[creesch]

It really should be illegal. Companies aren't going to do it themselves as it is a huge potential revenue stream.

So much so that it effectively has become the main focus of some companies who we as consumers still perceive as online stores/marketplaces. Specifically sponsored search results apparently can become a bigger income stream than the one from actual sales themselves.

Which is great for these companies, terrible for us consumers.

[insickness]

It's one thing to enforce contracts but another for government to dictate how private platforms monetize their own property. If ads make the service worse, the answer is competition and exit, not government bans. No one is forcing you to use these platforms.

[creesch]

That argument ignores the reality of the current market structure. The "competition and exit" theory only works when valid alternatives actually exist.

Right now, we are dealing with effective monopolies and duopolies. You can't just exit the App Store if you have an iPhone, and Amazon has cornered the market so hard that switching isn't really an option for most people. When competition is dead, the market can't self-correct because consumers have nowhere else to go.

Also, "monetizing their own property" is doing a lot of heavy lifting in your take. These platforms already charge: transaction fees, commissions, listing fees, higher product prices baked in, and in many cases consumers are paying directly (Prime, app purchases, ride fares). Injecting ads is basically double charging. On top of that it shifts the platform from "help me find the best match" to "whoever pays the platform wins".

Honestly, unless you are in a C-suite role, I'm not sure why you would defend a model that actively works against you as a consumer.