FTC alleges Amazon illegally made $20B by rigging billions of ad auctions

It’s strange how Amazon employees don’t think an auction represents market prices. I’d say that it perfectly reflects market prices.

> The FTC quoted an Amazon senior scientist as explaining that Amazon raises prices by using “an invented auction participant representing how much Amazon thinks that particular ad slot is worth.” An Amazon senior VP in charge of ads said internally that in Amazon’s auctions, “the second price isn’t set by an actual bidder, but rather by” Amazon itself with a “proxy 2nd price that we calculate,” the lawsuit said.

> The lawsuit quoted an Amazon employee as writing in a 2024 message, “We don’t tell them about the surcharge, we let them assume [it is] GSP-based.”

White collar criminals love putting their crimes in writing, don't they? Not like there's any consequences for it. Seems doubtful that, despite employees literally admitting to it, Amazon will be charged a fine that makes this more than a cost of doing business, that will exceed the profit of the fraud, and of course there will be zero criminal responsibility for the individuals in charge of this racket.

Source: https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2026/08/... (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49526082)

See also, Seth Godin's recent blog post, "The Amazon tax" https://seths.blog/2026/08/the-amazon-tax/