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Within 45 minutes of where I live lies a little town that is known for hundreds of miles around as a place to go shopping for locally-produced art and hand-craf

Within 45 minutes of where I live lies a little town that is known for hundreds of miles around as a place to go shopping for locally-produced art and hand-crafted items of almost any kind. You know, glass items, wind chimes, paintings, etc. Why does this still work, 30 years into the internet revolution? Curation. The shop owners choose very carefully what to sell, based on extremely limited space. Etsy purports to be the same idea on the internet, but they'll let anyone who wants to sell on their platform. THEY'D BE LEAVING MONEY ON THE TABLE IF THEY DIDN'T. But for the same reason that I buy less on Amazon and more from brick-and-mortar stores, they're finding that the CURATION is the key to VALUE. The problem of course, is that Etsy, or Amazon, or ANYONE who has a PLATFORM -- like Apple -- has to be willing to make sacrifices to their POSSIBLE bottom line to keep the platform useful and valuable to their actual customers. It seems that an easy "gate" to erect on the platform would be to limit how many chochkies you can sell per month. It would seem to be a fix for people who are trying to use volume and SEO to take over someone else's product idea. Someone here could probably blow a hole in that idea, though. But if it's a site for personal hobbyists to sell something on the side, then you have to come up with rules to CURATE the content to produce that outcome.

JAlexoid 5y ago
But... That curation is a VERY expensive task. Etsy is for artists/creators. If you add curation to the mix one side needs to take a hit - and it ain't going to be your wallet. Basically the reason for Etsy to exist is "direct to consumer" model, with low intermediary overhead and 0 setup hurdles. (If you ever tried to get a product on a supermarket shelf, that's how it is to get onto a successful curated store shelf)
- TheRealDunkirk 5y ago
  Looks like Etsy made $160M last year. I think they can afford to ramp up their efforts in this area. But, like the Apple App Store, people are only going to get satisfaction if they can make a big enough stink on social media.
  - JAlexoid 5y ago
    A) Why should they? B) Are investors not allowed to make any return on their investments in form of dividends?
    - dwighttk 5y ago
      Is Etsy paying dividends?
    - giaour 5y ago
      > Why should they? Because otherwise their brand is asymptotically approaching just being a more expensive Ali Express.
      - JAlexoid 5y ago
        The brand is established and it's not that heavily diluted... Even then - it only needs to keep up with the aesthetics and product types, to keep on top. So no... They don't need to. And curated storefronts were many - I knew of at least 5 startups in that space - they all folded.
    - vorpalhex 5y ago
      > Why should they? If they do not, many sellers will stop using them. Many buyers will stop using them. They will have competition.
      - JAlexoid 5y ago
        You're basically arguing for a monopoly now. Let them fail.
        vorpalhex 5y ago
        As a consumer, I don't want to go through the effort of finding the next Etsy. I want to be lazy and have the current Etsy be good. Whatever comes next will be small. They will lack some of the things I want for many years.
- spacexsucks 5y ago
  I would argue that for artists all their work is already curated if they built it themselves and hence they wouldnt need to curate stuff But if i am selling someone elses stuff, then i am in the business of curation.
  - JAlexoid 5y ago
    You're right. But we are talking about Etsy taking an active role in what is available on their site, which is curation. Not an easy task as well. They also decided to be way more lax, than some people want it to be.
- christop1957 5y ago
  Etsy may be compromised these days but it still IS for artists/creators as you say. We have a stand alone website that gets 2 to 9 visitors a day and our main Etsy site gets hundreds every day. That's why we are on Etsy. We are too small to hire comprehensive SEO/advertising help (I've tried a few) so we let Etsy collect the main slug of customers. We employ 4 people full time.
  - cinntaile 5y ago
    What kind of products do you sell?
    - nvr219 5y ago
      Bootleg game boy games.
      - nameisname 5y ago
        Underrated comment lmao
    - christop1957 5y ago
      we make furniture out of old wood
  - JAlexoid 5y ago
    Therefore it should be clear that the rise in fees is a reasonable tradeoff, for access to more potential customers. I understand the desire to make sure that goods are authentic, but that is the only reasonable argument in the whole strike manifesto.
- giaour 5y ago
  Etsy is also for curators, though (at least a specific kind). You have always been able to sell vintage items on their platform, and antique sellers are curators and restorers. Before manufactured goods were on the platform, you were basically browsing items that were either handmade or hand curated. It was a much better experience.
  - JAlexoid 5y ago
    Etsy is really for everyone, but the brand image is that it's really artists sales channel. Based on my experience, curators add an extra 50%+ to the price of a product. Which is the cost of well curated storefront.
- _aavaa_ 5y ago
  That is the cost of doing business. Without the curation they risk losing their customer base. Why should I as a customer go to Etsy if it's filled with knockoff crap rather than handmade things?
  - Spivak 5y ago
    Maybe, but Etsy is part of a long line of businesses that think they can solve adversarial search. The fact that Google can't and is losing the war should tell you everything about your chances. As long as you never use the "discovery" half of their business and find shops elsewhere, IG, TikTok, it's a fantastic experience. Basically Shopify but a little more streamlined.
    - wardedVibe 5y ago
      > The fact that Google can't and is losing the war Google has zero incentive to actually win that conflict, as frequently the SEO spam serves up ads from which google directly profits.
  - JAlexoid 5y ago
    > Why should I as a customer go to Etsy if it's filled with knockoff crap rather than handmade things? You don't go there. They aren't a curated product website, so why do you expect them to be one? Let them fail. It's baffling to me why so many people are so heavily invested into that brand here...
    - caconym_ 5y ago
      I've bought handmade things on Etsy that are a) very high quality and b) obscure/weird enough that I wouldn't know where else to go for them. Enabling this sort of thing is Etsy's pitch. I have no particular loyalty to their brand, but in the past they've done a great job living up to that promise for me, and I have to assume others have had similar experiences. If they get filled up by Chinesium knockoffs and the quality sellers are driven off, Etsy's product will no longer hold any value for us, and they will lose our business. So yes, "let them fail". But before you accuse us of blind, unearned devotion to a brand, you might consider that there is---or once was---a good reason to prefer Etsy over other options.
- john_moscow 5y ago
  Well, yes it is. And it works just fine on the "mom and pop shop" scale. But the whole idea of the post-2008 startups is to "disrupt" the industry by replacing the knowledgeable people with algorithms and minimum wage employees. So what is the bottom line? Consumers get to enjoy products that are 2x cheaper and 4x worse. Individual makers get priced out and have to join the drone ranks. And the corporate owners of trademarks and algorithms rake in so much cash they don't know where to invest it anymore. Sadly, this is happening across every sector, and most people seem to be just fine with it.
- cjohnson318 5y ago
  Curation is expensive, and difficult/impossible to automate, but there's value in it, in a world where anyone can post anything anywhere. We all felt better using Amazon ten years ago, when we could trust reviews, and trust products, but now it's flooded with brand names like "UZOOG" or whatever. People generally liked Facebook more before their grandparents and weird uncle got on it.
  - londons_explore 5y ago
    Look at Reddit as a platform which has many well curated 'subreddits', almost entirely for free. It's totally possible on an e-commerce platform. Just nobodies quite managed it yet.
    - hattmall 5y ago
      This has in some ways been a roll filled by subscription boxes.
    - cortesoft 5y ago
      The reason it works on reddit is because there is not money to be directly made by tricking the volunteer curators. If those reddit mods were controlling who could sell something, there would be a lot more effort going into corrupting them.
      - jyrkesh 5y ago
        I still think you're right, Reddit has a much higher signal to noise ratio than almost anywhere else on the internet. But there's absolutely money to made by paying off mods of larger subreddits to curate content in such a way that makes their brands look good.
- subpixel 5y ago
  Artists and creators are Etsy’s brand. But those sellers have not been the bread and butter of Etsy’s business for ages. I still occasionally find small sellers on Etsy whose stuff interests me and I always wonder why they choose to sell via Etsy and I’m sure it’s: because it works and because it’s less hassle than the other options. The traffic to your shop is worth swimming in a sea of knockoffs and doodads. And that’s what you compete with on the internet at large anyway.
mschuster91 5y ago
This is why I buy music related stuff (e.g. cables) only from Thomann. Amazon more or less relies on vendors to fill out metadata like product type, cable length, plug types and communication standards, and the result is that the Amazon product filter is often just horribly fucking broken. Meanwhile, Thomann does all that curation work on their own, and it's just a breeze to use. Our biggest electronics chain Conrad however... oh jesus they have gone really downhill some years ago with their website design - the search is broken, metadata for parts are (sometimes completely) wrong, and to make it worse even the in-store staff has to rely on the website instead of a dedicated ERP software which means if you are searching for a part with specific specs (e.g. temperature) even the store staff can't help you any more!
- bjelkeman-again 5y ago
  Thomann and the like killed my local music instrument stores. I don’t think Thomann will go away, but it depresses me that it is nearly impossible to find an instrument I want to purchase to test without travelling 5 hours. And I live in a capital city.
  - mschuster91 5y ago
    Thomann started out as a small music/instrument/stage tech store, too - but unlike their competitors, they fully embraced the future instead of showing the typical German skepticism towards change. I mean, I get your pain. But on the other hand I'm just sick about the Mittelstand complaining that online is eating their lunch... they have all sat on their wealth and glory and thought they had carved out their forever niche guaranteeing themselves profits without having to do anything any more, and every single one that collapses fills my heart with a bit of joy.
  - markbnj 5y ago
    I live in the northeast and we seem to still have local music stores offering the usual mix of instrument sales and service, lessons, sheet music and other supplies, etc. If I understand correctly from casual conversations with the owner of our local store many of them make a lot of their revenue renting instruments to local school students.
hitpointdrew 5y ago
>has to be willing to make sacrifices to their POSSIBLE bottom line to keep the platform useful and valuable to their actual customers. This will never happen with Etsy, Amazon, or any other publicly traded company. Publicly traded companies have a fiduciary duty to their share holders to make as much money as possible. If the leadership doesn't act in this manner, they will be replaced with others that will. If you want a platform like you are describing it will have to be privately owned.
- feoren 5y ago
  > Publicly traded companies have a fiduciary duty to their share holders to make as much money as possible. I feel like this is in semi-myth territory. Yes, there have been cases where shareholders have sued company leadership because they weren't making them as much money as they could. But it's not quite as clear-cut and well-tested in the courts as you make it sound.
  - mattkrause 5y ago
    In fact, the case law goes firmly in the other direction. Management has a ton of latitude to run the business as they see fit. The "remedy" for bad business decisions is supposed to be divesting and starting a competitor, not the courts. Cases like Dodge v. Ford or Caremark are odd because the board was basically not running a business at all: Ford flat-out said he was doing something not for the business, but in support of his philanthropic beliefs. Caremark was so asleep at the helm that they racked up a quarter-billion dollars in silly fines. Anyone can, of course, sue over anything, but if it's even vaguely legitimate (and the "facts" in Shlensky v. Wrigley are pretty bonkers, IMO), they won't win.
    - andai 5y ago
      >Dodge v. Ford Motor Company, 204 Mich. 459, 170 N.W. 668 (Mich. 1919) is a case in which the Michigan Supreme Court held that Henry Ford had to operate the Ford Motor Company in the interests of its shareholders, rather than in a charitable manner for the benefit of his employees or customers. It is often taught as affirming the principle of "shareholder primacy" in corporate America, although that teaching has received some criticism. [Wikipedia]
skrebbel 5y ago
Just in case you weren't aware, if you surround a word by asterisks, you can emphasize a word without YELLING Eg *hello* there Becomes hello there
- WhitneyLand 5y ago
  Thank you, for responding in a more productive way than I could have.
- 1-6 5y ago
  Honest question though, when is it ever appropriate to yell? Have you seen people ever do it? I think the all caps could be a useful tool for emphasis. Would I do it though? No.
  - zarmin 5y ago
    So! How's your first day on the internet going?
  - ______-_-______ 5y ago
    I think yelling is appropriate if someone says they're thinking of building an Electron app. That's the only reason I can think of.
  - Stratoscope 5y ago
    It's never appropriate here. > Please don't use uppercase for emphasis. If you want to emphasize a word or phrase, put *asterisks* around it and it will get italicized. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Of course, uppercase is appropriate for an acronym or initialism that actually is spelled that way, such as SEO in the comment we're replying to.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- SixDouble5321 5y ago
  OK, but how do I surround a word with asterisks as an example to others without emphasizing the word inside?
rr808 5y ago
Most artist markets feel the same as Etsy, the majority of stuff is made in China too.
ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago
That reminds me of an idea that I sent in to Apple, via their bug reporter (you can submit suggestions). I'm an Apple One subscriber. I only listen to Apple Music during my morning three-mile walk (45-50 minutes). The rest of the day, I'm working, and I don't listen to music, then. I use their "Create A Station Based on This Song" feature, like Pandora. It generally works fairly well (I think Pandora works better, but they also limit skips -even for paid subscriptions). I like to hear obscure, indie, music, from artists off the beaten path. I tend to immediately skip, when I get a song that is in my library, or that I've heard a lot (like the song used to create the station). I also tend to skip a lot, anyway, because a lot of undiscovered music is obscure for a reason. One time, I was listening to relaxing, wordless, techno/trance, and a freaking Lady Gaga pop song plops in, like an airborne gift from a dyspeptic, incontinent, buzzard. The only possible relation to what I was listening to, was that one of her band members was maybe playing a sampler. She's a talented artist, and all that, but that was not what I wanted to hear. It was quite jarring. Someone is selling eardrums. That was probably an AI hiccup. In any case, my suggestion was to create "Undiscovered Music" stations, so you say "Play more songs like this one, but ones I've not heard before, and are definitely not in my library." I would want to hear indie tracks, and songs from obscure artists. I listen to a lot of different types of music, and most of my tastes are heavily represented in the indie space. I often find it difficult to discover music that I'm not already familiar with. I suspect that if Apple did it, they would sell out. They'd stuff these "Undiscovered Music" stations with commercial pablum; rendering the entire concept useless. They'd probably kill it, soon afterwards, because "Nobody uses this service." The current push for "Bigger, Louder, MOAR!" is something that does not favor craftsmanship, Quality, or independence.
- samhw 5y ago
  > I suspect that if Apple did it, they would sell out. They'd stuff these "Undiscovered Music" stations with commercial pablum; rendering the entire concept useless. Why would they do that? It would be massively unpopular, per your own comment, so I can't understand why that would be a commercial move. It's not even like an indie radio station selling out, because a radio station is at least (usually) an independent competing entity. It's more like a record shop inexplicably filling its death metal section with madrigals. It would simply lose those customers who liked it, and not even gain any others, since pop customers want the opposite thing (and are already amply catered to) so wouldn't even click on it to begin with.
devoutsalsa 5y ago
It’s ok to leave money on the table. Trying to be all things to all people isn’t tenable.
taeric 5y ago
I'm tempted to say not to mistake local tourist traps for high quality goods. This is tough, as a lot of artistic items have quality control that is purely subjective. But, often these places are not much more curated than the vendor room of a convention. There will be some nice things; but claims of curation are all too often over sold.
cade 5y ago
My pet rant of late is a lament that companies seem incapable of having a conversation about achieving profit versus maximizing profit. In the ideal, companies that achieving profit can treat their employees and customers well; however, companies that maximize profit shit on everyone in their blast radius for that almighty dollar. How sweetly bitter is the teat of capitalism...

JAlexoid 5y ago

But... That curation is a VERY expensive task. Etsy is for artists/creators. If you add curation to the mix one side needs to take a hit - and it ain't going to be your wallet. Basically the reason for Etsy to exist is "direct to consumer" model, with low intermediary overhead and 0 setup hurdles. (If you ever tried to get a product on a supermarket shelf, that's how it is to get onto a successful curated store shelf)

TheRealDunkirk 5y ago
Looks like Etsy made $160M last year. I think they can afford to ramp up their efforts in this area. But, like the Apple App Store, people are only going to get satisfaction if they can make a big enough stink on social media.
- JAlexoid 5y ago
  A) Why should they? B) Are investors not allowed to make any return on their investments in form of dividends?
  - dwighttk 5y ago
    Is Etsy paying dividends?
  - giaour 5y ago
    > Why should they? Because otherwise their brand is asymptotically approaching just being a more expensive Ali Express.
    - JAlexoid 5y ago
      The brand is established and it's not that heavily diluted... Even then - it only needs to keep up with the aesthetics and product types, to keep on top. So no... They don't need to. And curated storefronts were many - I knew of at least 5 startups in that space - they all folded.
  - vorpalhex 5y ago
    > Why should they? If they do not, many sellers will stop using them. Many buyers will stop using them. They will have competition.
    - JAlexoid 5y ago
      You're basically arguing for a monopoly now. Let them fail.
      - vorpalhex 5y ago
        As a consumer, I don't want to go through the effort of finding the next Etsy. I want to be lazy and have the current Etsy be good. Whatever comes next will be small. They will lack some of the things I want for many years.
spacexsucks 5y ago
I would argue that for artists all their work is already curated if they built it themselves and hence they wouldnt need to curate stuff But if i am selling someone elses stuff, then i am in the business of curation.
- JAlexoid 5y ago
  You're right. But we are talking about Etsy taking an active role in what is available on their site, which is curation. Not an easy task as well. They also decided to be way more lax, than some people want it to be.
christop1957 5y ago
Etsy may be compromised these days but it still IS for artists/creators as you say. We have a stand alone website that gets 2 to 9 visitors a day and our main Etsy site gets hundreds every day. That's why we are on Etsy. We are too small to hire comprehensive SEO/advertising help (I've tried a few) so we let Etsy collect the main slug of customers. We employ 4 people full time.
- cinntaile 5y ago
  What kind of products do you sell?
  - nvr219 5y ago
    Bootleg game boy games.
    - nameisname 5y ago
      Underrated comment lmao
  - christop1957 5y ago
    we make furniture out of old wood
- JAlexoid 5y ago
  Therefore it should be clear that the rise in fees is a reasonable tradeoff, for access to more potential customers. I understand the desire to make sure that goods are authentic, but that is the only reasonable argument in the whole strike manifesto.
giaour 5y ago
Etsy is also for curators, though (at least a specific kind). You have always been able to sell vintage items on their platform, and antique sellers are curators and restorers. Before manufactured goods were on the platform, you were basically browsing items that were either handmade or hand curated. It was a much better experience.
- JAlexoid 5y ago
  Etsy is really for everyone, but the brand image is that it's really artists sales channel. Based on my experience, curators add an extra 50%+ to the price of a product. Which is the cost of well curated storefront.
_aavaa_ 5y ago
That is the cost of doing business. Without the curation they risk losing their customer base. Why should I as a customer go to Etsy if it's filled with knockoff crap rather than handmade things?
- Spivak 5y ago
  Maybe, but Etsy is part of a long line of businesses that think they can solve adversarial search. The fact that Google can't and is losing the war should tell you everything about your chances. As long as you never use the "discovery" half of their business and find shops elsewhere, IG, TikTok, it's a fantastic experience. Basically Shopify but a little more streamlined.
  - wardedVibe 5y ago
    > The fact that Google can't and is losing the war Google has zero incentive to actually win that conflict, as frequently the SEO spam serves up ads from which google directly profits.
- JAlexoid 5y ago
  > Why should I as a customer go to Etsy if it's filled with knockoff crap rather than handmade things? You don't go there. They aren't a curated product website, so why do you expect them to be one? Let them fail. It's baffling to me why so many people are so heavily invested into that brand here...
  - caconym_ 5y ago
    I've bought handmade things on Etsy that are a) very high quality and b) obscure/weird enough that I wouldn't know where else to go for them. Enabling this sort of thing is Etsy's pitch. I have no particular loyalty to their brand, but in the past they've done a great job living up to that promise for me, and I have to assume others have had similar experiences. If they get filled up by Chinesium knockoffs and the quality sellers are driven off, Etsy's product will no longer hold any value for us, and they will lose our business. So yes, "let them fail". But before you accuse us of blind, unearned devotion to a brand, you might consider that there is---or once was---a good reason to prefer Etsy over other options.
john_moscow 5y ago
Well, yes it is. And it works just fine on the "mom and pop shop" scale. But the whole idea of the post-2008 startups is to "disrupt" the industry by replacing the knowledgeable people with algorithms and minimum wage employees. So what is the bottom line? Consumers get to enjoy products that are 2x cheaper and 4x worse. Individual makers get priced out and have to join the drone ranks. And the corporate owners of trademarks and algorithms rake in so much cash they don't know where to invest it anymore. Sadly, this is happening across every sector, and most people seem to be just fine with it.
cjohnson318 5y ago
Curation is expensive, and difficult/impossible to automate, but there's value in it, in a world where anyone can post anything anywhere. We all felt better using Amazon ten years ago, when we could trust reviews, and trust products, but now it's flooded with brand names like "UZOOG" or whatever. People generally liked Facebook more before their grandparents and weird uncle got on it.
- londons_explore 5y ago
  Look at Reddit as a platform which has many well curated 'subreddits', almost entirely for free. It's totally possible on an e-commerce platform. Just nobodies quite managed it yet.
  - hattmall 5y ago
    This has in some ways been a roll filled by subscription boxes.
  - cortesoft 5y ago
    The reason it works on reddit is because there is not money to be directly made by tricking the volunteer curators. If those reddit mods were controlling who could sell something, there would be a lot more effort going into corrupting them.
    - jyrkesh 5y ago
      I still think you're right, Reddit has a much higher signal to noise ratio than almost anywhere else on the internet. But there's absolutely money to made by paying off mods of larger subreddits to curate content in such a way that makes their brands look good.
subpixel 5y ago
Artists and creators are Etsy’s brand. But those sellers have not been the bread and butter of Etsy’s business for ages. I still occasionally find small sellers on Etsy whose stuff interests me and I always wonder why they choose to sell via Etsy and I’m sure it’s: because it works and because it’s less hassle than the other options. The traffic to your shop is worth swimming in a sea of knockoffs and doodads. And that’s what you compete with on the internet at large anyway.

mschuster91 5y ago

This is why I buy music related stuff (e.g. cables) only from Thomann. Amazon more or less relies on vendors to fill out metadata like product type, cable length, plug types and communication standards, and the result is that the Amazon product filter is often just horribly fucking broken. Meanwhile, Thomann does all that curation work on their own, and it's just a breeze to use. Our biggest electronics chain Conrad however... oh jesus they have gone really downhill some years ago with their website design - the search is broken, metadata for parts are (sometimes completely) wrong, and to make it worse even the in-store staff has to rely on the website instead of a dedicated ERP software which means if you are searching for a part with specific specs (e.g. temperature) even the store staff can't help you any more!

bjelkeman-again 5y ago
Thomann and the like killed my local music instrument stores. I don’t think Thomann will go away, but it depresses me that it is nearly impossible to find an instrument I want to purchase to test without travelling 5 hours. And I live in a capital city.
- mschuster91 5y ago
  Thomann started out as a small music/instrument/stage tech store, too - but unlike their competitors, they fully embraced the future instead of showing the typical German skepticism towards change. I mean, I get your pain. But on the other hand I'm just sick about the Mittelstand complaining that online is eating their lunch... they have all sat on their wealth and glory and thought they had carved out their forever niche guaranteeing themselves profits without having to do anything any more, and every single one that collapses fills my heart with a bit of joy.
- markbnj 5y ago
  I live in the northeast and we seem to still have local music stores offering the usual mix of instrument sales and service, lessons, sheet music and other supplies, etc. If I understand correctly from casual conversations with the owner of our local store many of them make a lot of their revenue renting instruments to local school students.

hitpointdrew 5y ago

>has to be willing to make sacrifices to their POSSIBLE bottom line to keep the platform useful and valuable to their actual customers. This will never happen with Etsy, Amazon, or any other publicly traded company. Publicly traded companies have a fiduciary duty to their share holders to make as much money as possible. If the leadership doesn't act in this manner, they will be replaced with others that will. If you want a platform like you are describing it will have to be privately owned.

feoren 5y ago
> Publicly traded companies have a fiduciary duty to their share holders to make as much money as possible. I feel like this is in semi-myth territory. Yes, there have been cases where shareholders have sued company leadership because they weren't making them as much money as they could. But it's not quite as clear-cut and well-tested in the courts as you make it sound.
- mattkrause 5y ago
  In fact, the case law goes firmly in the other direction. Management has a ton of latitude to run the business as they see fit. The "remedy" for bad business decisions is supposed to be divesting and starting a competitor, not the courts. Cases like Dodge v. Ford or Caremark are odd because the board was basically not running a business at all: Ford flat-out said he was doing something not for the business, but in support of his philanthropic beliefs. Caremark was so asleep at the helm that they racked up a quarter-billion dollars in silly fines. Anyone can, of course, sue over anything, but if it's even vaguely legitimate (and the "facts" in Shlensky v. Wrigley are pretty bonkers, IMO), they won't win.
  - andai 5y ago
    >Dodge v. Ford Motor Company, 204 Mich. 459, 170 N.W. 668 (Mich. 1919) is a case in which the Michigan Supreme Court held that Henry Ford had to operate the Ford Motor Company in the interests of its shareholders, rather than in a charitable manner for the benefit of his employees or customers. It is often taught as affirming the principle of "shareholder primacy" in corporate America, although that teaching has received some criticism. [Wikipedia]

skrebbel 5y ago

Just in case you weren't aware, if you surround a word by asterisks, you can emphasize a word without YELLING Eg *hello* there Becomes hello there

WhitneyLand 5y ago
Thank you, for responding in a more productive way than I could have.
1-6 5y ago
Honest question though, when is it ever appropriate to yell? Have you seen people ever do it? I think the all caps could be a useful tool for emphasis. Would I do it though? No.
- zarmin 5y ago
  So! How's your first day on the internet going?
- ______-_-______ 5y ago
  I think yelling is appropriate if someone says they're thinking of building an Electron app. That's the only reason I can think of.
- Stratoscope 5y ago
  It's never appropriate here. > Please don't use uppercase for emphasis. If you want to emphasize a word or phrase, put *asterisks* around it and it will get italicized. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Of course, uppercase is appropriate for an acronym or initialism that actually is spelled that way, such as SEO in the comment we're replying to.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
SixDouble5321 5y ago
OK, but how do I surround a word with asterisks as an example to others without emphasizing the word inside?

rr808 5y ago

Most artist markets feel the same as Etsy, the majority of stuff is made in China too.

ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago

That reminds me of an idea that I sent in to Apple, via their bug reporter (you can submit suggestions). I'm an Apple One subscriber. I only listen to Apple Music during my morning three-mile walk (45-50 minutes). The rest of the day, I'm working, and I don't listen to music, then. I use their "Create A Station Based on This Song" feature, like Pandora. It generally works fairly well (I think Pandora works better, but they also limit skips -even for paid subscriptions). I like to hear obscure, indie, music, from artists off the beaten path. I tend to immediately skip, when I get a song that is in my library, or that I've heard a lot (like the song used to create the station). I also tend to skip a lot, anyway, because a lot of undiscovered music is obscure for a reason. One time, I was listening to relaxing, wordless, techno/trance, and a freaking Lady Gaga pop song plops in, like an airborne gift from a dyspeptic, incontinent, buzzard. The only possible relation to what I was listening to, was that one of her band members was maybe playing a sampler. She's a talented artist, and all that, but that was not what I wanted to hear. It was quite jarring. Someone is selling eardrums. That was probably an AI hiccup. In any case, my suggestion was to create "Undiscovered Music" stations, so you say "Play more songs like this one, but ones I've not heard before, and are definitely not in my library." I would want to hear indie tracks, and songs from obscure artists. I listen to a lot of different types of music, and most of my tastes are heavily represented in the indie space. I often find it difficult to discover music that I'm not already familiar with. I suspect that if Apple did it, they would sell out. They'd stuff these "Undiscovered Music" stations with commercial pablum; rendering the entire concept useless. They'd probably kill it, soon afterwards, because "Nobody uses this service." The current push for "Bigger, Louder, MOAR!" is something that does not favor craftsmanship, Quality, or independence.

samhw 5y ago
> I suspect that if Apple did it, they would sell out. They'd stuff these "Undiscovered Music" stations with commercial pablum; rendering the entire concept useless. Why would they do that? It would be massively unpopular, per your own comment, so I can't understand why that would be a commercial move. It's not even like an indie radio station selling out, because a radio station is at least (usually) an independent competing entity. It's more like a record shop inexplicably filling its death metal section with madrigals. It would simply lose those customers who liked it, and not even gain any others, since pop customers want the opposite thing (and are already amply catered to) so wouldn't even click on it to begin with.

devoutsalsa 5y ago

It’s ok to leave money on the table. Trying to be all things to all people isn’t tenable.

taeric 5y ago

I'm tempted to say not to mistake local tourist traps for high quality goods. This is tough, as a lot of artistic items have quality control that is purely subjective. But, often these places are not much more curated than the vendor room of a convention. There will be some nice things; but claims of curation are all too often over sold.

cade 5y ago

My pet rant of late is a lament that companies seem incapable of having a conversation about achieving profit versus maximizing profit. In the ideal, companies that achieving profit can treat their employees and customers well; however, companies that maximize profit shit on everyone in their blast radius for that almighty dollar. How sweetly bitter is the teat of capitalism...