A software developer made a Chrome and Firefox extension called Knockoff that automatically hides, grays out, or filters products from sketchy brands on Amazon, which highlights just how many shady brands are on the platform and how commonly they show up on searches for basic items.



The weird brand names are because Amazon requires the products you sell to have a “brand” in order to provide them plausible deniability that your product is not generic OEM stuff from China. So the sellers of generic Chinese OEM stuff have adapted by making up nonsensical brands and registering the letter jumble they come up with as a trademark. Now Amazon can claim everything on their site is a “brand name” product, see? It’s all totally above board.