Slashdot: 'Amazon Prime Is an Economy-Distorting Lie'

'Amazon Prime Is an Economy-Distorting Lie'
Published on June 01, 2021 at 01:00AM
Matt Stoller, looking at this month's antitrust suit against Amazon filed by D.C. attorney general Karl Racine: To understand why, we have to start with the idea of free shipping. Free shipping is the God of online retail, so powerful that France actually banned the practice to protect its retail outlets. Free shipping is also the backbone of Prime. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos knew that the number one pain point for online buyers is shipping -- one third of shoppers abandon their carts when they see shipping charges. Bezos helped invent Prime for this reason, saying the point of Prime was to use free shipping "to draw a moat around our best customers." The goal was to get people used to buying from Amazon, knowing they wouldn't have to worry about shipping charges. Once Amazon had control of a large chunk of online retail customers, it could then begin dictating terms of sellers who needed to reach them. This became clear as you read Racine's complaint. One of the most important sentences in the AG's argument is a quote from Bezos in 2015 where he alludes to this point. In discussing the firm's logistics service that is the bedrock of its free shipping promise, Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA), he said, "FBA is so important because it is glue that inextricably links Marketplace and Prime. Thanks to FBA, Marketplace and Prime are no longer two things. Their economics ... are now happily and deeply intertwined." Amazon wants people to see Prime, FBA, and Marketplace as one integrated mega-product, what Bezos likes to call "a flywheel," to disguise the actual monopolization at work. (Indeed, any time you hear the word "flywheel" relating to Amazon, replace it with "monopoly" and the sentence will make sense.)

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Slashdot: AT&T Says Leaked Data of 70 Million People Is Not From Its Systems

AT&T Says Leaked Data of 70 Million People Is Not From Its Systems Published on March 20, 2024 at 02:15AM An anonymous reader quotes a report from BleepingComputer: AT&T says a massive trove of data impacting 71 million people did not originate from its systems after a hacker leaked it on a cybercrime forum and claimed it was stolen in a 2021 breach of the company. While BleepingComputer has not been able to confirm the legitimacy of all the data in the database, we have confirmed some of the entries are accurate, including those whose data is not publicly accessible for scraping. The data is from an alleged 2021 AT&T data breach that a threat actor known as ShinyHunters attempted to sell on the RaidForums data theft forum for a starting price of $200,000 and incremental offers of $30,000. The hacker stated they would sell it immediately for $1 million. AT&T told BleepingComputer then that the data did not originate from them and that its systems were not breached. &q

Slashdot: AT&T, T-Mobile Prep First RedCap 5G IoT Devices

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Slashdot: AT&T Can't Hang Up On Landline Phone Customers, California Agency Rules

AT&T Can't Hang Up On Landline Phone Customers, California Agency Rules Published on June 22, 2024 at 01:50AM An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) yesterday rejected AT&T's request to end its landline phone obligations. The state agency also urged AT&T to upgrade copper facilities to fiber instead of trying to shut down the outdated portions of its network. AT&T asked the state to eliminate its Carrier of Last Resort (COLR) obligation, which requires it to provide landline telephone service to any potential customer in its service territory. A CPUC administrative law judge recommended rejection of the application last month, and the commission voted to dismiss AT&T's application with prejudice on Thursday. "Our vote to dismiss AT&T's application made clear that we will protect customer access to basic telephone service... Our rules were designed to provide that assurance,

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