I doubt I’d have the skill to write it but I’ve long thought something like Etsy could be interesting.
I think the federated nature of the Fediverse could do well to stave off the worst of any spamming.
But the thing I notice the most with independent sellers is that the bulk of what they’re doing is networking, generally amongst friends. Which, really, is the ideal environment for goods and services to be sold.
But, since capitalism always demands the line goes up, places like Etsy inevitably abandon them and making their sites encouraging of that kind of interpersonal connecting in favor of entities which can mass churn products out.
Setting up shops in the fediverse would allow people to easily host their own shops (and not be reliant on the infrastructure of, say, Etsy) and boosting would organically encourage a web of trust since their friend is essentially saying, “I know this person; they’re good.” You could even have the code autotag listings with a hashtag so people can filter out those types of posts, if they don’t want to.
Not sure how you’d handle federation when you first spin up an instance but, still, more alternatives are better than less, I expect.
I dunno; I think it’d be interesting.
Honestly, the only reason I’m still on Facebook is because of my local temple. If we could host a private group somewhere else with the same functionality, we’d jump ship in a heartbeat.
I consider it an “open source idea” but I did post something similar: https://lemmy.world/post/23359286
A dating site, difficult as it would be, would be great to undermine the Match.com monopoly
You mean like…
or
https://github.com/lafnlab/Amore
Seems folks are thinking about it but… getting traction for these types of projects will be the real challenge. I’m not affiliated with either. I was just curious and did a quick search.
Would definitely use something like this if it comes to fruition.
Does anything in the Fediverse have e2e encryption? Shouldn’t be hard to implement chat and a basic self advertisement, but I think even most people wouldn’t dip in their toes if any server admin could easily read convos. Of course chat could always happen over text or whatever but you still need to securely exchange details.
I think the main problem with a dating site would be the liability. You’d need really good moderation on every instance or you could get into some serious trouble.
Match gets away with it because they’ve got a huge legal team, but imagine if child sex abuse happened on a small instance run by volunteers.
Is there a fediverse LinkedIn equivalent? I hate that site but certain job applications ask for it now
Somebody was working on one but not sure it’s live any more https://github.com/Flockingbird
eBay
you need payment security, scam insurance, and real identification. facebook has become a massive hotbed for scams because they have zero security measures and at least here scam reports to the police have increased by 349.75% because of facebooks lack of security and people sudden stupidity to choose facebook marketplace over the traditionally and known safe platforms.
one could argue that people using facebook marketplace over a safe platform deserves it. but its becoming a problem when everyone is moving their trade away from the other platforms in favor of facebook. likewise, it would be a huge problem for a fediverse based platform to compete with these services if it cannot provide a safe exchange.
When I started selling on n ebay over 20 years ago I would list CDs and other items with stock images because I didn’t have a camera, people would physically mail me checks or money orders, I would deposit those and wait for them to clear, then mail them their items. I found a ln old piece of software in box that had a printed exchange between the buyer and seller off of a bbs from the early nineties.
I used to buy and sell car parts on a vehicle specific forum, but you could see the person’s forum activity.
The board game geeks website seems to do ok with math trades. I’m not really sure how trust gets established there. Reddit does or used to to the secret Santa thing.
There’s discogs for buying and selling media.
Of course everything is a scam now, even from “legitimate” companies.
People using marketplace to have things shipped is completely wild to me. Even local sellers are dishonest about the quality of their shit. At least on ebay you can get your money back if there’s a problem. I’m not sure if you could build some kind of token of trust that doesn’t require a central place that stores sensitive information. Maybe a way to verify yourself through a trusted platform like eBay, but those accounts can be stolen as well.
Whatever happened to people using craigslist is beyond me. Maybe the scams and lack of user accounts became a problem. They did implement an email system and you have to pay to list cars due to dealership spam. Of course a bunch of other platforms tried to take off and some alternatives became popular in other countries.
The benefit of decentralization is better moderation and specialization. It’s much harder to scam a small community. eBay does absorb a lot of losses by just refunding buyers when there’s a problem.
I personally would love to see a fediverse alternative to something like StumbleUpon, which I always found to be quite unique in the realm of social media.
I also think having something like Spotify with social features powered by the fedi would be neat (I realise technically funkwhale is vaguely this, but in execution it really isn’t. It’s federation is pretty basic/not social). Thinking something where you can easily start listening parties, share music to friends to listen to, find song recommendations from friends likes, etc.
