BrianFagioli writes: Mozilla is accusing Microsoft of stacking the deck against Firefox, arguing that design choices in Windows steer users toward Edge even when they explicitly choose another browser. According to Mozilla, parts of Windows still open links in Edge regardless of the default browser setting, including results from the taskbar search and links launched from apps like Outlook and Teams. Mozilla says this means Firefox often never even gets the opportunity to handle those links, which quietly shifts user activity back into Microsoft's ecosystem.

The company also points to Microsoft's aggressive rollout of Copilot as another example of platform power being used to push Microsoft services. Copilot appeared pinned to the taskbar, arrived automatically on many systems with Microsoft 365, and even received a dedicated keyboard key on some laptops. Mozilla argues that when the maker of the dominant desktop operating system promotes its own browser and AI tools at the system level, it becomes far harder for independent browsers like Firefox to compete.

Yes, Microsoft announced it's fixing common Windows 11 complaints. But what about getting rid of that requirement to have a Microsoft account before installing Windows 11? While Microsoft didn't mention that at all, the senior editor at the blog Windows Central reports there's "a number of people" internally pushing at Microsoft to relax that requirement: Microsoft Vice President and overall developer legend Scott Hanselman has posted on X in response to someone asking him about possibly relaxing the Microsoft account requirements, saying "Ya I hate that. Working on it...." [Hanselman made that remark Friday, to his 328,200 followers.]
The blog notes "It would be very easy for Microsoft to remove this requirement from a technical perspective, it's just whether or not the company can agree to make the change that needs to be decided."

Elsewhere on X someone told Hanselman they wanted to see Windows "cut out the borderline malware tactics we've seen in recent years to push things like Edge, Bing, ads into the start menu, etc." Hanselman's reply? "Yes a calmer and more chill OS with fewer upsells is a goal."

Q: When will we see first changes? for now it's just words...

Hanselman: This month and every month this year.

A new bill proposed in California "goes after big tech companies" writes Semafor. Supported by Y Combinator, Cory Doctorow , and the nonprofit advocacy group Fight for the Future, it's called the "BASED" act — an acronym which stands for "Blocking Anticompetitive Self-preferencing by Entrenched Dominant platforms."

As announced by San Francisco state representative Scott Wiener, the bill "will restore competition to the digital marketplace by prohibiting any digital platform with a market capitalization greater than $1 trillion and serving 100 million or more monthly users in the U.S., from favoring their own products and services on the platforms they operate."

More from Scott Wiener;s announcement: For years, giant digital platforms like Apple, Amazon, Google, and Meta have used their immense power to promote their own products and services while stifling competitors — a practice also known as self-preferencing. The result has been higher prices, diminished service, and fewer options for consumers, and less innovation across the technology ecosystem.

Self-preferencing also locks startups and mid-sized companies out of the online marketplace unless they play by rules set by their competitors. As a new generation of AI-powered startups seeks to enter the marketplace, their success — and public access to the innovations they produce — depends on their ability to compete on an even playing field.

"Anticompetitive behavior is everywhere on the internet," said Senator Wiener, "from rigged search results, to manipulative nudges boosting the 'house' product, to anti-discount policies that raise prices, to the dreaded green bubble that 'breaks' the group chat. When the world's largest digital platforms rig the game to favor their own products and services, we all lose. By prohibiting these anticompetitive practices, the BASED Act will protect competition online, empower consumers and startups, and promote innovations to improve all our lives."
The announcement includes a quote from Teri Olle, VP of the nonprofit Economic Security California Action, saying the act would "safeguard merit-based market competition. This legislation stands for a simple principle: owning the stadium doesn't mean that you get to rig the game." Some conduct prohibited by the proposed bill includes

• Manipulating the order of search results to favor a provider's products or services, irrespective of a merit-based process,

• Using non-public data generated by third-party sellers — including sales volumes, pricing, and customer behavior — to develop competing products that are subsequently boosted above the third-party sellers' product...

And the announcement also notes that "under the terms of the bill, providers could not prevent consumers from obtaining a portable copy of their own data or restrict voluntary data sharing (by consumers) with third parties."

Read on for reactions from DuckDuckGo, Proton, Yelp, Y Combinator, and Cory Doctorow.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Register: A lobbying trade body for smaller cloud providers is asking the European Commission to impose interim measures blocking Broadcom from terminating the VMware Cloud Service Provider program, calling the decision a death sentence for some tech suppliers and an illegal squeeze on customer choice. As The Reg revealed in January, Broadcom shuttered the scheme, a move sources claimed affects hundreds of CSPs across Europe and curtails options for enterprises buying VMware software and services. The Cloud Infrastructure Service Provider in Europe (CISPE) trade group, representing nearly 50 tech suppliers, filed the complaint today with the EC Directorates-General, accusing Broadcom of bully-boy tactics, and calling for authorities to halt what it terms as "ongoing abuse."

Francisco Mingorance, CISPE secretary general, said of the complaint: "Businesses -- both cloud providers and their customers -- are being irreparably damaged by Broadcom's unfair actions, which we believe are illegal. "After imposing outrageous and unjustified price hikes immediately following the acquisition of VMware, Broadcom is now applying the 'coup de grace'. We need urgent intervention to force them to change. The only way to stop bullies is to stand up to them." CISPE claims that, since Broadcom completed its $69 billion takeover of VMware in October 2023, prices have risen tenfold, payment is demanded upfront, products are bundled regardless of customer need, and minimum commitments are based on potential rather than actual consumption.

The VMware Cloud Service Provider (VCSP) program officially closed in January and all transactions must be complete by March 31. After that date, only a select group of suppliers will be able to sell VMware subscriptions -- either standalone or as part of a broader service. Across Europe, we're told this equates to hundreds of businesses losing their authorization. For some, the loss of VCSP status effectively destroys their market. Those whose operations were built around VMware must now hand customers to another authorized supplier or begin the costly migration to an alternative platform. Broadcom said in a statement responding to the complaint: "Broadcom strongly disagrees with the allegations by CISPE, an organization funded by hyperscalers, which misrepresent the realities of the market. We continue to be committed to investing significantly in our European VMware Cloud Service Provider partners... helping them offer alternatives to the hyperscalers and meet the evolving needs of European businesses and organizations."

Valve is facing a new consumer class-action lawsuit two weeks after New York sued the video game company for "letting children and adults illegally gamble" with loot boxes. The new lawsuit is similar, alleging that loot boxes in games like Counter-Strike 2, Dota 2, and Team Fortress 2 are "carefully engineered to extract money from consumers, including children, through deceptive, casino-style psychological tactics."

"We believe Valve deliberately engineered its gambling platform and profited enormously from it," Steve Berman, founder and managing partner at law firm Hagens Berman, said in a press release. "Consumers played these games for entertainment, unaware that Valve had allegedly already stacked the odds against them. We intend to hold Valve accountable and put money back in the pockets of consumers." PC Gamer reports: The system is well known to anyone who's played a Valve multiplayer game: Earn a locked loot box by playing, pay $2.50 for a key, unlock it, get a digital doohickey that's sometimes worth hundreds or even thousands of dollars but far more often is worth just a few pennies. Is that gambling? If these cases go to court, we'll find out.

The full complaint points out that the unlocking process is even designed to look like a slot machine: "Images of possible items scroll across the screen, spinning fast at first, then slowing to a stop on the player's 'prize.' Players buy and open loot boxes for the same reason people play slot machines -- the hope of a valuable payout." Loot boxes, the complaint continues, are not "incidental features" of Valve's games, but rather "a deliberate, carefully engineered revenue model." So too is the Steam Community Market, and Steam itself, which the suit claims is "deliberately designed" to enable the sale of digital items on third-party marketplaces through "trade URLs," despite Valve's terms of service prohibiting off-platform sales.

And while the debate over whether loot boxes constitute a form of gambling continues to rage, the suit claims Valve's system does indeed qualify under Washington law, which defines gambling as "staking or risking something of value upon the outcome of a contest of chance or a future contingent event not under the person's control or influence." "Valve's loot boxes satisfy every element of this definition," the lawsuit alleges. "Users stake money (the price of a key) on the outcome of a contest of chance (the random selection of a virtual item), and the items received are 'things of value' under RCW 9.46.0285 because they can be sold for real money through Valve's own marketplace and through third-party marketplaces that Valve has fostered and facilitated."

An anonymous reader shares a report: Cyberattacks reached victims faster and came from a wider range of threat groups than ever last year, CrowdStrike said in its annual global threat report released Tuesday, adding that cybercriminals and nation-states increasingly relied on predictable tactics to evade detection by exploiting trusted systems.

The average breakout time -- how long it took financially-motivated attackers to move from initial intrusion to other network systems -- dropped to 29 minutes in 2025, a 65% increase in speed from the year prior. "The fastest breakout time a year ago was 51 seconds. This year it's 27 seconds," Adam Meyers, head of counter adversary operations at CrowdStrike, told CyberScoop. Defenders are falling behind because attackers are refining their techniques, using social engineering to access high-privilege systems faster and move through victims' cloud infrastructure undetected.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Guardian: Tech companies are conflating traditional artificial intelligence with generative AI when claiming the energy-hungry technology could help avert climate breakdown, according to a report. Most claims that AI can help avert climate breakdown refer to machine learning and not the energy-hungry chatbots and image generation tools driving the sector's explosive growth of gas-guzzling datacenters, the analysis of 154 statements found.

The research, commissioned by nonprofits including Beyond Fossil Fuels and Climate Action Against Disinformation, did not find a single example where popular tools such as Google's Gemini or Microsoft's Copilot were leading to a "material, verifiable, and substantial" reduction in planet-heating emissions. Ketan Joshi, an energy analyst and author of the report, said the industry's tactics were "diversionary" and relied on tried and tested methods that amount to "greenwashing."

He likened it to fossil fuel companies advertising their modest investments in solar panels and overstating the potential of carbon capture. "These technologies only avoid a minuscule fraction of emissions relative to the massive emissions of their core business," said Joshi. "Big tech took that approach and upgraded and expanded it." [...] Joshi said the discourse around AI's climate benefits needed to be "brought back to reality." "The false coupling of a big problem and a small solution serves as a distraction from the very preventable harms being done through unrestricted datacenter expansion," he said.

"There's one big bright spot in the fight against climate change that most people never think about," reports the Washington Post. "It could prevent nearly half a degree of global warming this century, a huge margin for a planet that has warmed almost 1.5 degrees Celsius and is struggling to keep that number below 2 degrees..." [M]ore than 170 countries — including the U.S. — have agreed to act on this one solution. That solution: phasing out hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), a group of gases used in refrigerators, air conditioners and other cooling systems that heat the atmosphere more than almost any other pollutant on Earth. Pound for pound, HFCs are hundreds or even thousands of times better at trapping heat than carbon dioxide.

Companies are replacing HFCs with new gases that trap much less heat. If you buy a new fridge or AC unit in the United States today, it'll probably use one of these new refrigerants — and you're unlikely to notice the difference, according to Francis Dietz, a spokesperson for the Air-Conditioning, Heating and Refrigeration Institute, a trade group representing U.S. HVAC manufacturers... But that invisible transition is one of the most important short-term tactics to keep Earth's climate from going catastrophically off-kilter this century. HFCs are powerful super-pollutants, but the most common ones break down in the atmosphere within about 15 years. That means stopping emissions from HFCs — and other short-lived super-pollutants such as methane — is like pulling an emergency brake on climate change.

"It's really the fastest, easiest and, some would say, the only way to slow the rate of warming between now and 2050," said Kiff Gallagher, executive director of the Global Heat Reduction Initiative, a business that advises companies and cities on cutting greenhouse gas emissions. The only other solution that comes close to the speed and scale of slashing HFCs would be dimming the sun, a much more controversial and potentially dangerous option... [P]hasing out HFCs now "would buy us a little bit of time to develop other solutions that maybe take longer to implement," said Sarah Gleeson, a climate solutions research manager at Project Drawdown, a nonprofit that models how much different strategies would slow climate change. It could also keep the planet from crossing dangerous climate tipping points this century.

A data breach at SoundCloud exposed information tied to 29.8 million user accounts, according to Have I Been Pwned. While SoundCloud says no passwords or financial data were accessed, attackers mapped email addresses to public profile data and later attempted extortion. BleepingComputer reports: The company confirmed the breach on December 15, following widespread reports from users who were unable to access SoundCloud and saw 403 "Forbidden" errors when connecting via VPN. SoundCloud told BleepingComputer at the time that it had activated its incident response procedures after detecting unauthorized activity involving an ancillary service dashboard. "We understand that a purported threat actor group accessed certain limited data that we hold," SoundCloud said. "We have completed an investigation into the data that was impacted, and no sensitive data (such as financial or password data) has been accessed. The data involved consisted only of email addresses and information already visible on public SoundCloud profiles."

While SoundCloud didn't provide further details regarding the incident, BleepingComputer learned that the breach affected 20% of all SoundCloud users, roughly 28 million accounts based on publicly reported user figures (SoundCloud later published a security notice confirming the information provided by BleepingComputer's sources). After the breach, BleepingComputer also learned that the ShinyHunters extortion gang was responsible for the attack, with sources saying that the threat group was also attempting to extort SoundCloud. This was confirmed by SoundCloud in a January 15 update, which said the threat actors had "made demands and deployed email flooding tactics to harass users, employees, and partners."

Apple has accused the European Commission of using "political delay tactics" to postpone new app marketplace policies and create grounds for investigating and fining the iPhone maker, a preemptive response to reports that the commission plans to blame Apple for the announced closure of third-party app store Setapp.

MacPaw, the developer behind Setapp, said it would shut down the marketplace next month because of "still-evolving and complex business terms that don't fit Setapp's current business model." The EC is preparing to say that Apple has not rolled out changes to address key issues concerning its business terms and their complexity, according to remarks seen by Bloomberg.

Apple said it disputes this finding. The company said it submitted a formal compliance plan in October proposing to replace its $0.59 per-install fee structure with a 5% revenue share, but the commission has not responded. "The European Commission has refused to let us implement the very changes that they requested," Apple said. The company also claimed there is no demand in the EU for alternative app stores and disputed that Setapp is closing because of its actions.

China has unveiled new rules to rein in aggressive pricing tactics by online platforms, prohibiting e-commerce operators from forcing merchants to offer discounts or setting different prices based on user demographics without consent. The 29-article regulation -- jointly issued over the weekend by the National Development and Reform Commission, State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR), and Cyberspace Administration of China -- lays out detailed compliance requirements that target several long-standing pain points as competition among internet giants has often eroded the rights of both consumers and merchants.

To restore merchant autonomy on pricing, the rules ban platform operators from leveraging their dominant scale to impose "lowest price" agreements. Platforms are prohibited from using traffic throttling, search ranking demotions, or algorithm penalties to pressure merchants into predatory price-cutting or exclusive pricing arrangements.

Instacart has ended its AI-powered pricing tests after a study from Groundwork Collaborative, Consumer Reports and More Perfect Union revealed that the grocery delivery platform was showing different customers different prices for identical items at the same store. The company said Monday that retailers can no longer use Eversight, the AI pricing technology Instacart acquired in 2022, to run such tests.

"Now, if two families are shopping for the same items, at the same time, from the same store location on Instacart, they see the same prices -- period," the company wrote in a blog post. The study drew attention from lawmakers; Sen. Chuck Schumer wrote to the FTC that "consumers deserve to know when they are being placed into pricing tests," and Reuters reported that the agency had opened an investigation. Instacart says the tests "were never based on supply or demand, personal data, demographics, or individual shopping behavior."

The company also reached a $60 million settlement last week over separate allegations including falsely advertising free shipping.

They call it "the business-impersonator scam". And it's fooled 396,227 Americans in just the first nine months of 2025 — 18% more than the 335,785 in the same nine months of 2024. That's according to a Bloomberg reporter (who also fell for it in late November), citing the official statistics from America's Federal Trade Commission: Some pose as airline staff on social media and respond to consumer complaints. Others use texts or e-mails claiming to be an airline reporting a delayed or cancelled flight to phish for travellers' data. But the objective is always the same: to hit a stressed out, overwhelmed traveller at their most vulnerable. In my case, the scammer exploited weaknesses in Google's automated ad-screening system, so that fraudulent sponsored results rose to the top [They'd typed "United airlines agent on demand" into Google, and the top search result on their phone said United.com, had a 1-888 number next to it and said it had had 1M+ visits in past month. "It looked legit. I tapped the number..." ]

After I reported the fake "United Airlines" ad to Google, via an online form for consumers, it was taken down. But a few days later, I entered the same search terms and the identical ad featuring the same 1-888 number was back at the top of my results. I reported it again, and it was quickly removed again... A [Google] spokesperson there said the company is constantly evolving its tactics "to stay ahead of bad actors." Of the 5.1 billion ads blocked by the company last year, she said, 415 million were taken down for "scam-related violations." Google updated its ads misrepresentation policy in 2024 to include "impersonating or falsely implying affiliation with a public figure, brand or organization to entice users to provide money or information." Still, many impostor ads slip through the cracks.
"Reported losses from business-impostor scams in the United States rose 30 per cent, to US$835 million, in the first three quarters of 2025," the article points out (citing more figures from the America's Federal Trade Commision). An updated version of the article also includes a response from United Airlines. "We encourage customers to only use customer-service contact information that is listed on our website and app."

And what happened to the scammed reporter? "I called American Express and contested the charge before cancelling my credit card. I then contacted Experian, one of the three major credit bureaus, to put a fraud alert on my file. Next, I filed a complaint with the FTC and reported the fake ad to Google.

"American Express wound up resolving the dispute in my favour, but the memories of this chaotic Thanksgiving will stay with us forever. "

alternative_right writes: Grocery delivery service Instacart will refund $60 million to settle FTC claims that it misled customers with false advertising and unlawfully enrolled them in paid subscriptions. Instacart partners with over 1,800 retailers to provide online shopping, delivery, and pickup services from nearly 100,000 stores across North America. Its platform serves millions of customers and is also used by roughly 600,000 independent shoppers across thousands of cities in Canada and the United States.

In a complaint filed on Thursday, the FTC claimed Instacart engaged in multiple deceptive tactics that raised costs for customers, including failing to provide advertised refunds and falsely advertising "free delivery" while still charging mandatory service fees that added up to 15% to order costs. The FTC said Instacart also advertised a "100% satisfaction guarantee," but typically offered only small credits toward future orders rather than full refunds to customers experiencing problems with deliveries or service. The company allegedly hid refund options from "self-service" menus, leading customers to believe credits were their only option.

U.S. senators are probing whether Big Tech data centers are driving up local electricity bills by socializing grid upgrade costs onto residents. Some of the tactics they're using include NDAs, shell companies, and lobbying. Ars Technica reports: In letters (PDF) to seven AI firms, Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) cited a study estimating that "electricity prices have increased by as much as 267 percent in the past five years" in "areas located near significant data center activity." Prices increase, senators noted, when utility companies build out extra infrastructure to meet data centers' energy demands -- which can amount to one customer suddenly consuming as much power as an entire city. They also increase when demand for local power outweighs supply. In some cases, residents are blindsided by higher bills, not even realizing a data center project was approved, because tech companies seem intent on dodging backlash and frequently do not allow terms of deals to be publicly disclosed.

AI firms "ask public officials to sign non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) preventing them from sharing information with their constituents, operate through what appear to be shell companies to mask the real owner of the data center, and require that landowners sign NDAs as part of the land sale while telling them only that a 'Fortune 100 company' is planning an 'industrial development' seemingly in an attempt to hide the very existence of the data center," senators wrote. States like Virginia with the highest concentration of data centers could see average electricity prices increase by another 25 percent by 2030, senators noted. But price increases aren't limited to the states allegedly striking shady deals with tech companies and greenlighting data center projects, they said. "Interconnected and interstate power grids can lead to a data center built in one state raising costs for residents of a neighboring state," senators reported.

Under fire for supposedly only pretending to care about keeping neighbors' costs low were Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, Equinix, Digital Realty, and CoreWeave. Senators accused firms of paying "lip service," claiming that they would do everything in their power to avoid increasing residential electricity costs, while actively lobbying to pass billions in costs on to their neighbors. [...] Particularly problematic, senators emphasized, were reports that tech firms were getting discounts on energy costs as utility companies competed for their business, while prices went up for their neighbors.

Longtime Slashdot reader sinij shares a report from the BBC: Do you find yourself getting increasingly irate while scrolling through your social media feed? If so, you may be falling victim to rage bait, which Oxford University Press has named its word or phrase of the year. It is a term that describes manipulative tactics used to drive engagement online, with usage of it increasing threefold in the last 12 months, according to the dictionary publisher.

Rage bait beat two other shortlisted terms -- aura farming and biohack -- to win the title. The list of words is intended to reflect some of the moods and conversations that have shaped 2025. "Fundamental problem with social media as a system is that it exploits people's emotional thinking," comments sinij. "Cute cat videos on one end and rage bait on another end of the same spectrum. I suspect future societies will be teaching disassociation techniques in junior school."

Subaru owners are reporting full-screen SiriusXM pop-up ads appearing on their infotainment systems while driving -- sometimes even overriding Apple CarPlay. Subaru says the ads appear only twice a year, but frustrated drivers argue the practice is distracting, unsafe, and a sign of an industry trend that's likely to get worse. The Drive reports: At least one 2024 Crosstrek owner reported that the pop-up took over their screen even though they were using Apple CarPlay. To force-close an application that's in use, solely for the sake of in-car advertising, is especially egregious. [The following Subaru owner complaints to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reiterate that point...]

The Drive reached out to Subaru for comment on the marketing tactics. A company spokesperson responded, "We will discuss those messages in an upcoming meeting and will always consider customer feedback. This is the first we've heard of any issue. Those messages occur only twice a year, around Memorial Day and Thanksgiving, to alert customers that all channels are available to them for about two weeks." Reddit posts dating back as far as 2023 show owners complaining about in-car notifications.

It's "a complex mix of internet access and physical execution," says the chief informance security officer at Cequence Security.

Long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 summarizes this article from The Wall Street Journal: By breaking into carriers' online systems, cyber-powered criminals are making off with truckloads of electronics, beverages and other goods

In the most recent tactics identified by cybersecurity firm Proofpoint, hackers posed as freight middlemen, posting fake loads to the boards. They slipped links with malicious software into email exchanges with bidders such as trucking companies. By clicking on the links, trucking companies unwittingly downloaded remote-access software that lets the hackers take control of their online systems.

Once inside, the hackers used the truckers' accounts to bid on real shipments, such as electronics and energy drinks, said Selena Larson, a threat researcher at Proofpoint. "They know the business," she said. "It's a very convincing full-scale identity takeover."
"The goods are likely sold to retailers or to consumers in online marketplaces," the article explains. (Though according to Proofpoint "In some cases, products are shipped overseas and sold in local markets, where proceeds are used to fund paramilitaries and global terrorists.")

"The average value of cargo thefts is increasing as organized crime groups become more discerning, preferring high-value targets such as enterprise servers and cryptocurrency mining hardware, according to risk-assessment firm Verisk CargoNet."

Disney's channels, including ESPN, ABC, FX, and NatGeo, have gone dark on YouTube TV after Google and Disney failed to renew their carriage agreement before the October 30 deadline, with each side blaming the other for using unfair negotiating tactics and price hikes. YouTube TV says it will issue a $20 credit to subscribers if the blackout continues while negotiations proceed. Engadget reports: "Last week Disney used the threat of a blackout on YouTube TV as a negotiating tactic to force deal terms that would raise prices on our customers," YouTube said in an announcement on its blog. "They're now following through on that threat, suspending their content on YouTube TV." YouTube added that Disney's decision harms its subscribers while benefiting its own live TV products, such as Hulu+Live TV and Fubo.

In a statement sent to the Los Angeles Times, however, Disney accused Google's YouTube TV of choosing to deny "subscribers the content they value most by refusing to pay fair rates for [its] channels, including ESPN and ABC." Disney also accused Google of using its market dominance to "eliminate competition and undercut the industry-standard terms" that other pay-TV distributors have agreed to pay for its content.

"It's not just you. The internet is getting worse, fast," writes Cory Doctorow. Sunday he shared an excerpt from his upcoming book Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It.

He succinctly explains "this moment we're living through, this Great Enshittening" using Amazon as an example. Platforms amass users, but then abuse them to make things better for their business customers. And then they abuse those business customers too, abusing everybody while claiming all the value for themselves. "And become a giant pile of shit."

So first Amazon subsidized prices and shipping, then locked in customers with Prime shipping subscriptions (while adding the chains of DRM to its ebooks and audiobooks)... These tactics — Prime, DRM and predatory pricing — make it very hard not to shop at Amazon. With users locked in, to proceed with the enshittification playbook, Amazon needed to get its business customers locked in, too... [M]erchants' dependence on those customers allows Amazon to extract higher discounts from those merchants, and that brings in more users, which makes the platform even more indispensable for merchants, allowing the company to require even deeper discounts...

[Amazon] uses its overview of merchants' sales, as well as its ability to observe the return addresses on direct shipments from merchants' contracting factories, to cream off its merchants' bestselling items and clone them, relegating the original seller to page umpty-million of its search results. Amazon also crushes its merchants under a mountain of junk fees pitched as optional but effectively mandatory. Take Prime: a merchant has to give up a huge share of each sale to be included in Prime, and merchants that don't use Prime are pushed so far down in the search results, they might as well cease to exist. Same with Fulfilment by Amazon, a "service" in which a merchant sends its items to an Amazon warehouse to be packed and delivered with Amazon's own inventory. This is far more expensive than comparable (or superior) shipping services from rival logistics companies, and a merchant that ships through one of those rivals is, again, relegated even farther down the search rankings.

All told, Amazon makes so much money charging merchants to deliver the wares they sell through the platform that its own shipping is fully subsidised. In other words, Amazon gouges its merchants so much that it pays nothing to ship its own goods, which compete directly with those merchants' goods.... Add all the junk fees together and an Amazon seller is being screwed out of 45-51 cents on every dollar it earns there. Even if it wanted to absorb the "Amazon tax" on your behalf, it couldn't. Merchants just don't make 51% margins. So merchants must jack up prices, which they do. A lot... [W]hen merchants raise their prices on Amazon, they are required to raise their prices everywhere else, even on their own direct-sales stores. This arrangement is called most-favoured-nation status, and it's key to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission's antitrust lawsuit against Amazon...

If Amazon is taxing merchants 45-51 cents on every dollar they make, and if merchants are hiking their prices everywhere their goods are sold, then it follows you're paying the Amazon tax no matter where you shop — even the corner mom-and-pop hardware store. It gets worse. On average, the first result in an Amazon search is 29% more expensive than the best match for your search. Click any of the top four links on the top of your screen and you'll pay an average of 25% more than you would for your best match — which, on average, is located 17 places down in an Amazon search result.
Doctorow knows what we need to do:

• Ban predatory pricing — "selling goods below cost to keep competitors out of the market (and then jacking them up again)."

• Impose structural separation, "so it can either be a platform, or compete with the sellers that rely on it as a platform."

• Curb junk fees, "which suck 45-51 cents on every dollar merchants take in."

• End its most favoured nation deal, which forces merchants "to raise their prices everywhere else, too.

• Unionise drivers and warehouse workers.

• Treat rigged search results as the fraud they are.

These are policy solutions. (Because "You can't shop your way out of a monopoly," Doctorow warns.) And otherwise, as Doctorow says earlier, "Once a company is too big to fail, it becomes too big to jail, and then too big to care."

In the mean time, Doctorow also makes up a new word — "the enshitternet" — calling it "a source of pain, precarity and immiseration for the people we love.

"The indignities of harassment, scams, disinformation, surveillance, wage theft, extraction and rent-seeking have always been with us, but they were a minor sideshow on the old, good internet and they are the everything and all of the enshitternet."

Thanks to long-time Slashdot readers mspohr and fjo3 for sharing the article.