[jjwhitaker]

Unethical behavior is still unethical if other people are doing it too. In the case of Amazon there isn't a physical evaluation of a product if it's "on and end cap" and promoted like a typical brick and mortar store. I've purchased the Amazon Choice item many times as I didn't have time to read reviews on a dozen similar products and assumed the one they recommended was well rated, reliable, the best choice. If it was properly labelled "Featured by Amazon," I'd have assumed something very different and inspected the product carefully.

In a physical store, I have ignored the end cap because the product was visibly a smaller volume than a competitor at a similar price. I can also go to the aisle section and directly compare all the options the store presents vs products filtered down and advertised to me by Amazon's algorithms. There is bias but more transparency like bottom shelf vs eye level. Amazon is a black hole unless you still trust their review system.