The U.S. Federal Trade Commission filed a long awaited antitrust lawsuit against Amazon.com on Tuesday, and asked the court to consider forcing the online retailer to sell assets to stop what it said was ongoing harm to consumers.
Glad to see this action being taken, Amazon has certainly abused their market position. I would also add that Amazon does have competition in the form of eBay, and Amazon is rarely the cheaper option. And there’s a hodgepodge of other online marketplaces which look a lot like eBay but are usually focused on one niche or another. They usually get bought up by one of the big firms if they get big enough.
If there were a viable alternative to eBay, sellers would join en masse and buyers would follow the cheap supply. Buyer fraud is rampant on eBay, every seller has to raise their prices to compensate for it. I have been selling for years but I never sell items > $50 because buyer fraud is so common. Buyer will claim the item didn’t work/didn’t arrive and even with all the evidence in your corner and spending an hour or two on appeals, there’s a very good chance the buyer gets the item without paying for it even if you do everything “by the book”.
Crypto integration could help make this a reality, hell, make the whole platform decentralized. I would gladly mail a $200 iPhone to somebody in Nigeria if I knew they couldn’t reverse the transaction where they paid me for it like they can with PayPal. Reputation systems and/or escrow options could help protect the buyer and seller, and you could choose if you wanted escrow for each transaction. But unlike eBay, you could choose from hundreds of escrow providers which would insure balanced judgements come out of them. eBay has been undergoing enshittification for like a decade now.
Peer-to-peer markets for everything (like eBay) help encourage and enable re-use and repair, which is great for the environment and low income people. I wish somebody would come disrupt that market and make eBay alternatives.
Glad to see this action being taken, Amazon has certainly abused their market position. I would also add that Amazon does have competition in the form of eBay, and Amazon is rarely the cheaper option. And there’s a hodgepodge of other online marketplaces which look a lot like eBay but are usually focused on one niche or another. They usually get bought up by one of the big firms if they get big enough.
If there were a viable alternative to eBay, sellers would join en masse and buyers would follow the cheap supply. Buyer fraud is rampant on eBay, every seller has to raise their prices to compensate for it. I have been selling for years but I never sell items > $50 because buyer fraud is so common. Buyer will claim the item didn’t work/didn’t arrive and even with all the evidence in your corner and spending an hour or two on appeals, there’s a very good chance the buyer gets the item without paying for it even if you do everything “by the book”.
Crypto integration could help make this a reality, hell, make the whole platform decentralized. I would gladly mail a $200 iPhone to somebody in Nigeria if I knew they couldn’t reverse the transaction where they paid me for it like they can with PayPal. Reputation systems and/or escrow options could help protect the buyer and seller, and you could choose if you wanted escrow for each transaction. But unlike eBay, you could choose from hundreds of escrow providers which would insure balanced judgements come out of them. eBay has been undergoing enshittification for like a decade now.
Peer-to-peer markets for everything (like eBay) help encourage and enable re-use and repair, which is great for the environment and low income people. I wish somebody would come disrupt that market and make eBay alternatives.
What about mercari?