[HN Gopher] Jeff Bezos can't promise Amazon employees don't acce...
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Jeff Bezos can't promise Amazon employees don't access independent
       seller data
        
       Author : pabo
       Score  : 25 points
       Date   : 2020-07-29 22:15 UTC (45 minutes ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.theverge.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.theverge.com)
        
       | fennecfoxen wrote:
       | Question. What would a system capable of proving "this didn't
       | happen" look like?
        
         | actuator wrote:
         | Audit trail of data source access?
         | 
         | Though then, you would need to differentiate between legitimate
         | access and using it for your own products.
        
         | rmrfstar wrote:
         | A hard regulatory barrier between the product side and the
         | sales platform side.
         | 
         | This already exists in the financial sector. What you would
         | call an "investment bank" is actually a holding company with a
         | number of subsidiaries.
         | 
         | The investment bank subsidiary does capital raising and M&A
         | advisory, while the broker-dealer does market transactions.
         | These are separated by a "Chinese wall" or a "firewall". There
         | are criminal penalties for circumventing the wall.
        
         | mc32 wrote:
         | "We have a policy against that" along with "I know of no such
         | occurrences and if I did find out they'd get fired."
        
         | throwaway5752 wrote:
         | My thought was that people reacting to the article are
         | disappointed they didn't get an empty promise.
         | 
         |  _Earlier this year, The Wall Street Journal reported that
         | Amazon employees have accessed sales data from independent
         | sellers on its marketplace to help the company develop
         | competing products for its private-label. Amazon has a policy
         | barring the practice, but lawmakers like Rep. Pramila Jayapal
         | (D-WA) focused in on the company's enforcement of that policy.
         | 
         | "Let me ask you, Mr. Bezos, does Amazon ever access and use
         | seller data when making business decisions?" Jayapal asked.
         | 
         | Bezos highlighted the company's policy banning the practice,
         | but said, "I can't guarantee you that that policy has never
         | been violated." He continued, "We continue to look into that
         | very carefully. I'm not yet satisfied that we've gotten to the
         | bottom of it, and we're going to keep looking at it. It's not
         | as easy to do as you would think because some of the sources in
         | the article are anonymous."_
         | 
         | This seems reasonable. They have internal controls, but
         | auditing of them is hard, and as he's under oath he can say
         | they have the controls but ... proving a negative is hard. I
         | understand why people predisposed to not trust Amazon, but in
         | this case this is a reasonable answer being pulled out of
         | context for a soundbite.
        
       | aahhahahaaa wrote:
       | >Before the Journal's report came out, Amazon had told Congress
       | that it doesn't access sales data to help guide the launch of its
       | own products.
       | 
       | This is insanely hard to believe. Amazon just started selling
       | batteries and other random goods under their Basics brand based
       | on ZERO inside sales knowledge? I'd love to see how they enforce
       | that.
        
         | actuator wrote:
         | Playing the devil's advocate here.
         | 
         | You can get this data far more easily from market research
         | reports and sales data of the respective companies also.
        
           | [deleted]
        
         | tuna-piano wrote:
         | Look closely. Amazon claimed they don't access individual
         | seller data, but they do access aggregated product data.
         | 
         | However, in at least one case the aggregated data was only
         | between two sellers: Amazon Warehouse (which only sold a few
         | returned items) and the original seller.
         | 
         | "Amazon draws a distinction between the data of an individual
         | third-party seller and what it calls aggregated data, which it
         | defines as the data of products with two or more sellers."
         | 
         | https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazon-scooped-up-data-from-its...
        
       | tantalor wrote:
       | > "I do not think that's systematically what's going on," Bezos
       | said. "Third-party sellers in aggregate are doing extremely well
       | on Amazon."
       | 
       | Cool so cheating is okay if you do it only a little, great take.
        
         | mc32 wrote:
         | That's having your cake and eating it too.
         | 
         | I hope congress does something to curb this behavior where
         | these platforms glean information from hard working businesses
         | and use that data to inform the platforms' tactics.
        
       ___________________________________________________________________
       (page generated 2020-07-29 23:00 UTC)