this post was submitted on 13 Feb 2025
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What about a Federated E-Commerce Site (lemmy.blahaj.zone)
submitted 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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How about a e-commerce site in the Fediverse where you can either sell second hand stuff (like ebay) or sell stuff you made or paid people make (like amazon or etsy) but with multiple instances with different moderation, shipment costs and some might require you to have id obviously their will be sketchy instances or users but the community could make a list of instances/users to avoid or to be careful of at least, and most the users on this list would be user who their instance hasn’t banned (which might put the instance into disrepute, since if they are notorious enough to land on this list you should probably ban them) and the people who are in charge of this list can get reports from user and they will have to conform from other buyers who bought from that individual to make sure people aren’t lying because they don’t like the person or something, it could be federated/integrated with services like mastodon, peertube and possibly lemmy where you can sign in with it with your account from these services, but you have to make an account with this service to actually sell anything, but user from these other platforms could link their shop on this service on their mastodon post and/or account and peertube videos/account (sorry if I got carried away), what do you guys think?

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 days ago

I see the benefits, but I also see the risks. A lot of the social stuff right now is up to the altruism and expertise of instance admins, which cannot always be guaranteed. Not to mention the risks that one user's abuse (eg. scams, contraband sales) could shut down the entire venture.

I think there needs to be a federated protocol to handle payments that also has some protections for buyers and sellers alike, but without the explicit backing of banks it simply cannot exist within the world of fiat currencies.

Obviously, you could build this with cryptocurrencies, but that limits your users and of course many people will never touch crypto with a ten foot pole

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

Doing something like this "for real" on any scale takes a ton of anti-spam and anti-fraud effort. Look at how big a pain it has become to post on Craigslist, which doesn't even do commerce directly.

On a small scale it's less of a big deal. If you want an actual sales and payments platform like Etsy, it would have to be done by an organization of comparable scope, even if offloading payments to Stripe or whatever. Lots of seller vetting, dispute resolution, etc. I don't think it's impossible but it's not just a matter of software. It would need paid staff dealing with hassles all day, imho.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

https://codeberg.org/flohmarkt/flohmarkt

I run a Slovenian instance, https://flohmarkt.gregtech.eu/

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Cool for classified ads kind of stuff. Though personally I'd love to see more of a storefront kind of thing like Etsy. Etsy has become so greedy that it's often not profitable for small businesses and definitely not for individuals doing stuff in their free time out of passion like it used to be.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 days ago (5 children)

The problem would be payments though since you probably don't want the instance admins handling your payment info. Maybe it could work more like craigslist though where payment is up to the buyer and seller to figure out, but that has its own problems. It does seem like it would be useful though if there was a way to make it fairly safe

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 days ago

In Belgium we have 2dehands. Not perfect or open source but miles better than Facebook marketplace.

No payments go through the platform. People meet in person and use cash or use a bank transfer or 3rd party payment like payconiq to buy and sell things. It works perfectly.

Not everything has to have an integrated shopify style payment platform. Most of the population is perfectly capable of exchanging money.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (2 children)

Ok here's the pitch: instances generate currency for each of their users on a time registered basis or some other easily verifiable metric. Each instance's currency is different and they automatically generate exchange rates with each other instance's currency. People buy and sell items through it using only currencies generated by the federated platform.

Also all instances have to be co-ops or they get de-federated. Maybe the license even specifies this.

????

Socialism

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 days ago

If you are going to encourage cooperatives, you would need one or more organizations that help people set them up. That way people can learn how to start their own, and what it takes to run one. There are legal considerations, such as taxes and registering the cooperative. And some people would need to learn accounting and leadership skills. This is all learnable, but if we want people to succeed, we would need to help guide them.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 days ago

Sounds interesting, but how would these currencies be translated into fiat currency (USD, EURO, YEN, etc.)? Because ultimately people need to pay for housing and food with their country's chosen currency, and that is one of the main reasons why people sell stuff.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 days ago

Honestly a decentralised craigslist would be great.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 days ago

Lots of sites offload payment directly to stripe, PayPal, etc. many even let you choose the provider. I don’t see why it wouldn’t work the same way.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 days ago (1 children)

there could be a centralised payment system that all instances have to use

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 days ago

payment system

Yeah, not going to happen.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Check out Flohmarkt:

https://codeberg.org/flohmarkt/flohmarkt

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Man I came to comment I had the same idea... Just to find out someone else has implemented it again...

But that's cool. I still not fully understand what this Flohmarkt is. Is it just a social platform designed to share things you want to sell instead of pictures of your food?

I should really take a deeper look into it.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Flohmarkt is German for "flea market" so I'd expect something along those lines.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 days ago

You can't know it, but I am German 😅