Fediverse

I work in the IT department for a fairly large payment service provider. I can tell you now that you seem to be vastly underestimating both the financial aspect of this as well as several legal aspects.

• Federation would almost certainly have to be opt-in rather than opt-out. I don't think you're going to pass KYC checks for any PSP if it's opt-out, the risk of someone (ever so briefly) selling illegal goods through your website is too great otherwise. Stripe would just shut down your account (if they even let you open it), PayPal probably won't let you open it at all.

• Selling goods from other sites through your own, makes you liable for any returns, warranty claims etc... Simply "passing these on" isn't going to cut it. If the other site disagrees with the customer claim, you are on the hook for it, because it was sold through your website.

• The financial logistics aspect here is really complex. If you're going to process payments on behalf of another site, you have to deal with reconciliation. After reconciliation you have to the send the money to the other shop, incurring additional (sometimes surprisingly sizeable) fees. And coming from someone who deals with (automated) reconciliation on a daily basis, every payment method does it differently and they all find extremely creative ways to mess up your systems. And that includes unannounced changes, mistakes, random unexplained fees, failure to deliver settlement files, etc...

• How do you deal with the risk of scam instances? E.g. instance A tells instance B that a product was sold and the payment was processed. B sends it out, but it turns out the customer was the owner of A, and there was no payment at all. B just lost a product with very little chance of getting it back.

• Then there's practical aspects. How do you deduplicate products in search? Or will you have dozens of listings for the exact same product?

The only remotely viable way I see this working is if only search is actually federated. Once you are on a product page, you can only pay using the payment page of the instance that has the product. You won't be able to pay for products of multiple instances at once, and you might lose some unified styling. But at least that approach has a chance of passing KYC and deals with all the legal issues regarding returns/warranties etc..., and it reduces the scam risk because you're in charge of your own payments. But at that point, you've only federated product search and nothing else, and then as a consumer you might as well just Google it instead.

I appreciate you have experience in running a business, but running a marketplace, especially a very complicated one, is really not like running a usual business.

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.

I would love a federated Amazon that works directly with producers to sell everything at cost without a middleman or fees to the sellers.

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.

No, federated model is chosen over distributed model or centralized model to allow feuds, putting it simply.

That may work for a Reddit alternative, but doesn't work for markets. Helps moderation (some idea of it, I don't think that idea is good), but definitely hurts a single space to sell and buy stuff.

Which is why cryptobros and such types make either centralized or distributed systems.

So much for using computer networks for this.

Now about Amazon specifically - your post omits the whole warehouses and logistics part. Which is most of Amazon's core business.

Computer people today somehow started forgetting that real life is very hard and complex. When I was a kid (born 1996, so not old man), computers had a promise of making that real life easier, and from time to time delivered on it, but at some point bullshit like glossy buttons and Web 2.0 and social media became a thing in itself, and everyone started behaving as if it's done, we now can look down like olympic gods to those mortals messing around in dirt, and sometimes easily solve their problems. We can't.

Getting back to logistics - one has to design a system of shared warehouses, transportation, mailing and delivery tasks, tracking, reporting on outcomes of every event, and all that should be even more abuse-resilient than the processes inside actual Amazon. You'll have Byzantine problems in every interaction.

The "distributed king of all social media, solving once and for all the problem of centralized platforms" that I'm often dreaming about is realistic compared to that.

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.

I don't see why we can't just buy directly from shops. Maybe an aggregator of links for products, so there is an rss-like feed of products, prices etc?

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.

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.

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 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.

So... Postmates/Instacart but using activitypub for... Some reason?

you are not proposing a federated amazon, this is just federated ads and/or reviews.

how to process payments? how to ship goods? how to handle refunds? how to handle contestations?

please you can't just make anything federated. this protocol is built for social media and struggles to take over that sphere, we should focus on one thing rather than throwing random stuff at the wall hoping it sticks (cough federated tik tok cough)

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