from Hacker News

Elon Musk calls for breakup of Amazon

by noad on 6/4/20, 6:28 PM with 45 comments

  • by enitihas on 6/4/20, 8:27 PM

    In what sector is Amazon a monopoly. Retail? Walmart is much larger and Amazon's share of the market is too small to be a monopoly. Ecommerce? Even in ecommerce, Amazon's share is <50%. Fun fact, Tesla has a 60% of electric car market in the US (https://electrek.co/2020/02/04/tesla-electric-car-sales-us-m...). Does that mean Tesla is a monopoly, and should be broken up?

  • by sharkmerry on 6/4/20, 7:18 PM

    Is amazon the only way to pubish an ebook?

    Surely he could just post a PDF for paid download and have readers send the PDF to kindle if they really need to read it there.

    Calling a book "unreported truths..." while things are rapidly changing is misleading at best

  • by nix23 on 6/4/20, 7:19 PM

    Well he's absolutely right, but in 20 years when SpaceX owns the only Mars-Colony/City i vote also to breakup SpaceX

  • by Spivak on 6/4/20, 7:20 PM

    I don’t really know what anyone in this situation wanted to happen here? Amazon and Apple and Google have been trying to stem the tide of a massive wave of low-quality books and apps hitting their stores trying to make a quick buck off people’s ignorance and fear.

    Refusing to publish content related to COVID because nobody has the time and resources to go through them all is the best you can do. If they just let people publish the story would be “Amazon doing nothing about COVID misinformation spreading through their store.”

  • by mandeepj on 6/4/20, 9:27 PM

    A couple of days ago he tweeted - "off twitter for a while". I knew he'll be back soon. So, there he is. His "while" is very short :-).

    There's a pattern here. He wants to be in the news actively. So, he picks up one thing or another. If you are not paying for marketing then you have to do it yourself.

  • by m0zg on 6/4/20, 8:19 PM

    He's right though. As far as the first amendment goes, books are the most robust medium we have. You can go to Amazon right now and buy a copy of Mein Kampf, hardcover, paperback, or Kindle. Surely Berenson's book is not worse than Mein Kampf?

    Here's a though experiment, reductio ad absurdum, if you will.

    Say you like Bezos' politics and agree with the stuff he wants to censor. Say tomorrow Bezos is run over by a bus and, through a weirdest twist of fate in history (bear with me on this one) Richard Spencer takes his place, complete with his own, very different editorial preferences.

    Would you still agree that Amazon, as a company, has an unimpeded right to censor speech then? And if not, you need to think very carefully why you're _not_ against giving them this power now.

  • by christefano on 6/4/20, 7:49 PM

  • by kukx on 6/4/20, 11:37 PM

    Elon is right it is insane. We do not want monopolies. And especially monopolies on information, books. I am not convinced that splitting a company by a government is the best solution, however in this case I do not see any other quick way to restore a balance, well maybe Amazon choosing to immediately stop its censorship policy.

  • by 8bithero on 6/4/20, 7:16 PM

    It seems that Blue Origin must be making good progress.