Wednesday, August 20, 2025

Judge says Amazon must disclose its research funding to economists, academics and think tanks as part of a class action lawsuit.

Motion to compel, here.

Order granting motion to compel, here.

This is Lina Khan's article BTW, from Wavesblog archives.

[What about an academic who writes an economic paper "recommending caution" from enforcers - exculpating Amazon's self-preferencing - and a few days after publication starts working for Amazon. Does it count as external or internal? 

More fundamentally: does this type of intellectual capture work like this? Amazon supplies data (and money), friendly IO economists in academia supply theories - models, and the outcomes neatly reinforce the economics that defend entrenched power? Huge ROI possible.

[Possibly, however, the real problem of  this type economics is that it's used by Big Tech as a distraction. [Spend precious time debating models - like Romans were doing over entrails? - instead of devoting time and efforts observing and trying to understand the complexities of the technological world and their societal implications. Clearly, we'd need a different type of social science for that]].


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