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I'm very thrown by the "hidden Buy box" argument. I thought Amazon did that on purpose to hide overpriced items from the wild west that is Amazon's marketplace/sellers. So a t-shirt for $100 gets no Buy box because it's overpriced.

The video argues that this creates a monopoly.

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The argument is that a) is very important for sellers to get a bit button, and that b) Amazon uses that as threat of relaliation to get sellers to behave the way it wants. The latter point is almost the definition of monopoly.

Note that crucially this isn't a matter of interpretation. Amazon either IS doing this, or ISNT. The only question mark is can this be proven in court.

Unfortunately the logic behind the buy box isn't quite that clear.

They could also prefer a listing for a higher price from an established seller over a listing from a new seller, even if they're the brand owner.

They "could" do anything you can posit. This doesn't seem unfortunate - their incentives are well aligned with customer preference.

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