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Amazon blocks Meta’s new Muse AI agent from shopping on amazon.com

153 points · 162 comments · simianwords

  1. rkagerer · · focus · HN ↗
    The right way to do this is to create an API or MCP or whatever catering to bots, and implement corresponding terms in your legal agreements (i.e. after approving a bot to interact with us, you're responsible for purchases it makes), along with some limits to prevent runaway shopping when Muse decides to binge.

    Less friction = more shopping = more profits.

    That used to be a concept companies like Amazon understood well. (As well as companies like Google in the context of web browsing and keeping it user-friendly as opposed to user-hostile).

    If the bots mean customers are getting a better deal elsewhere, then you're doing something wrong elsewhere in your business model and need to go address that. Or eventually free market economics will, no matter how big an artificial moat you try to build.

    1. krunck · · focus · HN ↗
      Nice. That would allow people to create alternative interfaces for humans (like me) who absolutely HATE Amazon's web interface.
      1. carlosjobim · · focus · HN ↗
        Amazon is only an interface to purchase products made by other companies (except for Kindle devices).

        Your alternative interfaces exist and have always existed: Go to a physical store, order by phone, order through the OEM website, order through an Amazon competitor, etc.

        1. Miraste · · focus · HN ↗
          "you can already build [Dropbox] yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem."

          For all the complaints, it's nice to see HN hasn't changed that much.

          1. carlosjobim · · focus · HN ↗
            Yes, you're right. It's almost impossible to purchase from a physical store or from competitors to Amazon (who many times are much bigger than Amazon in their country).

            On the next episode of Oppressed Hackers: We get a load of a guy who had the nerve to say that it was possible to drink a glass of water.

            1. Miraste · · focus · HN ↗
              The point wasn't that there are no alternatives, but that calling Amazon "only an interface to purchase products made by other companies" is reductive to the point of being completely wrong.
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