I am a regular customer of Amazon. Use frequently and with satisfaction its platform for making purchases of various kinds. Also for this reason the news of the last few days is disturbing, if you pass me the deadline.
A Reuters investigation, which examined thousands of pages of internal company documents, evidently passed by an employee, has shown that at Amazon, in a systematic way, they manipulate the results of research to favor their products and harm competitors; in addition, there is a dedicated team that secretly uses data from rival products (how much they are purchased and from whom) to compete with them. A little over a year ago, on July 29, during the famous testimony of Silicon Valley leaders to the American Congress, the then CEO, Jeff Bezos said there was a strict rule at Amazon about not engaging in unfair competition, but that he could not guarantee that it had never been violated. Now it turns out that it has not been violated: in fact, making unfair competition, and modifying the results of the searches we carry out by not letting us buy the best products, is the rule.
The Reuters investigation refers to India, the second most important market for Amazon: is it the same elsewhere? In Italy? To this it should be added that The Markup survey site showed that in at least 3 out of 4 cases the products we see at the top are sponsored, so they are visible because they paid Amazon, but the consumer is not warned. Think they are the best. A deception, in short. Tolerable? No.
In Washington a group of Democratic and Republican senators has submitted a bill to expressly prohibit these practices, which should actually already be banned. As an Amazon user I am disappointed: the service is perfect, but fake. As with Facebook, deception is becoming the rule to make more profits in Silicon Valley.
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