By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C) @doctorow.pluralistic.net · 04/09/2026A year later, when I did tour stops with Tim Wu (who was promoting his excellent book *The Age of Extraction*), I learned that this number had climbed to more than *$50 billion*. This year, it's on track to top *$80 billion*. 41/ 115824
By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C) @doctorow.pluralistic.net · 04/09/2026Amazon calls this bribery system an "advertising" product, but it's not "advertising" in the sense of the ads that Amazon's platform sellers might have once placed in the local newspaper. 42/ 111710
By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C) @doctorow.pluralistic.net · 04/09/2026It's *payola*, more akin to the practice of packaged goods companies buying end-caps and whole shelves in the grocery store (a practice that is, in its own way, every bit as corrosive, though no grocery store has Amazon's economy-wide chokehold). 43/ 21308
