10 ms·
Amazon without the knockoffs
- siftapp 2mo ago[flagged]
- cmdrmac 2mo agoWhat an awesome extension!
- LorenDB 2mo agoI'd be interested to know how this works. Whitelist? Blacklist? Something else? Edit: appears to be using blacklists.
- Cyberdog 2mo agoGoing by the "How it works" section of the GitHub page (not the web site), it appears to be both whitelists and blacklists, plus heuristics for unknown brands to flag the keyboard-mash brands that are almost certainly junk.
- IncreasePosts 2mo agoI wonder why in the age of LLMs these brand names continue to exist. I just prompted deepseek in Chinese to give me some novel brand names in english for a lighted dog collar (something I recently searched for and saw the crazy brands), and it gave me a bunch of plausible sounding names. Granted, not particular inspired, but names that an English speaker would recognize as reasonable brand names
- esafak 2mo agoDon't give them ideas.
- jerbear4328 2mo agoThey want to sign up for the Amazon Brand Registry[1], which requires a valid US trademark, and these crazy names are approved faster because they're obviously unique. See NYT[2] [1]: https://sell.amazon.com/brand-registry https://sell.amazon.com/brand-registry [2]: https://archive.is/IQs4i https://archive.is/IQs4i / https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/11/style/amazon-trademark-copyright.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/11/style/amazon-trademark-co...
- dheera 2mo agoReality: A few years ago this would have been relevant. Most people can only afford the knockoffs now. My Chipotle meal cost $17 yesterday. It used to cost $8. The $9 difference is going to come out of my budget to buy authentic brands and buy local stuff. If you don't like it, make my Chipotle meal $8 again or double my salary, reduce my taxes, and don't pull random geopolitical shit that crashes the S&P500 every other weekend, and then we'll talk.
- Cyberdog 2mo agoMake your burrito or bowl at home, and it'll cost $4 or less.
- IncreasePosts 2mo agoThat sounds really cheap, if you don't consider that you need to do all the shopping, you need to prepare all the food, and deal with probably a bunch of food waste.
- otikik 2mo agoThis was actually tried. Cheaper and healthier https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRtoUoBgjDw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRtoUoBgjDw
- kjellsbells 2mo agoCuts two ways. Why should I pay $200 for a BigBrand dog bed if this knockoff site shows SHRDLU has the same thing for $40? We all know that BigBrand gets it from the same supplier. The real knockoff problem I see is that you buy what you think is BigBrand and get shipped Knockoff because someone is mingling inventory.
- xur17 2mo ago[dead]
- red-iron-pine 2mo ago> Cuts two ways. Why should I pay $200 for a BigBrand dog bed if this knockoff site shows SHRDLU has the same thing for $40? We all know that BigBrand gets it from the same supplier. in many cases may even be from the same factory made by the same hands with a slightly different supplier or quality of fabric, or lower QA.
- malfist 2mo ago> We all know that BigBrand gets it from the same supplier We don't know that. Look at Project Farm's review videos, he tests a lot of knock off and brand name products and it's almost always a get what you pay for situation. Knockoffs look similar, but use cheaper materials almost always. The question is almost always, do you need the quality that you get from name brand. Not "why can I get name brand quality of half price"
- kevin_thibedeau 2mo agoHe also routinely tests three or four identical products with nothing distinguishing beyond different paint jobs.
- malfist 2mo agoYes, but those are three or four knock off products. The brand name is always different.
- 2mo ago
- mjamesaustin 2mo agoEven better, buy direct from the manufacturer instead of Amazon. I've found most of the time you get the same price and free shipping without giving Jeff Bezos a dime.
- Cider9986 2mo agoI'd rather not spread out personal info like credit cards to more parties than necessary while Amazon has excellent and consistent customer support.
- SilverElfin 2mo agoMost of the time you’re giving that info to stripe or Shopify. But also credit cards are protected - you can dispute charges - so it’s not a huge risk IMO
- madibo3156 2mo ago> Amazon has excellent and consistent customer support We've been dealing with different Amazons. Also, credit cards in my experience are built to deal with that stuff. Have you encountered protection issues by using your credit card? The only chargeback I've initiated was against Amazon and my credit card company handled it swimmingly.
- Cider9986 2mo agoEvery time I talk to them I ask for a gift card for compensation for whatever problem and they give it to me.
- BorisMelnik 2mo agoagree - amazon is awful, I'll never purchase an item from them worth more than $100 again. stolen iphones, broken computer equipment, cheap products in expensive boxes. they want you to file a police report and spend so many hours project managing and dealing with their AI customer support / the ticket it makes it not worth it
- Retric 2mo ago
- reader9274 2mo agoHow can a HDJWNSK brand gain our trust and become respected if we're not even trying its products?
- 0x073 2mo agoIt cant get trust, as it disappears after a month.
- ActionHank 2mo agoBy word of mouth, HDJWNSK just rolls off the tongue.
- ahartmetz 2mo agoI like my NWOUIIAY
- klondike_klive 2mo agoBy coincidence it's flying ant evening in my part of the world. One of them just flew into my mouth and I said HDJWNSK three times in a row.
- dylan604 2mo agoI think your lysdexia strikes again. It's HDWJNSK /s
- tomekb 2mo agoWe need this but for books. These days it is impossible to buy any programming related book that is not a bootleg copy.
- hiyfsch 2mo ago[dead]
- 1970-01-01 2mo agoIronic. Selling you quality books at a good price is how Amazon started.
- somelamer567 2mo agoThese days, Amazon do a lot of print-on-demand which gives bootleg quality, and there's no way to tell if you're going to get it, and there seems to be no way to avoid it.
- MaKey 2mo agoGo with reputable publishers (e. g. O'Reilly or No Starch Press) and you will get quality books.
- gortok 2mo agoI worked for a hardware startup ten years ago now, and a big problem that was rampant at the time (and seemingly has only gotten worse) is that basically the Contract Manufacturers (CMs) in China take the BOMs and plans they’re given, and since they already have the molds, the same product will mysteriously be produced with a knock-off name, within weeks of your product being produced in china. At the time (and still) I didn’t know enough about whether the CMs are doing it themselves or they’re selling the information to a company to produce, or what, but if you want to manufacture something in China, you’re begging for it to be copied immediately. While I have my own disdain for the current length of copyright law, it’d be great if China at least had some variety of it. This sort of crap may be an eyesore for the big companies, but its a death-knell for small startups, and Amazon is enabling it.
- theflyinghorse 2mo agoReminds me - I was working for a Canadian network equipment manufacturer and at one point a client in Asia was trying to get support for a bunch of units of uor hardware (modems). Long story short, turns out they bought knock offs that didn't even bother changing casing leaving contact info on modems for our company.
- jjice 2mo agoI remembering hearing from a former Cisco employee once that in the mid 00s this would happen to them and the knock off router manuals were literal photocopies of the Cisco ones with very half-assed attempts to block of Cisco.
- kardianos 2mo agoChina supports Chinese interests. So far, you think there is some universalism sentiment. You're wrong.
- sleepybrett 2mo agoIf amazon suddenly banned this class of products temu and alibaba are there to take up the slack.
- cwillu 2mo agoNow we just need GitHub Without the Vibes
- advisedwang 2mo agoThis says it's using AmazonBrandFilter's list of brands. Why would we use/support this chrome extension instead of the upstream one [1] which is actually doing the important maintanance task? "Knockoff" seems to be literally describing itself. [1] https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/amazonbrandfilter/mhfjchmiaocbleapojmgnmjfcmanihio?hl=en&pli=1 https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/amazonbrandfilter/m...
- DetroitThrow 2mo agoOn top of that, it has a more restrictive license than AmazonBrandFilter. Given this appears to be a very simple AI project, why not just reimplement any missing functionality from AmazonBrandFilter into something under a free license? The most difficult to duplicate component is MIT.
- anticorporate 2mo agoFurther, what on earth is the reason for FSL for such a trivial project? FSL immediately makes me assume this project is monetized in some way, yet it's not immediately presented what that is, which makes me suspicious of the whole project. Maybe that suspicion is unfounded, but it could be immediately cleared up with some explanation on the landing page.
- Night_Thastus 2mo agoIt seems like AmazonBrandFilterList is one of the lists they use. It also seems like there a couple extra features that doesn't have. Either way, it's not like they're hiding the use of it. It would be another thing if it was being secret about it.
- chris-mosley 2mo agoAmazonBrandFilter dev here. Yeah. I don't know. I don't love that they're just ripping the list like that, I wouldn't mind as much if they at least helped contribute to the list. That is far and away the hardest part of this thing. But it is what it is, I'll be more peeved if they monetize it (which I'm unsure if they're doing). Maybe I should put one of those buy me a coffee links on the repo, I'd probably be better about focusing on it then.
- idopmstuff 2mo agoI own a dozen Amazon brands that are probably largely of the kind that OP would want this to get rid of (sourced from China, not name brands by any stretch, only sell on Amazon). For the most part I would say this extension is not a great idea (obviously very biased!), since I purchase brands that have high quality products that typically have pretty poor branding/online presence that I can improve. My stuff is very frequently of the same quality (and sometimes from the same factories) as much pricier stuff but at a lower cost. To some of those suggesting you can get this stuff on Aliexpress, in some cases that is true, though of course the big benefit of buying from Amazon is that there's no risk to buying no-name stuff because if it's junk you can return it. In any case, I gave this a try to see which of my brands it would filter out. It's weirdly inconsistent. One of my brands was filtered out because there's no brand name at the beginning of the listing. That's just an outright bad rule, because Amazon generally decides whether or not the brand name appears first. This brand is trademarked and has Brand Registry, so it qualifies for that treatment, just not getting it right now. Also, a number of other brands without brand names did not get the same treatment (and these are very much the type of products this is designed to filter out). On another one, it misunderstood the product model, which is at the beginning of the product name, as the brand and hid it based on that. That one was a bad one because the model is only three characters, which is extremely unlikely for a brand name. One product I sell is a hunting accessory, so I did some searches there. It hid everything by the brand KUIU, which is a well-known and very high end hunting brand. Definitely wrong there. So yeah, sort of an interesting idea, but the execution is pretty sloppy and the creator clearly doesn't have a full understanding of how Amazon listings work.
- binarysolo 2mo agoAnother PL seller here with a few brands and a couple hundred products: "No brand name" flag is tricky because the Amazon catalog team actively does A/B tests to hide brand names as part of their goal of commodifying all the sellers to increase price competition, when they see you're selling a commodity item. Same goes to wellknown brands that get caught in the crossfire because they're using their brand name from another language but don't make sense in English. Agreed that it's an interesting idea, but execution has a LOT of false positives.
- mikert89 2mo agoI stopped buying from amazon unless its a known brand, anything random I am just buying from costco instead. Had enough of the trash, or used product i keep getting from amazon
- mrweasel 2mo agoThe fact that Amazon doesn't care enough to implement this filter themselves is a strong indicator to just not buy of the site. Amazon doesn't give a shit if you're being hustled. If they have to issue a refund, that's the sellers problem, in all other cases they make money. There is so much junk of Amazon that's just not worth it. The only reason I ever shop at Amazon is if I truly cannot get the item elsewhere. They aren't cheaper, they're certainly not faster (in my area) and with every purchase you're at a much greater risk at getting scammed, compared to shopping at sites that don't do the marketplace crap. In a sane world Amazons customers would be leaving in droves, and I cannot figure out why they don't.
- samspot 2mo agoThe no hassle returns from Amazon mitigate everything. I recently bought direct from someone and had to return because they didn't send the advertised item. I had to pay return shipping and a restocking fee, costing me $40 and a lot of my time. I tried to work it out with the seller not realizing that I only had 30 days to dispute with Paypal, so I was screwed there. My overwhelming takeaway was I should have bought from Amazon. (and, if you use paypal open a case with them asap instead of talking to the seller first). I don't particularly like Amazon and would like to shop somewhere else, but it is sooooo convenient that it's hard to quit.
- lotsofpulp 2mo ago> In a sane world Amazons customers would be leaving in droves, and I cannot figure out why they don't. Because Costco does not sell a lot of stuff that I want.
- yuck39 2mo agoBecause if you need something in 2 days in the United States its often your _only_ option. I begrudgingly maintain a prime membership because its typically >2 times per month that I need something in two days. Maybe if I planned better that would happen less and I would save money, but its purely a convenience. Their logistic network is where prime holds its value.
- jelder 2mo agoPour one out for anyone who hoped to start a new brand.
- bluescrn 2mo agoEspecially those who planned to use a random password generator to come up with their brand name
- lenkite 2mo agoThese vibe-coded, LLM-generated websites look ALL the same, lol. They have the exact same tells nowadays. The output of LLM's in web-site generation used to vary quite a bit last year but now they all produce the same generic soup. Some sort of weird model collapse is happening. After 30 years of the web, a "common" component model and "UI standard" is now inadvertently metastasizing into existence. Sadly, it is a crappy standard with many of the UI decisions (cards with icons on their own line) being utterly brain-dead.
- dawah45 2mo agoI've used https://www.onlyamazingseller.com/ https://www.onlyamazingseller.com/ in the past, and while it doesn't show reliable third-party sellers (it shows only products sold directly by Amazon), it does get rid of much of the stuff I don't want to buy.
- BeetleB 2mo agoI should check my purchase history, but I probably use Amazon more for buying stuff that they would classify as a "Knockoff", but isn't (i.e. there is no established brand they are knocking off). Because for legitimate brands, I try to simply buy elsewhere. This is an example: https://www.amazon.com/MiiKARE-Universal-Rotating-Adjustable-Compatible/dp/B07MYW7C3Z?crid=25C7KM9EB0R0&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.q8CzUaG0slhOytkjRkYEuZX3DnAl-J4hsqQYWcBfzXpjX6XjZflzZDfW4NTxfObDbnJYuW-sfvkVZBKu7F41bF4wChmwWjMT0T4ElEVFxF8nE6KsC_vi1v0Flhpz40idWUQpBSWSJ6wSnb4jVHI6ZWZZqZkhxku03ZejYAkyzur6y5mLKhF0noZ7zXMexqUwcc5QQymuL9wQYH9d9_2Mr8DQP0V0EO0ljo_I2t7rdwQ.In9gNHmD_xqReF9khzgTERsXelCeiD4n-NDEc_573nU&dib_tag=se&keywords=phone+holder+plane&qid=1783447611&sprefix=phone+holder+pla%2Caps%2C227&sr=8-4 https://www.amazon.com/MiiKARE-Universal-Rotating-Adjustable... You'll find lots of different manufacturers selling this on Amazon, but there is no well known brand that makes these.
- jareklupinski 2mo ago> This is an example: https://www.amazon.com/MiiKARE-Universal-Rotating-Adjustable https://www.amazon.com/MiiKARE-Universal-Rotating-Adjustable... i wonder if it would be faster to 3d print that gadget than amazon prime it
- dceddia 2mo agoThe plastic parts almost definitely, but this seems like it has a couple springs and hinges that make it more of a pain.
- iwontberude 2mo ago3D printing is more a practice than it is a way to quickly create one off objects. I think certainly if your machine is dialed in and not malfunctioning in some way then it will be cheaper and faster to print than to buy this.
- arjie 2mo agoI have a Bambu P1S and using it has been some kind of normie-friendly experience. I recall in the long past before I got this machine, my friend's early model Prusa would semi-bootstrap itself by printing some of its parts but the thing I ended up getting was a fully formed unit that just does the whole thing with a minimum of fuss. We use the 3d printer explicitly for the one-off object scenario.
- iLoveOncall 2mo agoIt's funny but their homepage exemplifies why one may actually want the "knockoff" brands. $39 instead of $224 for a pet bed. I know which one I'll buy. There are plenty of categories of items where the cheap knockoff is perfectly adequate.
- wffurr 2mo agoUntil it falls apart immediately or gives your pet a rash because of the poor quality materials that were substituted.
- triceratops 2mo agoCostco sells genuine pet beds for $39. $224 is pure insanity.
- iLoveOncall 2mo agoYeah, they sell the same as XHLMFPETS on Amazon.
- Luker88 2mo agoI would be happy just with a amazon that does not disappear 80% of the results when you apply basic list filters like "cheaper first". I don't even know why that is legal.
- storus 2mo agoCan you do the inverse as well? Like Amazon but only the knockoffs?
- Waterluvian 2mo agoI feel we're well into the race to the bottom because I'm having an increasingly difficult time finding the brand name products to be any better. A lot of the brand name stuff is now also crap and some of the knock-off stuff seems to be just fine.
- drnick1 2mo agoI'd rather buy a cheap knockoff than pay top dollar for an equally bad branded product. Most "consumer-grade" stuff out there these days is garbage regardless of price or brand. Examples: mattresses, home appliances, furniture, audio devices, routers. If you need something durable or dependable, you need to buy enterprise-grade stuff or make your own.
- no_no_no_yes 2mo ago> Knockoff filters the trademark-squat pseudo-brands (the SZHLUXes and HORUSDYs) I see "HORUSDY" type brand names all the time. It's crazy that any shirt/pants/etc results in one of these.
- ahartmetz 2mo ago...and without Firefox, apparently
- SubiculumCode 2mo agoand without the https:?
- pokstad 2mo agoIsn’t the whole point of a brand to be recognizable? If customers couldn’t make this association from the start, what value does this provide?
- adithyassekhar 2mo agoI swear if I see one more “Bricolage Grotesque” and Inter website.. this is just what claude gives if you couldn’t be bothered to tell it what you want. Why is this even here?
- robbles 2mo agoWhat is a "squat-length string"? I realize this is one of Claude's copy tells (using excessively hyphenated words) but in this case I can't figure out what it means.
- ryan_j_naughton 2mo agoI'm confused. Counterfeit goods are clearly bad and a problem, but knockoffs that aren't counterfeit seem to be a good thing from an economics perspective, right? A knockoff that isn't counterfeit isn't deceiving customers -- it is just competing and competition drives benefits to consumers. There are many knockoff goods that reach comparable quality as the original, luxury good. We shouldn't support the idea of brands for their own sake. Today, many luxury brands are actually degrading in quality as the only thing customers are buying them for is the status signal more than the actual quality. What is critical is a customer is informed about the trade offs between the goods to make an informed decision. When I recently was buying camera gear, I bought some of the peak design bags and accessories (which are amazing). I then also bought some knockoff gear that is compatible with their system. Real:https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07F94FQRB https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07F94FQRB $29.95 Knockoff: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FYCB594Y https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FYCB594Y $5.01 I knew what I was buying in both cases. I wouldn't trust the knockoff clips to hold my $3K Canon, but I am ok with the knockoff clips to hold an old, light film camera I also brought on the trip. I made an informed decision and my choice also helped contribute to competition between vendors, which is good for the market as a whole and consumers broadly. If everyone used these chrome extensions, economic theory predicts that prices would rise for consumers and quality of the original brands would degrade through reduced competitive pressure. What could be more informative for consumers that simply eliminating knockoffs from their search results would be to increase information. Maybe adding a visible indicator of which company is the established or originator of the design and which are knockoffs would be better than simply filtering them out.
- MagicMoonlight 2mo ago[dead]
- infecto 2mo agoLove the idea of this but it has the inverse problem for me. So many brands are simply selling rebranded chinese goods anyway that I am probably better using review count and reviews to find low cost quality Chinese goods. I don’t know if it will ever happen but the only solution imo is better curation from an online site.
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- robotnikman 2mo agoWould be great if you could port this to Firefox
- fnordian_slip 2mo agohttps://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/amazonbrandfilter/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/amazonbrandfi... The original is available on Firefox. The dev has even replied on the current top comment, if you want to check it out.
- gaucheph 2mo agothere are lots of comments here defending the knockoffs. in my opinion, they are equivalent to spam. amazon doesn't have a filter for these built into it and they never will. reputation matters especially with fake reviews. i will shop for items with this filter on and if i find the selection lacking or the prices too high then i'll turn it off and look at the knockoffs.
- quxbar 2mo agoIME: Cycling bibs and shorts from knockoff amazon brands seem to be of equal quality to entry-level name brand stuff (pearl izumi) at a fraction of the price. Plain underwear, on the other hand, has serious want of quality vs 'real' athleisure brands (nike, underarmor, hanes). I was surprised to have such different experiences with two similar product categories.
- oathvz 2mo agoSmelling a Honey situation; we'll see affiliated query params added later if it hasn't been added already