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Amazon could soon be on the hook for safety of third-party products it sells and ships — Government order could classify it as a distributor, potentially exposing it to more legal claims (www.wsj.com)

submitted 9 months ago by L4s@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world

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Amazon could soon be on the hook for safety of third-party products it sells and ships — Government order could classify it as a distributor, potentially exposing it to more legal claims::undefined

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[-] Sanctus@lemmy.world 139 points 9 months ago

I mean, how is it not a distributor? Honest question, all those trucks sure do look like they are distributing products.

[-] Shadow@lemmy.ca 62 points 9 months ago

Typically a distributor deals to stores that deal to end users.

Amazon call themselves a store, but at their scale and volume they're pretty much a distributor.

[-] Gormadt@lemmy.blahaj.zone 39 points 9 months ago

Not even pretty much, they really are a distributor

They have many different businesses all selling on their shelves and then Amazon ships you the product

[-] brbposting@sh.itjust.works 18 points 9 months ago

Nooo the businesses are truly totally independent!

Amazon just handles:

marketing (choosing who gets the “buy box”)
warehousing
fulfillment in their own trucks
some customer service
transaction processing / disbursement

Am I forgetting anything? Besides the disclaimer that sellers don’t have to use Fulfillment By Amazon (FBA) and could ship themselves.

I could be more sympathetic if they just changed the user interface to put seller names front and center. Even keeping FBA. Even if eBay handled warehousing and fulfillment, we’d still think of it as more of a platform than Amazon - right?

Hidden too deep.

(Interesting, eBay announced “Managed Delivery in 2019, but pulled the plug before launch. They do still help you ship internationally.)

[-] watson387@sopuli.xyz 17 points 9 months ago

Amazon is the American Aliexpress.

[-] LodeMike@lemmy.today 1 points 9 months ago

So section 802(?) but for e-commerce not social media.

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this post was submitted on 02 Feb 2024

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