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Amazon execs destroyed years of evidence before FTC action, agency says

https://www.seattletimes.com/business/amazon/amazon-execs-destroyed-years-of-evidence-before-ftc-action-agency-says/?

Amazon allegedly destroyed communications, turned controversial programs on and off, and knowingly raised prices for consumers, according to unsealed documents.

Amazon execs destroyed years of evidence before FTC action, agency says::Amazon allegedly destroyed communications, turned controversial programs on and off, and knowingly raised prices for consumers, according to unsealed documents.

50 comments

Skies5394

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When the fuck are they going to stop treating these companies and executives with kid gloves?

Why do they do these things, shred evidence, lie on the stand, and break almost every white collar law there is? Because there are little to no consequences. And if there are it’s for people in the “out” group. New money.

Crack down on all of them. Shredding evidence should be an admission of guilt. Full stop.

skizzles

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When Citizens United gets overturned (i.e. never).

jwagner7813

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But the second you steal money from them, youll be only trial for your life pretty darn quick.

Stanard

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How optimistic to think you'd make it to trial for your theft.

satan

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You think the government is running the country? Have you been living under a rock?

They'll fuck you raw, and you'll say thanks daddy!

TheBat

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Split Amazon into retail and web services and then further split them into multiple different companies. Amazon has gotten way too big and stifling competition along the way.

Do the same to Facebook too while we're at it. Fucking hate speech central.

Kecessa

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Amazon, meta, Google, Microsoft, Apple...

TheBat

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Even though I'm not a fan of Apple, I am not sure how it could be split. Unlike other companies mentioned, Apple is firmly in consumer electronics business, except for Apple TV+ which is a recent addition.

Their software products also exist to work only on specific hardware.

Also, only today I figured out that they have their own office suite lol. Don't know why I never thought about it before

LufyCZ

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They are heavily vertically integrated, even if split, they'd still work together as one company, because they simply don't have any other choice.

There are many products all of these companies have that aren't profitable (f.e. YouTube would either die or get enshitified to hell, can't see Prime Music surviving without the rest of the Prime ecosystem etc.).

Splitting most of these up would not help anyone.

TheBat

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There are many products all of these companies have that aren't profitable

Splitting most of these up would not help anyone.

Good.

Companies have been using their profitable ventures to get dominant (or even solo) position in another market segment by undercutting the competition and then degrade their services as there's no other alternative for customers.

This should force them (and customers) to reconsider their offerings and the pricing for it.

LufyCZ

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Everyone is complaining about services raising prices all the time. YouTube introducing anti-adblock tech has caused an uproar.

Do you know why YouTube is dominant? It's because it's subsidized. Running a service like that is more expensive than you could ever imagine and it's free, thanks to subsidization.

I'm not saying Google's a good company, but consider how much value YouTube has brought into the world - it's not only entertainment, but also education.

It wouldn't survive on it's own.

Splitting up companies makes no sense. They could (and in 99% of cases still would) work together as one. Regulating them and holding them accountable does, much more. Why not start there, instead of wasting your time here?

LukeMedia

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That's one of the issues with these business models, it's hard to give a consumer something and then take it away later to turn a profit (enshittification).

LufyCZ

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So what you're saying is that instead of allowing companies to enshitiffy, we just kill all of them instantly?

uis

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It's because it's subsidized.

Do you know why google is ad monopoly? Because they have all youtube info.

LufyCZ

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There's no way that's true. It's a piece of it for sure, but they are neither an ad monopoly or a monopoly dependent on YouTube info.

uis

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Their streaming. Also split software development and hardware development.

TheBat

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But they only develop software for their hardware. Even after splitting, the Apple Software will only have one customer: Apple Hardware.

uis

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But Apple Hardware will have multiple suppliers

Why9

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MAGMA

uis

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Alpha, beta, GAMMA

EnderMB

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They (technically) already are. I work for Amazon, but I don't get paid by "Amazon". I get paid for the subsidiary I work for.

Splitting is fine, but it's easily dealt with by megacorps. If anything, if the idea is floated, it's probably because they're absolutely fine with it.

If you want to break Amazon apart, do the one thing they hate. Enable their employees to unionize, and empower them to fight the decades-long HR machine that ruins corporate employees lives.

SchizoDenji

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The moment you seperate AWS from the rest, the rest will shut down.

rustyricotta

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If Amazon (retail) can't survive on it's own without exploiting workers and all the other crap they do, then we'll be better off without it.

TheBat

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I'm not just asking to separate AWS. I want AWS to further split into different companies.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakup_of_the_Bell_System

Squizzy

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Why would you think that it isn't profitable?

lutillian

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Because they sell the bulk of their products at a loss. They use their webservices platform to bankroll their retail platform so they can undersell even Walmart. Some years it does turn a slight profit but generally it's fairly negative but no matter what it doesn't offset the pure profit that is the web services division. https://ir.aboutamazon.com/quarterly-results/default.aspx

ammonium

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Serious question, why do they then even bother with the retail platform?

lutillian

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If I had to guess, to achieve the ultimate conclusion of the Walmart plan, squash every other retailer in the nation and then raise prices.

SchizoDenji

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Brand awareness, data metrics, upselling their shitty amazon choice products.

jwagner7813

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Gotta go further and deeper then that too. There are other, larger and more diverse companies that are hiding in plain site behind the more popular business like Google, Amazon, Microsoft, etc...

ChihuahuaOfDoom

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Corporate death penalty should be on the table for stuff like this.

wooki

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Scandalist communism!

uis

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Didn't expect US to be communist country.

funkless_eck

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it is the natural recourse of capitalism to create an enemy. that's what competition is.

Appoxo

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This would create a big strain on the job market. Good luck dealing with a flood of >50k employees looking for a job (vs a new employee fresh out of college)

Skies5394

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That’s not how this works at all.

There are plenty of ways to deal with this, and issue a death penalty to the corporation while not punishing the workers:

Forced turnover of executives and board members (with jail time and high % fines), corporate watchdog for x amount of years
Dissolve the mega-corp into smaller corporations, and/or force all subsidiaries into a planned disengagement from parent company
Bail-out in the form of state ownership by government buying majority stake

In any of the above, or even in a complete mega-corp dissolution the demand doesn’t disappear. If you want to have the argument that these “oh so wonderful stewards of business” are the reason people have jobs in the first place, you can’t ignore that demand is the reason those very same executives have jobs too.

If they tear it down, someone will build something else to replace it.

kender242

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What eating the Rich Did for Japan

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jwagner7813

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Something would eventually take their place. The strain would be temporary.

chuckleslord

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Treat the destruction of evidence as proof of guilt and assume the worst case scenario. Ya know, the thing we do with criminals.

EncryptKeeper

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We don’t turn destruction of evidence as proof of guilt with criminals, it’s just a separate crime.

NightAuthor

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Legally we don't, but generally, as people... I think most of us look at destruction of evidence as at least evidence of guilt.

Mango

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Since when is that proof of guilt? I can see it being it's own specific crime, but it proves nothing.

uis

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It only works with people. Capitalism.

chuckleslord

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Yeah, I know that. I didn't say what WILL happen, just what SHOULD

db2

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They'll fine Amazon a pittance, pocket it, declare victory, and there's nothing we can do about it.

agitatedpotato

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Nothing legal we can do.

DeadWorld

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The executives need to be charged and Amazon should be put on a tight regulatory leash, if not broken up completely

Appoxo

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Legislative to CEO: You get a $5 fine. Now stop doing that or I'll increase it to $10! >:(

hogunner

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Get money out of politics and these problems go away (because they will be dealt with properly).