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.
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.
That’s a solved issue. Monero escrow services have been doing exactly this for the dark web for years now
Yeah but that doesn’t solve anything for the average Joe. Nor lost packages or scamming tactics etc.
If u get scammed u report it and the escrow doesn’t release the funds to the seller. The technology is the same its just the application that differs.
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.
So not decentralised then 😅
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.
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???
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. :)
So online farmers/flea market?
flea market
that is online farmers and flea market? feel free to post a link
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.
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.
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.
Exactly, you probably want a 3rd party to handle the money exchange part. Doesn’t mean a Fedi app can’t facilitate everything else.
I’m in pretty strong agreement with you. Then again, i run a business and am a reseller for a couple companies. It isn’t exactly rocket science. Company A has product, I note their price, make my own price, send offer to company B. They accept or decline. if the customer has any problems with the product, they either come to me or to the manufacturer. Imho its not much different than a unified storefron would be. Also you can put the sellers name in the storefront like ebay, amazon, ali express etc. the customer knows that its not you who actually sells the product. I think we’re making this a lot more complicated than it needs to be.
Yeah. I think a lot of the people in these comments are people just not experienced with business who assume that it is scary and impossible. There are certain aspects that are hairy if you don’t know what you’re getting into, but the whole system is designed to make it pretty easy. On the whole pie chart of “pain in the ass aspects,” there are some pretty big slices in places, but “I have to set up a Stripe account oh no” is not one of them lol. That one is a tiny tiny sliver.
Even if you decide to collect payments yourself and do payouts to merchants yourself, like a little Etsy or Amazon, dealing with the headaches involved with sending and receiving the cash will still be a minority of your problems. Although they will jump up to being significant.
I kind of want to express interest for getting involved with this thing with you, since I do think it’s a really good idea, but IDK if I really want to take it on. I do think it’s a really good idea, though. Basically add the “operated by actual humans” aspect to online e-commerce as it is being added for online social media.
I feel like you’re my kind of person. From the hackspace I frequent, I take the liberty to just set something up and put some work in. others can come in and help or not. stuff will either progress or not.
I would suggest we prop up a repository on codeberg (because of course) or something. You can dm me if that suits you more. everyone who reads this is of course invited to help/participate with any skills they want to bring in.
First question will be does something like this exist like e.g. https://codeberg.org/flohmarkt/flohmarkt and should we just work on implementing something like this in normal websites with the ideas just mentioned in this thread, should we fork it or should we build something from scratch.
I just landed on this thread and choose to respond to you here, OP. I will say you’re my kinda person :) I’m also an ethical business person and came to conclude that federated marketplaces are the future. I put together a community here (https://lemm.ee/c/fedonomy) but never posted anything. I’ve been thinking / working on this for over a year now, more on the incentive/ economic model and setting up a real life business in a very specific niche. I hate typing on the phone and there is too much to type and it’s like 4 am. Please message me.
Sure, but the type of people looking to use federated selling platforms are unlikely to want to use something like Stripe
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.
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?
Crypto doesn’t really solve any of the problems that a payment processor wouldn’t also solve, unfortunately.
yeah, thats right as well. and at least to my knowledge it would not be better to the environment either. one thing at a time. federated payment is for next week. :)
I would probably just use stripe and charge the customer and spread the money to the company in question. this is what you do as a normal business as well btw. You probably need to make your terms and the shop so that customer and the law knows that you are just a storefront for others as well as your own product. but aside from that I dont see a huge issue there.
What is “meatspace”
Real life. The offline world. Grassville.
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
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.
communal warehouses for fulfillment should be a service that is nationalized.
Domestic terrorism vibes here
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.
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
Thats a very good point. Thank you. I dont disagree on any of it but I think there could be alternatives to some parts.
There are physical syndicate-owned places that store collective things in them. Also, we are talking businesses here. A collective warehouse of say 100 sellers around a small city or bit town would not be easily being held hostage.
But these are details, although very interesting. Its very good long term for making such a project more resiliant and competitive.
Ideas are cheap. This is the third post like this I’ve seen in two weeks. Build it.
I think the closest you can come is open source an entire business, from business plans, architecture, systems, payment processing, etc.
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.
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.
Lol
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.
as long as it’s between instances and not exposed to end-users, yeah i think that was the original use case.
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
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.
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.
I’ll have to look into it at some point. The crypto bros could have also been hired by banks at this point to burn crypto as comoetition. I would not touch it with a 10 foot pole before extensive personally conducted research. which is unrealistic even for myself but especially for everyone else.
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 !monero@monero.town
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.
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.
in that case this would absolutely be a neat way of doing it. thanks for pointing that out.
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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.
Thats an interesting bit of information. Thanks! :)
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.
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.
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.
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.
I buy stuff from Ebay and Etsy plenty often.
Let’s call it Frontpage
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.
Thats pretty straightfoward. I like it. Combined shipping can make sense. Thanks for participating.
