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Last long enough and every platform is a villain: - Amazon - Ebay - Shopify - Stripe - PayPal ... At scale there's a relentless torrent of fraud, scammer

by ctvo 3y ago

Last long enough and every platform is a villain: - Amazon - Ebay - Shopify - Stripe - PayPal ... At scale there's a relentless torrent of fraud, scammers, and automated processes trying to steal anything not locked down. Platforms under invest in customer support, rely heavily on heuristics (machine learning and ... AI!) based automation to stop the bleeding, and there's always a story like this since these systems are very imperfect. I don't know what the solution is, but I do remember Etsy being a darling (supports small businesses! Down with Amazon!) only to see it now full of cheap Chinese knockoffs (not at Amazon levels, but getting there) masquerading as bespoke items from small shops in Italy.

arp242 3y ago
When I used it over 10 years ago it already had a bit of an issue with low-effort crap. "Browse latest items in this category to see random stuff" was difficult because half or more of the items were the same 3 things over and over. The solution is kind of obvious: keep it small scale, know your sellers instead of a free-for-all, stuff like that. But Etsy is a publicly traded company netting $2.6 billion/year (and somehow still making a $659 million/year loss in profit, wut?) so that's obviously not going to happen.
- Sohcahtoa82 3y ago
  > The solution is kind of obvious: keep it small scale, know your sellers instead of a free-for-all How would you pull that off without keeping out a large number of small, legitimate sellers?
  - arp242 3y ago
    That's a good question and I don't have a clear-cut answer to that because I don't work for Etsy so it's hard for me to judge. But in general I think it's okay to accept not everyone from the entire world is on your platform and some curation isn't necessarily a bad thing. What would you rather have? 7.5 million sellers with a large number of them peddling crap or 50,000 high-quality sellers? That's already more than you could possibly browse or what's available in all of London, NYC, etc.

by ctvo 3y ago

arp242 3y ago

When I used it over 10 years ago it already had a bit of an issue with low-effort crap. "Browse latest items in this category to see random stuff" was difficult because half or more of the items were the same 3 things over and over. The solution is kind of obvious: keep it small scale, know your sellers instead of a free-for-all, stuff like that. But Etsy is a publicly traded company netting $2.6 billion/year (and somehow still making a $659 million/year loss in profit, wut?) so that's obviously not going to happen.

Sohcahtoa82 3y ago
> The solution is kind of obvious: keep it small scale, know your sellers instead of a free-for-all How would you pull that off without keeping out a large number of small, legitimate sellers?
- arp242 3y ago
  That's a good question and I don't have a clear-cut answer to that because I don't work for Etsy so it's hard for me to judge. But in general I think it's okay to accept not everyone from the entire world is on your platform and some curation isn't necessarily a bad thing. What would you rather have? 7.5 million sellers with a large number of them peddling crap or 50,000 high-quality sellers? That's already more than you could possibly browse or what's available in all of London, NYC, etc.