[throwaway150]

*smh*

Every time I hear a story like this (and there's one like every month) I wonder how we ended up here. The internet was meant to be this place where anyone could set up a website, run a business, and reach customers directly. Instead it has turned into a collection of walled gardens, where your existence and livelihood depend on the whims of an opaque algorithm.

Luckily in my country Amazon does not have the level of market control it has in the US and some other places. People still walk or drive to local shops and when they order something for delivery they usually do so from their websites.

But reading many of these HN threads gives the impression that in the US and elsewhere Amazon controls a huge share of the market. If it functions as such a powerful exchange for both merchants and buyers, should there not be regulation to prevent injustices like this?

[Imustaskforhelp]

If I remember correctly, they might be fined a lot.

But when the only punishment for crime is fine, then crime becomes legal (and even preferred if doing the crime actually makes more than the fine)

Amazon also does malicious compliance. Yes they are following the law but they are trying to stoop as evil foolishly low as possible while still following the law and sometimes they don't even follow the law but get out of free jail card by paying some fines and oh did I mention, lobbying?

I completely agree with your message. We might need a better alternative to Amazon but one of the reasons why I sort of prefer Amazon sometimes is that you can get a 5% discount on all products if you have a decent credit card and pay bills on time on all products in my country, there are special cards just for amazon and also some cards which pay 5% on all online payments.

On small businesses this is not really possible.

Theoretically if one keeps money in a short term market fund or somewhere safe and uses this or other apps, they can probably safe upto 5% on all expenses, (uses credit cards and then pays the bills on time)

Combine this with the bloody fact that Amazon's tos's requires you to sell the cheapest on amazon, there just ends up being no competition.

[jasonjayr]

We ended up here because certain people realised that there is oppertunity in exploiting the window of time between "I trust that you are selling this in good faith" and "This is a scam and I will drag your name, and any of your associates in mud". The internet enabled people to just 'make up names', and keep exploiting this.

So rather than investing time and effort into investigating, we just built faceless tools to punish anything that looks even remotely suspicious, and ignore any appeals, and if a few (or a lot) of folks just trying to make an honest living get caught up, then oh well.

Even if you try selling direct, your payment processor takes on this role, with varying degrees of trigger-sensitivity.

[Imustaskforhelp]

> Even if you try selling direct, your payment processor takes on this role, with varying degrees of trigger-sensitivity.

I agree but I hate payment processors sometimes as well and they feel very rent seeking in nature (akin to amazon) to me as well, I definitely wonder if stablecoins with good on/offramps or proper VISA support might actually help the end citizen but I am a bit worried because Stablecoin's on crypto and most crypto's really scummy so I also don't want to give things like this way too much attention.

Time will tell perhaps