So the fine for price fixing is $100M and Amazon is worth $2 trillion so that’s like 20,000x bigger than the fine. I think they will survive this one gang
this post was submitted on 25 Feb 2026
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Amazon NUTTED 🤤🤤🤤🤤🤤
I’ve pointed out Valve doing basically the same thing; games can’t be priced lower than Steam on competing game storefronts (not Steam key resellers), or Valve will threaten to delist your game. Which would be essentially kill it. And they obviously do this to protect their chunky store fee.
But personal loyalty goes a long way.
I’m trying to reframe the perspective here, not drag into an argument about Valve. A whole lot of people feel good about finding “deals” on Amazon, about Amazon services that have helped them, and especially about the value and convenience the whole platform provides. It’s easy for Lemmy to hate on Amazon, but for the average person, I think this is a harder sell than most of us realize. They’ll dismiss it as the “market working” or California sensationalism or, more likely, just filter it out as noise in their feed, just like most PC gamers would when they read something bad about Valve.
I boycott pretty much all the big corporations. I can’t really boycott Amazon because I am in a super rural part of the US and run a small business. Like most small businesses I purchase a lot of random doodads and thingamabobbers from china. Amazons monopoly on the US post office and their logistic network that gets bulk goods from china to my house is hard to live without. They fix more than prices, the whole economy is stacked in their favor. They basically won globalism and it was bad for the globe.
Valves scope is much smaller and less destructive. They keep their customers due to loyalty and the investment into a steam library.
Yeah…
That’s how Amazon worked. At first.
Back then, online shopping kind of sucked, and this little book store company made its so streamlined I got invested.
I didn’t invest because I always thought they would get broken up as a monopoly.
But the point is that Valve could easily be Amazon some day. All these little companies taking their first anticompetitive steps could.
Of course everyone loves them when they’re small, and nice, and growing, until they get so big it’s way too late to do anything about it. But many will still feel loyalty, like they do to Amazon today.
Yea it will be interesting to see what happens to valve in the future. Without antitrust laws anything is possible.
I cannot express enough how angry I am that people still use amazon. Major cringe when friends tell me all the shit they buy on there. I used it 10 years ago a couple times, never once since then. Its shit, slave labor, and enriches billionaires. No one forces you to use it.
Feel free to provide goods to my rural community any time! You can’t believe that poor people have budget consideration and seek the cheapest product?
Use eBay or literally any other site. What is so specific to amazon that you need ? Amazon isn't even cheaper in many cases if you actually search.
eBay’s just as fucking bad? They monopolized your post office pricing and fix prices on their market place, they manipulate visibility and charge more for promotions. It’s the same scam with a different name lmao
Well, if you wanna say that, all stores are bad, capitalism is evil, stop buying things and go live in a cave 😁
There is not one store out there that's not evil, because capitalism relies on exploiting the poor and weak and less intelligent. That's how it is. Unless you go live off grid in Alaska but guess what you'll still have to import products made with slave labor.
Again, Lemmy being angry because we aren't perfect. Using eBay or a small store instead of amazon is astronomically better than buying your funko pop collection on amazon.
Amazon hosts small stores too. Most small stores exist on both. They also host half the internet and government contracts so they don’t care if you use eBay. Your tax dollars use Amazon. Their beyond your reach as a consumer but not an educated citizen
Amazon is cheaper than eBay on every item I’ve looked at in the last 6 months. eBay has robbed me a few times in the last 6 months. What a wild ass suggestion.
Huh, bad luck. I've been using eBay for 20 years with maybe 2 issues and they've always been resolved.
Companies like Amazon and eBay exist to leverage to post office and their platform for profit. They both do the same thing to the same people.
It’s cringe because it’s affordable and convenient? Whenever I buy something from there I always price compare online and it’s the cheapest hands-down. Some people don’t have the luxury of constantly considering geopolitics and large-scale repercussions when they’re just simply trying to get by.
It super depends on what you’re buying. Personally, I just go without in order to avoid them. The only things I ever buy from Amazon are things I cannot find anywhere else that I need to have, such as water filters for the lead pipes in Montréal.
We don’t have the luxury to ignore how bad Amazon is. Amazon is aware of this and does everything it can to force you to buy from them by under cutting other businesses until competition dries up. Every time I can buy something for a little bit more and skip Amazon that’s a huge a win for everyone from the original supplier, the more local store selling it, and the working class in general.
Edit: Reading and writing more comments, I’m gunna find a way to get those filters from elsewhere even if they cost a bunch more.
No bro water filters from Amazon are unethical, please expose yourself to lead because some guy on lemmy is virtue signaling /s
I cannot tell what side of the argument you’re trying to be on here, gunna be real hokest with ya.
I mean what I said. I also buy water filters from Amazon because I suck water straight from the ground. Some times the water is yellow and needs to be filtered.
Did you miss the part where I said I’d be looking for filters elsewhere even if they cost a bunch more?
I think personal safety is more important than virtue signaling. You should have used your political power to regulate it before it became a critical service in communities. I hate Amazon, yet I am dependent on it. I come from the side of nuance. You want to handle Amazon you monopoly bust it. Boycotting won’t help.
I have always voted progressive, never even centrist. I live in Canada, also, but yea I don’t actually make the rules but the people I vote for to make said rules don’t like Amazon either.
That’s my only point it doesn’t matter if there’s a group of consumers boycotting them if the government doesn’t listen to those constituents. Amazon is a political problem not a consumer problem.
Like, yes, but also consumers are the electorate and the people we elect need to represent us. We keep electing people who represent the businesses’ interests and not our own, despite alternatives, and so we have it in our heads that these things are more separate than they are. We have the control, we just refuse to use it to the point where most people have forgotten that.
For now I would just focus on that November election, a boycott is not as effective as monopoly busting and regulating. If you can organize your town and state to vote for someone competent it might be easier than asking people to boycott Amazon globally. Amazon hosts 1/3 of the internet and has government contracts. The Amazon prime subscribers are a drop in the barrel
"some people don't have the luxury of considering whether their product is made from death camp body parts when they're just simply trying to get by"
Jesus H Fucking Christ. How about electing a government that will regulate Amazon instead of comparing poor people who need consumer goods to nazis. This is some tankie ass behavior
You missed the point completely, so I'll lay it out for you: Everyone has to draw a line SOMEWHERE. And when a country whose government sends fascist death squads into the streets is supported by a company, there's a fuckton of lines to be drawn.
There's ZERO excuse for doing business with amazon. No one is starving because they can't shop there. So GTFO with your lazy ass morally corrupt exuses.
Great reason to business with Amazon. Armor plates and carrier. Gun mods. These are real expressions of political will. Enjoy your boycott. Glad you’re privileged enough to have money and options on places to purchase consumer goods. Super happy for you. Very righteous.
Now that we have a dictator I find it hilarious you’re trying to do the steps from before we have a dictator. It’s too late for boycotts and protests and voting. You missed your chance for that 10 years ago. Amazon’s got cheap body armor.
Sorry bub I’ve got plants to feed. Don’t worry my neighbor is going to genocide us no matter where we buy water filters from.
Unfortunately, they are a master at driving local businesses out of money. Buying a certain pet food at my local retailer (a franchisee) would be about $30. On Amazon, it's $25 (and sometimes even $15-20, if you do the subscription discount). At the local store, I'd have to pay more and drag the stuff home on my own feet.
It's the Walmart model. A lot of the frustration is that it's a systemic problem where individuals are incentivized against their best interests and the best interests of their communities.
Because shareholders. The Line, must go up.
Thankfully (/s) Amazon has enough money that it's cheaper to bribe politicians than provide a better product. So systemic solutions are that much more difficult.
They're BUSTED when someone goes to prison.
There was a time when Amazon was not full of scummy rip-off products, when it was not playing games with prices, when it was not a cloud-computing powerhouse, and you know what happened?
That's right, they crushed their adversaries (retail shopping) and earned billions in profits. They won.
But somehow that's not enough winning, there isn't enough winning until all the value has been vacuumed up from the world.
Bezos explicitly undercut the competition for years to drive all of the competition out of business. Amazon took as much time from 1997-2016 to make as much profit as they did in 2017, which is also (not) coincidentally when they hit peak market saturation and were able to start raising their prices.
So what you're talking about was real, but it wasn't like, "back when Amazon was good", they were just preparing for what they are now. Having a huge monopoly on just about everything has always been their win condition, and they're no where near done winning.
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The other commenters here are right about Amazon's initial methods, but I'm also going to highly recommend Cory Doctorow's Enshittification for a detailed explanation of how this happens (including a breakdown on Amazon specifically) and what to do about it.
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