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.
except you cant. not in most real life situations. I personally made it a habbit to not shop at amazon and the time and money I “waste” for shopping elsewhere is insane. If you come with “you’re just bad at searching then” I will block you without comment.
It is hard to shop at other places. I just always give other places a chance to win my business. It keeps some money from Amazon.
Exactly. And that is by design. We need legislation for that but we also need a working system to compete if possible (imo). If I didnt have to use search engines all the time to get my products that would be awesome. I’d like to go to a site I trust because I worked with them in the past and buy stuff from them while actively widening my scope of trust without having to navigate potential scams. Example: amazon takes care of scams (or paypal for that matter) and so should a federating shop. thats why trust in federation is very important.
There are currently money saving plugins that will alert you Automatically to lower prices on other sites when I am shopping Amazon. They kind of suck, but maybe a Fedi version of that would be better.