Amazon has added hundreds of thousands of products from independent businesses to its marketplace platform without the consent of the businesses’ owners. DoorDash and other delivery apps have been doing this to restaurants for years. Now Amazon is scaling the practice to a wide swath of independent retailers and brands. Local and state governments can protect their independent businesses by prohibiting this practice but should act swiftly.
In 2023, Amazon created Project Starfish with the goal of making Amazon the most comprehensive source of product information “for all products worldwide. A key component of its strategy: Add products not offered by Amazon by scraping the online catalogs of thousands of independent businesses and facilitating sales of those products, with Amazon as the middleman.
According to an internal document that surfaced in late 2024, Amazon planned to use Project Starfish to scrape the online catalogs of as many as 200,000 businesses in 2025 and to bring in $7.5 billion in sales from it that year. The project launched in beta in April 2025.
One component, “Buy For Me,” allows Amazon customers to complete purchases of items offered on other sites without leaving Amazon’s shopping app. Under this program, Amazon’s AI agents scan the web for products not available in the Amazon store. These products are then “re-skinned,” posted on Amazon’s shopping app, and sold through Amazon’s checkout process.
(Another component, “Shop Other Stores Directly,” sends customers from Amazon’s platform to the small business website to complete a purchase.)
According to hundreds of small business owners who were shocked to see their products on Amazon’s app in late 2025, Amazon has added their products to “Buy For Me” without their knowledge or consent. In many instances, Amazon has “hallucinated” product details that do not match the products listed. In a viral Instagram video, retailer Angie Chua pointed to a vinyl sticker for which Amazon incorrectly posted a photo of a pair of pants — something her store, Bobo Design Studio, has never sold. In other cases, Amazon listed and sold products that businesses no longer had in stock or sold them at prices that differed from those on the businesses’ own websites.
Hypocritically, Amazon itself has actively challenged companies whose AI agents scrape Amazon’s own platform for data. In a written statement following its October 2025 cease-and-desist letter to Perplexity, the developer of the Comet web browser, Amazon actually said, “We think it’s fairly straightforward that third-party applications that offer to make purchases on behalf of customers from other businesses should operate openly and respect service provider decisions whether or not to participate.” To back up its demand, Amazon cited two laws, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (18 U.S.C. § 1030) and the Comprehensive Computer Data Access and Fraud Act (Cal. Penal Code § 502) — laws that Amazon itself might now be violating.
On LinkedIn, retail industry expert Marieke van Bruggen summed up Amazon’s aggressive action in blunt language: “We need to stop pretending this is about ‘convenience.’ It’s a coordinated effort to swallow small retailers.”
Listing independent businesses on a marketplace platform without the business owners’ explicit permission can cause those businesses significant financial, logistical, and reputational damage.
Damage to customer relationships: Many independent business owners intentionally choose not to sell their products on Amazon. Being listed there without the business owner’s knowledge or permission can confuse customers and negatively affect customers’ trust in and perceptions of the business.
Damage to supplier relationships: Some wholesale suppliers prohibit retailers from selling the suppliers’ products on Amazon. When Amazon lists an independent retailer’s products without the owner’s consent, it can jeopardize those supplier relationships, leaving the business cut off from its suppliers, with both financial and reputational damage.
Cutting businesses off from their customers: Amazon cloaks Buy For Me shoppers’ contact information from the business owners whose catalogs it scrapes by using anonymized email addresses, with the suffix @buyforme.amazon. This makes it impossible for the business owners to provide customer support or build new customer relationships. Small businesses are unable to add these new customers to their email lists, the lifeblood of small business marketing.
Direct financial losses: Some independent business owners have reported that Amazon posted items that the business does not even offer. When a business receives an order from Amazon for a different product and fulfills it, the customer receives a product that is different from the one ordered. Amazon denies responsibility for the incorrect order, leaving the business owner responsible for refunding “incorrect” orders.
Loss of control over marketing and transactions: When Amazon links an independent business to its platform without its owner’s permission, the business loses control of marketing and transactions. Bobo Design Studio’s Chua uses the analogy of Airbnb scraping photos of your home from Zillow, then listing your home for rent on its website without your permission.
Intellectual property theft. When it uses a store’s name, its logo, and/or the names and photos of its unique products, Amazon is effectively stealing that store’s intellectual property. Amazon also gains information about these products that it could use to replicate them and compete against them under one of its own brand names.
Kennedy Smith“Listing independent businesses on a marketplace platform without the business owners’ explicit permission can cause those businesses significant financial, logistical, and reputational damage.”
Enact local and state laws that prohibit marketplace platforms from listing businesses, their products, and their intellectual property on their platforms without the business owners’ explicit permission.
Local and state elected leaders can adopt legislation that prohibits Amazon and other marketplace platforms from listing businesses in their jurisdictions without the business owners’ explicit consent.
There is a precedent for this: Scores of local governments and several states have successfully enacted laws that prohibit third-party restaurant meal delivery companies like DoorDash, Grubhub, and Uber Eats from adding restaurants to their platforms without restaurant owners’ permission. The reasons for doing so — financial, reputational, and logistical damages — are nearly identical to those involved in Amazon’s Buy For Me scraping program.
A local ordinance or state law should:
The law or ordinance could also prohibit small-business website-hosting platforms from allowing AI agents to access their sites. By not offering more rigorous safeguards, e-commerce platforms such as Shopify, Squarespace, and WooCommerce bear some responsibility for Amazon’s access to small businesses that use their hosting services.
Alert small businesses in your community to this problem. If a business owner finds that Amazon has added their business name and products to its platform, urge the business owner to email [email protected] as soon as possible to opt out and to post a message on its website stating clearly that it does not give permission for its products to be listed on any other platforms without the business owner’s explicit permission. The business owner should thoroughly document opt-out requests and check back frequently to document when their products are removed. The business owner should also thoroughly document the unauthorized listings with plenty of screenshots. Some affected business owners have added a notice on their online storefronts stating that any orders placed through @buyforme.amazon will be automatically cancelled.
File a complaint with your state Attorney General’s office. When Leeann Fox, the owner of Arrow’s Aim Greenhouse & Supply Company, discovered that Amazon had scraped her business’s online catalog without her knowledge or consent, she filed a complaint with the Washington state Attorney General’s office and encouraged other small businesses to do so as well. Businesses that file a complaint, or that comment on a complaint already filed, should cite any specific damages that Amazon has caused, such as monetary damage, brand and reputational damage, misrepresentation, and intellectual property theft.
Stacy Mitchell, “Amazon’s Monopoly Tollbooth in 2023.” Institute for Local Self-Reliance, September 23, 2023.
Stacy Mitchell and Ron Knox, “How Amazon Exploits and Undermines Small Businesses, and Why Breaking It Up Would Revive American Entrepreneurship.” Institute for Local Self-Reliance, June 2021.
Kennedy Smith, “It’s Time to Break Up With Amazon. Here’s How.” Institute for Local Self-Reliance, October 31, 2024.
Matt Day, “Amazon AI Tool Blindsides Merchants by Offering Products Without Their Knowledge,” Bloomberg, January 6, 2026
Brian Delp, “How Amazon’s Latest Initiatives Skip Consent,” Forbes, January 6, 2026
Luis Rijo, “Amazon AI scraping project creates unauthorized listings for small brands,” PPC Land, January 3, 2026
Ina Steiner, “Amazon Scrapes Listings, Places Orders on Indie Seller Sites,” eCommerce Bytes, January 6, 2026
Mike Wheatley, “Amazon’s AI agents spark backlash from retailers after listing their products without permission,” Silicon Angle, January 6, 2026
photo courtesy of Angie Chua / bobodesignstudio.com
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