"This year, it became apparent to more shoppers that Prime Day is less a showcase of Amazon deals than a brutish exhibition of the platform's unmatched power. New reporting indicated that the retail platform's promoted "sales" large appear to be a mirage, thanks to pricing tactics that artificially inflate costs just before the shopping surges begin. Many disgruntled consumers who got hip to the scheme during July's Prime Day decided not to return for this month's deals,"
"There's a reason Amazon's tricks lay at the heart of a now-iconic 2022 essay penned by Cory Doctorow, a Canadian American author, digital activist, and friend of Slate. On his Pluralistic blog, Doctorow coined the term enshittification as a succinct explanation as to why more Americans and global citizens were embracing the "techlash": Corporations in Silicon Valley were making their products more extractive, juicing more revenue and rigging the game in their favor, because they'd eliminated all viable competitors."
Amazon employed pricing tactics that artificially inflated costs immediately before Prime Day, turning promoted discounts into an illusion. Many shoppers recognized the pattern, skipped subsequent deals, and some pursued a federal class-action lawsuit. Amazon reached a record settlement requiring refunds for customers tricked into Prime memberships or prevented from canceling subscriptions. The situation illustrates enshittification: market-dominant platforms extract more revenue while degrading transparency, choice, and the user experience. Comparable behaviors include search engines degrading results to trigger more ad clicks and social platforms becoming more toxic after ownership and policy changes.
Read at Slate Magazine
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]