Is it possible to one day replace the privacy nightmare of Amazon with a decentralized merchant network? All I really use Amazon for these day is aggregate customer reviews by query, then buy the items as direct as possible. Why can't respectable tools to this instead? I understand the cost, but could the tech be adopted?

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[–] Carighan@lemmy.world 29 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I'm not entirely sure you'd want that, tbh.

Think about how logistics work, and how fuel has to be spent. You don't want a decentralized network for physical goods. That's extremely inefficient and wasteful.

Even if it's just about the final point of sale... we kinda already have these aggregations of individual merchant stalls? We call them "malls" mostly, nowadays, or "markets", depending on type. They exist, but keep in mind that a lot of stuff is centralized behind the scenes, be it maintenance, logistics or chains.

[–] Tibert@compuverse.uk 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

There are malls, markets, things like that. These are just the front end for the customers to buy things, the retailer.

As you said there are centralisation behind. Either through the same company managing all those different malls, or through Wholesalers working in the background selling to a lot of retailers.

[–] Anafroj@sh.itjust.works 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Totally agree, what we really need is a "Uber Eats/Deliveroo for everything", leveraging local businesses. And if we can get a decentralized reputation system, then such platform can be decentralized as well.

[–] yak@lmy.brx.io 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I like this idea so much. The problem is quality control.

Uber Eats here in UK really struggles to delivery an accurate order. And where there is a problem the driver blames the restaurant, the restaurant blames the driver, and Uber or the restaurant (it's frequently not clear where to begin) may or may not issue a refund and perhaps an apology, but that doesn't solve the problem which is you don't have the food you were promised and that you paid for. No one takes responsibility for that.

Who in a decentralised system can or should take responsibility?

Amazon, for all their many faults, claim to be trying to make the most customer-centric company on earth. A lot of their early success came from a stellar returns policy, shouldering responsibility for products they dispatched, as well as excellent prices. Not so much now, but certainly during their incredible retail growth period.

How do you code for that in a federated system? And, if you can, how do you compete in a wider marketplace with an Amazon monolith?

[–] Anafroj@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Who in a decentralised system can or should take responsibility?

The customers. :) Ear me out:

The main reason why there is so much problems with deliveries (way more with UPS, DHL and the likes than Uber Eats deliverers, in my own experience) is because we're not their customers, in their heads. They're paid by the merchants (UPS/DHL/etc are paid by your shop keeper), or they're paid by the platform (rider is paid Uber Eats/Deliveroo/etc), but the end customer is just part of the constraints, for them, especially since the customer doesn't even choose who will deliver their package (you don't like UPS? Too bad!). Give the customer that choice, and make them pay directly for the delivery to the deliverer, and I guarantee all those problems will go away. This is why I said we need a decentralized reputation system : so that the customer can see the reputation of local delivery service before selecting them.

When the problem is with the shop, well, this is already sort of dealt with. We already have reviews systems and we already select our shops, so it does happen that shops behave poorly, but not for long. Although, users have to be educated about verifying reviews, and developers have to implement countermeasures and stay on top of the review cheating game.

And to avoid problems with the platform, we have the interoperability of standards like ActivityPub : there is one global network (like the fediverse, or the web), and multiple programs are implemented to use it. They have a incentive to work well because there is competition, something that centralized platforms eliminate altogether.

[–] LazerDickMcCheese@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 year ago

Right! I was thinking that with an infinitely scaling model without a single point of failure

[–] LazerDickMcCheese@sh.itjust.works 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I apologize for not being more specific, I'm not interested in a centralized delivery system. I just want vendors to have their inventories posted online (as usual), but for them to be aggregated by category and filterable in one location without depending on a dystopian tech company. MAYBE have a frontend to appear as though everything is centralized, but I would be indifferent

[–] Carighan@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

Aaaah, okay. I keep thinking I heard of exactly this in the German city of Hamburg before, or even the entire area. But I can't find anything about it right now. But I'm sure I had heard of this. There was like this meta-shopping-system, and then the orders were fulfilled by each company individually, they just pooled their catalogues basically.