Amazon's Top Watchdog In Congress Says Its Witness 'May Have Lied'

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: Amazon's witness at a hearing last year "may have lied to Congress" about how the company uses data from its third-party sellers to come up with its private-label products, House Antitrust Subcommittee Chairman David Cicilline said Thursday. The assertion comes after a Wall Street Journal investigation found Amazon employees had used non-aggregated or easily identifiable data from sellers on its platform to inform its proprietary product strategy, according to interviews with more than 20 former employees and documents reviewed by the Journal.

"At best, Amazon's witness appears to have misrepresented key aspects of Amazon's business practices while omitting important details in response to pointed questioning," Cicilline said in a statement on the report. "At worst, the witness Amazon sent to speak on its behalf may have lied to Congress." Cicilline is leading an investigation into Amazon and its tech peers that will culminate in a report about the health of competition in digital markets. In a January interview with CNBC, Cicilline said it was evident the digital marketplace was "not functioning properly" and said he planned to create bipartisan regulatory proposals to address the issues after releasing the report. The report was initially expected by early April but has been delayed due to the pandemic. The chairman of the full Judiciary Committee, Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., said that if true, the Journal's report "raises deep concerns about Amazon's apparent lack of candor before the Committee regarding an issue that is central to our investigation."

"Amazon has had opportunities to correct the record on its business practices. It is deeply concerning that, beginning with the hearing last year, they may have misled Congress rather than be fully forthcoming on this matter, notwithstanding our repeated requests in this regard," Nadler said, adding that the committee would "seek clarification from Amazon in short order."

All the liars

[lessSockMorePuppet]

All the big players lie. We've got Facebook red-handed admitting they were selling fake news, we've got Amazon lying to Congress.

Why super-monopolies like this continue to exist isn't pleasant to contemplate.

Re:All the liars

[Frank Burly]

What do you mean by "Super Monopolies?"

When Standard Oil was a monopoly, you literally could not buy oil from anywhere else.

When AT&T was a monopoly, they were literally the only way to make a long distance call

With Microsoft, they controlled about 90% of the PC market, and the PC was just about the only way people used computers, and there was about a decade of software that people didn't want to stop running. How would new tech or a rational market create a competitor?

With Major League Baseball, there is pretty much no other option if you want to play, or watch, professional baseball in the U.S.

With Amazon and Google you just need to type another URL into your browser to break the monopoly. Every B&M retailer has a website that sells things.Office 360, ZoHo, and probably a dozen others offer business email. And there are other search engines and ad brokers as well (Amazon and Google are competing for advertisers.)

Facebook has a moat in the network effect: it is the most valuable because it has the most users, and new users join because that is where everyone is. But even with social media, there are lots of non-FB places where the youngs congregate, and lots of FOSS social media ghosttowns which could be populated overnight if people really wanted it.

Unlike the days of Standard Oil and Internet Explorer, People are able to vote with their feet and their wallets, and when they do so they want more of the same. I can't think of anything the government should do to fix it.

Re:

[HiThere]

Valid points, but it's still a dangerous concentration of power that fosters corruption...and the sense that "We're big and powerful, we don't have to care.".

Re:

[Frank Burly]

I don't have a solution. But I think breaking up companies is a specific remedy for a specific problem. I would favor consumer protection/privacy laws, a private right of action, and an unwaivable right to class actions for companies that exceed XX% of the total market. I have no idea what those laws would be, but since PII has value, maybe we should treat it like money.

Re:

[inode_buddha]

What amazes me is that anyone in Congress is worried about lying. The only honesty they worry about is that of others. "But it's OK when WE do it!!"

Chili Peppers - I Could Have Lied

[wolfheart111]

There must be something In the way I feel That she don't want me to feel The stare she bares cut me I don't care You see so what if I bleed I want the bitch amazon to sing. :P

Amazon Wants To Own The Supply Chain

[divide overflow]

Anyone who believes that Amazon won't use every tool and bit of data at their disposal to claim as much of the supply chain as it possibly can for itself is naive.

Well

[ArchieBunker]

Then how about the witness *may* go to jail for perjury?

Re:

[Brain-Fu]

You know as well as I do that isn't how it works. There is, and always has been a social hierarchy, and the laws are different based on where you are in it. We have these lofty notions of equality, all of which are relatively recent (historically speaking), and we are keen on expecting that everyone in the world should be buying-in.

Well they are not and they never have. We have legal concepts that "pay lip service" to the concept, laws written as if they applied equally to everyone, etc. This is just a

Re:

[anegg]

Ah... a wealthy/high-standing person might have "been confused" or "misspoke", while the poor/low-class person is a liar or worse. Yes, I have heard of such differences in the description of untruthful language based on the position of the speaker in the social hierarchy.

Re:

[ChatHuant]

There is, and always has been a social hierarchy, and the laws are different based on where you are in it.

Hence the Latin privilegium, meaning "private law" - the origin of the English "privilege".

Re:

[Brain-Fu]

I would also like to say: this social hierarchy is not some accident of "capitalism," nor is it even unique to humans. Many other species, including non-mammals (like, for example, lobsters), organize themselves into strict social hierarchies in which things are great for the ones on top and really suck for the ones on bottom.

THIS MEANS, as much as our moral fiber might bristle at the suggestion, that there is a proven survival advantage to having such social hierarchies, even though it sucks quite a lot f

Re:

[hey!]

Civilization is like a virus that runs on hardware designed for survival in small hunter-gatherer groups.

If you look at social mammals, there is a hierarchy, but it's not like the alphas are kings and the lowest status animals are slaves. Alphas perform significant services for the pack, and studies of primates and canids show that alphas have higher levels of stress hormones than other animals.

Can't be

[nospam007]

Nobody has ever lied in Congress, ever!

Re:

[tokul]

> Nobody has ever lied in Congress, ever! :)

Hello former US president.

Nice to meet you on Slashdot.

Misleading title?

[davecotter]

Shouldn't it be "Congress's Top Watchdog of Amazon..." showing the possession is to congress, rather than the possession is to Amazon?

The way it's written it sounds like the watchdog works for Amazon.

Re:

[Teun]

Indeed, that was my first impression.

Who cares? Congress will do nothing

[zkiwi34]

Why?
Because Bezos hates Trump and provides vast amounts of loot to Democrats. Ergo, those gaining the loot (Democrats), will overlook pretty much anything.

Nothing to Do

[fermion]

The precedent has been set that lying to congress, if for the good of the country, is not the basis for ay conviction.

Now, lying to court, or the IRS, is still up for debate, But as Amazon is a critical cog in our quarantine , congress decided back in February that such things are acceptable.

Of course they lied

[RitchCraft]

ALL major tech companies lie Period. That's why technology has been in the shitter for the past 20 years. It's a reflection of the billionaire CEOs that run these companies.