[Spivak]

This frustration seems like it's just being directed at the closest entity you can shake your fist at rather than the actual cause.

Suppose all those fly-by-night companies set up merchant accounts on Shopify or just bought cheap Wordpress template and hosted it themselves and did the exact same thing. The world of boutique men's watches is absolutely rampant with this. Would you be demanding that Shopify or Tim Berners Lee vet all the products before they're sold. Would you demand that Visa/Mastercard do it? What about UPS/FedEx?

If you want to require businesses to get licenses and submit themselves to regular safety audits then just say that. Don't try to offload the responsibility of law and public policy to random corporations.

[freeone3000]

If you're buying off of a Shopify site, the only endorsement is from the seller. And you know who you're buying from. Amazon is allowing these companies to sell in Amazon's name. I'm not charged by YouCantBelieveItsNotNike, my CC bill says Amazon. I return these products to Amazon. Amazon is the seller.

[dsfyu404ed]

>If you're buying off of a Shopify site, the only endorsement is from the seller.

Isn't that basically the same as on eBay and Alibaba?

Ebay has a curated front page but it never shows stuff sold from a jurisdiction distant enough to not be accountable for shady practices. It seems like amazon is the odd one out here since they hold inventory, ship it and sell a lot of things themselves.

[dfxm12]

FYI, as an official policy, eBay doesn't allow counterfeit goods to be sold: https://www.ebay.com/help/policies/prohibited-restricted-ite...

It's reasonable for shoppers to see this as an endorsement and assume eBay actually enforces this policy.

[lochlan]

Counterfeit items, e.g. video games, are all over eBay. I’ve reported many auctions over the years as infringing and have never seen one taken down.

[jfengel]

If they set up their own shops, then they'd be far less visible, and they wouldn't benefit from the reputations that fairer dealers get.

Those "random corporations" are a few very large players who have won the network effect lottery. Most people will go to the place that everybody knows, especially if it's cheap. There's only room in the public brain space for a small number of these. It's very hard to set up a new one, especially if its tag line is "More expensive but at least it won't kill you".

Such natural monopolies are frequently subject to regulation if they won't do it themselves, simply out of self-protection. They're not just the "closest entity"; they're a bottleneck where regulation is feasible. But such regulation is going to be more cumbersome if it comes from an outside entity, so they should take calls like this as a sign that it will be worse for them one way or the other. Today, they've got some flexibility in their solution.

[meritt]

Amazon ships products from their warehouses, in their packaging, charges credit cards as "Amazon.com", provides customer support, and accepts product returns. This makes it generally indistinguishable to the consumer if they're purchasing from Amazon or a sketchy third party vendor, as simply the "best" deal gets populated into the buy box. Unless a consumer drills down into the full offer list, the specific 3rd party merchant and the corresponding ratings are completely hidden.

That's significantly different from someone running their own ecommerce site where they are very clearly the merchant of record.

[dd36]

They should have to buy liability insurance and if the insurer won’t insure them, they can’t list.

[Spivak]

Offloading the work of law to insurance companies rather than retailers doesn't really sound like we're making any progress.

Sidebar: this is super common btw, had more than one law professor go on a rant about how all the CS people in their courses just want to push everything to the actuaries and create a de-facto court system within insurance.

[dd36]

Insurers already do this... They don’t insure risky companies or they have to charge such a high premium that constantly failing and restarting is not cost effective. I think most complaints here are from people trying to buy legitimate products.

[MichaelApproved]

Nah, fines are just a cost of doing business.

Anyone selling harmful products, like lead lipstick, should be thrown in jail.

[dd36]

I agree. How do you jail a foreigner? You can’t even class action against sellers nowadays to protect the other buyers because of forced arbitration agreements. But if they had to be insured, the insurance available would be non-existent.