Re: in order to help protect against abuse, we are lowering the volume limits
Amazon's search has been increasingly useless for years now- leading to scenarios like the one you describe- and at this point I'd argue that this was clearly by design.
The amount of irrelevant nonsense you'll receive in response to a reasonable and focused query- not just keyword-stuffed nonsense from dubious sellers, but nonsense from irrelevant product categories- the opacity and lack of control you have over filtering this out and what you see in general makes clear that Amazon is going to show you what *they* want you to see and buy, whether or not it's what you want.
If Amazon wanted to crack down on the dubious Marketplace sellers and endless duplicate, keyword-stuffed listings, they could have done so long ago.
They won't, because they make good money from the amount of sellers of counterfeit crap on their site with little or no effort on their part, and few consequences to themselves. Quite the opposite, they can- and do- use this to blackmail and strongarm the legitimate rights holders into not boycotting the site themselves, since Amazon are the only people who can- apparently- stop this.
The recent case against them for the use of dark patterns in getting people to sign up for Prime- then making it difficult to cancel- is just another example that proves they're long past deserving the benefit of the doubt on any of the above.
As someone summed up nicely a while back, the "skeeviness" has been slowly but consistenly creeping into the formerly-reputable Amazon for a long time, and they're now absolutely dripping with it.
It says something that I trust eBay more these days- even though it's all independent sellers, it's much clearer where you stand, rather than with Amazon where you might buy from a marketplace seller with a great reputation and get a fake (or whatever) anyway because *their* "Fulfilled by Amazon" stock was mixed in the same bin with every other seller's, however dubious.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
