[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)