Just because counterfeit goods are sold doesn’t mean you have to sell them too. With all of these stories about Amazon it’s clear they care more about volume of goods sold and therefore amount of revenue generated and market share than they do about what is being sold. If two journalists and a few days can turn up this many clearly banned items that Amazon’s searches themselves are suggesting, it clearly is not something that the company hasn’t been aware of since the start of third party selling. They just choose not to commit resources to it as they’re facing no serious repercussions for it and it actually makes them money.

Since this is nominally a site that discusses technology and Amazon is itself a major vendor of internet services it is not out of the question to think that they could, with programmers assigned to it and a desire to do so, massively reduce the ability for dangerous and/or banned items being sold on their site. Given that many of these things come from the same sellers and are being purchased by the same people it’s not as if these are all one off outliers. It’s a hard problem, certainly, but this is a company led by the richest man in the world for crying out loud!

If ever there was a reason for state oversight to stop large tech entities from getting away with whatever they want, surely it’s enabling people to actually cause deaths?

the real audience for twitter is the news media who magnifies its exposure granting it more relevance than it deserves. the organizations that know how to exploit this are very good at intimidating others through direct accusation or insinuation. This can include people who simply don't agree with a point or view or are not vocal enough in their agreement.

Joseph McCarthy has been resurrected but now by the mob.

> takes every pub and street conversation that happened anyway

... and hugely amplifies them, giving them an audience of potentially millions instead of a couple of people chatting together.

Aside from that, all this offensive ranting and bullying, as well as every other type of conversation, is now saved and ready to be mined for advertising or political gain. Advertising is annoying but can be lived with, it's the political data-mining companies that are a real problem. See, for example, Cambridge Analytica.

Arguably, without these shady political entities and their data mining capabilities, and the amplifying power of Twitter and Facebook, we might not be faced with Brexit and Trump.

Or maybe we would, but at the very least we need to consider this and can't just say, sure, nothing has changed really. Because things have changed, and are continuing to change, rapidly and in ways we cannot predict, due to the sudden central role of tech giants in our societies.