It's not like that even try to hide a lot of the shit they do.

Stuff like:

• locking authors into exclusivity contracts with Kindle Unlimited/Audible (monopoly abuse/anticompetitive*
• Advertising items as "on sale" - especially around Prime Day/Black Friday etc after jacking up the price a few weeks in advance
• Items with "free Prime shipping" but the exact same item without Prime is less about the shipping cost
• Stuff like Kindle ebooks shown with a discount price when no other medium exists, it was never sold at the listed "regular price" to begin with, and/or it's only available from Amazon in the first place

You joke, but...

Well, yeah, it's just a joke. Not a funny one, either.

To be fair, this is a result of the lack of competition or the formation of trusts, hence why we had anti trust laws

Sure, but don't deflect the responsibility to fix the economy onto the individual, this is a problem of monopoly and should be treated as such.

Time and again, across years and product categories, Amazon has reached out to its vendors and instructed them to increase retail prices on competitors’ websites, threatening dire consequences if vendors do not comply.

Yes, buying from alternative websites is the bare minimum and the bar is so low it's underground. But that's beside the point: Amazon is price fixing across the internet.

I've tried, but some companies only sell their products on Amazon, even when going to the products website, they link back to Amazon when you click the Buy Now button.

I buy things on eBay sometimes and it's shipped by Amazon with a gift receipt lol

I buy direct from the manufacturer whenever I can.

The prices outside of Amazon will be higher though, that's the reason for this enforcement, the "Amazon tax". Cory Doctorow has been talking about it for a while. I'm glad to see someone that can do something heard it.

Finding stuff outside of Amazon isn't easy, though. Search engines barely show results for anyone outside Amazon, Walmart, and ebay. Too often I'll find a retailer for a while only for Amazon to buy it later or otherwise destroy them (I miss Woot and Jet and Fictionwise and Bookpool, &c).

The Valve example sounds similar, but I think Amazon is comparably more nefarious:

• Valve chargers developers $100 per title, and a revenue sharing fee that starts at 30%
• in exchange, devs must follow Valve’s content and pricing policies (which requires developers not to undercut Steam’s prices

Amazon has a few different tiers for sellers, but in general, they charge:

• Monthly fees ($39.99 / mo)
• Referral fees (8-15%)
• Fulfillment and refund fees, which includes additional storage fees
• Advertising fees (for keyword bids or sponsored products)

Valve is kind enough to offer free promotion on the home page (if your game is popular, or has a sale), and digital games are much easier to scale, versus manufacturing and holding physical inventory. They also do a lot of nefarious shit (loot boxes..), but I’d argue at least their partners aren’t being squeezed quite as much.

Dont worry guys well give one of the richest men in the world a 100k fine!

Yeah don’t worry. They’ll get a small fine and will appeal and drag it out for years

Went to buy my replacement Bluetooth speaker from the same company my last one was from.

They don't ship to Australia, Amazon was literally the only option.

For now they're just SLAMMED

Bezos explicitly undercut the competition for years to drive all of the competition out of business. Amazon took as much time from 1997-2016 to make as much profit as they did in 2017, which is also (not) coincidentally when they hit peak market saturation and were able to start raising their prices.

So what you're talking about was real, but it wasn't like, "back when Amazon was good", they were just preparing for what they are now. Having a huge monopoly on just about everything has always been their win condition, and they're no where near done winning.

I avoid Amazon as much as possible, though on occasion I've more or less had no other reasonable choice. But that's happened something like 4 times in the last 10 years or so.

The big problem with boycotting Amazon is that while it's easy enough to avoid buying from their online store as much as possible, AWS (Amazon Web Services) is pretty much unavoidable if you're using the modern internet.

Once all the competitors are gone, they will increase the prices to absurd, heartless levels

It’s cringe because it’s affordable and convenient? Whenever I buy something from there I always price compare online and it’s the cheapest hands-down. Some people don’t have the luxury of constantly considering geopolitics and large-scale repercussions when they’re just simply trying to get by.

Feel free to provide goods to my rural community any time! You can’t believe that poor people have budget consideration and seek the cheapest product?

Can't wait for them to be fined one penny for every $20B made.