First off, wonderful article as always. Your deep dives really bring a lot of the ideas I've had since school into sharper focus, and I definitely appreciate your timely emails. I hope that in the near future you're able to give some insight on the Facebook-Instagram emails that were recently leaked.
Far as the Facebook ads, though, I'm not 100% certain they're completely an algorithm. I sell independent fiction through Amazon for the kindle device (which is a whole other conversation, trust me), but I run ads for my books through Facebook because their desktop and mobile UI are much easier to navigate, and less expensive in the long run for my category.
One thing I noticed is that during the initial uptick in the pandemic, and the beginnings of the nationwide closings, there was a delay Facebook notified us of in ad approval time (up to 24 hours). To me, this indicate there's some sort of human element involved. Whether they're batch checking the ads, or looking at them individually, there's a set of eyes that were either transitioning to a WFH situation, or unable to come into the office while they sussed out details.
Now, AFTER approval of my ad, everything moves to complete automation, and I can willy-nilly turn it off and on again, determine how much money to put into the program, end times, and indicate how much I'm willing to spend during the bidding process.
But to get any new ad into the system? There's DEFINITELY an approval wait.
Great Article. Amazon 3rd party seller here for 5+ years. Hopefully the immunity that Amazon has will end. The amount of anti monopoly,tax,labor and ip laws they out right break is staggering. I found it comical when bezos today talked about the third party sellers like hes a Saint. Meanwhile any successful product they either get ahold of themselves and keep the buy box,go directly to manufacturer and copy the item. Aside from their scam advertising programs which for some reason the pricing goes up and up with lower roi. As well as all the games they play like setting automatic disposals if they suspend your account allowing foreign counterfeits to lodge unfixable ip complaints and i. general not really giving any interst in American 3rd party sellers. In some of our amazon groups we have even large sellers and Amazon vendors that are putting together complaints and testifying to the ftc.
This is all excellent information. When I got into SEO in late 2009, I quickly discovered Google had the power to just... turn off my business or my client's business and there was literally no recourse.
Ironically, that experience wiping me out ended up with me getting into email based businesses.
Just a couple of quick notes. I needed a small plastic clip for my dishwasher. As with just about any search now-a-days the Buy This! links to the Amazon site. They were asking $20. Seemed grossly overpriced, so I searched for the actual technical name and found it on an appliance repair/supply site -- for a couple dollars. Amazon doesn't automatically translate to lowest price. Now I generally use Amazon to find the actual name of the item I want (when I don't know it) then find the manufacturer and buy directly from the manufacturer, even if it costs more. I refuse to do business with Amazon directly - and I'm hardly an outlier. And I agree with Rob Bird on subscriptions.
This should be required reading by every congressperson and CEO prior to the hearings. It really cuts right through the plausible deniability BS we are all so tired of, and gets right to the heart of the issues.
Wanted to comment, clicked on the title and was asked to check my email. I found over 100 notifications from you! Love your writing and you provide a valuable service, and if the biggest problem I have is having to delete 100+notifications when I want to comment, I'm happy to do it, but you may want to check why that happened. Thanks for your great work!
Sure you've likely written more on the origins of the Buy-n-Large-Goliaths, yet it would likely serve people including your readers / audiences to always remind that many of these Goliaths have been highly funded with subsidies in many forms, some at quite huge amounts in terms of their legacy amounts' value, in today's dollars, and what these often enable / promote / leveraged in market share appropriating or gaining. Little of these public funding programs are healthy anymore if ever, though public funded grant systems as relatively low amounts for true "seed money" were once a great thing for US; yet with flexibility of crowd funding, etc, sources now, we should leave behind un-liked goliaths / public funded goliath building.
Though most often producing/shopping local and regional is way healthier / better for everyone, I agree with anti-monopoly efforts. Though one does Not have to be "on facebook(s)" / participate with facebooks, any advertiser that meets certain threshold of fraudulent sales should have lawsuits brought against them for fraud, when certain percentage of any advertiser's product is found to be fake / fraudulent or unauthorized knock-offs the media firm getting advertising revenue from the company should have to give up certain Meaningful percentage of the advertising revenue gained, this should be part of funding the "Justice system" / lowering court costs. Again, one is not required to shop or even participate in the "facebooks" so these type of concerns shouldn't be bogging down our court systems (Including complex systems of layers and layers of legal code by legislative processes)...... yet with this legacy, the shared responsibility would help {It would be much better in the first place if we started living more local and not publicly funding with low effective taxes / subsidies and whatnot corporate governing favors}.
I find it odd that people want the government to subsidize companies that are so unhealthy, then expect the companies to give mirage of long run lower prices (Can anybody say NIMBY of ecology and human health destructive manufacturing outsourced, yet we know 1 planet can only take so much of "cheap" manufacturing - not everything is, yet lots of these giants sell what is known as NIMBY manufactured products / and labor that is often maltreated).... long run "low prices" and yet be anywhere near vigilant about checking into millions of sourced products, often products from afar with subsidized infrastructures and subsidized raw materials/ ingredients). Seeing some comments posted here, makes one wonder how often people think the advertising screening is audited in detail, nevermind that app codes might not be frequently audited for automated bot stalling of ad approval / placement etc. to give mirages / appearance of healthy oversight.
To genuinely address many of the vast potential grave concerns the United States is now facing, systemic change with in-depth oversight via democracy / evolving of governance not the sort-of-representative party-allegiance system we know, is of course necessary.
First, I've been reading BIG for a while now and Goliath was particularly eye opening for me, so thank you for writing about these important topics.
For the most part I agree with your characterization of the big tech platforms as absentee owners, but I'm not fully convinced that proposed changes to section 230 I've been hearing about are the right way to address this issue. I fear that making tech firms responsible for speech on their platforms risks regulatory capture because small firms with less resources would struggle to effectively police the content posted to their sites. It also seems like another instance of delegating what should be state responsibilities to tech companies.
Cory Doctorow, in his recent writing "How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism," seems to voice similar concerns, and presents some combination of interoperability laws and trustbusting as a better solution that would allow users to leave platforms that act poorly. Here's a snippet from the relevant section.
```
To the extent that we are willing to let Big Tech police itself — rather than making Big Tech small enough that users can leave bad platforms for better ones and small enough that a regulation that simply puts a platform out of business will not destroy billions of users’ access to their communities and data — we build the case that Big Tech should be able to block its competitors and make it easier for Big Tech to demand legal enforcement tools to ban and punish attempts at adversarial interoperability.
Ultimately, we can try to fix Big Tech by making it responsible for bad acts by its users, or we can try to fix the internet by cutting Big Tech down to size. But we can’t do both.
```
I would be interested to know what you think about these concerns around section 230. From my perspective the absentee ownership problem is real, but section 230 does play an important role in the internet, and revoking it entirely would likely further entrench the largest firms.
Thanks again for covering these issues. Your writing has expanded my view of what liberty really is.
Thank you for your explanation of what is happening. I have a situation right now with Paypal, where I bought a product costing 49.95 GBP, plus tax plus 30 GBP shipping, 94.95 GDP total. Seller requested an additional 31 GBP for additional shipping cost because I live in the Canary Islands, making the total 125.95. I paid it. Seller delivered half the product, missing the motor and connections. I contacted the Seller repeatedly for 2 weeks with no response. I then contacted Paypal. The Seller next day through Paypal offered me 94.95 GBP which is the original price, but does not include the additional 31 GDP requested and paid. Nor does it include the 61 GDP it will cost to return the product. It also does not allow enough time for return from the Canary Islands. Nine days are provided, where the Seller could not deliver in 45 days. Nevertheless Paypal seems to think this is a good full price refund, and have blocked me from declining the offer or challenging the offer. If I actually accepted the offer, which I will not, I will be out at least 185.95 GDP,to get a refund of 94.95. i will also have been subjected of much stress abuse and aggravation. I would also have to hope the Seller is honest, which he has already shown he is not. If he says the return is late, or incomplete, then I would receive nothing. I am totally disgusted with Paypal and their lack of support for me. Paypal used to be better than that, but now I know what is going on.
Really fun read. My take on the bizarre behavior we observe with a lot of this stuff is that these systems are so chaotic and complex and glitchy that NOBODY, even their authors, really can predict how they behave.
Imagine a single screenplay with a hundred different authors, each writing scenes in parallel. That's modern software development.
One developer might be writing code that depends on a feature that another developer is just about to disable, because that feature was actually a side effect bug that was never meant to exist. This happens every single day.
The industry motto is "move fast and break things." There's no time for scheming when you're just scrambling to get through your to-do list.
This was an excellent piece, thank you for the work you do. I had no idea about the degree of fraud on these platforms.
Given how good you are at driving awareness, it saddened me to see how little limelight you gave to Amazon Web Services across all your respective pieces. AWS is the bedrock of everything Amazon is able to get away with. It has the highest profit margins and is arguably the railroad of the 21st century, a critical piece of infrastructure with a disproportionate impact on the rest of the market.
Here is an excellent NY Times piece that does a good job explaining some of their practices, though it barely scratches the surface: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/15/technology/amazon-aws-cloud-competition.html . The practices they are engaging in pose a threat to the entire country's tech innovation ecosystem, if not the world. Worse, the majority of the morally bankrupt behavior you have documented in detail is made possible by their technical dominance.
They have been able to get away with it because most legislators and the public lack the understanding of technology necessary to know what is happening or where to look. Google, Facebook, Apple, and Amazon all engage in monopolistic practices that affect the general public. You correctly pointed out in this piece that Amazon also impacts thousands of other businesses; AWS impacts every company with a website.
First off, wonderful article as always. Your deep dives really bring a lot of the ideas I've had since school into sharper focus, and I definitely appreciate your timely emails. I hope that in the near future you're able to give some insight on the Facebook-Instagram emails that were recently leaked.
Far as the Facebook ads, though, I'm not 100% certain they're completely an algorithm. I sell independent fiction through Amazon for the kindle device (which is a whole other conversation, trust me), but I run ads for my books through Facebook because their desktop and mobile UI are much easier to navigate, and less expensive in the long run for my category.
One thing I noticed is that during the initial uptick in the pandemic, and the beginnings of the nationwide closings, there was a delay Facebook notified us of in ad approval time (up to 24 hours). To me, this indicate there's some sort of human element involved. Whether they're batch checking the ads, or looking at them individually, there's a set of eyes that were either transitioning to a WFH situation, or unable to come into the office while they sussed out details.
Now, AFTER approval of my ad, everything moves to complete automation, and I can willy-nilly turn it off and on again, determine how much money to put into the program, end times, and indicate how much I'm willing to spend during the bidding process.
But to get any new ad into the system? There's DEFINITELY an approval wait.
Make of that what you will.
Great Article. Amazon 3rd party seller here for 5+ years. Hopefully the immunity that Amazon has will end. The amount of anti monopoly,tax,labor and ip laws they out right break is staggering. I found it comical when bezos today talked about the third party sellers like hes a Saint. Meanwhile any successful product they either get ahold of themselves and keep the buy box,go directly to manufacturer and copy the item. Aside from their scam advertising programs which for some reason the pricing goes up and up with lower roi. As well as all the games they play like setting automatic disposals if they suspend your account allowing foreign counterfeits to lodge unfixable ip complaints and i. general not really giving any interst in American 3rd party sellers. In some of our amazon groups we have even large sellers and Amazon vendors that are putting together complaints and testifying to the ftc.
This is all excellent information. When I got into SEO in late 2009, I quickly discovered Google had the power to just... turn off my business or my client's business and there was literally no recourse.
Ironically, that experience wiping me out ended up with me getting into email based businesses.
Thank you so much for this! Keep it up! And consider having a paid subscription. This work has value.
Just a couple of quick notes. I needed a small plastic clip for my dishwasher. As with just about any search now-a-days the Buy This! links to the Amazon site. They were asking $20. Seemed grossly overpriced, so I searched for the actual technical name and found it on an appliance repair/supply site -- for a couple dollars. Amazon doesn't automatically translate to lowest price. Now I generally use Amazon to find the actual name of the item I want (when I don't know it) then find the manufacturer and buy directly from the manufacturer, even if it costs more. I refuse to do business with Amazon directly - and I'm hardly an outlier. And I agree with Rob Bird on subscriptions.
This should be required reading by every congressperson and CEO prior to the hearings. It really cuts right through the plausible deniability BS we are all so tired of, and gets right to the heart of the issues.
Wanted to comment, clicked on the title and was asked to check my email. I found over 100 notifications from you! Love your writing and you provide a valuable service, and if the biggest problem I have is having to delete 100+notifications when I want to comment, I'm happy to do it, but you may want to check why that happened. Thanks for your great work!
Sure you've likely written more on the origins of the Buy-n-Large-Goliaths, yet it would likely serve people including your readers / audiences to always remind that many of these Goliaths have been highly funded with subsidies in many forms, some at quite huge amounts in terms of their legacy amounts' value, in today's dollars, and what these often enable / promote / leveraged in market share appropriating or gaining. Little of these public funding programs are healthy anymore if ever, though public funded grant systems as relatively low amounts for true "seed money" were once a great thing for US; yet with flexibility of crowd funding, etc, sources now, we should leave behind un-liked goliaths / public funded goliath building.
Though most often producing/shopping local and regional is way healthier / better for everyone, I agree with anti-monopoly efforts. Though one does Not have to be "on facebook(s)" / participate with facebooks, any advertiser that meets certain threshold of fraudulent sales should have lawsuits brought against them for fraud, when certain percentage of any advertiser's product is found to be fake / fraudulent or unauthorized knock-offs the media firm getting advertising revenue from the company should have to give up certain Meaningful percentage of the advertising revenue gained, this should be part of funding the "Justice system" / lowering court costs. Again, one is not required to shop or even participate in the "facebooks" so these type of concerns shouldn't be bogging down our court systems (Including complex systems of layers and layers of legal code by legislative processes)...... yet with this legacy, the shared responsibility would help {It would be much better in the first place if we started living more local and not publicly funding with low effective taxes / subsidies and whatnot corporate governing favors}.
I find it odd that people want the government to subsidize companies that are so unhealthy, then expect the companies to give mirage of long run lower prices (Can anybody say NIMBY of ecology and human health destructive manufacturing outsourced, yet we know 1 planet can only take so much of "cheap" manufacturing - not everything is, yet lots of these giants sell what is known as NIMBY manufactured products / and labor that is often maltreated).... long run "low prices" and yet be anywhere near vigilant about checking into millions of sourced products, often products from afar with subsidized infrastructures and subsidized raw materials/ ingredients). Seeing some comments posted here, makes one wonder how often people think the advertising screening is audited in detail, nevermind that app codes might not be frequently audited for automated bot stalling of ad approval / placement etc. to give mirages / appearance of healthy oversight.
To genuinely address many of the vast potential grave concerns the United States is now facing, systemic change with in-depth oversight via democracy / evolving of governance not the sort-of-representative party-allegiance system we know, is of course necessary.
Thank you Matt, these articles are much needed.
Matt,
First, I've been reading BIG for a while now and Goliath was particularly eye opening for me, so thank you for writing about these important topics.
For the most part I agree with your characterization of the big tech platforms as absentee owners, but I'm not fully convinced that proposed changes to section 230 I've been hearing about are the right way to address this issue. I fear that making tech firms responsible for speech on their platforms risks regulatory capture because small firms with less resources would struggle to effectively police the content posted to their sites. It also seems like another instance of delegating what should be state responsibilities to tech companies.
Cory Doctorow, in his recent writing "How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism," seems to voice similar concerns, and presents some combination of interoperability laws and trustbusting as a better solution that would allow users to leave platforms that act poorly. Here's a snippet from the relevant section.
```
To the extent that we are willing to let Big Tech police itself — rather than making Big Tech small enough that users can leave bad platforms for better ones and small enough that a regulation that simply puts a platform out of business will not destroy billions of users’ access to their communities and data — we build the case that Big Tech should be able to block its competitors and make it easier for Big Tech to demand legal enforcement tools to ban and punish attempts at adversarial interoperability.
Ultimately, we can try to fix Big Tech by making it responsible for bad acts by its users, or we can try to fix the internet by cutting Big Tech down to size. But we can’t do both.
```
I would be interested to know what you think about these concerns around section 230. From my perspective the absentee ownership problem is real, but section 230 does play an important role in the internet, and revoking it entirely would likely further entrench the largest firms.
Thanks again for covering these issues. Your writing has expanded my view of what liberty really is.
Thank you for your explanation of what is happening. I have a situation right now with Paypal, where I bought a product costing 49.95 GBP, plus tax plus 30 GBP shipping, 94.95 GDP total. Seller requested an additional 31 GBP for additional shipping cost because I live in the Canary Islands, making the total 125.95. I paid it. Seller delivered half the product, missing the motor and connections. I contacted the Seller repeatedly for 2 weeks with no response. I then contacted Paypal. The Seller next day through Paypal offered me 94.95 GBP which is the original price, but does not include the additional 31 GDP requested and paid. Nor does it include the 61 GDP it will cost to return the product. It also does not allow enough time for return from the Canary Islands. Nine days are provided, where the Seller could not deliver in 45 days. Nevertheless Paypal seems to think this is a good full price refund, and have blocked me from declining the offer or challenging the offer. If I actually accepted the offer, which I will not, I will be out at least 185.95 GDP,to get a refund of 94.95. i will also have been subjected of much stress abuse and aggravation. I would also have to hope the Seller is honest, which he has already shown he is not. If he says the return is late, or incomplete, then I would receive nothing. I am totally disgusted with Paypal and their lack of support for me. Paypal used to be better than that, but now I know what is going on.
Thank you Matt. I look forward to your learnings every week, and look forward to a day more people understand and support the change you champion.
Really fun read. My take on the bizarre behavior we observe with a lot of this stuff is that these systems are so chaotic and complex and glitchy that NOBODY, even their authors, really can predict how they behave.
Imagine a single screenplay with a hundred different authors, each writing scenes in parallel. That's modern software development.
One developer might be writing code that depends on a feature that another developer is just about to disable, because that feature was actually a side effect bug that was never meant to exist. This happens every single day.
The industry motto is "move fast and break things." There's no time for scheming when you're just scrambling to get through your to-do list.
Great article and great public-interest newsletter! As a student, I would probably miss out on a paid content version of your newsletter.
Matt,
This was an excellent piece, thank you for the work you do. I had no idea about the degree of fraud on these platforms.
Given how good you are at driving awareness, it saddened me to see how little limelight you gave to Amazon Web Services across all your respective pieces. AWS is the bedrock of everything Amazon is able to get away with. It has the highest profit margins and is arguably the railroad of the 21st century, a critical piece of infrastructure with a disproportionate impact on the rest of the market.
Here is an excellent NY Times piece that does a good job explaining some of their practices, though it barely scratches the surface: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/15/technology/amazon-aws-cloud-competition.html . The practices they are engaging in pose a threat to the entire country's tech innovation ecosystem, if not the world. Worse, the majority of the morally bankrupt behavior you have documented in detail is made possible by their technical dominance.
They have been able to get away with it because most legislators and the public lack the understanding of technology necessary to know what is happening or where to look. Google, Facebook, Apple, and Amazon all engage in monopolistic practices that affect the general public. You correctly pointed out in this piece that Amazon also impacts thousands of other businesses; AWS impacts every company with a website.
Thanks for making great content. Good luck!
Thank you for this timely piece! I've had Veblen on my reading list for a while and never considered how it relates to Big Tech.
Pleasantly surprised to see a rational Section 230 reform from a Republican senator too!
I'll be cheering for my congresswoman against my employer tomorrow
Excellent article. An eye opener for me.