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.

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[–] daniskarma@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 points 18 hours ago (2 children)

I really don't see the appeal of activity-pub for this.

It's a protocol used for social media and interactions. You describe just sort of a "metastore".

Maybe a review store site could work better with activity pub.

[–] someacnt@sh.itjust.works 1 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

Reading the post, I found what I really want right now: a federated review platform. Too many times I want to look for a product, and has to look into a reddit thread to see a recommendation. There should be one, right? Where is it?

[–] Emperor@feddit.uk 2 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

Reading the post, I found what I really want right now: a federated review platform.

!neodb@lemmy.zip is a general review site. It currently covers media but, if you can get the data in (SKUs?) I can't see a reason it couldn't cover other products.

[–] someacnt@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

Thanks a lot! Bummer that it is primarily for media. I wish it had more publicity/popularity, is there any way I can help?

[–] Emperor@feddit.uk 2 points 1 hour ago

It's not a bunker per se, it is just that, if you are a review platform, the easiest initial targets would be Goodreads, IMDb, etc. Other types of stuff to review may take a little longer. However, if you can get access to a source of unique IDs, it may be possible to import the information. As it is written in Python there will be knowledgeable folks around who can better advise on this. I'd suggest post about it here: !neodb@lemmy.zip. See what other people think about it.

[–] asdfasdfasdf@lemmy.world 1 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

I think it makes sense. It would allow a decentralized unified search across all stores. With Lemmy I can search posts as long as the instance is federated. With this I could find products.

[–] daniskarma@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

In this example instances are stores, stores are users in instances? How stores are protected to be defederated by competitors (we are talking about money and making a living here).

What it adds to just a simple centralized service that any store can join. If you don't want it to be another amazon, make that service a coop. or some kinds of non-profit that it's paid by the stores that want to become part of that.

I think here we are in the classic conundrum of "a solution in search of a problem".

Fediverse and ActivityPub is cool, but it's a social media thing. And decentralization is cool when needed, for instance social media. But it doesn't have to make sense for every use case.

For what's being proposed there's zero actual need for decentralization or ActivityPub.

[–] asdfasdfasdf@lemmy.world 1 points 15 hours ago* (last edited 15 hours ago) (1 children)

Instances are stores (think Amazon or Etsy). Products are posts. Sellers are users.

Stores aren't protected from being defederated. You can still search Google or whatever, still visit the site and buy stuff. It just will not be a unified search, just like how anything else works with ActivityPub.

The good stores would be run by admins who don't have an incentive to defederate from others. Stores don't make money or take a cut from sellers anyway. The sellers aren't in charge of the instance, just like an Etsy seller can't do anything about the fact that they have competitors on Etsy.

The need for decentralization is that the store / Amazon / Etsy is broken up but the search and interactions, reviews, etc. are unified.

[–] daniskarma@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 12 hours ago

Those admins are unpaid?

Managing a store it's a LOT of work. And you are doing to provide profit for other people. Who is going to do it for free?

It's not like social media where people may volunteer to admin and mod, and users may donate because it's a common goal of share information, opinions, knowledge, funny stuff etc.

Here we are talking about bussiness that do what they do because they want money. I would not volunteer to admin a store so shop owners could earn money, that's for sure.

And I still not see the advantage of doing within the ActivityPub instead of just being a normal service where all interested shops could join.