Fediverse

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.

Or you can just buy from other online retailers.

So in simple terms, you propose to build a mom-and-pop shop and have it act like a global player like Amazon?

Congrats, it does not happen very often I sit in a chair and stare at the screen in disbelief!

@haui_lemmy I had a mostly similar idea a few weeks ago but I'm a mess ( sleep issues ) so no coding for me. 😂
But yes, as I mentioned somewhere extending activitypub could be a start.

I know 20 years ago Walmart was the face of corporate evil but hear me out. They have had 1 company MO and have never wavered from it, providing affordable goods at the lowest possible price to the consumer without any bells or whistles. No coupons, no buy 3 get 1 free, no sketchy pricing based on bullwhip procurement.

My message here is to encourage anyone like myself who is fed the fuck up with Amazon, Google and Microsoft shitting on every product they put out all rhe while cutting all operating costs from any semblance of customer support. I call Walmart every year to check how much .22 ammo they have around deer season to get my tags and the winters supply of varmint ammo in one trip. Every year I speak to a real person even if it rings for a hot minute.

For about the same price as Amazon prime, I have Walmart "prime" that comes with free delivery of not just market place shit but also same day grocery delivery. They dont spread themselves too thin like literally every single corporate giant out there. They were better equipped than Amazon to get into the market place industry and they are killing it. While every other shit head company is dumping billions into AI (Walmart might be too idk so take this with a grain of salt) Walmart invested billions into developing their drone delivery project.

Tldr: I encourage everyone who likes simple affordable products from a straight forward without any bullshit to give the Walmart equivalent of Amazon prime a shot.

Edit: One other perk point for uncle Wally is it isn't a snake payment deal like 9.99/month of never ending monthly payment, maybe they do offer that now but when I signed up it was a single flat payment for 1 year and I get 2 emails letting me know it's coming due for next year and the second being the invoice. They dont spam you, force apps on you, value your data more than you or the product you're buying. Fuck i could keep going with how pleased I've been with Walmart.

I think the closest you can come is open source an entire business, from business plans, architecture, systems, payment processing, etc.

You are completely misunderstanding what Amazon actually does, and why it's successful, despite being a shitty company. It's first and foremost a logistics company. People can order "stuff" in many places, but if they order it on Amazon, they'll get it by tomorrow if they order it before midnight. They got warehouse everywhere. They do (some) of their own final deliveries for anyone close to those, use the big logistics players for the rest (ups, DHL, ...) while having massive volume and the power to dictate price that comes with that. The number of workers in the warehouses is actually minuscule for their size, it's all automated. Huge up front cost, very low cost once it's actually running.

Consumers go there because they can get literally anything. Again: warehouses. It's also a market place but that only works (these days) because it's THE place the people go. The reviews are also a massive point, and would be inherently untrustworthy in a federated version.

How would you ever get anyone to go to your federated version for shopping that sells like "some" things? Even if you manage to combine all those shops, you'd need a way to agree on what an item is called (or how to assign id numbers) so the same item from multiple sellers is grouped in the same offer, and many similar small things you take for granted it didn't even ever see/notice on Amazon.