Amazon pushes customers towards pricier products, report claims

ProPublica investigation found that algorithms placed items in the prominent 'buy box' on the website that weren't always the cheapest

Amazon's algorithms encourage customers pay more than they need to for popular products and appear to give more prominence to items that benefit the retail giant, according to an investigation by ProPublica.

The investigation looked at 250 frequently purchased products over several weeks to see which ones were chosen to appear in the highly-prized "buy box" that pops up first as a suggested purchase.