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By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C) @doctorow.pluralistic.net · 04/09/2026

Over the past 7 years, Amazon has been secretly charging the winning bidder an amount equal to *their own* sealed bid, *not* the amount that the next-highest bidder was willing to pay (plus a penny): gizmodo.com/ftc-sues-ama... 64/

gizmodo.com

FTC Sues Amazon for Allegedly Duping Advertisers

Do you know how bad things have to be for Trump's FTC to come after you?

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By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C) @doctorow.pluralistic.net · 04/09/2026

According to the suit, Amazon did this *80%* of the time. That is *tens* of *billions* of dollars Amazon extracted from platform sellers, who passed those costs onto you, *and* onto *every other retailer* in the country (thanks to AI-enforced Most Favored Nation policies). 65/

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By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C) @doctorow.pluralistic.net · 04/09/2026

Amazon's defense is that this is all a big misunderstanding. Platform sellers just didn't understand how a SBSPA worked. 66/

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ldrberi.bsky.social @ldrberi.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

These amounts are why I want to see fines that *start* with the amount of revenue generated by the cheating. Anything else falls pretty short.

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