Jeff Bezos urged Amazon to flood search results with junk ads, FTC alleges

Haus@kbin.social to News@lemmy.world – 291 points –
cnbc.com

Amazon's ads strategy helped pump its profits while steering shoppers to higher-priced goods, the agency alleges.

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This, among other shitty behaviour, is why I avoid Amazon now. It's just a horrible shopping experience.

Amazon is basically Ali Express or Temu. All the trustworthy / quality products are buried unless you explicitly search for them.

Except Aliexpress is still fun.

Let me spend 6 hours looking at slightly different screwdrivers and keycaps and dodgy anime merch and ICs that haven't been used since 1988. Way better than 84 pages of KWJIBO brand home goods.

I went to multiple hardware, plumbing stores, and Amazon but only found my obscure bathtub faucet to hose fitting on aliexpress for less than a dollar

I ended up on Temu for the first time today since I always avoid Amazon. Pretty sure that site gave my phone an STD.

I use it to price check and sometimes figure out a better search term before I get it from a china direct seller.

Ali express isn't that different from other websites, there are certain brands I know and trust, or if something is cheap enough, I will take a risk on it being good. I actually just bought some stuff there yesterday.

It really is. Etsy too.

Remember when Etsy was for actual crafts and not a dozen people drop shipping the same kitschy shit from China?

I do! If you're patient and careful, you can still find some good creators on there. But, it's almost not worth it to even look anymore. Etsy doesn't even pretend to give a shit about all of the fake shops and misleading listings. Unfortunately, I haven't found any good alternatives yet either.

I haven't used amazon personally in years and I haven't missed it a bit. The biggest problem is trying to order stuff at work because my employer doesn't care that amazon is a shit company. If I put a purchase order in for a niche part from Joe's Niche Part Depot I just get a response of "We don't have them registered as a supplier in our system, but amazon has that part too and it's only $3 more there so we're just going to get it there."

urged?

he's the CEO.

term is directed

I appreciat you calling out shit as it is.

I have no doubt he's controlling things still but he's not the ceo anymore.

It's mental that after years of Jassy running the show, no one knows who he is, and everyone still believes Bezos is in charge.

Jassy's legacy at Amazon is RTO, and that's hugely depressing, to the point where if Amazon continue to lose market share, I think they should look towards a new CEO.

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Making it more difficult for a customer to find what they want to buy is certainly an interesting retailer strategy.

It's like an honest person turning into a compulsive liar. Until people catch on, what can't they get away with?