alt Hacker NewsOriginally posted this in another thread, but very curious what others think.
Can I ask my partner to buy a product on Amazon?
Can I ask my personal assistant to buy a product on Amazon?
Can I hire a contractor to buy products on Amazon?
Can I communicate with a contractor via API to direct them what products to buy?
What if there is no human on the other end and its an LLM?
Same issue with LinkedIn. I know execs who have assistants running their socials. Is this legal?
Like, where do we draw the line? In the future, would the only way to shop on Amazon be with approved VR goggles that scan your retina to verify you are a human?
Replies
The law has nothing to do with it. Amazon is a private company and can make rules about who can or can't place orders on its website. When you create an account you agree to their ToS.
Can I use Amazon Mechanical Turk to place orders for myself on Amazon?
No.
That is why you have personal credentials to log in to Amazon. If you want to have delegating capabilities you can open an Amazon business account.
> where do we draw the line?
Perplexify has shown itself to be a bad actor [1][2][3], and possibly incompetent, too [4].
We need to draw a line, eventually. But it’s far from urgent. And I don’t think Perplexity should be the one deciding.
[1] https://blog.cloudflare.com/perplexity-is-using-stealth-unde...
[2] https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/perplexity-ai-loses...
[3] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/10/reddit-sues-to-b...
[4] https://brave.com/blog/comet-prompt-injection/