The ad tier will now be the default of the retailer's Prime membership, but subscribers can opt out of commercials by paying an additional $2.99 per month.
Adam Conover did a great video about "Free shipping" is a scam and actually ends up costing you more overall. Ultimately the companies are using the same logistics companies you could with no special discounts, and in order to make a profit pocket the excess. Which isn't as bad as the alternative what is happened with insurance where the cost of everything ballooned to obscene extents even if you had a plan, then once they were too big to fail insurance companies just stopped paying out leaving you in a smoldering crater of the full hyperinflated price.
But just because you can see a "price" for shipping. That doesn't mean that's what it actually costs the company.
It is literally my job to write the code that queries the carrier (UPS/FedRx/Speedy/Etc) and generates a label and receipt. 99% of our clients fudge the "cost" that the end customer can see. The end customer thinks it cost $20 to ship their package but the API returned $6 from UPS.
We also offer rating so that their website can "calculate" a rate of $20 externally and $6 behind the scenes.
I mean ultimately someone is paying the shipping but I don't see how it's bad, or good.