer regulations, then we need antitrust. Otherwise we need a lot more regulations. Which one would you prefer?
I have a feeling you wouldn't recognize anticompetitive behavior despite it hitting you in the face for the past 10 years.
> More and more, antitrust is a means for people who dislike big, successful companies for no particular reason to attack them. On some level, the government is just throwing its weight around. The message is "don't forget who's really in charge."
The same government that gives it tax cuts when building new "fulfillment centers" and billions of dollars in cloud/military contracts? Something doesn't add up in your logic.
> Consider all the "Lina Khan fans" you see on HN and elsewhere. They rarely articulate why the government should be suing these companies, which laws that company broke, or if those laws make sense. They just don't like big companies and want them taken down a peg.
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wawd.32...
Legacy media really sucks.
Reuters is legacy media, hence why I mentioned legacy media.
Like basically any rocket attack I assume happened in like 2006 and between completely different belligerents than whatever a post claims at this point
A podcast doesn't include any video data. How could it show a video?
It annoys me too but I'm young enough to tolerate the kids on my lawn...
Additionally there are far more genres of podcast than one or two talking heads. I wouldn’t call a Dungeons and Dragons podcast a talk show, video or audio.
That's fine with me. In that case, what's the difference between a "video podcast" and a "show"?
> A video podcast is distributed over RSS like any other podcast, unlike a talk show which is distributed via television.
Both of these are obviously false; podcasts need not be distributed by RSS and talk shows need not be distributed by television. Most obviously, radio is well known for the number of talk shows that are distributed over it. Next, podcasts tend to be distributed by providing download links on a web page. Then, talk shows are defined by their content and are distributed via any and all video channels; here's one I follow on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUUc-rp7o3g
That particular video involves asking three guests to discuss the differences between chopsticks in each of their home countries. What would you call it?
I find that most people who criticize people who criticize legacy media are angry that they don't meet their own political leanings.
Depends, the tabloids are really good at providing videos or photos from outside or pull them in so you can watch them on their site.
The more "high-end" the media, the less likely their are to provide you with external material, in my experience.
One they never provide sources. Not just their sources but sources behind figures or statements of truth.
Two it's hard to find articles that highlight different points than the leading article on the topic.
These days most articles have one of two sources:
* rewritten from a single prime news reporting source that did the hard yards,
* copied near verbatim from an official Press Release and|or Advertorial Press Material.
The second is the real bane of modern "news" sourcing - eg: straight up disguised advertising- a mega shopping chain pays a network to insert "news" pieces about fighting back against inflation savings that "local" stores are offering up to "stick it to the big guys" and other such template garbage. Perhaps worse; the undeclared "vested interest" news that comes from (say) a mining or energy companies Press Release.
More and more it's hard to find any truly independant journalism (because of cost cutting), and near impossible to find multiple sources and viewpoints.
One answer is for more citizens to become "press aware" and start to distribute their own press kit releases on local issues to spread the side of events that they want aired. That still faces the counter pressure of actual advertisers that spend with networks that would rather see their take get the airtime.
I'm fairly sure that the #1 source of news articles, social media posts, etc, probably by far is "native advertising" aka hidden advertising (this is actually illegal in some countries) aka PR articles posted as if from the news source.
https://paulgraham.com/submarine.html
Once you see it, you can't unsee it.
Other than the fact that text is sequential I imposed no ranking, these are the two major sources.
> "native advertising" aka hidden advertising
aka submarine news, aka Advertorial Press Material (as I called it above)
This is what I was talking about, perhaps we have differing nomenclature due to differing countries of origin or somesuch but it's the same thing; "news" sourced from preprepared press releases issued by vested interests - either advertisers and|or PR think tanks, etc.Either way it's "free" professionally prepared copy that costs nothing in paid reporter time and sometimes comes with a carrot (paid advertisement inches), sometimes with a stick (we're thinking of withdrawing | changing contracts, but we have this copy we'd like to see run).
Never link outside your garden.
Example: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/02/us/politics/trump-jan-6-c...
Enshittification (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification) is getting so bad, I'd be willing to pay for sites that actually work. So far, paywall offers are just to remove external ads and that's only part of what I want. The rest of what I want is for the fucking site to actually work. For example, both Google and Amazon search have been seriously degraded and de-featured in recent years and it's been done very intentionally and systematically to optimize for their ad or sales revenue.
I suspect this degradation has crept deeper into their stacks than just at the top layer where it could be easily turned off with a flag and sold as a paywall upgrade.
To me fair, news is probably pretty hard to measure. Since the real value is in quality. People want information, quickly available, but accurate and easily readable. I mean isn't a big function of the news to explain complex topics more simply? I don't think there are any half way decent metrics for quality in really any domain.
People seem to frequently forget that your measurement is always a proxy. A proxy for what? That's for you to decide. But you can't ever measure anything directly.
It's sadly common even in data science but the biggest offenders I see are business people. You can't use metrics without understanding what they're for otherwise you'll just enshitify your product. Be that number of clicks, time on page/site, number of academic citations, whatever. They're meaningless at face value. A good example is time on site. That's great for social media like YouTube where it generally correlates strongly to "using the website for what the website does" but even then it can be "scrolled for 20 minutes looking for something to watch, gave up. But on a news site, no one fucking cares about that. Your job is to provide information, so time on {page, site} might actually be a negative because it doesn't necessarily mean people are reading that whole time but they might be struggling to find the information they are looking for. A confusing UX also optimizes time on site.
(Markets can work with monopolies, even efficiently, but it's the problem of benevolent dictators. They're never benevolent and eventually abuse their power. Competition is good for everyone involved because a stagnating monopoly is just one overtaken by bureaucrats who don't know how to make money, i.e. it is already dying)
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=L_QaZk5iJOA
(not being sarcastic...i mean that i may have missed something inadvertently)
The most consequential merger win was probably the NVIDIA/ARM merger that died under FTC litigation.
https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases
https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2022/02/...
[1] https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/01/06/fire-and-motion/
In this case, her cases even if lost would be the equivalent of cover fire. Businesses need to re-act to the cover fire and cannot advance (perform their own motion) while she is firing.
The second part is that you would hope/expect her to be able to gain territory in the near future via the "motion" part of the strategy.
So I agree in your framing, just from my perspective you flipped the terminology.
Progress requires testing the system and seeing where the failure points are. It's significantly better than the relative nothing we've gotten from past admins.
Also with the current judicial and congressional makeup it's a wonder anything gets done.
How else could it possibly work? Companies just get to break the law and no one can ever take them to court over it?
And when it’s politically motivated, it is not just harm in the sense of economic inefficiency, but further is unjust and lowers public trust in institutions.
It's the FTC's job to do this kind of thing. If we argue it shouldn't be their job then what will we be doing? Nothing? We've tried the "do nothing" approach more times than any of us can count, and it doesn't work.
What's not OK is for the executive branch to not like the law, but be unsuccessful at passing new law through the democratic process, and then use the FTC to unsuccessfully sue companies in order to punish them (and threaten others) with costly legal expenses.
If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and make your substantive points thoughtfully and respectfully, regardless of how wrong someone is or you feel they are, we'd appreciate it.
If so, then if she isn't the right person for the job, is there someone who will be more successful?
It's basically the executive sidestepping the legislator and blocking perfectly legal behavior by the threat of burying it in such long and expensive lawsuits it's not longer viable.
3 years ago that would have just been rubber stamped.
Their work on non-tech stuff has probably been even more effective, too.
yes, because companies have decided to consider courts as a cost to do business instead of a regulator they must not piss off at any cost. the courts in that capacity will simply be abused, especially as these fast moving tech companies can make billions beofore a case shuts it all down.
Definitely needs to be some reform to how punishment works, especially retroactive costs.
“Sometimes, you know, the companies decide that they’re going to abandon the merger,” Khan said. Stahl asked if abandoning a merger amid the FTC’s scrutiny was a win, to which Khan said, “That’s right.” https://legal-mag.com/ftcs-lina-khan-defends-merger-and-acqu...
If adobe merged with figma that would be catastrophic for that domain. Prices would skyrocket, quality would invariably fall off, and innovation would stagnate due to lack of competition.
Part of having a free market is maintaining it. You can't have a free market if it's constantly consolidating into a monopoly or pseudo-monopoly. This is bad for the products, for the market, and for the consumer.
The keyword in that last sentence is market. Plenty of people will argue what the FTC is doing is stifling economic growth - but it's the opposite. Anti-competitive behavior stifles economic growth in the long run, so preventing it allows smaller companies to grow and innovate. Keeping slow moving giants on life support and de-facto welfare is not good for the economy.
There're a few problems with this:
1. Our lawmakers are incredibly inefficient, and many dedicated their lives to ensuring new laws don't get passed. Doesn't matter what the law is, they're career "blockers"
2. Our courts are not unpartisan, and many are conservative-leaning, and they'll simply continually strike down laws until they make it up and up and then the extremely conservative supreme court blocks it. This has been Texas' strategy.
What's wrong with that? Who still watches TV (either OTA or from satellite) in this age, except for elderly people who haven't figured out how to use the internet? This seems like people complaining about the consolidation of companies in the landline telephone market. It's a dying market, so of course the companies still hanging on are going to merge so they can save costs and squeeze the few remaining customers more.
She appears to be improving. But the FTC chair isn’t an internship.
I think the attention she’s bringing to the issue will cause many people to ask why antitrust enforcement has to be so hard. Any company with more than $100B in revenue is a quasi-government, and damages fair competition merely through their existence. Instead of making enforcement rely on years-long court cases, we need more immediate ways to break up or regulate these companies, and what we have today is not enough. If her attempts make more people realize the current laws aren’t enough, that might be its own form of success.
Lina Khan was 32 when she started as FTC chair. Prior to that, she had researched anti-trust at the New America Foundation, received a JD from Yale, worked as a legal director at the Open Markets Institute, worked as a legal fellow at the FTC, and served as counsel to the House Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Antitrust.
I don't disagree that she made some early missteps at the FTC, but this is far from her first rodeo. I also think that, on balance, it's a benefit to hire young, promising voices to positions of power, and that we should get back to a place where we do that a lot more.
I wish a POTUS candidate would come out in support of Khan so I could point to that as a reason to support that candidate (it’s definitely a component of how I’d vote).
I can live with USPS but what made me actually cancel my Prime account was their use of On-Trac shipping in California. They literally missed every single time and had to come back the next day.
In my zip code there are various blocks (including my own) where virtually nothing gets delivered in <5 days. This is in one of the biggest cities in the US.
I've contacted customer service and gone through multiple escalations twice and nothing has changed and it appears to reach a black hole. Addresses a few blocks away get normal prime delivery in 1-2 days.
As much as I love Amazon (I've been a customer since the very beginning) this makes me think that antitrust action is needed. Seeing pictures of Bezos partying with the Kardashians doesn't help Amazon's cause very much either.
For a while things got delivered via Amazon's subcontracted trucks but that stopped and now it's just whatever level of service USPS offers is what you end up with. Houses a few blocks away get normal prime delivery.
As much as I don't want to be a fan of Amazon -- their offering, especially because of the logistics/shipping, combined with generally fair prices, is quite incredible.
Yeah, that's probably why. They get people hooked with actually good service and then drop quality to save money once they've captured the market.
I suspect it isn’t next-day in, say, Broome. Last time I was in Hobart even it definitely wasn’t next or two-day shipping, lol.
As usual Perth gets shafted with 3rd party couriers with 0 SLA :(
How would this even work? It's on Amazon to deliver your stuff in 2 days but they also have to allow 3rd party shipping they have no control over? Are they allowed to require such a seller to fulfill the order by a specific date?
Because to me a lowly customer Prime === Item Shipped by Amazon. That's the whole value.
I don't understand why this misconception is so widespread. Most inventory is tracked using seller specific FNSKU's. Ergo inventory is not comingled.
https://sellercentral.amazon.com/help/hub/reference/external...
> When more than one seller has inventory with the same manufacturer barcode, we may fulfill orders with the inventory that’s closest to the buyer, to facilitate faster delivery.
Isn’t that a form of commingling of inventory? If one of the sellers I selling fakes, I think the other seller would be blamed whenever this happens.
https://www.amazonsellers.attorney/blog/pros-and-cons-of-ama....
> In summary, Amazon's commingling inventory can have serious implications for FBA sellers who are wrongfully accused of selling defective or inauthentic products. While the practice may improve efficiency, it can also make it difficult for sellers to prove their innocence in the event of false accusations. Sellers should be aware of these risks and take steps to protect themselves, such as opting out of commingling inventory or closely monitoring their inventory and customer feedback.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41773581
To your point, maybe it depends on the product?
https://sellercentral.amazon.com/help/hub/reference/external...
> By default, we use the manufacturer barcode to track eligible inventory throughout the fulfillment process, unless you change your barcode setting or your product is not eligible. When more than one seller has inventory with the same manufacturer barcode, we may fulfill orders with the inventory that’s closest to the buyer, to facilitate faster delivery.
> If your product isn’t eligible for virtual tracking with the manufacturer barcode, an Amazon barcode is required. You may be able to get an exemption to use the manufacturer barcode by enrolling your ASIN in Amazon Brand Registry. To learn more about virtual tracking and see product eligibility requirements, go to,Using manufacturer barcodes with FBA virtual tracking.
https://sellercentral.amazon.com/help/hub/reference/external...
> By default, we use the manufacturer barcode to track eligible inventory throughout the fulfillment process, unless you change your barcode setting or your product is not eligible. When more than one seller has inventory with the same manufacturer barcode, we may fulfill orders with the inventory that’s closest to the buyer, to facilitate faster delivery
> Last week, before the order was unsealed, some of the initial coverage called it a “partial victory” for Amazon, but as it turns out, the portion of the ruling in which the company was victorious was relatively slim.
> The areas where the judge granted Amazon’s motion to dismiss were related to specific aspects of state claims, including elements of allegations brought by Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Oklahoma, and Maryland. Eighteen states and one territory, Puerto Rico, joined the FTC in the lawsuit against Amazon.
https://www.geekwire.com/2024/unsealed-order-in-amazon-antit...
I am interested in reading an analysis of this.
Still, I did not mean to imply it was most or even a majority. I didn't think anyone expected the case to be dismissed in full. I have no idea what the impact of getting States items dismissed is, all told.
Consolidation over the past few decades has limited the capacity for firms to compete in many sectors.
So I appreciate the sentiment of what the FTC is trying to do, but they really come across as amateurs bringing far too many lawsuits and often with weak legal reasoning/argumentation.
In many of the cases they've brought there exists alternative, yet stronger arguments that could have been made.
I'd support congress legislating towards more competition (e.g. forcing open standards for things like APIs/chat clients/smart watches etc), or a more active FTC.
But the current approach is far too disorganized and weak.
And if you haven't kept up this year, Chevron being overturned is showing that the SCOTUS is more than happy to reduce FTC interference.
Unfortunately Congress is largely old and non-technical so the problems present aren't very well recognized or understood.
History will look at walled gardens as bad for competition and thus broader society.
I hope they also include Amazon allowing thousands of Chinese retailers to stock Amazon's warehouses with counterfeit, faulty products, and potentially dangerous out-of-spec parts - with no way to meaningfully report or bring the offending product to Amazon's attention.
Coincidentally the majority of USPTO trademark submissions are literally just random strings of letters now for this reason.
This is not true. A trademark is only required for Amazon's brand registry which gives brand owners control over who is allowed to sell their branded products.
And I think store brands are pretty mostly a win for the consumer (this is important for any monopoly case).
No I didn't say that.
AB can still look at AM listings in a category and note what is popular (just like anyone can do since that is part of the details AM generally includes in listings), and make a generic version (just like anyone can do), and then sell that on AM. AB products are usually pretty good and usually quite reasonably priced and so even if treated exactly the same as everything else in their category are still likely to end up being included in the products that get algorithmically recommended as alternatives.
It's not clear to me how this would improve competition.
As far as your point on Chinese retailers goes, you are arguing that Amazon should allow fewer sellers and those sellers should be more regulated. That may be a good thing but I'm having some difficulty seeing how it is an antitrust thing.
- Sincerely a kid raised on everything store brand.
Meanwhle I will almost always get an AmazonBasics if it exists as a first result.
99.9% of buyers prefer this over having to wade through innumerate random brands and try to discern quality.
I'd rather these perverse incentives not exist and simply have a more educated consumer base learn to search "Amazon basics X" instead of maximizing conviniece to enable monopolies. We've clearly been shown that we can't handle the latter
You don't have to care per se, that's what the government is for. But taking the time and energy to argue against your long term best interests is disappointing.
It’s not feasible for people to go to China, inspect the manufacturing processes, and figure out what is worth what. There is a whole business there of purveying goods, which is what brands like Amazon and Kroger and Kirkland all the way up to LVMH.
With the advent of the internet, that business is no longer restricted to physical stores, so technically, anyone can make a superior product and sell direct to anyone. There were stories of Kmart and Walmart and whoever else bullying vendors because the vendors used to get nowhere without shelf space.
1. Have access to immense amounts of data about these products that the manufacturers don't. Because they own the marketplace.
2. Can freely advertise, push, or even force their own products as much as possible. Because they own the marketplace.
That's probably the more pressing issue.
https://www.amazon.com/Amazon-Basics-Speaker-Subwoofer-Gold-...
> It's easy to sell online with Walmart.com. Partner with the largest multi-channel retailer and put your products in front of millions of Walmart shoppers.
Americans are used to American storefronts going through American regulations, but now you're essentially being dropshipped hazardous unregulated products. I generally try to buy from companies directly but this hasn't stopped my family from buying chinesium children toys for me that go straight into the trash.
How did we end up here? Like why the hell can I buy things on Amazon that can't legally be sold on shelves in the US? Why aren't retailers suing?
Amazon used the excuse it wasn't acting as a distributor and thus shouldn't be held responsible for protecting the public from these products
Because Amazons wiped a lot of them out, and the ones that remain are either doing the same thing, or stand zero chance of comign out of it anything less than bankrupt.
Amazon for all its convenience has decimated likely close to if not more than a million businesses at this point across the world.
This is the secret today. Find the product you want, buy straight from that company. Anymore the storefronts are all uniform and shipping (which used to be Amazon's advantage) is the same.
The days of massive online retailers dominating is over at my house. I just wish more people would figure that out.
But aside from that, Amazon almost always has a better return process, and you only need to give one site your payment details rather than many.
(That said, I often buy outside of Amazon, because for certain specialty items, Amazon is pretty lacking.)
Every company so far, I send an email or click the return link on the confirmation email they sent when I ordered. Print the label and send it back. I haven't had any problems yet.
>need to give one site your payment details rather than many.
Either use PayPal or your credit card. If it gets compromised, cc companies are really good at making sure you don't get screwed.
I have been doing this for 5 years now and haven't had any problems.
I guess you hate every grocery store ever then
Why should I feel bad about Kraft being under permanent pressure by Walmart's Great Value brand?
More competition is needed, not less. Along with more transparency. Banning Amazon from competing would be a mistake. They need a more level playing field, not fewer players.
Also unclear to me why "ecommerce" is a market unto itself that we should be concerned with level of concentration in, as opposed to simply a slice of the broader "retail" market (which is much less concentrated)
It just feels icky to me that you can sign away your rights to do business with someone else.
Aa for E-commerce, it can have a larger inventory than physical retail. You're not going to find many solar charge controllers or mechanical keyboard parts at Walmart, but Amazon will have tons of options deliverable within 48 hours. Few sites can have comparable shipping cost/speed and you have to research each one, whereas Amazon enjoys the position of being the default.
A decade ago, I helped a small Amazon seller with his inventory, and it was eye opening to see all the fees and risks compared to eBay. But he couldn't sell on eBay without losing a massive portion of his customer base, despite their better shopping/buying UX in my experience.
https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/ftc_gov/pdf/1910134amazonec...
It seems completely reasonable to split brick and mortar sales from web-based, given that the business model is pretty significantly different.
And AWS
The issue is that even if you know it's wrong, what are you going to do to. You grow to a certain size, and it then becomes clear that you're inching closer and closer to becoming a monopoly. Do you then stop and inform your shareholders that you unfortunately reached the maximum size for your organisation?
Even if you have no moral issue continuing down your current path, you have very little to fear, because the precedence is that you'll get a relatively mild punishment.
For Amazon, if this was to have any real meaning, the US government could step and an say: Because of the actions of Amazon, the online store, we're no longer able to utilize AWS in good faith. This would force Amazon to split their businesses into two, or lose government contracts, which would both be a real punishment.
Breaking rules definitely isn't an innate part of human nature at scale.
Edit: more seriously, it doesn't help that the laws are entirely subjective. You're not a monopoly until after the fact. Monopolistic behavior is sometimes rewarded, and sometimes punished. Look at court cases involving Apple and Google. The only real difference between them is scale. You're allowed to be big, up until someone decides that you're actually too big. It's only a question of "too big to fail" or "too big to exist".
Consider all the "Lina Khan fans" you see on HN and elsewhere. They rarely articulate why the government should be suing these companies, which laws that company broke, or if those laws make sense. They just don't like big companies and want them taken down a peg.
The Google suit was particularly egregious. There was no alternative to Google search because no one had built a better product for reasons that have nothing to do with anticompetitive behavior. And the real irony here is that Google appears to be behind on LLMs, which have finally given us an alternative to typing things into Google. So the government picked the exact moment when Google's search market share is seriously threatened to sue!
I'll put it to you another way: if you want smaller government, you need smaller corporations, too.
> There was no alternative to Google search because no one had built a better product for reasons that have nothing to do with anticompetitive behavior.
I would first argue that Google's unparalleled superiority in search is overblown. For one, there's ads in it. As Google's founders themselves stated, ads are a perverse incentive to ruin the search experience in favor of advertisers and I can point to several examples[0] in which this happened.
There are paid search engines that do not have advertising (e.g. Kagi) but they themselves have complained about the struggle that is competing with Google. For example, on iOS, there's only five default search engine options, there's no way to add a different search engine as default, and Google pays $$$ to Apple to be set to the default and for that search engine option to be buried in Settings. I don't see how that isn't anticompetitive.
On a technical level, Google has a supracompetitive advantage, too. A lot of websites have restrictive policies that forbid scraping except for Google and Bing. This means only those search engines can actually return results for those sites.
[0] Product ads in web search, every programming search query giving you four or five ads before the actual StackOverflow answer you're interested in, image search becoming a glorified product search with actual functionality being removed, Gemini
Unaccountable to who? I can think of plenty “almost monopolies” that no longer exist or are former shells which would infer they were accountable - at least to the customer.
But the more important question is - how big is too big? Is it the same for every company? If not, who decides? How do you measure it?
If it’s not objective criteria, it becomes a “I know it when I see it” where subjective variables result in a company in the crosshairs. So in the end, the government picking winners and losers.
If you didn't want to be convicted of murder, you wouldn't walk right up to the line of what constitutes murder. You'd stay far away from that line on the legal side. Same for companies, if the system is doing its job.
I'm not a US citizen but I understand that it comes down to the FTC and the courts rather than the government.
* I'm a big fan of Chairwoman Khan.
* The government should be suing many of the companies FTC is going after because their behavior yields bad outcomes for consumers, such as worse health outcomes after a private equity group captures an entire geography then drives up prices while reducing quality.
* They tend to have broken laws around creating and abusing monopoly positions, usually with various illegal details like kickback arrangements and self-dealing.
* These laws make sense.
* I don't mind big companies and many of the companies FTC goes after are not particularly big.
* Companies that utilize edge cases in market dynamics to produce bad outcomes for consumers should be taken down a peg.
There are the standard points around consumer protection. Ticketmaster, Adobe, Amazon, really do engage in anti competitive practices and then burn the consumer once they've consolidated power. People feel that, but to your point, can't articulate all the moving pieces, and that's fine, use the mute button. God help us if Kroger and Safeway get their way and merge.
To your point about "don't forget who's really in charge." - it might feel like there's no upside here, but in reality you do end up with companies that have more power than the government, and that's a dangerous road to go down in a democracy, since there's no real way to hold them accountable. Obviously the government is deeply flawed in a million different ways, but ultimately there are elected officials, which cannot be said of private companies.
Also Lina Khan talks a lot about resiliency. Too much efficiency can make things worse [1]. With mass consolidation, black swan events lead to and outsized impact compared to what they would in an economy where there aren't monopolies everywhere. Climate change, pandemics, instability in Europe and the middle east, etc mean that it's worth trading extreme efficiency for robustness.
[1] https://sohl-dickstein.github.io/2022/11/06/strong-Goodhart....
Absolutely. Isn't the recent Crowdstrike incident sort of a testament to this? In terms of efficiency it's great for a bunch of systems to all rely on the same tool. But when something goes wrong, it goes wrong for everyone.
Because it's not productive and against HN guidelines to say "read the article".
>Last year, the FTC alleged Amazon.com, which has 1 billion items in its online superstore, was using an algorithm that pushed up prices U.S. households paid by more than $1 billion. Amazon has said in court papers it stopped using the program in 2019.
Price fixing is generally an illegal tactic. I'm not a lawyer but there's plenty of legal dictionaries that laymen can understand on the whats, why's, and hows. So yes, the goverment should sue if a law is suspected of being broken.
>The Google suit was particularly egregious. There was no alternative to Google search because no one had built a better product for reasons that have nothing to do with anticompetitive behavior.
did you ignore the point where google was spending 250m a year to Apple to be the default search engine on IOS?
Please actually read the topics before complaining that there is no rationale behind it. You're doing the very thing you accuse others of doing. YOu're not providing an argument you're saying arguments don't exist and inserting a strawman.
>the government picked the exact moment when Google's search market share is seriously threatened to sue!
Googles been under scrutiny since pre-pandemic. There is no such thing as "good timing" for a lawsuit because they take years to bring to court, let alone to resolve.
More like ~$20-26 billion
But what happens in the scenario where the person comes in, undercuts them, and then sells to the bigger company? How does this force the larger company to change? This is like antitrust 101.
I don't understand people who claim to be proponents of capitalism and are opposed to antitrust. If you want the free market to determine anything with fewer regulations, then we need antitrust. Otherwise we need a lot more regulations. Which one would you prefer?
I have a feeling you wouldn't recognize anticompetitive behavior despite it hitting you in the face for the past 10 years.
The same government that gives it tax cuts when building new "fulfillment centers" and billions of dollars in cloud/military contracts? Something doesn't add up in your logic.
> Consider all the "Lina Khan fans" you see on HN and elsewhere. They rarely articulate why the government should be suing these companies, which laws that company broke, or if those laws make sense. They just don't like big companies and want them taken down a peg.
https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2023/09/...