Amazon faces potential break-up as FTC finalizes antitrust lawsuit | The FTC is getting ready for the big one::undefined
I will believe it when I see it.
Yeah remember when they were going to break up Microsoft? That went great.
Yeah, there the FTC was with a clear market that Microsoft would have a monopoly over should the merger go through. They had Microsoft on the ropes, but, before they could finish them, Microsoft pinky promised prices wouldn’t go up. And that was that, no threat of a monopoly and the merger could go through.
… the current antitrust ruling guidelines make enforcement basically impossible.
It was more that George w Bush was elected. And cracking down on monopolies is against the code of fascists. Ideally they want to be in charge of all the monopolies. So he more or less called off the suit just as they were about to close in on Microsoft.
I meant the Microsoft Activision Blizzard fiasco, I guess I didn’t realize.
Oh yes that too. Microsoft is always been bad though. Always will be always has been.
Hell, I won’t believe it even when I’ll see it. Likely some loophole will be found to dodge this in one way or another.
Not to be pedantic, but isn’t that the same as “I’ll believe it when I see it”? You’re just saying it won’t happen
I think they’re saying even if this goes through amazon will find a way to ignore it
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There is mods on lemmy? I just found out there is also karma, why are we recreating a toxic authoritarian shit hole but decentralized?
Came here to say exactly this. Not going to happen.
Who in the fuck do they think they’re fooling? There hasn’t been any sort of large corporate antitrust breakup since Bell Systems in the early 80s. They expect us to believe that after 40 years of inaction, suddenly they’re going to do their jobs again? This is nothing but pandering to pad approval ratings. I would love to be wrong, but I’m not getting my hopes up.
This smells like fodder just in time for election season
Dude, the 80s wasn’t 40 years ago…
Damn I got old…
The 80s will always be 20 years ago. Y2k was ten years ago, the 2010s didn’t happen and we’re both old.
Damn, there might be a group of us.
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The FTC has actually been crazy busy this administration - https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases - they’re really doing far more than at any other point in my lifetime.
I fully support the FTC burning it all down, but then I read this paragraph, and it did not give me confidence: “The FTC has had Amazon in its sights this year. The company recently agreed to a $5.8 million settlement with the Commission over Ring privacy violations that included employees spying on customers. And in June, the FTC sued Amazon over “deceptive” Prime subscription tactics.”
5.8 million is probably Jeff Bezos’s weekly cheese budget. It’s loose change in his car seat.
I fully support the FTC burning it all down
Lol sayin the quiet part out loud
If it’s about burning down the corporate regulatory capture and their stranglehold on markets that killed free market capitalism, then it’s not the quiet part. That’s the literal mission of the FTC that it hasn’t been fulfilling for half a century now.
killed free market capitalism
Citation needed.
Damn this thread is negative as hell.
I’m one of the most cynical, pessimistic people I know, but not in here.
Kinda wish people’s first reaction were “good,” not “yeah right, remember Bell in the 80’s?”
Maybe I’m naive, but this seems like good news to me. Even if it doesn’t actually result in Amazon being broken up, at least it indicates someone is doing something.
“Don’t let perfection be the enemy of progress” or something like that.
Astroturfing. Amazon has PR teams that come here and sow seeds of “pff it doesn’t even matter” in order to make people cynical and complacent.
Yeeaah nah, I can absolutely promise you that Amazon PR isn’t wasting their time trying to make a few hundred thousand Lemmy users apathetic lol. This is such a crazy level of paranoia
I highly doubt that. Regular people have no real ability to effect the outcome, and the majority of people are saying “there’s no way this absolutely bullshit situation gets fixed” not “what is there to fix? Nothing is wrong!”
No company is paying their PR to say “Yeah [we] are real pieces of shit that need to be hacked up and thrown to the wind but [we] are gonna come out of this just fine so suck our cocks.”
That isn’t how PR works. At least not till they hit dictator levels of power.
PR people aren’t stupid. They know how to muddy the water and make efforts like this seem unimportant because it prevents people from galvanizing. Its the divide and conquer strategy.
Progress needs actual progress though, a lot of progressive regulation is put up with absolutely no chance (or intention imo) of going through. It’s a bunch of tech regulators with no idea how the tech works throwing out drastic proposals to look heavy handed and tough, because that’s what people want to see.
Much of the cynicism online right now is due to an avalanche of reporting that shit is hitting the fan with the climate. Anyone with so much as one child is feeling a retro-antinatalist regret. Concerning ourselves with long ago-gutted anti-trust laws seems like worrying about dirty windows in a house that’s fully engulfed in flames with no fire department within a million miles. Break 'em up, for sure, but what’s the point if the gulf stream collapses next year and we become Mars in a decade. Or sumptin.
I have 3 children and not only don’t feel regret, I’m quite optimistic. Perpetually-online Doomers are the only ones feeling that way.
Dream on.
“how dare you be optimistic!” Lol
I encourage anyone with a sufficiently smooth brain to ignore inevitabilities, you included. Really, y’all are in an enviable place. If two-hundred million in the USA under heat or flood warnings while scientists say the Gulf Stream is on the verge of collapse means nothing more than “it’s summer” to you, good for you. You win. Seriously.
Im smarter, more successful, more wealthy, and more involved in climate lobbying than you, so I know I win.
Edit: And more attractive. Oh and my Warhammer 40,000 collection is bigger than yours. Oh and I dont mean to brag but my daughter graduates with honors and got a scholarship to college. Also my wife is a smokeshow with a big ol ass.
Edit: Oh also I have good hair.
Absolutely. we need a lot more of this too.
It’s “Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good”
Any move in the right direction is good, even if it doesn’t prove to be enough on it’s own.
This is funny, because I literally said “good!” when I read the post title. So I’m right there with you.
Absolutely straight, we need a lot more of this too.
More than half of Amazon’s sales come from third-party merchants who this year started paying an average of over 50% commission on every sale, up from 35.2% in 2016, the result of it raising Fulfillment by Amazon fees every year and increasing storage fees.
While paying for Amazon’s logistics and advertising services is optional, most merchants consider these, especially advertising, a necessary part of doing business. Moreover, the FTC has reportedly amassed evidence that Amazon disadvantages merchants who don’t use the services by giving them lower placements.
Capitalism at its finest… I still remember when Amazon was just a humble online bookstore. How times have changed.
I would be curious if all these influencers pushing FBA (Fulfilled by Amazon) where they got paid for the original thought because there is so much junk flowing into Amazon now especially people trying to use Amazon’s logistics.
I can’t imagine there is great margin for a product listed on Amazon if half of every sale is given to Amazon for commission.
No doubt this is slimy, but does it make Amazon a monopoly? It seems like a tough case for the FTC to win.
Not sure but giving your own products preferential placement on what you present to the public as an open marketplace is an anti-competitive behavior that they have been caught doing.
Contrary to popular corporatist disinformation, anti-trust law isn’t just for literal control-100.000000%-of-the-market “monopolies.” Any company (or colluding group of companies) large enough to unduly influence the market can be subject to it.
That’s why it’s called “anti-trust” law, not “anti-monopoly” law.
Took them ten years to split up AT&T and that was a literal monopoly. Near 100% market share.
We need to do the same with Microsoft and Google
And like the other 10 companies that own pretty much every brand in the country.
But not Apple? The most valuable company in history.
Eeeh. Apple’s App Store fees can be a bit much, but all told the company doesn’t have enough power on any market to warrant such a huge intervention I think. Just forcing them to make their ecosystem more open would be enough. Like how the EU wants to force them to allow 3rd party package managers on iOS.
Luckily the EU wants much more, and already accepted regulation that will be implemented later this year to open all ecosystems up, completely. iMessage will have to provide an open API that provides the same service levels than the native client for example.
Ideally this is all that will happen with Amazon as well
They went after MS in the 90s. Nothing really came of it.
Yes and no.
The simple fact that you’re not using IE6 on MSN with Bing search to access a Windows server is more or less proof that the constraints placed on Microsoft at that time did actually have an impact (even if I felt robbed that the company wasn’t split up at the time).
Today the one thing Microsoft is still dominante in is Office software (and even then Google docs is snapping at their heals).
OS? Android is more popular than windows Server OS? Linux rules the roost Browser? Chrome
The company that really needs scrutiny ATM is Google.
Are you high?
What about facebook, disney, netflix, twitter, apple, uber, airbnb?
Uber has direct competition in Lyft, among other rideshares and entrenched taxi companies. Disney and Netflix are literal competitors. You’re on an alternative to Twitter right now, and Facebook is yet another. Apple has competitors in every industry. AirBnB has both tons of competition and 26% market share - below Booking.com
Oligopolies are still not competitive. We need research into finding out what market share starts distorting competition, and tying antitrust to that.
A market with 2 competitors can still be broken down further.
Oligopoly has an actual meaning and that meaning isn’t “companies I have heard of”
What’s funny is you hate Uber because you’ve heard of them but Yellow Cab had a literal monopolistic chokehold and you didn’t give a fuck at all.
Doubt. If it somehow works out, do Google next
Lol. What a crock of shit. If anyone thinks the oligarchs that run this country will allow this to happen you’re smoking rocks.
This country leads the world in corruption & greed. Nothing will change that but this is great click bait.
You think the oligarchs make more or less money when Bezos has a monopoly?
I think it may well happen because the oligarchs want Amazon broken up. Biden did appoint Lina Kahn as chair of the FTC. Kahn has long been vocal that Amazon needs to be broken up.
This needs to happen. As skeptical as I am that this will result in a break-up, AWS really needs to be busted up away from the rest of Amazon, and that’s just to start with.
Read similar news about meta , google and even microsoft ! Now it feels like a hogwash !
Would be great if the US started regulating big tech as harshly as the EU, let’s see how they like that.
The FTC hasn’t had a spine in decades, I doubt anything will come of this. It would be nice for once if the government actually gave a shit about monopoly busting, but they don’t care anymore. Not when corporations are legally allowed to bribe the ones making legislation, oh and also companies can be people now
The FTC has had a spine since 2020, they have been really busy - https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases
If this does happen, I hope they find a way to do it that doesn’t make Bezos and the like richer, like what happened with Standard Oil years ago.
They will settle for increased regulation, knowing their army of lawyers will be able to manage it all while the little guy will get snowed under.
So we’ll see even more small businesses fail while Amazon will continue to grow because the gov’t was lobbied into killing the competition.
How exactly does helping small businesses access a worldwide market they otherwise would never get access to cause small businesses to “fail?”
Remember when FTC threw hands with MSFT…like literally last week? Yeah.
Does this need to happen? By God yes, a thousand times over. Will it actually happen with a positive effect? Big doubt.
