He has 1.8 million subscribers and talks about gear. There's no way his affiliate purchases were done by "friends and family" in any significant number above 0.1% to even matter.
It's just Amazon payback BS.
If you write the rules (or laws) such that everyone is breaking them but then chose when and how to enforce those laws you can selectively enforce them against specific people or specific kinds of people. You're terminating him for a totally legitimate not-at-all-dystopian reason when obviously the real motivation is something else entirely. You just weren't looking to see if anyone else committed the crime.
This! I've been saying this for so long and I'm glad to see more people saying it.
In response to this type of behavior over time, we internet "power users" have developed a superpower, something we do better than almost anyone else
We hold a grudge forever,
and, we happen to be good about telling others
This routes around their damage
You do still have to watch out for marketplace items on some of them. And if it really IS direct-from-China why not go to eBay or Alibaba?
AliExpress does manage to have a search feature that is massively worse than Amazon's, if you can believe that possible.
However, I think the last purchase I made through Amazon was super specific (particular model of washing machine agitator motor) and unlikely to be glump-binned. So perhaps that's the approach.
The things in the middle are the problem.
> Come to our store (Austin, TX) or mail your device to us and we will fix your problem!
Not a lot of money compared to what he makes off his youtube channel, or off his for Macbook repair business with six employees.
He's mad that he got banned for an obviously fake reason, not because of the money.
Until the FTC or his Representative start to cost them real money.
For example, if companies want to have anything more than a simple (unmoderated) review system there might be certain safe harbours they lose.