Comments

• ChairmanMeow@programming.dev ⁨18⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago

  I work in the IT department for a fairly large payment service provider. I can tell you now that you seem to be vastly underestimating both the financial aspect of this as well as several legal aspects.

  • Federation would almost certainly have to be opt-in rather than opt-out. I don’t think you’re going to pass KYC checks for any PSP if it’s opt-out, the risk of someone (ever so briefly) selling illegal goods through your website is too great otherwise. Stripe would just shut down your account (if they even let you open it), PayPal probably won’t let you open it at all.

  • Selling goods from other sites through your own, makes you liable for any returns, warranty claims etc… Simply “passing these on” isn’t going to cut it. If the other site disagrees with the customer claim, you are on the hook for it, because it was sold through your website.

  • The financial logistics aspect here is really complex. If you’re going to process payments on behalf of another site, you have to deal with reconciliation. After reconciliation you have to the send the money to the other shop, incurring additional (sometimes surprisingly sizeable) fees. And coming from someone who deals with (automated) reconciliation on a daily basis, every payment method does it differently and they all find extremely creative ways to mess up your systems. And that includes unannounced changes, mistakes, random unexplained fees, failure to deliver settlement files, etc…

  • How do you deal with the risk of scam instances? E.g. instance A tells instance B that a product was sold and the payment was processed. B sends it out, but it turns out the customer was the owner of A, and there was no payment at all. B just lost a product with very little chance of getting it back.

  • Then there’s practical aspects. How do you deduplicate products in search? Or will you have dozens of listings for the exact same product?

  The only remotely viable way I see this working is if only search is actually federated. Once you are on a product page, you can only pay using the payment page of the instance that has the product. You won’t be able to pay for products of multiple instances at once, and you might lose some unified styling. But at least that approach has a chance of passing KYC and deals with all the legal issues regarding returns/warranties etc…, and it reduces the scam risk because you’re in charge of your own payments. But at that point, you’ve only federated product search and nothing else, and then as a consumer you might as well just Google it instead.

  I appreciate you have experience in running a business, but running a marketplace, especially a very complicated one, is really not like running a usual business.

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• jaggedrobotpubes@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago

  I think the way to beat amazon is to specialize in one tiny area. Carve them up into such small slices that they cant fight back.

  So like, instead of trying to do just their books business, do just horror books. Horror that mixes with all genres, every possible crossover, but always horror books.

  Having a genuine specialty is what can take amazon down, bit by bit. Something genuinely cool, something genuinely fun. Another big-ass store is nothing special.

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  • haui_lemmy@lemmy.giftedmc.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago

    You obviously didnt get the point. These stores already exist and they’re not big.

    I do get the specialization idea and I think its valid. i just dont see how to make that federated and why only for books as I’m not talking about a service, really. Its a network.

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• buzz86us@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago

  I would love a federated Amazon that works directly with producers to sell everything at cost without a middleman or fees.

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  • haui_lemmy@lemmy.giftedmc.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago

    There you go. Glad you like it.

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• vxx@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  I like the idea and it could work very well for smaller communities. In fact, theyre already doing something similar called “Werbering” (advertising ring) in germany. It takes the idea and elevates it into the digital space.

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  • haui_lemmy@lemmy.giftedmc.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Thats an interesting bit of information. Thanks! :)

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• PugJesus@lemmy.world ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ 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.

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  • BrianTheeBiscuiteer@lemmy.world ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ 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.

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    • PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ 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.

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  • haui_lemmy@lemmy.giftedmc.com ⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    That is a very good point! Thank you! I figured someone would find a constructive way to argue why something might be better than something else and you are that person. This would kind of speak to the idea of crypto which I dont really like on first sight but it would at least give the ability to audit, right?

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    • PugJesus@lemmy.world ⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Crypto doesn’t really solve any of the problems that a payment processor wouldn’t also solve, unfortunately.

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  • x4740N@lemm.ee ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    What is “meatspace”

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    • PugJesus@lemmy.world ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Real life. The offline world. Grassvile.

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• rottingleaf@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  No, federated model is chosen over distributed model or centralized model to allow feuds, putting it simply.

  That may work for a Reddit alternative, but doesn’t work for markets. Helps moderation (some idea of it, I don’t think that idea is good), but definitely hurts a single space to sell and buy stuff.

  Which is why cryptobros and such types make either centralized or distributed systems.

  So much for using computer networks for this.

  Now about Amazon specifically - your post omits the whole warehouses and logistics part. Which is most of Amazon’s core business.

  Computer people today somehow started forgetting that real life is very hard and complex. When I was a kid (born 1996, so not old man), computers had a promise of making that real life easier, and from time to time delivered on it, but at some point bullshit like glossy buttons and Web 2.0 and social media became a thing in itself, and everyone started behaving as if it’s done, we now can look down like olympic gods to those mortals messing around in dirt, and sometimes easily solve their problems. We can’t.

  Getting back to logistics - one has to design a system of shared warehouses, transportation, mailing and delivery tasks, tracking, reporting on outcomes of every event, and all that should be even more abuse-resilient than the processes inside actual Amazon. You’ll have Byzantine problems in every interaction.

  The “distributed kind of all social media, solving once and for all the problem of centralized platforms” than I’m often dreaming about is realistic compared to that.

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  • haui_lemmy@lemmy.giftedmc.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Your comment brings no ounce of new ideas or criticisms to the table, overlooks all the pros and cons already mentioned and assumes you know a lot more thane for example. I run businesses for 15 years, do ethical business since 10 yrs and am thinking from a position of experience.

    The reason I dont present myself in a way that screams competence is because this is lemmy and we dont need this stuff. I like spitballing ideas and push new projects for the benefit of the people.

    But feel free to suggest constructive things.

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    • ChairmanMeow@programming.dev ⁨38⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago

      I feel like this is far too dismissive for a comment that was in my eyes fairly constructive. He correctly pointed out that one of Amazon’s main selling points is their whole logistics division. A federated website doesn’t have that. So either:

      • You somehow also start doing logistics, or
      • You provide a good reason why shops don’t actually care about Amazon’s logistics all that much, and how they could to it themselves instead.

      Maybe you could actually address the core of his criticism instead of outright dismissing it.

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• 11111one11111@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ 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.

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  • haui_lemmy@lemmy.giftedmc.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Glad you found something that works for you mate. Still, this corpo-soft-lock-in-shit isn’t cool man. I get it, you want it easy and reliable. But this aint it. The stuff I’m talking about here is kind of the middle inbetween local seller and wholesale chain store. Thats why I like the idea.

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• iltg@sh.itjust.works ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  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)

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  • Suoko@feddit.it ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    the idea is not bad. Think you create your ecommerce site, list your products, and they are automatically listed in a huge marketplace. The same could apply for bed and breakfast booking websites

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  • PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    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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    • Randomgal@lemmy.ca ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      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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    • RowRowRowYourBot@sh.itjust.works ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      You think the payment processing issues are trivial? That’s a weird claim.

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  • PriorityMotif@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Bittorrent is federated streaming video before it was cool.

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  • haui_lemmy@lemmy.giftedmc.com ⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Wow. Took a while to get a naysayer in here.

    Sorry mate, I can do whatever I like. You should visit a hackspace at some point. You would be shocked how many people there give a crap about what you think they can do.

    But on a more productive note:

    I have not thought out the whole process yet. Otherwise I would not ask here but show a product. There are ways to work payments for open source already. Payments are limited to credit cards, bank transfer, crypto, paypal, stripe, etc as far as I know. So I would suggest the “main shop”, that the customer orders in, would be the one booking and sending the other funds to the other shops the customer ordered in. The delivery would be standard dropshipping (the buy order goes to the other shop and they are responsible for delivery, same as amazon does for many shops now). Contestations is a good point. They would also need to be delivered to the dropshipped company and the payment contested as well. From my current pov this sounds entirely doable.

    So if you just drop that condescending tone you can see we actually can be productive here. Do you have any more points we can work through?

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  • Mubelotix@jlai.lu ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    God, if only someone had invented an internet-native form of money in 2008

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    • PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat ⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      A lot of the terrifying aspects of slinging money around that people are talking about in this thread actually do become terrifying, once Bitcoin and friends are your platform. Fraud? Refunds? Someone hacked your server and stole your wallet? All that stuff is now 100% your problem, there is absolutely no way to “undo” of something wrong happens, and no infrastructure in place to handle any of it or any professionals with already a simple system in place for it.

      I actually think 3% is roughly a fair fee for the processor to charge you, in exchange for agreeing to worry about all of that nonsense on your behalf so you can just collect the money. For in-person transactions, it’s mostly just a predatory rent payment, but for online transactions where the possibility for malfeasance is amplified, it makes sense to me.

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• ragebutt@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  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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  • ALoafOfBread@lemmy.ml ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    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 (workers and 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.

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  • haui_lemmy@lemmy.giftedmc.com ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    That is a very constructive idea! Thanks. The warehouses can also be collectively bought/built imho but I’m not totally opposed to state owned. Everything is better than techno feudalist owned.

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    • ragebutt@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Collective buying and building of such a project means that there is not universal standard or regulation and the project falls apart when there is disagreement. Given the scale this is inevitable

      Look at lemmy for example: most servers play nicely but occasionally you get the server like exploding heads that cause the overwhelming majority to defederate

      Amazon has 300 warehouses across the US and another 175 worldwide according to a quick web search. That’s a lot of sites that have to play nice with each other. If even one of them starts having poor practices, doing something offensive, something disruptive, etc. it may cause a lot of the others to not want to work with them. If you have one that is especially shit stirring then it may cause a huge portion of the network to cut ties.

      But unlike lemmy now it’s not just some social media where you jump to a new server. Now companies have their products held hostage. Now people in that region potentially have services significantly disrupted. Now your whole system is undermined and a bezos type can swoop in to prove his is much better and more trustworthy.

      A state controlling it (which would inherently happen with collective ownership if done correctly, a pseudo state would be created given the scale) would introduce regulation and enforcement to ensure consistency in operation. It is then the responsibility of the constituents to hold representatives accountable to ensure regulations and enforcement are meaningful

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• cyborganism@lemmy.ca ⁨12⁩ ⁨hours⁩ 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.

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  • pr06lefs@lemmy.ml ⁨12⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    I order stuff from ebay. Got a phone on the way from china right now. Ebay work-alike might not be a bad place to start.

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    • haui_lemmy@lemmy.giftedmc.com ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Exactly. The idea is to not make a perfect copy but a viable alternative without the constant breaks in design and trust when scouring the web for items. All those funny labels on websites for example like trustedshops are just for this. If one could make a web of trust, that would eliminate fakes and take power from for profit companies who make these labels and control trust.

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  • WolfLink@sh.itjust.works ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    I buy stuff from Ebay and Etsy plenty often.

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  • haui_lemmy@lemmy.giftedmc.com ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Amazon has a lot of different aspects, same as facebook and xitter. I aim to think of alternatives, not perfect copies. My only hard target is that it is free from single entity control. Thats why not ebay or one of the others. Flohmarkt is kind of promising but i’ll check it out deeper and host an instance. That way I can judge its potential.

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• Irelephant@lemm.ee ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  I don’t see why we can’t just buy directly from shops. Maybe an aggregator of links for products, so there is an rss-like feed of products, prices etc?

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  • haui_lemmy@lemmy.giftedmc.com ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Because this does not work in reality. You have many mechanics that are hidden to the casual user but play a significant role from a vendor standpoint.

    You have ui change which means you slow down the users purchase due to them finding buttons and informarion, leading to similar websites which is bad for variety and gives corporare unified marketplaces an edge

    Then you have trust. Leaving a website you have learned to trust means you have to check if the next website is trustworthy which isnt feasible.

    Unified order overview and checkout so you know what you bought and when its coming. Especially for a complex multi stage order.

    Unified payment of course as well as claims, returns, etc.

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  • PriorityMotif@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    like pc-partpicker

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  • MajorHavoc@programming.dev ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    I think we will see this continue, but with federated product search, soon.

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    • haui_lemmy@lemmy.giftedmc.com ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Thats actually a very long interesting point. Thanks for mentioning it

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• scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  This is surprisingly one of the few actual useful uses of blockchain. Business tried to shove it in everywhere and it didn’t make sense because blockchain is a way to audit federated separate instances - which businesses are not. They’re a single monolithic structure, and they don’t need the trust - they already have it. They’re themselves, they just have to trust their own internal teams.

  We, on the otherhand, are the perfect use for it. A way to say X person paid Y person for this product on this day at this time, X person now has the authority to rate Y person for how they did. Immutable, impossible to fake.

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  • muntedcrocodile@lemm.ee ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Exactly xmr has been doing this for the markets on the dark web for years now. Escrow reviews ratings seller trust etc.

    I fear the idea of crypto has been so poisoned by scammers and bullshit that the average person had forgotten it actually has value

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  • turtle@lemm.ee ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    You don’t need a blockchain.

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  • haui_lemmy@lemmy.giftedmc.com ⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    I’m definitely intrigued. I have HUGE prejudices when it comes to blockchain, one being climate impact. The other being privacy of all things. But I can see it as an option.

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    • muntedcrocodile@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Climate impact of monero is significantly less per transaction than any fiat. Their are no physical banks with employees and buildings and travel and transport and minting etc etc etc. Monero is the only truly private currencies all others have every transaction tracked.

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    • scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech ⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Not crypto, blockchain. When done correctly and you don’t have every user trying to calculate the next hash for some pennies it works pretty well. Computing the hash when an action happens like a purchase is fairly trivial compared to mining.

      Crypto started the concept of the blockchain, at the end though it’s just a distributed immutable audit log. The hash is required, but if done correctly, it’s trivial.

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  • lime@feddit.nu ⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    as long as it’s between instances and not exposed to end-users, yeah i think that was the original use case.

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• PriorityMotif@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  The best idea I can come up with is a federated marketplace. Each vendor has their own instance. Buyers can browse the marketplace and have a unified checkout experience. Vendors would have unified product posts so whichever vendor has the best price or fastest shipping (user preference) would get the sale. USPS for example has shipping zones which determine the price for shipping depending on distance.

  The best example I can come up with is rockauto. They are a central marketplace of different auto parts suppliers. You can find parts that are in the same location in order to combine shipping.

  If you put a part in your cart it will then show parts that are in the same warehouse.

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  • haui_lemmy@lemmy.giftedmc.com ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Thats pretty straightfoward. I like it. Combined shipping can make sense. Thanks for participating.

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• Valmond@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  The problem they (should/did) solve was scamming, and payments. So you’d need to have some banking system with locked money, disputes etc. IMO that is the complicated part, the rest is just more or less a searchable database.

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  • muntedcrocodile@lemm.ee ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    That’s a solved issue. Monero escrow services have been doing exactly this for the dark web for years now

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  • haui_lemmy@lemmy.giftedmc.com ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Its possible that this is pretty sttaightforward. My thought on payment is stripe and paypal atm since they’re already established. They also handle this.

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• Kolanaki@pawb.social ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  So… Postmates?

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  • haui_lemmy@lemmy.giftedmc.com ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Again, how about a non condescending way to deliver your feedback? Its valid and I’ll check it. Just take the win.

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• MxRemy@piefed.social ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ 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.

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  • haui_lemmy@lemmy.giftedmc.com ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Flohmarkt is nice if a little small atm but of course it is very new. I’ll check if it would work to implement their api in a normal website/shop. because my point also is to make people independent from each other so that no single entity can control them. in this case I mean if flohmarkt got “outlawed” for example because lobbyists and such, websites would prevail, i hope.

    Thanks for participating.

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    • Suoko@feddit.it ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      We coiod think of an integration with all main ecommerce platforms like:

      WooCommerce X Cart PrestaShop OpenCart osCommerce Joomla Zen Cart VirtueMart (Joomla) Drupal Commerce (Drupal) KonaKart PimCore

      www.ecommerceceo.com/open-source-ecommerce/

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• catloaf@lemm.ee ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Ideas are cheap. This is the third post like this I’ve seen in two weeks. Build it.

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• TurboHarbinger@feddit.cl ⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  ITT: OP has an “idea” and no money. Please do all the work.

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  • muntedcrocodile@lemm.ee ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    I think op sees us as exactly that. His thinktank. Isn’t that kinda the whole point of a social network?

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• Porcupine@lemmy.ml ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Open Bazaar

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• pr06lefs@lemmy.ml ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  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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• blue_berry@lemmy.world ⁨12⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Could this be an app realized based on the mycelial web - amazon uses huge AI models to predict their customers and do the logistics …

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• lambalicious@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Example 1: So you buy at toms groceries, you trust them.

  [citation needed]

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• ThePantser@lemmy.world ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  So online farmers/flea market?

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• reddwarf@feddit.nl ⁨12⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  So in simple terms, you propose to build a mom-and-pop shop and have it act like a global player like Amazon?

  Congrats, it does not happen very often I sit in a chair and stare at the screen in disbelief!

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• muntedcrocodile@lemm.ee ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  I love the idea of federate Amazon. The obvious choice would be to implement Monero as the “reserve currency” integrate with decentralise xmr exchanges and escrow services. U would do some sort of seller raring from consumers giving reviews tied to a purchase transaction on the blockchain.

  Also imagine the possibilities if for services could federate (most likely only with eachother). If this gets built it will be the final form of the free market. No borders no laws no restrictions no censorship no taxes. It would be chaos. The end of wall street as we know it, and from its ashes shall rise a libertarian phoenix.

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• NaibofTabr@infosec.pub ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  I think there’s some misunderstanding here. Amazon is a massive logistics system. The retail storefront is a tiny part of what Amazon is today.

  AWS exists because Amazon needed to solve an internal data handling problem in order to solve their logistics problems so that they could scale up. After building that system, they started selling it as a product to other businesses. The point being, Amazon’s real success is based on providing business-to-business services. The retail website is the tiny public-facing bit, but it depends on the rest of the organization structure in order to operate properly.

  What you’re proposing is more like an eBay alternative, where the system is basically just the storefront, and the sellers listing products are responsible for their own logistics. eBay still provides dispute resolution for buyers though, and that’s hard to achieve without some centralized control.

  There’s also the legal problems. At some point someone will use such a system as a silk road - probably sooner rather than later. Whoever is administrating and hosting it will be liable for criminal activity in the countries where the crime occurs. It will not end well.

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• MyOpinion@lemm.ee ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Or you can just buy from other online retailers.

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• FeelzGoodMan420@eviltoast.org ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Lol

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• timewarp@lemmy.world ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  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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• Creat@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨12⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  You are completely misunderstanding what Amazon actually does, and why it’s successful, despite being a shitty company. It’s first and foremost a logistics company. People can order “stuff” in many places, but if they order it on Amazon, they’ll get it by tomorrow if they order it before midnight. They got warehouse everywhere. They do (some) of their own final deliveries for anyone close to those, use the big logistics players for the rest (ups, DHL, …) while having massive volume and the power to dictate price that comes with that. The number of workers in the warehouses is actually minuscule for their size, it’s all automated. Huge up front cost, very low cost once it’s actually running.

  Consumers go there because they can get literally anything. Again: warehouses. It’s also a market place but that only works (these days) because it’s THE place the people go. The reviews are also a massive point, and would be inherently untrustworthy in a federated version.

  How would you ever get anyone to go to your federated version for shopping that sells like “some” things? Even if you manage to combine all those shops, you’d need a way to agree on what an item is called (or how to assign id numbers) so the same item from multiple sellers is grouped in the same offer, and many similar small things you take for granted it didn’t even ever see/notice on Amazon.

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