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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.
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.
A version of this focussed on a gift economy/trading platform (e.g. like freecycle, or the buy nothing groups on facebook) would also be cool.
Also person-to-person buying/selling, rather than business-to-person would be nice to have, like craigslist, reverb.com, gumtree, or used items on ebay.
If this was focused on a craigslist/gumtree style of selling, where most of the actual trade is done off-site/in-person with cash or bank transfers, it would completely side-step the payment processor problem.
Decentralized sales platforms would just suck to use, in general. The Amazon problem is likely something that can only be solved by the legislative processes of the countries it operates in.
Imagine Ebay but with even less scam prevention.
An e-commerce site invariably involves a level of responsibility that I don't think would fly in a federated environment.
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. I mean capitalism is garbage, but unfortunately we do currently gotta buy stuff occasionally, and it would be nice if that experience sucked less.
Oooh, awesome, thanks for this link!
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.
Flohmarkt is nice if a little small atm but of course it is very new.
Philosophically, the classified ad model (a bit like Etsy or eBay without auctions, where you are just an introduction service) seems more in keeping with the Fediverse and has a lot less hassles than trying to replicate Amazon with all it's storage and shipping.
I’ll check if it would work to implement their api in a normal website/shop.
What I'd like to see is more seamless integration of !flohmarkt@lemmy.ca into other Fediverse services.
So someone has a blog for their writing on WordPress or Ghost but can run a sidebar or footer with links to Flohmarkt where people can buy a signed copy or special edition directly. Or you have it working with !neodb@lemmy.zip where users can read a review of a film and click through to see if anyone has a copy of the Blu-ray on Flohmarkt.
Equally, !friendica@lemmy.ca is a kind of Facebook replacement and Flohmarkt could slot in there as a Marketplace replacement.
In general we probably need more plug-ins in Fediverse services to help integrate things more tightly and Flohmarkt seems the kind of thing that would work well when slotted into a lot of other existing services.
if flohmarkt got “outlawed” for example because lobbyists and such
That would be very difficult to do with a decentralised service.
I agree on all points except the last. It is no problem to outlaw something and disrupting fediverse instances is no problem either. With websites that is a whole different ballgame because they are manifold.
Instances are websites.
No, they are not.
Instances have websites but the bulk of the fediverse is done on a completely different layer, even a different port.
Fediverse instances are clusters of microservices. They usually include a database, a frontend and a backend. The backend is where the api is and where federation requests come in and go out. Thats where the magic happens.
If you want to test this, just disable the webserver (frontend) and watch the instance still working. You can also see this working when you look at the different frontends of some bigger lemmy instances for example.
That's true of lots of non-federated sites. Anything with an API..
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
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.
ITT: OP has an "idea" and no money. Please do all the work.
We are not your thinktank bro
I think op sees us as exactly that. His thinktank. Isn't that kinda the whole point of a social network?
Why do you hate fun
I think the closest you can come is open source an entire business, from business plans, architecture, systems, payment processing, etc.
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.
I buy stuff from Ebay and Etsy plenty often.
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.
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.