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Etsy in its purest form was great. Its been diluted to almost trash with all the people gaming the system. Same with almost all other tech platforms. Humanit

Etsy in its purest form was great. Its been diluted to almost trash with all the people gaming the system. Same with almost all other tech platforms. Humanity defaults to greedy (ie optimize for search results etc). Worse yet is the big companies pretending to be little companies to cash in on indie buyers.

wkat4242 4y ago
Yeah the same way with Kickstarter that was first overrun with scams and now mainly used for commercial products dumping a few early bird discounts for cheap marketing. The platform doesn't care because they still make money. The only one that still seems to work is crowdsupply, I think because they are really in a niche market.
SilverBirch 4y ago
Humanity doesn't default to greedy, but the humans who are greedy are the ones motivated to flood these market places. For every 1000 small creators hand-chiseling marble effigies there's someone who is greedy and can sell the entire catalogue of some niche factory in Guangdong. The net effect is a flooded market, despite only 1 in 1000 people being greedy.
- reaperducer 4y ago
  Exactly. The tech bubble worships at the altar of sacred, almighty "scale," and then wonders why things like this happen. Not everything scales. And almost every time tech tries to reinvent the wheel at scale, it fails, or makes things worse.
  - hakfoo 4y ago
    I always figured the endgame is to get the scalers into industries that scale well, and then build the non-scaling factors as peripherals. For example, I could imagine a hyper-scale firm selling exceptionally generic standardized clothes, or furnishings, and that feeds an ecosystem of artisans who do alterations and customizations. The scale business avoids the risk of dead stock and having to discount unsellable goods, since its primary drive is price/quality ratio, and the customizers don't have to directly compete with a behemoth that has economies of scale.
cmckn 4y ago
I’ve seen more than a few influencers recently promoting “passive income” by way of arbitraging Alibaba garbage on Etsy/Amazon/EBay. I place more blame on those systems than the folks trying to make a buck, but it’s demoralizing as a buyer having to wade through all of it.
incone123 4y ago
Reminds me of the 'small business' tag on some Amazon sellers. Technically true, but they're usually just reselling stuff from Alibaba.

wkat4242 4y ago

Yeah the same way with Kickstarter that was first overrun with scams and now mainly used for commercial products dumping a few early bird discounts for cheap marketing. The platform doesn't care because they still make money. The only one that still seems to work is crowdsupply, I think because they are really in a niche market.

SilverBirch 4y ago

Humanity doesn't default to greedy, but the humans who are greedy are the ones motivated to flood these market places. For every 1000 small creators hand-chiseling marble effigies there's someone who is greedy and can sell the entire catalogue of some niche factory in Guangdong. The net effect is a flooded market, despite only 1 in 1000 people being greedy.

reaperducer 4y ago
Exactly. The tech bubble worships at the altar of sacred, almighty "scale," and then wonders why things like this happen. Not everything scales. And almost every time tech tries to reinvent the wheel at scale, it fails, or makes things worse.
- hakfoo 4y ago
  I always figured the endgame is to get the scalers into industries that scale well, and then build the non-scaling factors as peripherals. For example, I could imagine a hyper-scale firm selling exceptionally generic standardized clothes, or furnishings, and that feeds an ecosystem of artisans who do alterations and customizations. The scale business avoids the risk of dead stock and having to discount unsellable goods, since its primary drive is price/quality ratio, and the customizers don't have to directly compete with a behemoth that has economies of scale.

cmckn 4y ago

I’ve seen more than a few influencers recently promoting “passive income” by way of arbitraging Alibaba garbage on Etsy/Amazon/EBay. I place more blame on those systems than the folks trying to make a buck, but it’s demoralizing as a buyer having to wade through all of it.

incone123 4y ago

Reminds me of the 'small business' tag on some Amazon sellers. Technically true, but they're usually just reselling stuff from Alibaba.