Comment on Can we please make a viable (federated!) amazon alternative? I have an idea!

daniskarma@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

• someacnt@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  Reading the post, I found what I really want right now: a federated review platform. Too many times I want to look for a product, and has to look into a reddit thread to see a recommendation. There should be one, right? Where is it?

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  • Emperor@feddit.uk ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    Reading the post, I found what I really want right now: a federated review platform.

    !neodb@lemmy.zip is a general review site. It currently covers media but, if you can get the data in (SKUs?) I can’t see a reason it couldn’t cover other products.

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    • someacnt@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      Thanks a lot! Bummer that it is primarily for media. I wish it had more publicity/popularity, is there any way I can help?

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      • Emperor@feddit.uk ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

        It’s not a bunker per se, it is just that, if you are a review platform, the easiest initial targets would be Goodreads, IMDb, etc. Other types of stuff to review may take a little longer. However, if you can get access to a source of unique IDs, it may be possible to import the information. As it is written in Python there will be knowledgeable folks around who can better advise on this. I’d suggest post about it here: !neodb@lemmy.zip. See what other people think about it.

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  • balder1991@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    If it involves money, it has the incentive to game the system. So you’d be dealing with multiple efforts of actors adding fake reviews, sabotaging competitors, endless spam etc.

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    • someacnt@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      Argh, that connects it to the shopping platform. I wish there is a way around amazon…

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• asdfasdfasdf@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  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.

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  • daniskarma@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    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.

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    • asdfasdfasdf@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      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.

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      • daniskarma@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

        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.

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