Fediverse

Looks good. While it looks more oriented towards a second-hand marketplace, its concepts can be extended to include business-to-consumer interactions as well. A mix of these systems could enhance the marketplace ecosystem's versatility and usefulness. Thanks for sharing the proposal

This is very interesting to me and I've played with this kinda idea a few weeks ago, the Activity Pub proposal you linked seems very sensible for communicating between actors but doesn't really offer much of a path to create a platform. In my view creating a platforms is the reason this should exist, because current platforms (Amazon,Ebay,Uber, AirBnB,DoorDash,Lieferheld) are mostly just engaging in rent seeking from buyers/sellers on their platforms. Rentier Capitalism

I don't believe a protocol can sufficiently challenge the current players without an underpinning organizational structure that ensures fairness and transparency to both sellers and buyers, when it comes to moderation, indexing, and categorization. Especially moderation but also hosting will have costs, and the consequences for bad moderation are likely much larger with commerce than with social media. So I would like a Coop with significant control from both sellers and buyers to provide the public facing platform which then federates with the Stores which can be self hosted by sellers (potentially as an extension to existing eCommerce Software).

Or alternatively two Coops if it's not reasonable for the sellers to host their own Stores e.g.: Uber and AirBnB, here the sellers should outright own the one providing the Stores, and own the minority in the one providing the Coop. Obviously middle grounds could also exist where e.g.: a Platform for Delivery food federates with seller servers that are hosted on a local level by Coops comprising of restaurants of a region.

I very deeply believe something like this could make our commerce much better and fairer, and while getting it of the ground might be hard, I think because the sellers make money on these Platforms it should give real incentive to develop both the tech and the legal orgs as well as advertise for them, and for the sellers to invest real money into it, or maybe agree to kick 1-2% of a purchase back to the coop.

Adding some element of democracy (like voting on posts) could maybe improve both those marketplace sites.

I think it would improve any site really. Imagine how much better Instagram or Facebook would be if one could downvote stupid shit and the posters would see what people actually thought about their posts/comments. But that might lead to sads, and therefore less active users, so they won't allow it.

Democracy is pretty cool though imo.

The Federation would provide a great tool of figuring out the best way to build trust. A reputable server will only let people join if they are in some way reputable. Servers that let scammers flourish will become defederated. If course servers have to be comparable in size. If there's one server with 90% of users it doesn't work that well.

There's a world where it can make sense, due to advancing technology and education. We don't live in it.

Ok, you don't think that decentralizing is the solution. If you consider Amazon and eBay to be a problem what do you think might be a potential solution?

I hate the marketplace thing, and the harder it became to filter out third parties the more I ordered outside of amazon.

I came to amazon back then because it was one seller offering most I cared about, and a single contact for everything. More and more stuff is now only available via 3rd parties - and with that I can just order stuff bypassing amazon.

Amazon has gone downhill massively in the last few years (in the UK anyway). Free delivery is only for orders over £20 now if you don't have Prime, and they make it really difficult for you to pay for delivery as an option. Prime is no longer next day delivery, or even guaranteed delivery by a specific date.

My last 2 orders were marked as delivered but haven't arrived. It was so difficult to get a refund for the first one (you have to go through a chat bot now which wasn't easy to find on their app) and I haven't been able to get a refund for the second one yet as it was a 3rd party seller and they haven't responded to my message.

I'm trying to use other sellers as much as possible now. It's also often cheaper to go direct I'm finding lately.

Payment terminal aren't as locked down as you think.

They are shitty because manufacturers do the bare minimum and always ask for exceptions (and they often are granted).

Processors only one as much terminal as possible out there to make more money.

Plus the illegal items being sold. Who would monitor those.

Piracy communities have been defederated just because worlds wants to preempt legal trouble, just in case the moderation there slips up.

What more for physical items, such as illegal drugs and our services. The fediverse might quickly find itself to be a clear net version of the silk road, or a real hotbed of counterfeit items.

The reason why I choose Amazon is buying from many different stores without creating an account for each and every one. Nevermind that paying is easy.

They have a huge market share in Europe too. And it's very hard to compete with them, because in online retail the advantages given by economy of scale are brutal.