5 ms·
My experience is that eBay screws up their filters and wayyy overfilters. The Canadian government has some secret spat with Xiaomi cellphones and got eBay, new
by Scoundreller 3y ago
My experience is that eBay screws up their filters and wayyy overfilters.
The Canadian government has some secret spat with Xiaomi cellphones and got eBay, newegg and Amazon to stop their sale. They weren’t approved for sale in Canada, but I suspect some other reasoning for targeting a Chinese manufacturer in particular and not all the other unapproved products.
However, eBay just blocked anything with “xiaomi” in the title, so their scooters, vacuums, android TV hubs and everything were no longer available for sale.
I had an old Mi Box (TV hub) listed for sale that became shadow-banned: after it didn’t sell for a while (duh, nobody could find it), I went to lower the price and it gave some vague error. I called eBay and they said it was due to gov regulation but had no further info, so I just took “xiaomi” out of the title and voila!
- dheera 3y agoDuring COVID I reported a bajillion eBay sellers for selling masks above MSRP, they did nothing.
- QuarterReptile 3y agoAnti-price-gouging laws are an incredibly bad idea.
- dheera 3y agoI disagree, people hoarding life-saving equipment people can use during a pandemic just to make a quick buck should be punished and publicly shamed.
- niij 3y agoDemand is the signal to create more supply. Anti price gouging disincentivises more production.
- jmopp 3y agoCreating more supply is hard. Jacking up the price is easier. Sure, someone will see the opportunity and undercut your inflated price, but you will have made your money by then and there will be a lot of collateral damage in the interim.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- niij 3y agoIn what way does a higher equilibrium price cause collateral damage? Can you explain what collateral damage you're envisioning?
- messe 3y agoI would have thought: a lack of access to masks during a pandemic due to their in-affordability? But who am I to question the wisdom of the free market…
- niij 3y agoIf you don't let people price goods at what they're worth the buyer is decided by random chance and you get shortages instead. Is there really a human right for "the fastest buyers on eBay should get the goods"?
- Nullabillity 3y agoClearly the old unit price was already profitable, or there would have been no supply rather than insufficient supply. Rewarding this kind of greed also isn't exactly pushing society in a positive direction, longer term.
- niij 3y agoDo you see any downsides to government's setting prices? There have been a few examples of this in the 20th century.. > Rewarding this kind of greed also isn't exactly pushing society in a positive direction, longer term. Call it what you want, but they're the ones making and providing goods we all agree are necessary :) money is the tool our society uses to incentivize more of that behavior.
- dmazzoni 3y agoeBay posts are littered with typos, though. How well does eBay do at filtering out Xaiomi, Xoiami or Xiaoim phones?
- punkybr3wster 3y agoWasn’t there a huge malware issue with the Mi Box products? Maybe that’s why they got banned?
- kps 3y agoMaybe they're under a different name, but I don't see any Xiaomi phones on the REL, so I'd guess the ‘secret spat’ is lack of RF certification.
- Scoundreller 3y agoI’m still trying to get the gov to cough up the documents, but funny how the gov didn’t tell our telecoms to ban them from roaming on our cellular networks. Nor identify domestic users that imported them and put on a transition plan to get them off our networks. If they’re actually so harmful to public health. Though I wonder if our telecoms were behind this; they prefer you to buy your device from them.
- kps 3y agoI don't think “harmful to public health” is a consideration. Pretty much every country with a functioning government requires RF certification for electronics, but especially radio transmitters. It's never going to be worth hunting down individual buyers or hassling tourists, but selling is another thing.
- Scoundreller 3y agoCell phones do have emitted energy regulations based on estimated tissue absorption. And they vary country to country (some countries even further regulate them near schools & other locations). If they were causing harmful interference, I’d like to think they would be harder-headed about it.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago> Cell phones do have emitted energy regulations based on estimated tissue absorption The real reason everyone does RF certification is to make sure the radio isn't screaming in others' bands.
- arcticbull 3y agoAll that RF radiation from any of these devices can do is mildly warm you up. When you get to kW it could cook you I guess. It's not about health effects, there are none. It's about the risk of interference.
- wredue 3y agoThe Canadian government “secret spat” doesn’t seem so secret. Xiaomi stuff is laced with various levels of spyware. There’s also tech relations issues due to huawei shenanigans and back doors.
- Neil44 3y ago*citation needed
- porkbeer 3y agohttps://www.knowyourmobile.com/phones/is-your-xiaomi-phone-spying-on-you-yes-heres-what-you-need-to-know/ https://www.knowyourmobile.com/phones/is-your-xiaomi-phone-s... was the first ddg result. Or just google it. Pretty common knowledge that the too cheap to be true chinese phones, amazon fires, etc all trade on your personal data to subsidize the device, either overtly with amazon, or less openly in the case of xiaomi, huwei, and dozens of smaller brands of phone, television, and other connected devices.
- Scoundreller 3y agoSo are iPhones and US Android phones, but I guess when it’s a “partner” country’s corporations doing the spying, that makes it okay.
- throwaway2990 3y agoNot even slightly similar.
- Eisenstein 3y ago> I guess when it’s a “partner” country’s corporations doing the spying, that makes it okay. According to the government? Yes, of course.
- december456 3y agoWell yes, partner country's corporations intelligence, your intelligence.
- Aurornis 3y ago> My experience is that eBay screws up their filters and wayyy overfilters. This is what happens when the penalties are high and users are motivated to evade keyword filtering. I doubt it's what eBay wants to do, but if the law is unclear about how filtering must be done then companies will over-filter to stay safe.
- Guvante 3y agoI think calling it overzealous government orders is giving eBay too much credit. If you ask "what is the quickest way to filter X" someone is going to do a keyword search. You could then actually put forth the effort to properly filter but generally once the fire is out no one cares anymore. Unless those other products added up to enough revenue to impact numbers of course.