Can we please make a viable (federated!) amazon alternative? I have an idea!
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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.
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So online farmers/flea market?
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Example 1: So you buy at toms groceries, you trust them.
[citation needed]
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how to ship goods?
Part of their point was that Amazon doesn't handle shipping for a lot of the things they sell. If you want to, they can store everything within their massively-optimized operation and ship it for you for a small-enough-to-be-compelling fee, but you don't have to. You can also just list your stuff there and ship it to customers when they order it.
how to process payments?
This is trivial. The modern financial internet makes it extremely easy.
how to handle refunds? how to handle contestations?
This is a fair point, probably the biggest issue that could be a stumbling block. One fair counterpoint is that Amazon's handling of these situations is often pure uncaring dogshit, so if you're doing a bad job at it, you're still no different than Amazon (and potentially better than, since it is hard to see how someone could be any worse.)
It's not totally simple, and you have to do some real actual work to solve it, but it's also not like going to the moon. It's solvable.
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Shilling your bags as usual. Crypto-scammers are all so predictable.
Why in god's name do you need monero to buy groceries or even computer parts?
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I really like the idea of a grassroots Amazon competitor. That said,
You need to have a high level of trust. A federated network of shady scams that just take your money and send you nothing half the time is not going to fly. Is there a vetting process, who controls that process, how's all that work. If its 'good seller' reviews, how are those stats protected from manipulation.
You need to have extreme ease of use. UI barriers that seem trivial to developers can sink a platform.
If there are problems solvable by centralization, maybe that could be done as a cooperative organization which devs and vendors can join and run democratically.
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amazons true strength is ultimately in their logistics. Amazon itself isn’t a bad idea in theory but the execution is poor because of cutthroat capitalism exploiting workers and privatization. Ultimately the idea of sellers being able to ship their goods to communal warehouses for fulfillment should be a service that is nationalized. The marketplace can be federated, sure
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I think the closest you can come is open source an entire business, from business plans, architecture, systems, payment processing, etc.
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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.
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I mean, if their content was signed you could verify the authenticity of the certificate. Usually the business name appears in the cert.
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I wonder if you can 'outsource' trust by relying on payment systems? If a seller uses stripe and scams some users, stripe would freeze their account right?
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This is some Azula-level irony.
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Another issue might be, how do you deal with people selling illegal items/services? How do you avoid "Silk Road" style liability? Would there be a blacklist that someone running an instance could use so they don't have to vet everyone they are federated with?
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Considering your answer to payments solution was "This is trivial.' it sounds like a) You've never run a business and b) you're more interested in fantasizing than a realistic conversation.
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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.
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Correct. Someone orders something, it doesn't arrive, they dispute the charge with their CC company, their CC company and Stripe talk to one another and get the merchant's side of the story, and basically unless there is some pretty massive indication that the buyer is lying or has a consistent pattern of this or something, the buyer gets their money back. If that happens a bunch, the seller loses their Stripe account.
The system is heavily biased in favor of the buyer, which for the most part works out, because most of the fraud exists on the seller end. And on the whole the fact that 99% of people on both sides are not cockheads trying to abuse the system, is what makes it all work reasonably well.
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I have run several businesses, some of them on this micro-scale. That's how I know that part is trivial.
You can literally set it up for yourself for free, if you want to see: https://stripe.com/
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Pretty much what they're doing all over this thread.
Like some people can only see the glass half full. Few have the guys to look at both the fullness and the emptyness equally.
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Another point here, Amazon has really thin profit margins on their core business (not counting AWS, etc. Just the online shopping). If it weren't absolutely gargantuan, it would fail. It's only profitable because of the logistical efficiency it has achieved, exploitation (of workers, cheap goods from China, etc.), and absolutely massive economies of scale. Similar to Walmart.
Recommended reading: People's Republic of Walmart.
All for nationalizing - would be better for everyone. -
God, if only someone had invented an internet-native form of money in 2008
