[esses]

I think there's one thing that should be clarified from the article. "Sponsored" does not mean that the product is "sponsored by Amazon" as italicized in the article. It means the seller paid money to be at the top of the search query.

Perhaps it is a healthy dose of old aged jadedness, but I have a habit of trying to avoid Sponsored items.

[NavinF]

uBlock Origin blocks sponsored search results by default because like you said they're just ads.

(Amazon will still return a duplicate result for the same product in the correct place further down the list so you're not missing out on anything by blocking sponsored search results)

[atoav]

So yet another instance where using an adblocker can make you safer than not using one.

[notRobot]

Man I love uBO so fucking much.

[eyelidlessness]

It absolutely implies some amount of endorsement. It’s the same as seeing the endcap of a supermarket aisle. They decide to co-market the product and they decide to promote each other in the process. If anything, it’s advertisers on Amazon who have little choice in the arrangement because there are so few alternatives to market themselves in.

[fmajid]

Fun fact: Amazon is the 3rd largest ad company after Google and Meta/Facebook, $32B a year in revenues that are near pure profit. I suspect the market cap of their advertising business would eclipse that of thei e-commerce side if it were reported separately.

[makeitdouble]

The issue I'm having more and more is legit brands also paying for better placement as it just makes business sense.

It's kinda similar to apps paying to appear on their own search results' pages in the AppStore, to avoid having competitors take the spot.

[Maxburn]

I once followed a sponsored ad for some Samsung headphones. After having problems with that Samsung product support informed me I have no warranty because the product I had was a European model and I’d have to ship them from the US to a European support center to get them fixed.

Amazon took the return/refund almost a year after the sale. Ideal? No, but they took care of it.

Samsung paid for that ad.