Particularly egregious in the United States, where they have such a strong monopoly.

And also why supporting independent shops directly is SO important.

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[–] 14 points 3 months ago

Algorithmic Pricing and Algorithmic Collusion

Even a simple pricing algorithm operating on multiple sites can result in price fixing that would be illegal if it came about by leaders of the respective companies meeting and agreeing to control prices in the same way. Because the algorithms are aware of price changes made on other sites in real time, they form a communication channel that enables this. You'll need some form of new legislation around pricing algorithms to ever put a stop to it.

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