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The root cause is the unending quest for scale.

This could be resolved by having a human person with decent judgment evaluate and approve all products before they can be listed. That's how normal retail outfits operate. Everything you find on a Safeway shelf has been authorized by someone at Safeway corporate. That doesn't mean it's good, but it at least means they consciously intend to sell it.

But that scales poorly. This person has to have some sort of skin in the game, so you can't just contract it out or automate it. Amazon leadership is making a conscious decision to allow their store to be flooded with shit in order to reduce their costs of curating it. Given how successful they are, I have a hard time arguing they made the wrong choice, but I certainly don't like it.

It's the same reason it's hard to impossible to reach customer service at many of these places. Google would much rather lose you as a "customer" than spend the money it takes to have a person available who can get your gmail account unfucked.



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