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And that’s basically it!
Could he not put terms of use on his website prohibiting the use by AI agents, and sue Amazon if they don't comply?
Filing a suit against Amazon… which attorney is going to take that case, and how much money would you need to pay them? 😕
Some lawyers would be very happy to go up against big tech since they have so much money that it's often cheaper for them to just buy the problem away
Exactly. A bunch of lawyers work on contingency.
It's not like every lawyer in the world is quaking in their boots at the mere thought of going up against Amazon.
That's not necessarily how it works. If Amazon is guilty, they'll settle for an easy win
Depends though. If they think they're guilty but that it'll be impractical to prove it if they delay the case in court for one to two business centuries, they'll do it
There are about 1.3 million attorneys in the United States in 2026. Find a cross section between that and “consequences? Fuck it” and that’s your group.
There’s likely plenty of people who will happily make good trouble fighting Amazon.
Also, people know people. I myself have a friend of a friend with incredibly powerful legal weight that wants to take a swing at my employer. They are waiting for them to cross a line and then I just need to agree to let them go nuts.
That situation is NOT rare. And powerful people know this. So they paint this picture of them being indestructible. But it’s a lie.
What happens if Amazon just stops existing one day?
Literally nothing. They are buried into all e-commerce like a fucking tick. They pretty much own the cloud, even if Google and Microsoft tell you otherwise. But everything they’ve done is already done. The blueprint is out there. The rough edges sanded down. There are no questions, which means recreating such a thing is much less risky and expensive now than it used to be.
And Amazon knows this.
Weird clauses in terms of use are frequently just toilet paper when it actually comes down to enforcing them in court. You can "sue" but you might just win $1 because the judge would find that you have not suffered any monetary damages. You got paid for the item, after all, and "building a relationship with your customers" has no quantifiable and measurable value which can be proven in court, so judges default to one dollar.
There is also the aspect of whether an AI agent has the legal capacity to contract on behalf of Amazon or the buyer, and on whose behalf they contract if they do. I'm not aware of any American cases which have held that AI agents are "agents" (an entity with the legal power to act on behalf of another) within the meaning given to that word under the law of agency. The Civil Resolution Tribunal in British Columbia, Canada, ruled in Moffat v. Air Canada that AI chatbots can bind the organisation who uses them and makes them available to customers. This opinion is not binding precedent, but I think courts worldwide should use it as a template for AI agency powers. If the AI has no power to contract, then the sale is void in its entirety.
I believe Amazon would argue three points:
Isn't this just like Doordash though? I'm not sure how these were resolved though.
In May 2021, DoorDash was criticized for unauthorized listings of restaurants who had not given permission to appear on the app.[72] The company was sued by Lona's Lil Eats in St. Louis, with the lawsuit claiming that DoorDash had listed them without permission, then prevented any orders to the restaurant from going through and redirecting customers to other restaurants instead, because Lona's was "too far away," when in reality it had not paid DoorDash a fee for listing.[73] This aspect of DoorDash's business practice is illegal in California.[73]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DoorDash#Litigation_for_illegal_unauthorized_restaurant_listing
"building a relationship with your customers" has no quantifiable and measurable value which can be proven in court
With utm tags in weekly news letters etc. you can pretty easily calculate traffic coming to your site and conversion rates of how many people make purchases after clicking links.
And even without utm tags you can show spikes in purchases and traffic after sending emails.
It would be easy to show data: This many people go to my site This % of those people subscribe to my mailing list. This many % of people buy after receiving the email. Average purchase is xx$.
This many people never went to my site because amazon.
Interesting! I can't imagine Amazon would want to argue #2, though, since it seems like that would completely undercut their ability to use AI agents in this way.
I hadn't really thought about the implications of the ability of an AI agent to contract, though. That seems like really murky (and intriguing) territory; whether they can or cant, either way would have a lot of interesting implications.
Ah this is how GrubHub, Uber eats, and other food delivery operated during the pandemic! They literally pretended like restaurants were on board, called in the order themselves, sent freelancers and then skimmed off the top.
It was so destructive to many restaurants that they were forced to change. Bad delivery drivers would tank their Google/Yelp reviews. Many created a custom window/spot for food delivery because they wouldn't know which were real call-ins vs food delivery.
Food delivery won because of cheating.
And Amazon is doing the same.
Besides all the obvious problems with this, the biggest one I see coming that I don't see many people talking about is how Amazon will inevitably use this to put others out of business if they don't cooperate with Amazon. They've already done this hardball game with sellers voer the last decade that if you don't sell on Amazon for an unsustainable low price + pay Amazon fees you'll find yourself losing business to Amazon's stolen copies of your products under the "Amazon Basics" brands. Well proven they do this, and I can see that if you find yourself scraped by this new AI program and you fight it, you're going to be getting a visit from the Amazon Mafia.
On the one hand, I'd like to support independent stores, and I hate the shoehorning of AI into every part of the online experience. On the other hand, I like the reduced risk exposure of not providing my payment details or email address to yet another vendor. I hate that every online transaction seems to be interpreted as consent to receive more junk newsletters. Yes, I want to buy your product. No, I don't want to be signed up for your newsletter or have my email address sold to a third party. I buy thing, you send thing, end of transaction.
They have no ability to sign up for my mailing list
Do people ever do that on purpose?
Yes, i sign up people i don't like
Oh shit, that's why I'm on so many goddamn mailing lists!
Yeah, and happy new year you filthy animal
I'm subscribed to a skeleton themed shit posting account's merch advertisements. I don't think I've ever bought anything but his shirts are literally just shitposts. It's nice to still get weird twitter humor without having to touch twitter.
Amazon has been drop shipping like this for a while, my neighbor bought 5 gallons of driveway sealer on Amazon pre pandemic and it shipped from a Home Depot. Seller listed as Amazon no indication of coming from a home depot at all until he got a tracking number for a location in Kentucky.
The weird part was it was the same cost as the Home Depot website so if it was just drop shipping with no backend deal it Amazon didn't make any money from it.
I have been trying to break my Amzon Addiction for years. This did it. Walmart is lesser evil now.
workers pissing in bottles wasn't enough for you?
Are we talking about Amazon or Walmart?