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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

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

> 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.