California Attorney General Rob Bonta last night filed a request for a preliminary injunction in California’s existing case against Amazon for price fixing. Attorney General Bonta’s 2022 lawsuit alleged that the company stifled competition and caused increased prices across California through its anticompetitive policies in order to avoid competing on price with other retailers. New evidence paints a clearer and more shocking picture. The motion for a preliminary injunction comes after a robust discovery process where California uncovered evidence of countless interactions in which Amazon, vendors, and Amazon’s competitors agree to increase and fix the prices of products on other retail websites to bolster Amazon’s profits. Time and again, across years and product categories, Amazon has reached out to its vendors and instructed them to increase retail prices on competitors’ websites, threatening dire consequences if vendors do not comply. Vendors, bullied by Amazon’s overwhelming bargaining leverage and fearing punishment, comply — agreeing to raise prices on competitors’ websites (often with the awareness and cooperation of the competing retailer), or to remove products from competing websites altogether. Amazon’s goal is to insulate itself from price competition by preventing lower retail prices in the market at the expense of American consumers who are already struggling with a crisis of affordability.
You don’t have to use Facebook… but if you have a kid… - guess where almost every school seems to post EVERYTHING you would want to know about?
Like upcoming charity events, extra-curricular club sign-ups, campus event pictures (none of which I would want of my kid being posted, but they will do anyway), important announcements about the next school dance, or anything else you might give a shit about if you’re a parent who wants to do more than the bare minimum?
Do you have a choice then NOT to use Facebook? Yeah… but it’s kind of shit to suggest since it then would mean not realistically having access to a bunch of stuff a parent would want to have.
Even the ones that DON’T use Facebook use some other dog-shit app with ads and monthly “premium” features they put behind paywalls.
So the real answer instead of the Ben Shapiro-tier response of “just take responsibility” is "Hey maybe we should have publicly funded applications and privacy laws that help stop schools from putting shit up on Facebook w/o legal consequences… maybe we should have an app without ads and spyware that allows public schools to safely and securely put this kind of stuff up so that parents can participate without having to use Facebook or the hit mobile app - “DefinitlyNotKIDZAdvertisingSpamSpyware2026.”
Do you get what I mean? You don’t HAVE to use Amazon is the same sort of silly-seeming argument where the real solution can be crafted using legislation NOT drafted by barely-lucid octogenarian luddites. We could treat them like a hostile monopoly and break them up or something, and that would actually SYSTEMICALLY fix the issue.
We’re not talking about Facebook. We’re talking about buying things.
Jesus Christ… Can you not understand the relevance of using that in my point? 🤣
I’m using another massive monopolistic company (Amazon = Facebook) who has pretty much cornered a market (shopping online = social media) - thereby making the only options for most Americans wanting to have access to something said company has a monopoly on (caramel sauce, niche healthcare product, etc. = school communication) being “A - don’t use the thing” and “B - stop your bitching and use it?” and how terrible it is that we don’t instead go with “C - do a legislation to make it so we can still do the thing we want or need, but we don’t have to let the shitty monopolistic company continue to have carte blanche to do whatever they want in that space?”
Is that really lost on you?