A Revised Version of the FTC’s Case Against Amazon Reveals More Alleged Criminal Behaviour ⇥ theatlantic.com

In November, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission filed a revised version (PDF) of its case against Amazon with some notable redactions removed or adjusted. There is much to learn in this newer version which I have inexplicably ignored for four months. For example, paragraph 39 originally read (PDF):

Plaintiffs bring this lawsuit despite Amazon’s extensive efforts to impede the government’s investigation and hide information about its internal operations. Amazon executives systematically and intentionally [long redacted string] of the Signal messaging app. Amazon prejudicially [another long redacted string] despite Plaintiffs’ instructing Amazon not to do so.

In the revised copy, however, we get a little more colour (emphasis mine):

Plaintiffs bring this lawsuit despite Amazon’s extensive efforts to impede the government’s investigation and hide information about its internal operations. Amazon executives systematically and intentionally deleted internal communications using the “disappearing message” feature of the Signal messaging app. Amazon prejudicially destroyed more than two years’ worth of such communications — from June 2019 to at least early 2022 — despite Plaintiffs’ instructing Amazon not to do so.

Executives of technology companies facing FTC scrutiny sure seem to like deleting evidence — allegedly, or whatever.

Leah Nylen and Matt Day, Bloomberg:

Amazon’s founder and former Chief Executive Officer Jeff Bezos personally ordered executives to accept more ads, even ones the company had internally labeled as “defects,” indicating they weren’t relevant to user searches, according to the new version of the complaint.

The FTC alleges that Amazon’s increased use of ads boosts profits while it harms sellers and consumers, making it harder for shoppers to find products they are searching for. “We’d be crazy not to” increase the number of advertisements shown to shoppers,” the FTC quoted Amazon executives as saying.

This sort of thing has been a recurring complaint for years, but it is apparently working for Amazon, no matter how much it sucks for customers. Amazon has become a place I dread shopping. It is just about my last choice — a retailer where I know I will be paying too much, and dodging drop-shipped junk left and right.

Obviously, there are still places where Amazon will often have much lower prices than local retailers — northern Canada springs to mind — and even a small savings can add up for many people. Amazon is also a boon for people who have disabilities. So there is this huge customer base for whom Amazon is still the best option, and they must wade through the gunge.

Stacy Mitchell, the Atlantic:

In Amazon’s case, the FTC lawsuit suggests that the company’s financial disclosures effectively conceal a major source of profits: its third-party marketplace, which connects buyers with outside sellers. Third-party transactions represent about 60 percent of Amazon’s sales volume. The company acts as a middleman, matching vendors with shoppers and providing logistics to get the product from one to the other. The FTC alleges that, within this third-party market, Amazon imposes exorbitant fees on the sellers who rely on its site to reach customers, fees well in excess of what it costs Amazon to provide those services, leading to big profits. How big? That’s redacted.

[…]

That leaves the public, as well as journalists, other businesses, and policy makers, with no way to evaluate the lawsuit’s pivotal claim. (The case is not expected to go to trial until 2026, if not later.) […]

Even though the FTC has settled numerous smaller cases, it is the big ones — Amazon, Facebook, and likely Apple soon — which are notable both for how ambitious they are and how sluggish progress is made. One might argue the FTC should scale its cases and pick its battles more carefully, but that would effectively become a license for a corporation to become so sprawling and complicated it defies investigation. The U.S. is, unfortunately, one of two places where such a massive investigation is possible, and the other one already tried.