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293 points giuliomagnifico | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.001s | source
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crazygringo ◴[] No.45108350[source]
> The consumers’ 2021 lawsuit said Amazon violated antitrust law by restricting third-party sellers from offering their products for lower prices elsewhere on rival platforms while they are also for sale on Amazon.

I've noticed that third-party sellers generally get around this by having the same list price on their own site, but basically offering everyone a coupon for 15-30% off. Not just for signing up for e-mails, but spinning a wheel that pops up a discount, items that are on sale 95% of the time, etc.

So while this may very well be anticompetitive of Amazon, at the same time it's generally something savvy sellers and savvy consumers have been able to get around easily for a long time.

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IncreasePosts ◴[] No.45109178[source]
Neither here nor there, but about 15 years ago while I was a fresh grad/hire at Amazon, I realized that the crawler that was supposed to enforce this had not been running for multiple years. I went out and fixed it and got it running again, and I showed about $8M/month revenue increase from this.

What did I get? From my skip level manager: "Great job, but too bad about that bug. Next time if it's perfect we can talk about promo" (the crawler went down for a day from an edge case that was preexisting, I fixed it same day)

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_DeadFred_ ◴[] No.45110136[source]
Brave to tell about that time you fixed the snitching machine. But I appreciate you telling it and I don't think you should get downvotes
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IncreasePosts ◴[] No.45110170[source]
If a machine catches you doing something you weren't supposed to do, it doesn't seem like snitching. Are red light cameras snitches?
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Spivak ◴[] No.45110788[source]
Yes, what do you think snitching is? There's an automated security company called tattletale. That's what they do.

The fact that there's so many social norms about not snitching is a beautiful illustration of how disconnected the rules we live under are disconnected from our own interests.

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1. IncreasePosts ◴[] No.45117690[source]
"snitches get stitches" - yes, I guess it is in my interest to not be attacked by a psycho because I told the police what the psycho did, but I wouldn't really call that norm related to my interests as a potential snticher, more like a norm meant to protect people who would be snitched on.