By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C) @doctorow.pluralistic.net · 04/09/2026Say you're that person who raises the bidding from $10 to $50 - you have no way of knowing whether the other bidders would have dropped out at $15 or at $45. If you were the only person who was willing to pay more than $15 for the item, you've just vastly overpaid (by $34.99). 60/ 1983
By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C) @doctorow.pluralistic.net · 04/09/2026But in an SBSPA, you name your true price, but you only pay the price you *would have paid* if you'd gone through the tedious, expensive, time-consuming process of an open call auction. 61/ 1923
By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C) @doctorow.pluralistic.net · 04/09/2026Amazon's search auctions are SBSPAs. A merchant tells Amazon the *maximum* they're willing to pay to be at the top of the search results for a given query, but they *pay* a price equal to the *second-highest* bid, plus one cent. 62/ 1953