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Facebook can easily do better will ultimately fail for the same reasons. As long as the marketplace has incentive to alter the perception of buyer/seller reput
by uncletammy 10y ago
Facebook can easily do better will ultimately fail for the same reasons. As long as the marketplace has incentive to alter the perception of buyer/seller reputation, it's doomed to become another ebay.
If you have high hopes for anything, it should be for https://openbazaar.org https://openbazaar.org
They attempt to solve the problem with "moderated payments" where the buyer pays into an escrow account which is jointly controlled by the buyer, the vendor, and a third party called a moderator. In order for the funds to leave the escrow, any two of these parties need to agree how to release the funds.
- rjbwork 10y agoThis is actually how some Bitcoin transactions take place, on the white, grey, and black markets. People build a reputation for honesty as an escrow, take a small fee, and facilitate transactions. They arbitrate disputes, and decide who to release the funds back to.
- fapjacks 10y agoHow hilarious, ironic, and fitting that dark markets operate more on a working platform of trust than friggin Ebay.
- hellweaver666 10y agoIsn't escrow basically the opposite of trust? If you trust someone you don't need a middle man to make sure everything goes well.
- soylentcola 10y agoI guess it's more the acceptance that buyer/seller is an adversarial relationship so you need to at least be able to trust the system or framework to be impartial and enforce honesty.
- dragonwriter 10y ago> Isn't escrow basically the opposite of trust? No, escrow is trust-as-a-service. That is, it's a means of removing the need for trust between the transaction principals by hiring a mutually-trusted third party.