this post was submitted on 21 Feb 2025
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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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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

What about the online food ordering market. I reckon that might be an easier first step than consumer products. Here in the Netherlands JustEatTakeaway has a market share of around 90% and requires restaurants to give them a 14% provision. Restaurants don't have much of a choice, if they're not on there they miss out on a huge part of the market, it's like they don't exist. Why don't restaurants unite and develop a FOSS protocol that let's them federate, so the consumer has a central place to browse the food delivery market, but simultaneously makes the providers independant because they can run their own instance if they please. Have these types of ideas been pitched to branche organizations? Restaurants have a clear interest to develop this to free themselves from the platforms with a monopolistic venture-capital-driven strategy.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

I fully agree that this would be a valid application. The reason any company doesnt adopt such strategies is the cost of pioneering it. Most companies who spearhead such an idea want it to pay off -> proprietary. Also most people are specialized in their industry. Developing an app is not native to food industry for example.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (5 children)

ITT: OP has an "idea" and no money. Please do all the work.

We are not your thinktank bro

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

I think op sees us as exactly that. His thinktank. Isn't that kinda the whole point of a social network?

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago (4 children)

Or you can just buy from other online retailers.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago (15 children)

I think there's some misunderstanding here. Amazon is a massive logistics system. The retail storefront is a tiny part of what Amazon is today.

AWS exists because Amazon needed to solve an internal data handling problem in order to solve their logistics problems so that they could scale up. After building that system, they started selling it as a product to other businesses. The point being, Amazon's real success is based on providing business-to-business services. The retail website is the tiny public-facing bit, but it depends on the rest of the organization structure in order to operate properly.

What you're proposing is more like an eBay alternative, where the system is basically just the storefront, and the sellers listing products are responsible for their own logistics. eBay still provides dispute resolution for buyers though, and that's hard to achieve without some centralized control.

There's also the legal problems. At some point someone will use such a system as a silk road - probably sooner rather than later. Whoever is administrating and hosting it will be liable for criminal activity in the countries where the crime occurs. It will not end well.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago (4 children)

Example 1: So you buy at toms groceries, you trust them.

[citation needed]

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Could this be an app realized based on the mycelial web - amazon uses huge AI models to predict their customer's behaviour and do the logistics ... (not sure myself, but it probably won't work solely on ActivityPub)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

The goal is not to ensnare the user but to free them. AI is absolutely not part of this idea. I havent read of the mycelial web yet though. Is it a thing or just an AI pipedream?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago (2 children)

I made a first prototype here: https://github.com/bluebbberry/MyceliumWebServer. Its recommends songs to the users. You can see it here: https://techhub.social/@myceliumweb and try it out by posting to #babyfungus on Mastodon.

You can do AI in an ethical way by making it more decentralized. The idea behind the mycelial web is to realize it based on volunteer computing, meaning that everybody can contribute computing power. And then I can say, for example: use my models, which was trained with all these other models, on this Amazon alternative to recommend me stuff. And the AI model was trained on my PC and runs on my PC (just wasn't trained solely with my computing power or my data alone).

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

Thats an interesting bit of information. Thanks! :)

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