cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/40697282
This is mostly just word-vomit, but I had a random idea while doing a tonne of Xmas shopping and figured you guys might appreciate possibly chewing on it.
What if there potentially was a Fediverse-style alternative / competitor to Amazon Prime, etc. but instead of being one giant marketplace (a la Flohmarkt, etc.), it was made up of independent websites that federate together?
Think something architecturally similar to Lemmy, Mastodon, Peertube, Pixelfed, Loops by Pixelfed, etc, but:
No “instances” in the traditional sense (like Lemmy servers, Mastodon, instances, etc.)
Instead, each shop is its own fully independent website
(e.g.
Gotyka,
Dolls Kill,
Dracula Clothing,
VampireFreaks,
Killstar,
Hot Topic,
Barnes and Noble,
Home Depot,
Everlane,
Kotn,
Pact,
American Giant,
Taylor Stitch,
Outerknown,
plus other shops for books, electronics, home goods, etc.)
The federated layer wouldn’t replace their storefronts. It would just:
Aggregate listings / catalogs
Allow discovery, search, wishlists, maybe reviews
Potentially handle things like recommendations without centralizing power
Function kind of like a decentralized “market index” rather than a single store
In other words: a protocol + shared infrastructure, not a mega-store.
Some half-baked thoughts:
Users might sign in via each individual shop (or perhaps via a shared fediverse identity like ActivityPub / OAuth / something new)
Each store keeps control of branding, stock, payments, policies
The “platform” just connects them into one large, searchable, decentralized marketplace
No single Amazon-style choke point that can enshittify everything
I love this idea in theory, but realistically:
I don’t have the skills, knowledge, or time to build anything like this
I also don’t know if this already exists in some form (OpenBazaar vibes? Solid? Something ActivityPub-adjacent?)
This is more of a conceptual “what if” than a proposal
But the idea stuck with me because:
I hate how centralized Amazon is
I like how the Fediverse decentralizes control
And holiday shopping really highlights how fragmented yet monopolized online commerce has become
So I’m mostly curious:
Is this technically feasible with existing Fediverse tech?
Has something like this already been attempted?
What would be the biggest blockers — payments, trust, logistics, identity, incentives?
Would independent shops even want this, or would it be more attractive to smaller creators?
Is there a protocol or project adjacent to this idea?
This idea honestly came from Xmas shopping fatigue and bouncing between a million tabs, wishing there was a non-Amazon way to do “one stop shopping” without recreating Amazon itself.
Curious to hear thoughts, critiques, or “this already exists and you reinvented the wheel” responses.
Also, feel more than welcome to steal the idea.
I think this is a good idea
Requires a fully funded and staffed public postal service in a county that’s dismantling, privatizing, and outsourcing core components of public sector package shipping
Amazon is more “warehousing and fulfillment” than it is “storefront”.
This would be hard to replicate without immense capital.
Amazon is local independt shops too, and better shipping, I just wouldnt do that to myself when amazon exists and ik I can get returns + fast shipping, you need buyers, more than a few altruistic ppl
I mean, I buy stuff off eBay a lot, and it’s often from small mom-and-pop shops. I needed new ribbon for my typewriter recently and ended up getting it from a store that just sells ink ribbons. They have an off-eBay presence too.
Same with half the comic book stores I buy from. Like gemcity has an ebay page, cant remember the others but many have amazon and ebay pages.
In the near-term, a better idea might be to establish an alternative under a co-op model, like Subvert is trying to do for music as a Bandcamp successor. Vendors are part-owners of the entity and have input into its governance. Any code should be open source, too. Federation would be great to later help turn it into a truly resilient global platform.
Not quite what you want but Flohmarkt (flea market in German) is federated. https://codeberg.org/flohmarkt/flohmarkt
Are there any instances of this? It looks promising
Yeah, I mentioned Flohmarkt in the post
The biggest problem I see is that retailers generally don’t want to increase visibility for their competition. Competition usually lowers prices, good for consumers, but business is not a fan. Even in non competing markets, consumers only have a limited amount of money. That $50 you spent on clothes is $50 not spent on power tools. The main reason some sell on markets like eBay/amazon/etc is because they’re so large and centralized that you can’t really avoid them.
Love the idea in concept. One major issue is the shipping. A major benefit of Amazon is just being able to add 20 things to your cart and get them all in like 1-2 boxes. In this hypothetical scenario, you’d presumably still have to handle checkout through each individual store, and if you ordered 20 things, you’d be placing up to 20 individual orders, each with their own shipping costs.
This becomes more problematic when maybe multiple stores you’re buying from sell multiple things on your list… ideal case would be to buy as many things from one store as possible, to consolidate shipping, but what if their prices for the individual items vary? Now you’ve got to search each individual storefront for each item and calculate the difference in cost. (This store sells item A for $2 cheaper but shipping is $3.50, is there another item I can add in to save shipping? They sell item B for $0.50 more, but I might save on shipping costs…)
Technically this is no worse than it is now if you’re shopping from a variety of stores rather than one megastore, but it would be a large barrier to adoption if you’re trying to capture some of the “fed up with Amazon but still like the convenience” crowd.
Try shopping on Discogs or EBay. They both can handle a single cart with multiple vendor items shipping from different places.
A major benefit of Amazon is just being able to add 20 things to your cart and get them all in like 1-2 boxes.
If this has worked for you in the last 5 years, your Amazon experience has been very different than mine.
It was wonderful, when they did that.
You get the option to pick, fewer boxes or faster delivery for some items? I always get the option.
Oh, yeah. I’ve used Amazon recently enough to see the “fewer boxes” option.
Last time couple of times I checked “fewer boxes” I got emailed a half assed excuse blaming their “partners” and then slowly received a shit-ton of boxes.
I don’t give them many chances, anyway. I try to shop non-megacorp, now. (Gosh, this sentence sounds entitled. But hey, I do have it good. I can afford to try not to throw money to Amazon.)
I’m not mad if it’s working for others.
Really I’m just curious if there’s a set of customers that Amazon still excels for, or if Amazon is just coasting along on reputation from past quality.
I like stuff fast, so it works for me. 90% of things get overnighted with no minimum limit with prime. Only have a local walmart, everything else is 30+ minutes away and even then amazon usually has cheaper and better stuff compared to whatever cheapo brands retail stores carry at a markup.
I had a horrible Amazon experience 3 or 4 years ago and haven’t shopped there since, so I’m probably remembering the time when it did work.
Sounds like Rakuten actually…
Interesting to learn about this company, the different storea, and different ‘front facing storefronts’ ideas soubd on the face of it to be similar to the OP’s idea.
[I only read the wikipedia for my response] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rakuten).
But a read through the criticisms section and the example of the negative systemic influence of centralised power are numerous.
The examples where the systemic centralised structure of the company influenced the pathway are,
-
the Corporate Culture section the ‘Englishionisation’,
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disabling product reviews. This was a product specific case, but it highlights the fact they can take this action sitewide at any time, with little to no recourse.
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Price Hiking, with up to 18 Rakuten employees having been revealed to have promoted the idea with vendors. If your online marketplace is telling you to do something on price, the pressure for an individual business is great because you are then vulnerable to them making decisions against you with very little you as a vendor can do to respond.
With these few examples from their wikipedia page the negative and at times malign effects of a centralised platform are revealed in the same way the same exercise for Amazon would reveal the same systemic consequences. With the system OP is advocating the onlibe marketplace would be unable through its own structure to implement these pressures on vendors operating on the network. This systemic difference would make it better for vendors, and customers alike, however harder (but not impossible) for a commercial operation that maintains the network to exist. I’d look tobthe Mcdonalds’ Harry Sonneborn owning real estate example of how you can use unique adjacent business structures to build a viable business while not undermining it’s core selling point.
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This is basically eBay.
Yoooo, fediverse ecom?! I love that idea.
And it’s totally doable. Ecom has been going through a “headless” revolution for a while now, meaning way better APIs and metadata.
There’s A LOT of problems in the ecom world around product images, availavle inventory, and metadata accuracy, but it’s definitely worth exploring.
The main reason for a store to sign up on a website would be:
- Advertising
- Centralised shipping
- Centralised handling of payments (and note, this one is especially hard due to laws surrounding KYC and complexities in handling different payment methods)
The Fediverse, being decentralised, has a hard time implementing the latter two. The first is basically not much different than being discoverable on Google.
So fun as it sounds, it won’t be easy to implement. You’d likely have to have independent “shippers” and PSPs sign up to this, and somehow have webshops choose which to use. And that’s a very awkward structure for a Fediverse-minded solution.
A Search and streamlined payment program would be neat, but customer support and other things would have to be the responsibility of each store, so at minimum you’d have to gather stuff like contact info and return policies in a standardized way to show users
I love this idea!
