How Amazon’s AI Algorithms Raise the Prices You Pay Amazon can steer market-wide prices without ever colluding—exposing a gap in antitrust law that the FTC is now fighting to close.

Thanks! Here's the full piece: washingtonmonthly.com/2026/04/20/h...

Naming Names: Attorney General Bonta Secures Public Access to Evidence in Amazon Price Fixing Case “I’m making efforts to push the market back to a retail that will give you [Amazon] solid headroom…” “I am very determined to help you hunt the disrupters in the market.” “If the problematic retail…

8. Amazing work by the team at @agrobbonta.oag.ca.gov 's office. You can find the full memo of evidence here:

7. The email evidence is extensive, but it's almost certainly the tip of a much bigger price fixing operation. That's because Amazon trained employees to do this over the phone or to use "legally approved talking points."

6. It just keeps going and going... here's a fertilizer maker acting as go-between so Home Depot and Amazon could match each other in raising prices.

5. When Amazon got mad that Skullcandy earbuds were cheaper on Walmart, the brand made them unavailable on Walmart, ensuring Amazon could charge the higher price.

4. Hanes...

3. An Amazon employee responds with, We're "good now" after a lamp company gets Walmart to raise its prices.

2. Here's Levi's serving as go-between so Walmart and Amazon could cooperate to raise prices on khakis. "In response, Amazon acknowledged that Walmart raised its price and confirmed it had matched that higher price: 'the updated pricing of $29.99 is now showing up on [Amazon].'"

1. Boy, Amazon is in a heap of trouble. Evidence made public yesterday by California AG @agrobbonta.oag.ca.gov shows blatant price fixing. And there are so many examples. Here's Amazon scheming with a pet food supplier to get Chewy to raise its prices.

How Amazon’s AI Algorithms Raise the Prices You Pay Amazon can steer market-wide prices without ever colluding—exposing a gap in antitrust law that the FTC is now fighting to close.

"These allegations point to a novel form of monopoly power: the ability of a dominant platform to use algorithms to lift prices across an entire market. Amazon is doing so...by provoking and shaping the responses of rival algorithms, creating feedback loops that ratchet prices higher."

Every consumer should read this thread. The antitrust investigation into Amazon, likely kneecapped by Team Trump, is more important than we think.

Algorithmic price coercion is destroying small (and honest) businesses and robbing us of billions.

#amazon #jeffbezos #business #prime #bezos #ftc #sec

Stacy Mitchell has the best command of this subject. She explains how Amazon's ability to match any discount absolutely shreds competitors trying to give you a lower price. To hide these powers from nosy reporters, Amazon shuts off the magic algorithm during holiday shopping season and Prime Day.

wild thread. There are no deals!!

How Amazon’s AI Algorithms Raise the Prices You Pay Amazon can steer market-wide prices without ever colluding—exposing a gap in antitrust law that the FTC is now fighting to close.

17. If the case succeeds, antitrust law may finally catch up to how digital markets work. If not, online price swings will continue to masquerade as competition, even as prices stop performing the work we depend on them to do. Read the full piece:

16. This is why so much may turn on the antitrust case against Amazon, scheduled to go to trial next March. 17 states have joined the case, and could carry it forward on their own if Trump bails. An early ruling from the judge is notably encouraging:

15. The risk is more than higher prices. Left unchecked, algorithmic pricing will undermine market functionality. Price changes are meant to carry information—about demand, scarcity, opportunity. But today they're often just noisy artifacts of algorithms reacting to one another.

14. Lawmakers have failed to grapple with the fact that a dominant platform equipped with powerful pricing technology can raise prices across a market without doing any of these things. Instead, it uses its own price changes to provoke responses that create feedback loops.

13. Although lawmakers are starting to target pricing algorithms, so far they’re focused only on scenarios where firms rely on the same software, share non-public information, or coordinate indirectly. Or when they use customer data to charge people different prices.

12. Amazon uses another algorithm to safeguard this revenue stream: it scans the web and punishes sellers who charge less elsewhere by stripping them of the Buy Box. Lose the Buy Box, lose your sales. The result: as Amazon’s fees rise, sellers raise prices everywhere.

11. Amazon has no incentive to stop this. It takes roughly 45% of every third-party sale in fees, so higher prices mean more revenue and profit.

10. These tools have learned to exploit Amazon’s rules, says @tedtatos.bsky.social. One tactic is a “wait my turn” strategy: Instead of undercutting the seller with the Buy Box, they hold back, allowing that seller to raise prices, knowing they will get their own turn at the higher price.

9. Amazon shapes pricing decisions not only across the web, but within its own third-party marketplace. To survive in Amazon’s ecosystem, most sellers rely on third-party “repricing” software. Popular tools advertise “AI-driven pricing” to “avoid price wars.”

8. This is a novel kind of monopoly power. Economists Zach Brown and Alexander MacKay call it “algorithmic coercion.” And its impact “can be worse for consumers than if firms explicitly coordinated on high prices.” The FTC says Nessie generated $1B+ in extra profit in 3 years.

7. Another algorithm, code-named Project Nessie, went further. It learned to predict when rivals were likely to follow a price hike. It raised prices in those instances — allowing Amazon to charge more, knowing that shoppers were unlikely to find a cheaper option.

6. Over time, competitors’ algorithms learn and adapt. They learn that discounting doesn’t work. So instead of cutting prices, they raise them. Amazon follows. Prices go up across the web without any coordination.

5. One is an “anti-discounting” algorithm that matches competitors’ price changes instantly to the penny. When a rival offers a discount, Amazon matches it; when rivals raise prices, Amazon follows. This denies other retailers a way to win customers by lowering prices.

4. This is at the center of the antitrust case brought against Amazon by the FTC and 17 states. The complaint targets three pricing algorithms that Amazon uses to thwart competitors and maintain its grip on online retail.

3. Lawmakers are starting to look at algorithmic pricing, but their focus is only on collusion and surveillance pricing. They haven’t caught up to this: a dominant firm using its own algorithms to unilaterally lift prices across a market without coordinating with others.

2. We tend to see online price swings as evidence of competition. But they often reflect something else: Amazon using algorithms not just to adjust its own prices, but to track how rivals react, probe their strategies and ultimately learn how to induce them to raise their prices.

How Amazon’s AI Algorithms Raise the Prices You Pay Amazon can steer market-wide prices without ever colluding—exposing a gap in antitrust law that the FTC is now fighting to close.

1. Amazon has built powerful pricing algorithms that have learned how to steer prices upward — not just on Amazon, but across the web. I have a new piece on how these algorithms work, and how they help sustain Amazon’s monopoly.