Amazon made $1 billion with algorithms used to raise prices, says FTC

Amazon made over $1 billion using an algorithm that strategically raised the prices of the products on the platform, alleges the FTC.

The United States Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has claimed that online commerce giant Amazon intentionally raised prices by more than $1 billion using secret algorithms.

Details from FTC’s lawsuit against Amazon filed in September were made public on Thursday as a new version of the lawsuit was made available in a Seattle court with fewer redactions. The FTC claimed that Amazon created a “secret algorithm internally codenamed ‘Project Nessie’ to identify specific products for which it predicts other online stores will follow Amazon’s price increases,” according to Reuters.

The FTC also alleged that executives at the company intentionally deleted messages on the messaging app Signal. They used a feature that makes messages disappear in an act that “destroyed more than two years” worth of communications from June 2019 to “at least early 2022” despite the trade commission asking Amazon not to do so, reports ABC News.

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