Amazon has warned hundreds of thousands of its third-party sellers through direct email communications that it may be forced to shut down its online marketplace if Congress passes bills regulating the conduct of digital platforms, according to a seller advocacy group.
The Online Merchants Guild, a trade association representing thousands of digital marketplace sellers, says that the emails started going out to a core group of sellers who have worked in the past with Amazon’s public-policy team, and then progressed to “almost everyone.” The emails pushed sellers to register at an in-house website, supportsmallsellers.us, to “stay informed and involved on legislation that could impact your business.”
The website asks for emails and physical addresses from sellers, and says that signing up will “afford you opportunities to communicate directly with your elected officials.” With physical addresses, Amazon could target messages from potentially thousands of seller constituents directly to their own members of Congress. This amounts to building a large lobbying army out of its seller partners, by asserting that their livelihoods are at grave risk from the legislative effort.
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