Can we please make a viable (federated!) amazon alternative? I have an idea!
-
That's quite a popular theory that the banks and even perhaps the us government itself played a part in promoting the crypto scams and nft bullshit simply to poison the idea of crypto for the masses.
Please do look into it if u got any questions dont be afraid to ask [email protected]
Thank you for this friendly and encouraging offer. This goes a long way sowing trust. I feel a lot more positive about looking into it now. Have a nice weekend.
-
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.
no sketchy pricing based on bullwhip procurement.
Walmart's procurement has been abusive to their suppliers (who often go out of business because of their relationship with Walmart) for decades. I think you may need to reassess your perception of their procurement strategy.
-
Very much decentralized. Just with the caveat that payment decentrlization needs its own project. Successful foss software projects typically have a narrow scope and concentrate on them. Feel free to do the payment part in an adjacent project so that we dont have yo rely on stripe and paypal.
Sorry to bother, good luck.
-
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.
Amazon doesnβt handle shipping for a lot of the things they sell.
This is false. Very few products sold via Amazon are shipped independently from Amazon's logistics services.
-
you are not proposing a federated amazon, this is just federated ads and/or reviews.
how to process payments? how to ship goods? how to handle refunds? how to handle contestations?
please you can't just make anything federated. this protocol is built for social media and struggles to take over that sphere, we should focus on one thing rather than throwing random stuff at the wall hoping it sticks (cough federated tik tok cough)
how to process payments? how to ship goods? how to handle refunds? how to handle contestations?
The problems are solvable, but the solutions taken together are couple times as complex as Amazon itself. This translates to cost. Which is naturally the reason Amazon came to existence earlier than that solution.
I think that layers of storage\messages and actual logic should be firmly separated, an instance going down when someone wants a refund for an operation that involved it seems not good enough. If the operation is a cryptographic contract with an escrow, and "instances" are just servers providing message storage probably privileged for some users (might be members of a community, might pay for that storage, that's lower layer anyway), this is less of a problem. But that's not a federation.
By the way, however I dislike OP's attitude, if you suggest this idea like a federated ads and reviews platform, it becomes useful.
-
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.
a) Youβve never run a business
They might have run a small business or been present in a bigger one in management position, doing their own job well enough to avoid painful understanding they don't get it as a whole. Arrogance is not always cured by experience, actually I doubt it's ever cured in humans and we all have it.
b) youβre more interested in fantasizing than a realistic conversation.
That much was clear from the very beginning, I tend to have such ideas too, but I have BAD and thus mania periods.
-
I really don't see the appeal of activity-pub for this.
It's a protocol used for social media and interactions. You describe just sort of a "metastore".
Maybe a review store site could work better with activity pub.
I think it makes sense. It would allow a decentralized unified search across all stores. With Lemmy I can search posts as long as the instance is federated. With this I could find products.
-
I think it makes sense. It would allow a decentralized unified search across all stores. With Lemmy I can search posts as long as the instance is federated. With this I could find products.
In this example instances are stores, stores are users in instances? How stores are protected to be defederated by competitors (we are talking about money and making a living here).
What it adds to just a simple centralized service that any store can join. If you don't want it to be another amazon, make that service a coop. or some kinds of non-profit that it's paid by the stores that want to become part of that.
I think here we are in the classic conundrum of "a solution in search of a problem".
Fediverse and ActivityPub is cool, but it's a social media thing. And decentralization is cool when needed, for instance social media. But it doesn't have to make sense for every use case.
For what's being proposed there's zero actual need for decentralization or ActivityPub.
-
no sketchy pricing based on bullwhip procurement.
Walmart's procurement has been abusive to their suppliers (who often go out of business because of their relationship with Walmart) for decades. I think you may need to reassess your perception of their procurement strategy.
Lol that's called business. It's why nothing came from any of the investigations accusing them of not doing enough to protect workers employed by other companies they purchased from. It also happened around 2015ish and all the articles I found from 2020 praise their supply chain managment.
https://www.marketingscoop.com/consumer/walmart-supply-chain-strategy/
I mean they were called out for not being attentive enough and they responded in a way you would hope a company would respond. Albeit an article written by walmart but still they owned up and addressed it.
Haven't found a single source that supports your claim that the issue went on for decades either so feel free to provide some sources and I'll be happy to read them and adjust my opinion accordingly.
-
In this example instances are stores, stores are users in instances? How stores are protected to be defederated by competitors (we are talking about money and making a living here).
What it adds to just a simple centralized service that any store can join. If you don't want it to be another amazon, make that service a coop. or some kinds of non-profit that it's paid by the stores that want to become part of that.
I think here we are in the classic conundrum of "a solution in search of a problem".
Fediverse and ActivityPub is cool, but it's a social media thing. And decentralization is cool when needed, for instance social media. But it doesn't have to make sense for every use case.
For what's being proposed there's zero actual need for decentralization or ActivityPub.
Instances are stores (think Amazon or Etsy). Products are posts. Sellers are users.
Stores aren't protected from being defederated. You can still search Google or whatever, still visit the site and buy stuff. It just will not be a unified search, just like how anything else works with ActivityPub.
The good stores would be run by admins who don't have an incentive to defederate from others. Stores don't make money or take a cut from sellers anyway. The sellers aren't in charge of the instance, just like an Etsy seller can't do anything about the fact that they have competitors on Etsy.
The need for decentralization is that the store / Amazon / Etsy is broken up but the search and interactions, reviews, etc. are unified.
-
Amazon doesnβt handle shipping for a lot of the things they sell.
This is false. Very few products sold via Amazon are shipped independently from Amazon's logistics services.
Do you have numbers for this? I tried to find some, and couldn't.
-
Instances are stores (think Amazon or Etsy). Products are posts. Sellers are users.
Stores aren't protected from being defederated. You can still search Google or whatever, still visit the site and buy stuff. It just will not be a unified search, just like how anything else works with ActivityPub.
The good stores would be run by admins who don't have an incentive to defederate from others. Stores don't make money or take a cut from sellers anyway. The sellers aren't in charge of the instance, just like an Etsy seller can't do anything about the fact that they have competitors on Etsy.
The need for decentralization is that the store / Amazon / Etsy is broken up but the search and interactions, reviews, etc. are unified.
Those admins are unpaid?
Managing a store it's a LOT of work. And you are doing to provide profit for other people. Who is going to do it for free?
It's not like social media where people may volunteer to admin and mod, and users may donate because it's a common goal of share information, opinions, knowledge, funny stuff etc.
Here we are talking about bussiness that do what they do because they want money. I would not volunteer to admin a store so shop owners could earn money, that's for sure.
And I still not see the advantage of doing within the ActivityPub instead of just being a normal service where all interested shops could join.
-
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.
Wasn't a federated Amazon just a mall, in a way?
-
Wasn't a federated Amazon just a mall, in a way?
Good point!
The mall was still centralized and most shops didnt have their own place and a stall ij the mall but I can totally see where you're coming from.
It might be a good idea to keep this in mind if this ever becomes reality and we need marketing ideas.
-
Lol that's called business. It's why nothing came from any of the investigations accusing them of not doing enough to protect workers employed by other companies they purchased from. It also happened around 2015ish and all the articles I found from 2020 praise their supply chain managment.
https://www.marketingscoop.com/consumer/walmart-supply-chain-strategy/
I mean they were called out for not being attentive enough and they responded in a way you would hope a company would respond. Albeit an article written by walmart but still they owned up and addressed it.
Haven't found a single source that supports your claim that the issue went on for decades either so feel free to provide some sources and I'll be happy to read them and adjust my opinion accordingly.
They dictate the operations of their suppliers. They force large expansions in capital investment and then decide that they don't want to renew the supplier relationship before the financing for the capital investments can be paid back. The only way suppliers can hope avoid this is to do what Walmart wants or constantly change their products in often superficial ways with branding agreements for IP of entertainment companies.
-
Do you have numbers for this? I tried to find some, and couldn't.
-
Yeah, so 18% of the stuff is shipped by someone else. IDK if you want to call that "a lot", but I definitely wouldn't call it "very few." Anyway glad we got to the answer, however to characterize it.
-
Wasn't a federated Amazon just a mall, in a way?
A mall is a private real estate instrument built by speculators to extract rent from businesses and it's actually rather predatory. This is fundamentally not real estate and fundamentally does not exist to extract rent, so it's more like "what if you took a mall and removed all the mall-ness from it".
If malls were collectively owned by the stores that comprise them and pieces of the mall could appear and disappear at will of whoever's participating... Is it actually even still a mall really???
-
This is incredibly valuable advice! Thank you so much!
My current stance on federation is of course opt in and requires the main seller to trust the downstream vendors.
The main point is that this already happens for a large portion of thing you can buy. I sell computers and adjacent services, classical system integration if you will. Of course I have to buy the systems from vendors and resell them to my customers.
Many system integrators have shops where some of them rely on custom integration of vendor apis. Take minecraft server sites for example that have an automated integration with a hosting company's api (eg hetzner). you as a customer just order a server, their automation makes the order processing with hetzner and provisions the server for you.
Now make this over a non custom but standardized api, eg activity pub.
I might still be overlooking stuff but from a technical standpoint this should be doable. The legal aspect is interesting, although I think this could be done similar to already existing resellers.
Feel free to point out flaws obvious to you. I appreciate your feedback massively.
I think the biggest issue is that if you already need to separate payments, returns, shipping, etc... you're left with a shop that also advertises products for other shops, possibly competitors. Then the question becomes... why bother federating at all?
I think it'd be better to set up a FOSS shopping platform, eg something that competes with WooCommerce or the likes. That's significantly easier from a financial and legal perspective, and I think it's an easier sell to actual merchants (why pay a license for that shit, use this one for freeee). Then once you have that running, you could think about optional federation as an addition to an already well-functioning platform.
-
There is a simple way to solve this. Make it so only people who have purchased the product can give reviews.
There is absolutely nothing "simple" about that. It sounds simple, but what does "someone has purchased a product" actually mean, in technical terms?
Let's start basic, since this is a proposal about a federated system, there are instances. Who runs these and why? Does ever seller run an instance? can there be users/customers on those? if not, who runs the customer-instances? Who defines what a product is, and are products like communities? or more like posts? how do you correlate different sellers selling the same item, where a review would obviously apply to both? can you review a shop or seller? Are delivery services their own "entitty" and can you review those, too? When you purchase an item
Now without any answers to any of those question, let's just go to the next level. Where are the reviews stored? in the instance where the item is sold (possibly owned by the shop)? or with the user? if it's with the user, how does a webserver displaying an item find all the reviews for it? Does this differ between reviews for items and reviews of shops/sellers?
If a review is stored on the instance of the seller, he can just add an entry to the database stating "user x purchased item y", and the review is valid. If the reviews are stored with the user, he can spin up an instance, and create a bunch of users there who can leave reviews, because he can mark sales as "valid" as the seller, no matter if there was any item and/or money exchanged.
I wrote all of this thinking about the classic sellers attempt at "creating good reviews to boost a product", but there is the opposite threat of review-bombing (might be a competing product or seller, or you just don't like pink shirts and decide to review-bomb those): How you protect against those has similarities, but reverses the roles essentially. Sellers are now the "target", and reviewers the "threat".
Aaaand this all is just about reviews, which have no monetary value. The platforms main goal would be to deal with physical items, exchanged for real money, and creating physical effects (like shipping). All those have to also be secured in a much more robust way. If a fake review or two slip through the cracks, who cares. But if just one valuable item goes missing (or is never shipped), or the payment for it, that's immediately a problem.
