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> The company argues that it merely ships these goods for others — similar to UPS and FedEx — and should not be required to cooperate with the CPSC on recalls i
by croes 2y ago
> The company argues that it merely ships these goods for others — similar to UPS and FedEx — and should not be required to cooperate with the CPSC on recalls if those products are found to be unsafe.
So these other companies only pay Amazon for the shipping and nothing else, do they?
- gruez 2y agoshould ebay and facebook marketplace be responsible for cooperating with CPSC on recalls?
- klausa 2y agoYes.
- ndegruchy 2y agoIf they are able to reach out to folks who have purchased on their platforms and mark offending items as recalled due to safety issues, I don't see why not. It doesn't even seem like that onerous of a task. They're not _responsible_ for the items sold, but they should be doing _some_ level of footwork making sure that items that are recalled are labeled and/or delisted. Just like Target, Walmart and other physical retailers often work with recalls on products sold through their stores.
- Aurornis 2y ago> I don't see why not. It doesn't even seem like that onerous of a task It’s a hugely onerous task because it requires mapping every listing to a known product. If someone sells a “green couch” then how do you track recalls for that? You either force everyone selling anything to look it up in a big database you maintain and disallow generic sales, or everyone is just going to list things generically anyway to avoid the hassle. It’s an idea that sounds easy when you assume everyone’s making perfectly formed listing, but sounds like a waste of time when you look at real listings. EDIT: Replaced high chair example with a couch because people were pointing out that a high chair listing would be deleted. Though that proves my point, that any item covered by regulations wouldn’t be allowed on the platform, so if you extend regulations to cover every product ever made then you can forget about being able to buy things second hand. I’m guessing Amazon would actually love that, but you wouldn’t.
- ty6853 2y agoIirc Facebook has dealt with this for lots of children's stuff by banning it's sale. Certain items (forgot which, maybe car seats etc) you have to look up creative misnamings to find them, although maybe Ai has crushed that by now. What will actually happen is this stuff just becomes less accessible to poor people and now their child had no safety equipment at all instead of a 1/100 chance of a recalled item that probably still would be better than nothing.
- danorama 2y agoBut without the CPSC that safety equipment might not be safe at all. And elimination what Amazon is arguing for.
- Aurornis 2y agoExactly. If you make the regulations cover a wider range of products, the only response is to ban those products from sale. If the regulations cover everything, well then either the marketplaces all shut down or they cost $10 per listing and require you to agree to a lot of legal consequences if you provide wrong info in your listing. Ideas like this only sound good to people who imagine no consequences will ever reach them, just billion dollar corporations.
- danorama 2y agoBy that argument the regulations shouldn’t cover anything? It would make a lot more products available to more people, after all. And maybe cheaper?
- ty6853 2y agoThe regulation has to be cheaper than the value add of the service. Nobody wants to get sued for a gazillion because one time in 100 million a child flies out the recalled car seat and gets chopped up by a telephone pole, which of course will be all the fault of Facebook with deep pockets and not the drunk or exhausted parent that is driving. They're just going to say no thanks we will ban this item.
- Aurornis 2y agoThese ideas are attractive to a lot of people who don’t imagine any second order consequences. They become much less popular when people are faced with the realities, like if Facebook marketplace sellers were required to collect your information and register you as the buyer (can’t have anonymous sales if they have to track buyers), higher prices, and overall reduced availability of things for sale because it’s increasingly painful for anyone to sell or buy on these marketplaces.
- thinkingtoilet 2y agoOr the reality could be holding some person on Facebook to the same standard as a company making hundreds of billions of dollars is absurd. This is an absurd argument against this.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- viraptor 2y ago> like if Facebook marketplace sellers were required to collect your information and register you as the buyer Where did you take that from? None of the notifications need to come from the seller directly to the buyer.
- Aurornis 2y ago> None of the notifications need to come from the seller directly to the buyer. That’s why you would need to collect buyer information. To deliver the notification to the buyer. The way these marketplaces work is to facilitate in-person meetups. FB doesn’t have buyer info. They would have to have sellers collect it. In reality every seller would just cancel their listings and pretend it never sold.
- viraptor 2y agoFb already has chats attached to the listings and asks whether you sold on or off marketplace. A change to "which person did you sell to" would be trivial at this point. Prevent posting phone number or address in the listing and you'll be required to go through the chat. Regardless of what you think of the idea itself, the notification part would by very easy to implement.
- croes 2y agoFor business sellers of course.
- bnjms 2y agoIf they store the product and know what it is. Yes. Maybe Amazon can compromise. They can stop selling their own things on their platform.
- jeroenhd 2y agoPlenty of people make a business out of advertising on those platforms, so I don't see why not. You could make an argument that Facebook doesn't really sort or categorise products by their properties, but eBay definitely does. You could also make an argument that Facebook isn't a middle man in the transaction because payment doesn't go through Facebook (unless you pick a payment option that does, of course). I think you can defend Facebook Marketplace, but not eBay. When I use eBay, I don't wire money to John Stevens, I pay eBay directly. eBay wants a cut, that means eBay gets part of the responsibilities too. Not for everything, of course, and they can always hold the seller accountable when those responsibilities become a problem.
- Aurornis 2y agoFB marketplace listings are free and for a single item. Ads are paid and meant to run for a very long time. They’re not comparable in any way. If you forced marketplace sellers to the same review standards as ad buyers, it would become expensive and difficult to list things. The number of listings would collapse. People would be frustrated because they can’t buy cheap things second hand like they did in the past.
- Zigurd 2y agoEbay already has policies and protections again counterfeit items. It would not be a very big change in operations to add recalls.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- tzs 2y agoThe case between Amazon and the CPSC concerns products that are using "fulfilled by Amazon". They come from an Amazon warehouse and are shipped by Amazon. If you return the product you send it back to Amazon and Amazon refunds your money. With Facebook Marketplace Facebook just provides a way to bring buyers and sellers together and provides payment processing. The product is shipped by the seller from someplace that is not Facebook. If you return the product you send it back to the seller, and the seller handles issuing refunds. Those are two very different arrangements.