Hi folks! I’m here with another idea. Let’s make an amazon alternative. I know! I know! That was asked for a couple times already but lets discuss some details.

Amazon is basically glorified dropshipping by now. What if we just made federated (not sure if over activitypub would work) ads and sales, powered by fediseer (the “trust” network of the fediverse).

Example 1: So you buy at toms groceries, you trust them. they have experience with tina’s hardware store and they trust them. so you can buy both toms and tinas wares on both sites.

Example 2: So for example, I run a small business that sells computers. You run a small business that sells mice and keyboards. I have worked with you before so I mark you as trusted in my local website, which federates with yours, showing your products in my shop. If a customer buys my computer and buys your keyboard on top, my site sends you a buy order with customer address and payment. I get a small fee for my electricity of say 1%.

Can someone try and poke holes in this idea? It feels like this could work!

Have a nice weekend.

  • nanook@friendica.eskimo.com
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    2 months ago

    An e-commerce site invariably involves a level of responsibility that I don’t think would fly in a federated environment.

  • finitebanjo@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    Decentralized sales platforms would just suck to use, in general. The Amazon problem is likely something that can only be solved by the legislative processes of the countries it operates in.

    Imagine Ebay but with even less scam prevention.

  • PugJesus@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    I know that Federation is exciting, but all these ideas for federated services are really missing the reason why the Fediverse’s current bits are successful - because they have low moral hazard.

    When you get into economics and meatspace relationships, moral hazard skyrockets.

    • BrianTheeBiscuiteer@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      Accepting payments and creating “contracts” over the Fediverse is no bueno at the current time. I think it would require some kind of 3rd party, almost PayPal-esque (PayPal has its own controversy) service that would create the obligation and associated penalties that come with an online transaction. Could be the instance itself but as you said that’s a risk most instance owners wouldn’t take.

      • PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat
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        3 months ago

        Accepting payments isn’t some kind of wild adventure that will inevitably doom your operation. People do it all the time, you can set up a Stripe account in a few minutes. You could, if you wanted (and you would probably want to go this route at least initially), require people to have a Stripe account or something and get paid directly from the buyer without you being involved. And then just charge a flat fee to the merchants or something, if you wanted to make the whole thing sustainable.

        Stripe is well-equipped to deal with issues of taxes, fraud, refunds, and so on for micro-level businesses. Once you get into accepting payments and re-disbursing them to people, you’ve opened up a whole can of worms which probably means you should be spending a couple thousand dollars on lawyers and accountants to make sure it’s all on the up-and-up, but even then, it’s not unsolvable. It’s kind of a pain in the ass, that’s all. Jim Bob’s Towing with his 2 pillhead employees manages to do it every day. It’s how Jim Bob financed his boat. It’s fine.

        • BrianTheeBiscuiteer@lemmy.world
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          3 months ago

          Exactly, you probably want a 3rd party to handle the money exchange part. Doesn’t mean a Fedi app can’t facilitate everything else.

        • catloaf@lemm.ee
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          3 months ago

          Sure, but the type of people looking to use federated selling platforms are unlikely to want to use something like Stripe

          • PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat
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            3 months ago

            Then they are being silly.

            I actually don’t think that would be an issue in practice, given how alarmingly eager Fediverse instance operators are to get in bed with Cloudflare and AWS. But, if you are accepting payments, you are for the forseeable future going to be working with some kind of financial processor, and Stripe is far from the worse of the bunch as far as that is concerned.

  • naught101@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    A version of this focussed on a gift economy/trading platform (e.g. like freecycle, or the buy nothing groups on facebook) would also be cool.

    Also person-to-person buying/selling, rather than business-to-person would be nice to have, like craigslist, reverb.com, gumtree, or used items on ebay.

    If this was focused on a craigslist/gumtree style of selling, where most of the actual trade is done off-site/in-person with cash or bank transfers, it would completely side-step the payment processor problem.

  • Remy Rose@piefed.social
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    3 months ago

    Closest we’ve got right now is Flohmarkt, right? If they haven’t already been working on some kinda trust system, they’re probably taking code contributions. I saw somewhere else somebody suggested Loops integration for it, so they could have something like the tiktok shop. I mean capitalism is garbage, but unfortunately we do currently gotta buy stuff occasionally, and it would be nice if that experience sucked less.

  • Cyborganism@lemmy.ca
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    3 months ago

    It’s much more than that. Amazon’s strength is also in its proximity warehouses and contacts with delivery companies.

    Otherwise you just have a federated Ebay.

  • 11111one11111@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    I know 20 years ago Walmart was the face of corporate evil but hear me out. They have had 1 company MO and have never wavered from it, providing affordable goods at the lowest possible price to the consumer without any bells or whistles. No coupons, no buy 3 get 1 free, no sketchy pricing based on bullwhip procurement.

    My message here is to encourage anyone like myself who is fed the fuck up with Amazon, Google and Microsoft shitting on every product they put out all rhe while cutting all operating costs from any semblance of customer support. I call Walmart every year to check how much .22 ammo they have around deer season to get my tags and the winters supply of varmint ammo in one trip. Every year I speak to a real person even if it rings for a hot minute.

    For about the same price as Amazon prime, I have Walmart “prime” that comes with free delivery of not just market place shit but also same day grocery delivery. They dont spread themselves too thin like literally every single corporate giant out there. They were better equipped than Amazon to get into the market place industry and they are killing it. While every other shit head company is dumping billions into AI (Walmart might be too idk so take this with a grain of salt) Walmart invested billions into developing their drone delivery project.

    Tldr: I encourage everyone who likes simple affordable products from a straight forward without any bullshit to give the Walmart equivalent of Amazon prime a shot.

    Edit: One other perk point for uncle Wally is it isn’t a snake payment deal like 9.99/month of never ending monthly payment, maybe they do offer that now but when I signed up it was a single flat payment for 1 year and I get 2 emails letting me know it’s coming due for next year and the second being the invoice. They dont spam you, force apps on you, value your data more than you or the product you’re buying. Fuck i could keep going with how pleased I’ve been with Walmart.