Pluralistic: Amazon achieves enshittification inception (04 Sep 2026)

Cory Doctorow argues that Amazon has reached “enshittification inception” by not only making “payola” (auctioning top search results to the highest bidder) its most profitable business, but also by secretly cheating its own sellers on these payola auctions.
Amazon’s “payola” scheme, combined with “Most Favored Nation” clauses and various junk fees, imposes an “economy-wide tax” on nearly every product, making top search results 25-29% more expensive than the best match.
The “enshittification inception” refers to Amazon’s alleged fraud in its “sealed-bid second-price auctions” (SBSPA) for search placement, where it secretly charged winning bidders their maximum bid 80% of the time, instead of the second-highest bid plus one cent, defrauding sellers of tens of billions.
This systemic corruption means consumers are paying significantly more for products on Amazon, which actively suppresses tools like unit price comparison that would expose the rigged system, all while the FTC and 22 states are suing Amazon over this “secret ad surcharge scheme.”