Bots behind the game console shortage
Reading the article, this seems to be the core issue:<p>&gt; “When your browser checks out an item on a retail site, it sends ‘requests’ to the site’s server. These requests are basically commands that tell the server what to do. Add this item to the cart, submit my order, and so on,” they wrote. “We send those commands associated with checking out to the servers of sites we automate without requiring a browser. Basically, we can mimic what a human does, stripping out the unnecessary lags and delays of a browser.”<p>&gt; &quot;The service is optimized for Target, Best Buy, Amazon, and Walmart.&quot;<p>This is hardly just game consoles, the whole baby formula problem is similarly gamed:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.forbes.com&#x2F;sites&#x2F;laurendebter&#x2F;2022&#x2F;05&#x2F;13&#x2F;baby-formula-shortage-bots-snap-up-inventory&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.forbes.com&#x2F;sites&#x2F;laurendebter&#x2F;2022&#x2F;05&#x2F;13&#x2F;baby-fo...</a><p>Basically, if you see a shortage anywhere in the consumer&#x2F;retail goods market, you can use a pool of capital to buy up all the remaining product as quickly as possible - assuming you have access to a pool of capital.  This is the same kind of thing that happens in wartime scarcity, the only difference between this and say WWII is the bot technology being used.  Now you&#x27;re the sole supplier and can jack up prices and earn huge percentages.  The resellers are just little black market manipulators, in other words, and the bot writers are their facilitators.<p>However, the main sources of product are the big corporate retailers, Amazon etc.  They can&#x27;t jack up the prices themselves (well, they can to some extent as current &#x27;inflation&#x27; price hikes are resulting in record profits), but do they really care if automated bots are placing orders?  Are they going to write bot-detecting software that might reduce the amount of orders being placed online? Why would they, that would reduce revenue.<p>It&#x27;s not too surprising that this situation has come about, it&#x27;s basically monopolistic manipulation of markets throughout the whole supply chain.  A deregulated neoliberal paradise has many similarities to a war zone economy.