Comment by TruePath
1 month ago
I couldn't think of something worse than demanding Amazon decide what is counterfeit or violates regulations and policing that rule. The law on both those points is far too complex for the result to be anything but Amazon blocks what the big brands tell them to and protect them from competition.
Amazon is essentially a logistics company with a search engine. It doesn't really make sense to have them enforce regulations or counterfeiting rules than it would to make UPS and google. It's not like they hide who the seller is on any item (it's listed as sold by).
What your complaining about is a fundamental consequence of anything that lowers the barriers to selling goods. You once needed to buy a storefront to sell retail goods, later you at least needed sufficient name recognition for people to visit your website -- that investment gave anyone whose goods were counterfeit as well as regulators assets to seize.
But just like making it easy for every citizen to publish their thoughts means we see lots of hate and dumb shit online -- anything that lowers the barriers to selling retail goods (in general a good thing) will make it easy to sell counterfeit or defective crap.
In the long run, I suspect tech will make reputable 3rd party evaluations easier to access but let's not blame Amazon for not becoming an arm of the state and judging what is and isn't legal.
It's far easier and efficient to have the seller be responsible for what they sell, rather than every buyer learn relevant regulations and research whether any potential buy follows that.
And regulations are necessary since many sellers are without ethics/morals and simply want to sell.
The cost to the individual can be huge (eg cancer, home burnt down), and the society as well (environment etc).
I get the line of thought that "a simple product search engine like Amazon" shouldn't be held responsible for every single small item sold, but I think they should. The information and power balance is incredibly offset here.
Don't forget that Amazon is one of the largest companies on this planet, to a large extent because they take this shortcut of "money first, responsibility later". So I do blame Amazon (among others). The old discussion of privatization of profit and society takes the risk and cost...