[yazaddaruvala]

Disclaimer: I used to work for Amazon for many years.

Context: It’s been a few years but I built many of these counterfeit detecting systems from greenfield. Including the early architecture integrations with the ads teams.

AMA (I can’t always say everything, but I’ll answer to my best ability in the morning)

[pbhjpbhj]

What proportion of counterfeits could you detect?

Was there any concern on liability as presumably Amazon can detect lots of counterfeits but choose not to?

Was there any effort to prevent sellers they know are selling junk, or going to sell junk, from using the site?

[yazaddaruvala]

> What proportion of counterfeits could you detect?

This is an impossible question to answer. The numerator was a known number of counterfeits but the denominator is entirely unknown.

> Was there any concern on liability

Yes many brands, including Apple, would threaten to sue. Some even did but as a developer I wasn’t involved in those details to know much.

> Was there any effort to prevent sellers they know are selling junk, or going to sell junk, from using the site?

Absolutely! There were entire organizations of 100s of people devoted to just this task. Including appeal pathways for sellers to get back access to the site.