"In recent weeks, Amazon has changed how it pays out seller earnings and collects payments for its advertising services. The company then announced it would start charging merchants a 3.5% fuel surcharge to offset surging oil prices from the Iran war.

To some sellers, the moves represent another example of Amazon putting the squeeze on them.

“We’re running out of f---ing margin,” said Michael Patrón, who runs an eight-figure Amazon business and frequently criticizes the company’s policies on his X account. “I think that’s why it keeps getting more and more frustrating.”

Patrón and hundreds of large Amazon sellers are boycotting its advertising platform on Wednesday to protest the recent policy changes that are strangling their already stretched bottom lines.

The 24-hour advertising boycott is being organized by Million Dollar Sellers, a community of more than 700 members that collectively generate about $14 billion in revenue.

“Sellers have complained for years, but this feels different,” MDS co-founder Eugene Khayman said in a post on X about the boycott. “The reason is simple: this is no longer just about irritation. It is about cash extraction.”"

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/04/15/amazon-sellers-boycott-ads-payment-changes.html

#Amazon #USA #BigTech #Monopolies #Rentism

Why the U.S. Stopped Breaking #Monopolies

https://wp.me/pfZJKA-mn

Suck it, Live Nation!
https://www.billboard.com/pro/live-nation-verdict-ticketmaster-loses-antitrust-trial/

RE: https://flipboard.com/@rollingstone/music-news-dqrh37u8z/-/a-w_0Bl6yPQ8qz5J0w8wwORw%3Aa%3A3199477-%2F0

NO SHIT SHERLOCK!!!

In all seriousness, this is a landmark ruling.

“The jury deliberated for four days before deciding that the company operated as a monopoly that broke antitrust laws.”

“An exact punishment has yet to be meted out, but the consequences could range from heavy monetary damages to possibly breaking up Live Nation and Ticketmaster. It’s also likely that Live Nation will appeal the verdict, meaning the case could continue for several more years.”

#monopolies #antitrust #ticketbastard

Ticketmaster-owner Live Nation has operated as a monopoly, jury finds
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/clyddyp19yyo

#Ticketmaster #Monopolies #Capitalism

"In 2023, the city of Evanston, Illinois raised its ambulance fee from $1500 to $2000, with a $15 mileage charge tacked on. Like many municipalities, city officials and taxpayers have gotten used to ever-increasing prices for basic services, all bucketed under the “cost of living” crisis we’re dealing with. In fact, yesterday the Michigan University consumer sentiment indicator hit the worst reading it has ever recorded, going all the way back to 1961. The endless increases in prices for all sorts of random necessities is a key reason.

But these cost hikes don’t just ‘happen,’ as if it’s some sort of natural event. Markets are a function of law. There are companies and dealers and financiers behind every industry, so we can actually try to understand why they are happening. In this case, Evanston chalked up the hike to, among other things, the increasing of “cost of equipment and vehicles used for emergency responses.” The ambulance market, once a decentralized set of family owned firms, has been rolled up into a consolidated industry run by private equity. And the price hikes followed.

This story isn’t unusual. In early 2025, BIG traced a roll-up of fire trucks and fire apparatus, leading to a crisis in that sector. It turns out that something similar seems to have happened here, with some of the same players."

https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/code-red-why-your-city-cant-affordor?r=3pbdu&utm_medium=ios&shareImageVariant=split&triedRedirect=true

#USA #Emergency #Ambluances #Monopolies #Rentism #PrivateEquities

Sourdough #6 Drafting Hope, Creating Counter-Narratives with migrazine and maiz / magazine presentation

Raumschiff, Friday, April 24 at 05:00 PM GMT+2

Sourdough #6 (magazine presentation) 
Drafting Hope, Creating Counter-Narratives                                                                                                                                                                                                                               with migrazine and maiz

When: Friday, 24th April, 17:00–19:30
Where: Raumschiff, Pfarrplatz 18, 4020 Linz

In this gathering we present the last issue of the online-magazine migrazine "Drafting Hope, Creating Counter-Narratives” in which we took part in search for models of life, community and values that promote the emancipation from technology monopolies as well as our capacity for a political digital engagement. Intervening with counter-narratives, creating alternative uses and spaces for technologies, as well as building relationships that inspire empathy and generosity were some of the forms of (re)existence in a hyper-digitalized life that we gathered to tackle this issue.

Together with the authors Aimilia Liountou and Mary Maggic we will go through two of the published texts: respectively, the sociopolitical development of emojis in the global cultural sphere, and “Workshopology” as practice and research methodology for artists and interdisciplinary collaborations.

We invite activists, authors, artists, editors and general public to an evening full of playful, creative exchange on hegemonic digital infrastructure and possible ways to overcome them - acknowledging our contradictions at hand. 

This event will be held in English.

About
Verein maiz: Autonomous Centre by and for migrant women founded in Linz in 1994. Our goal is to better the living and working situation of migrant women in Austria and to promote their political and cultural participation, as well as to transform the existing, unjust social conditions. https://maiz.at/de 

migrazine - Online Magazine by Migrant Women* for Everyone is a multilingual magazine and alternative media platform that deals with migration-related phenomena as well as socio-political issues. migrazine went online for the first time in 2009, published by maiz (Autonomous Centre by & for Migrant Women), born out of a desire to make critical migrant voices more audible in the media and to stand up against the clichéd portrayal of migrants. http://www.migrazine.at/ 

Verein maiz and migrazine will be represented by Lia Kastiyo-Spinósa and Rosi Grillmair.

Aimilia Liontou (she/her) is a multidisciplinary artist, interested in the use of technology and its impact on the near future. In her artistic practice, she uses speculative scenarios as a means of investigating current realities and potential futures. By blending real facts with fantasy, she create projects that aim to question specific situations and encourage viewers to think for themselves, rather than suggesting specific solutions. Since May 2023 she is part of servus.at team. https://www.aimilialiontou.com

Mary Maggic (1991, Los Angeles) is an artist and researcher based in Vienna since 2017 whose practice revolves around workshopology as a shared process of amateurism and care that can collectively move us beyond pollution, planetary wounds, and grief. These workshopologies center ecological crisis as the starting point for embodying our permeability and vulnerability, informed by what our collectives and lands already know and feel. With this participatory practice, Maggic constantly searches for new embodied strategies for dissolving the boundaries between the personal and the planetary, and entering into new modalities of collective world-making. 

https://core.servus.at/en/projekt/sourdough/sourdough-6-drafting-hope-creating-counter-narratives

*Sourdough is funded by LINZimPULS.
poster: © Elizaveta Belkevich

https://kulturkarte.servus.at/event/sourdough-6-magazine-presentation-drafting-hope-creating-counter-narratives-with-migrazine-and-maiz