4 ms·

should ebay and facebook marketplace be responsible for cooperating with CPSC on recalls?

by gruez 2y ago

klausa 2y ago
Yes.
ndegruchy 2y ago
If 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 ago
    Iirc 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 ago
      But without the CPSC that safety equipment might not be safe at all. And elimination what Amazon is arguing for.
    - Aurornis 2y ago
      Exactly. 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 ago
        By 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 ago
        The 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.
    - viraptor 2y ago
      Car seats and breast pumps - they're pretty much immediately deleted.
      - Aurornis 2y ago
        Exactly - Extend that mentality to everything and then you won’t be able to list any of those products either.
  - eloisius 2y ago
    In other words, it would make the business model of running a marketplace that sells dangerous junk from alibaba less profitable. Say more.
    - ty6853 2y ago
      Hard to say. Raising risk and lowering supply might make it more profitable to do fly by night grey market operations that disappear before enforcement.
  - _dark_matter_ 2y ago
    Entity matching is way easier in the age of LLMs. Not like Amazon is lacking the compute or abilities. So yes, do that, find out who is selling what.
    - Aurornis 2y ago
      I used Craigslist and FB marketplace and equivalents for a while for a lot of things. The average listing is garbage. Devoid of useful information. You have to know exactly what you’re looking for and search broadly because people don’t make an effort to describe things. LLMs absolutely will not solve this. If the only details are “table saw” and a dimly lit picture of a dust-covered table saw that looks like any number of generic table saws, AI isn’t helping you.
  - cortesoft 2y ago
    Ok, so how do you think it should be done? If a product is sold and it turns out it is dangerous, there has to be some way to reach the people who have bought it. Amazon is the company that has that data and can reach the consumer.
    - Aurornis 2y ago
      This comment thread was about eBay and FB marketplace. Platforms where the product information isn’t even accurately known.
      - Zigurd 2y ago
        Ebayy has a program for that. https://www.ebay.com/help/selling/selling-tools/ebay-authenticity-guarantee?id=4644 https://www.ebay.com/help/selling/selling-tools/ebay-authent... That goes straight at the "product information isn’t even accurately known" problem.
      - mlhpdx 2y ago
        It’s an interesting question. The bar would be the least they could possibly do, obviously (as it is now), so is there a case for raising that bar at all?
    - xvokcarts 2y ago
      What's wrong with how normal stores do it? They publish recalls publicly, people check the site, media promotes it, whoever bought it can replace it.
    - hexaga 2y ago
      Well, no. In an ideal world yes. But that's not our world. There doesn't have to be some way to reach everyone that has ever purchased a product. For the vast majority of the history of things being sold that has not been the case. It wasn't even in the realm of possibility. It would be nice. It would save lives and avoid tragedy. It is not required, and failure is an option. We've been failing for a long time already. If we have to do it, it's a simple matter of finding who has the capability to do so and force them to, as you say. But we don't. Forcing someone to do only because they can is a tricky proposition.
  - mindslight 2y ago
    You do realize there is a difference between cooperating with the CPSC on data that one has, and implementing a centralized top-down tracking regime and forcing individuals to conform to it, right? You also do realize that there is a difference between a business selling many copies of the same item repeatedly, and individuals selling things one off, right? If you don't, then maybe you need to learn about these things in the context of existing regulations before spouting off nonsense comments bashing strawmen. Another big one that should make this whole topic moot: A corpo is a government created liability shield. The tradeoff of getting that liability shield is extra regulation to prevent easily-knowable liabilities. And remember, the sine qua non of a corpo is itself compelled speech.
Aurornis 2y ago
These 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 ago
  Or 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 ago
      Fb 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 ago
For business sellers of course.
bnjms 2y ago
If 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 ago
Plenty 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 ago
  FB 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 ago
Ebay 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 ago
The 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.

should ebay and facebook marketplace be responsible for cooperating with CPSC on recalls?

by gruez 2y ago

should ebay and facebook marketplace be responsible for cooperating with CPSC on recalls?

klausa 2y ago

Yes.

ndegruchy 2y ago

If 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 ago
  Iirc 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 ago
    But without the CPSC that safety equipment might not be safe at all. And elimination what Amazon is arguing for.
  - Aurornis 2y ago
    Exactly. 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 ago
      By 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 ago
        The 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.
  - viraptor 2y ago
    Car seats and breast pumps - they're pretty much immediately deleted.
    - Aurornis 2y ago
      Exactly - Extend that mentality to everything and then you won’t be able to list any of those products either.
- eloisius 2y ago
  In other words, it would make the business model of running a marketplace that sells dangerous junk from alibaba less profitable. Say more.
  - ty6853 2y ago
    Hard to say. Raising risk and lowering supply might make it more profitable to do fly by night grey market operations that disappear before enforcement.
- _dark_matter_ 2y ago
  Entity matching is way easier in the age of LLMs. Not like Amazon is lacking the compute or abilities. So yes, do that, find out who is selling what.
  - Aurornis 2y ago
    I used Craigslist and FB marketplace and equivalents for a while for a lot of things. The average listing is garbage. Devoid of useful information. You have to know exactly what you’re looking for and search broadly because people don’t make an effort to describe things. LLMs absolutely will not solve this. If the only details are “table saw” and a dimly lit picture of a dust-covered table saw that looks like any number of generic table saws, AI isn’t helping you.
- cortesoft 2y ago
  Ok, so how do you think it should be done? If a product is sold and it turns out it is dangerous, there has to be some way to reach the people who have bought it. Amazon is the company that has that data and can reach the consumer.
  - Aurornis 2y ago
    This comment thread was about eBay and FB marketplace. Platforms where the product information isn’t even accurately known.
    - Zigurd 2y ago
      Ebayy has a program for that. https://www.ebay.com/help/selling/selling-tools/ebay-authenticity-guarantee?id=4644 https://www.ebay.com/help/selling/selling-tools/ebay-authent... That goes straight at the "product information isn’t even accurately known" problem.
    - mlhpdx 2y ago
      It’s an interesting question. The bar would be the least they could possibly do, obviously (as it is now), so is there a case for raising that bar at all?
  - xvokcarts 2y ago
    What's wrong with how normal stores do it? They publish recalls publicly, people check the site, media promotes it, whoever bought it can replace it.
  - hexaga 2y ago
    Well, no. In an ideal world yes. But that's not our world. There doesn't have to be some way to reach everyone that has ever purchased a product. For the vast majority of the history of things being sold that has not been the case. It wasn't even in the realm of possibility. It would be nice. It would save lives and avoid tragedy. It is not required, and failure is an option. We've been failing for a long time already. If we have to do it, it's a simple matter of finding who has the capability to do so and force them to, as you say. But we don't. Forcing someone to do only because they can is a tricky proposition.
- mindslight 2y ago
  You do realize there is a difference between cooperating with the CPSC on data that one has, and implementing a centralized top-down tracking regime and forcing individuals to conform to it, right? You also do realize that there is a difference between a business selling many copies of the same item repeatedly, and individuals selling things one off, right? If you don't, then maybe you need to learn about these things in the context of existing regulations before spouting off nonsense comments bashing strawmen. Another big one that should make this whole topic moot: A corpo is a government created liability shield. The tradeoff of getting that liability shield is extra regulation to prevent easily-knowable liabilities. And remember, the sine qua non of a corpo is itself compelled speech.

Aurornis 2y ago

These 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 ago
Or 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 ago
    Fb 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 ago

For business sellers of course.

bnjms 2y ago

If 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 ago

Plenty 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 ago
FB 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 ago

Ebay 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 ago

The 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.