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.

  • Randomgal@lemmy.ca
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    3 days 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.

    • Balder@lemmy.world
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      11 minutes ago

      All of this talk is actually ignoring the very fundamental aspect of this sort of transaction: trust.

      When you buy from a place, you do it because you trust the store or the service to handle problems [1]. I remember one saying that a purchase is actually a very intimate relationship, and if you have any reason to think that person or service would screw up over, you’d never engage in any monetary transactions with them.

      A marketplace where anyone can sell only works because despite your diligence to look for reputable sellers, the platform usually offers some assurance that you’ll be refunded for any type of scam, which means they take on the burden of doing some quality control on approving sellers. At least that’s how it works in Brazil, I suppose that a country with a high societal trust might have less of this problem, but the incentives are the heart of any system.

      [1] Sure, sometimes it doesn’t go the way you wanted it and you can end up being screwed by the service, but the expectation was there.

    • rottingleaf@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      a) You’ve never run a business

      They might have run a small business or been present in a bigger one in management position, doing their own job well enough to avoid painful understanding they don’t get it as a whole. Arrogance is not always cured by experience, actually I doubt it’s ever cured in humans and we all have it.

      b) you’re more interested in fantasizing than a realistic conversation.

      That much was clear from the very beginning, I tend to have such ideas too, but I have BAD and thus mania periods.

    • kat@orbi.camp
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      3 days ago

      Pretty much what they’re doing all over this thread.

      Like some people can only see the glass half full. Few have the guys to look at both the fullness and the emptyness equally.

    • PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat
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      3 days ago

      I have run several businesses, some of them on this micro-scale. That’s how I know that part is trivial.

      You can literally set it up for yourself for free, if you want to see: https://stripe.com/