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Comment by mitthrowaway2 | Hacker News Reader

This doesn't make sense; these days it seems like the majority of products on Amazon can also be found on AliExpress for a third of the price, both of them sold by FWHZHW. From what you're saying, these things should disappear from Amazon's search listings, but in my experience they're the ones promoted straight to the top, and anything else gets buried under that mountain.

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So consider the alternative (because this happened to us): 5-6 years back, one of our brand stores sold a thing (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08DKG3NX7) that created an entire niche of products, and 6 months after our success, a buncha clones came out of the woodwork.

On Amazon, they created listings that imitated our copy and images. On AliExpress/Taobao/etc., they ripped off our images and pretended to be us. Deciding which product/listing is the original product is super nontrivial especially when there's international trademarking and IP law (or lack thereof) involved.

Getting 6 months, you were lucky! I've heard of kickstarters that were ripped off on AliExpress before they even finished their own product...

Doesn't that just mean that they brought little more to the table than an idea?

I think we should severely limit copyrights and patents, but not get rid of them entirely.

Or they're just ideas.

It's an interesting debate. One more thing they did was prove there was a market for the idea.

That is the whole point of copyright/patent law. Society benefits by having interesting ideas brought to market, and society misses/looses out when people who bring ideas to market are punished by copycats, stopping new ideas/innovation.

You wouldn't have had an industrial revolution without copyright/patent laws.

In the modern world where we have done most of the low hanging fruit a new novel idea could be even more valuable for society to protect.

Yep. That happens. But delisting some items that cost less but not others doesn’t fix your problem. So…?

The amount of product images on Amazon these days with incorrect shadows or perspective lines... wow.

If Amazon detected and banned any seller whose product images were gen AI or which didn't match user photos, it'd go a long way towards regaining trust.

Agreed. The only explanation is that people don't want to use aliexpress so it's not counted as a direct competitor. If you're prepared to wait even a week, you can get less than 1/3 the price and this has been true for over a decade!

This is just not true. Sure if you want trash you can get it on Aliexpress and Amazon, but lots of good quality stuff is not available on Aliexpress at all.

Even some Chinese manufacturers have a broader range on Amazon than Aliexpress.

> can also be found on AliExpress for a third of the price, both of them sold by FWHZHW

Am I a conspiracy theorist to believe that Amazon is behind Trump’s decision to end the de minimis?

That's been my theory since it was announced.

Not just Amazon. Every retailer and seller wants to keep their 80% margins(manufacturing price wise).

yeah, that seems like the easiest pitch of all times. Trump wanted to do tariffs, especially on China anyway, Amazon likely just nodded trying to hide their grin.

of course it's hard to know what went through the heads at Amazon, the initial tariff news were crazy and Amazon doesn't want a recession, as it's bad for business

AliExpress obviously isn't comparable and the price is irrelevant when it takes 2-3 weeks vs same-day/1day

Depends much on what you are buying. There are many cases of totally not urgent things that costs 75% less. So waiting makes totally sense.

How often do you actually need something the same day?

Almost always, considering the price is only $5 more

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