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They've surely realized very early on, they've just been trying very hard to be hush about it. Can't blame them, much as I dislike them.

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Well that's fair. Realized AND acted on a problem vs. just realizing the problem. It unfortunately has to hit them in the public eye before they are willing to really start addressing the problem.

I further contend there really is no solution. It's a war of escalation. We've seen it play out with SEO and search engines over the years. You can still "game" Google, but it's a lot harder to do it, the barrier to entry is a lot harder than it used to be when you could just list your site with a link farm. I am guessing that Amazon is in a similar war.

Maybe the current state of affairs is despite significant efforts to combat it. That would explain some of the silence on all these complaints, since "we're doing everything we can and it's still happening" is more embarrassing than "we know it's happening and we're looking into it."

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