That's pretty egregious. The fact that is says "0 of 1 purchased" implies that the person making the list asked for it which is a lie no matter how you spin it. Sounds like fraud to me.
It seems like Amazon may have violated California law, and under CACI 1903 the buyers of items on the baby-registry list could have standing to sue Amazon for negligent misrepresentation:<p>Fact: "the item was added to the list by the list's creator"<p>1. Amazon represented to the buyer that the Fact was true.<p>2. Amazon's representation was not true.<p>3. Amazon had no reasonable grounds for believing the Fact
was true.<p>4. Amazon intended the Buyer to rely on this representation.<p>5. The Buyer reasonably relied on this representation.<p>6. The Buyer was harmed.<p>7. The Buyer's reliance on Amazon's representation was a substantial factor in causing the harm.<p>The core of the issue to puzzle over: How was the buyer of the gift harmed?<p><a href="https://www.justia.com/trials-litigation/docs/caci/1900/1903/" rel="nofollow">https://www.justia.com/trials-litigation/docs/caci/1900/1903...</a>
Happened to us a few months ago. We got a pair of baby bath kits we didn't ask for. We looked afterward, and saw the ads mixed into our list with no way to remove them. Incredibly slimy practice.
I created DreamList <a href="https://www.dreamlist.com" rel="nofollow">https://www.dreamlist.com</a> as a parent because I was appalled by the practices of baby registries and wish lists out there. Without naming competitors we saw:<p>- A major retailer hid the actual wishlist behind an "idea list" page that visitors saw first when they clicked on someone's wishlist link. The "Idea list" was full of high margin items that had nothing to do with the wisher (sometimes even targeted to the wrong gender).<p>- Multiple major registries indexed your name for SEO and thus a baby registry still showed as top result on google for female founders and executives who had babies in recent years.<p>- Multiple wikipedia and gossip press links boosting SEO of several universal registries by showcasing the wedding or baby lists of famous people (the SEO boost was substantial too). Privacy was non-existent at that point.<p>- Popular new baby or wedding specialized registries that are also retailers and would push gift cards for their own stores to registry guests where you'd often find 30%+ markup on common items. Etc...<p>So, as I was literally nursing a baby in one arm, I wrote code for DreamList with the other. It was architected to be actually private (no lists get SEO, unless users explicitly ask for it; no ads or promotional emails; etc.). It is not tied to a retailer, so you can add the lowest price items from anywhere (and link your other wish lists and registries). It lets you manage wish lists together with your spouse or team (we've served charity and disaster recovery teams in every disaster since Hurricane Harvey). More importantly, you can add large items and dreams you are saving towards such as a big trip to Disney, or 529 plans, so on special occasions family can contribute small amounts to help little ones get there sooner.<p>It starts with little architectural decisions, but every detail matters in a family product, as it sets a tone for interactions and thus relationships of millions of families that live apart geographically. We've reached a time when we have to take online privacy and quality in our own hands, for the sake of our kids.
I run exactly 0 analytics and ads on Wishy.gift, nor do I plan to ever do so. Almost 300 users are using the service so far, and I have no idea who most of them are, where they come from, or how they found the service. There's a huge uptick in the number of registrations now before Christmas, but I'm really hoping that people might find it useful for birthdays, weddings and baby registries as well.<p>All feedback is very welcome :)
Unless consumers/people get organized, and get laws passed (and enforced) to force companies to some minimal ethical standards, things will only get worse.<p>"Voting with your dollars" is just another way of saying to stay divided and alone, while companies unite and get ever more organized. How well has it worked so far?
Even after reading the article and specifically searching for the "sponsored" text, it took me minutes to find it in the screenshot. Extremely deceptive
I've grown annoyed with Amazon's ad practices. I filter by for example price, and there is something like 4 ads per page, nearly identical to the properly search results. Makes scanning a page a much more cumbersome so that you don't click on the garbage products they advertise.
I suggest using BabyList, which was launched by a friend on HN 7 years ago and is now one of the top baby retailers in the country.<p><a href="https://babylist.com" rel="nofollow">https://babylist.com</a>
I've gotten this from ads in their normal search. I've been conditioned for years to trust that the search returns what I expect. Now when I instinctually click the first link, I end up with the wrong brand. My fault for not paying attention, but me being more careful means they've lost my trust.
I see this as a control group in the great Internet advertising experiment. It answers the question: "How often will someone click an ad, given that the advertised product is certain to be unwanted?" That is, how often will someone mistake an ad for a real result?
Is there no way out of the antiquated gift registry idea? Could we have baby showers and weddings in which everyone contributes cash (and absolutely no gifts) to offset the event costs? Any excess cash becomes a gift to the parents or couple.<p>Gifts served a purpose in the distant past because people needed "things" to start their life, but that's no longer the case. Most people have way too many things, and most of their expenses are operating costs anyway (like mortgage, rent, education, health care, and transportation).
Nothing deceptive about pushing your own brands over third parties then letting third parties buy back those sales with advertising then deceiving the users to click on those ads...
There are quotes from people interviewed who removed the sponsored ads from their own listings. Did no-one think Amazon's behaviour was so unacceptable that they abandoned it, and used a different service?<p>Or is Amazon such a monopoly that this wasn't even considered?