Comment by stcredzero | Hacker News Reader

Comment by stcredzero | Hacker News Reader

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if they want such massive platforms and play on such marketplaces, they must obey their own guidelines, else they are either stripped from the playground or someone else should own the play ground.

So here's a question: Is a store really a marketplace? It seems to me that Amazon, Target, Macys, etc, do a lot of curation and editorial work with regards to standards of production and marketing for items in their stores. Isn't that more akin to publishing?

I think the grey area and critical zone is this: Should a company be allowed to advertise their ecosystem/playground as akin to a "marketplace" when what's really happening, is that they are tightly controlling the product and harvesting the information for themselves? Seems like a bait and switch to me! ("Your margins are our opportunities," is the most fundamentally aggressive business statement I can possibly imagine, and Jeff Bezos said it!)

Apple, Amazon, and YouTube all seem to fall into this general pattern: A "marketplace" or "ecosystem" which is less bazaar and more their tightly planned cathedral. "Partners" who are put upon, data-analyzed, and sometimes cannibalized. This pattern seems to be very widespread, and it only stands to reason, given the tremendous increase in the ability of companies to leverage technology to harvest such data in their own playgrounds.

I understand your idea, but I still think they are and should be defined as marketplaces, with a scrutiny any marketplace should get.

The first reason is, Amazon isn't doing much curation (if any), due to their size they can't do proper curation, and bots are terrible at it (either based on keywords or reporting). This is proven by counterfeit items being sold, listings being stolen/manipulated, biased report systems.

Then Amazon claims they aren't liable for the products sold - the customer belongs to Amazon (you can't even have access to their names anymore), the listings belong to Amazon, everything except what arrives at the door.

At last, Sellers pay for the product advertising Amazon does, it's called a Referral Fee (ranges from 8% to 15%). In fact, the Seller pays for everything (and they should, yet the amounts are up for discussion).

So they have all the symptoms of a marketplace, yet Amazon plays what ever role is more suitable for them.

I only think they should be enforced the rules of a market place in any developed place in the world.

No real private marketplace would be open if they were selling counterfeits. Even if they sold legit products as well, until they purged everything counterfeit they would not be open, and they'd pay fines for it.

I bet if any public Health/Goods inspection force would be deployed on ANY amazon warehouse, they'd find shady shit. But such public organizations don't have the tools/protocols to do what they do in the real world.

I agree with you when you say, this isn't limited to Amazon.

For example, why can't we get the full data from the customer that purchases from us? Why can't they be our customer on Amazon? Amazon hoards everything, and we get the scraps.

What kind of "full data" would you want from the customer? Earlier, you mentioned their name. Why can't the customer's transaction be as anonymous as possible, if they choose to be?

It seems as if Amazon, likely prodded by the GDPR and CCPA, is limiting the personal information they share with third parties. I think that's a good thing, for the consumer at least.

That's a slippery slope: is the person the seller customer, or Amazon's customer?

Their name was an example of something required to provide feedback, make amendments, or any kind of engagement that's required with that customer.

Anonymity is one of the reasons review manipulation thrives on Amazon.

Honestly I doubt it was due to GDPR/CCPA, or user privacy concerns, and more turning FBA into a pipeline of homogeneous suppliers that race to the bottom.

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