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eBay explicitly bans AI "buy for me" agents in user agreement update
- advisedwang 9mo agoLLM-initiated purchases probably rack up chargebacks, support calls, etc for mistakes the LLM makes. I'm not surprised they want to limit it.
- doctoboggan 9mo agoMore likely, they want to be the exclusive provider of LLMs that can purchase off of eBay, or at least charge for API access.
- rvnx 9mo agoThis; "certified / authorized by eBay" and then agents have to pay access to the catalogue
- nxobject 9mo agoThey may have an inkling that the big LLM companies will want to pay for future/past data... I imagine either Google or OpenAI has something predictive and shopping-related in the books.
- lukev 9mo agoRight -- this seems more of a protective measure than something they will proactively enforce. If you have a well-behaved agent that uses a browser to buy on eBay, I doubt that will cause issues. But if it leads to issues, they can point to that clause instead of having to help repair the issues caused by someone else's software.
- jsheard 9mo agoI might be out of the loop, but are agents actually out there buying stuff from "unwilling" vendors at any significant scale? I thought that was still mostly limited to opt-in partnerships with retailers. Still, eBay might be anticipating the issues you mentioned and trying to get ahead of them.
- Nkharrl 9mo agoNot commonly known (I work in this space), but yes. Agents are being used to automate things like non-cash account balance arbitrage, stacking and abusing marketing promotions, triangulated purchasing schemes, and purchase-refund arbitrage schemes at an increasingly large scale.
- dlcarrier 9mo agoThey should treat it like freight forwarders. They're allowed, but when you use one you don't get the return policy.
- yieldcrv 9mo agonot the User Agreement! Impossible to enforce, they can read browser windows and pass captchas
- drum55 9mo agoeBay is hyper aggressive about fingerprinting, they will catch things like it trivially. Browsers leak all sorts of information like what sockets are open on localhost, making yourself look like an actual person is very challenging to someone motivated to detect you.
- Nextgrid 9mo agoLLMs don't need browser automation though. Multimodal models with vision input can operate a real computer with "real" user inputs over USB, where the computer itself returns a real, plausible browser fingerprint because it is a real browser being operated by something that behaves humanly.
- drum55 9mo agoSure, the cost of that goes way up though, especially if it has to emulate real world inputs like a mouse, type in a way that’s plausible, and browse a website in a way that’s not always the direct happy path.
- Ekaros 9mo agoBut will they behave like same user in past? I would guess there is lot of difference between how bot accesses page and real user has historically accessed them. Like opening multiple tabs at one time, possibly how long going through next set takes. How they navigate and so on. There might be lot of modelling that could be done simply based on words used in searches and behaviour of opening pages. All trivially tracked to user's logged in session.
- TeMPOraL 9mo ago> But will they behave like same user in past? I would guess there is lot of difference between how bot accesses page and real user has historically accessed them. Like opening multiple tabs at one time, possibly how long going through next set takes. How they navigate and so on. That would be making an assumption that a device and/or account maps 1:1 to a specific human. It does not. People share accounts, share devices, and ask others for one-off help ("hey can you finish buying this for me while I deal with $[whatever our kid just did]", this kind of stuff).
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- whyenot 9mo agoSo scraping bots and “buy for me” bots are bad, but the incredibly annoying sniping bots are OK? That sure feels like a double standard.
- theamk 9mo agosniping bots keep people on ebay.com
- jader201 9mo agoI think AI is going to level the playing field with all these bots that have been used for things like this (including scalpers for those low supply/high demand items), and retailers will (hopefully) have no choice but to address the issue once everyone starts to use/abuse them. I can only hope.
- jsheard 9mo agoWhat's the point of sniping bots when eBay has automatic bidding? Counter-sniping is essentially built-in, if your price ceiling is higher then a snipers then you're guaranteed to win even if they bid at the last millisecond.
- pishpash 9mo agoAuto bid isn't the same as sniping. Sniping hides information about demand. Auto bid can't hide information as soon as there is another bidder.
- pwg 9mo agoAuto bid does not hide any information even with one bidder, as ebay indicates that "1 bid" has occurred. The only way auto-bid could hide information is if eBay treated auto bid as "silent auction" style. Show "zero bids" all the way to the end, then once closed, see which 'auto-bid' came in highest and declare that bidder the winner. Sniping is attempting to recreate 'silent auction' style bidding, with a bid system that is not 'silent'.
- noman-land 9mo ago
- downrightmike 9mo agoNo one wants AI to spend their money, checked or not. The few people who would want AI, want AI to save them money
- subroutine 9mo agoWhat is the use case for LLM agent shoppers? I can't imagine delegating the purchase of a used item to an AI (I'd be okay with AI identifying the best deals for me to review). This must be something for people who are doing something at scale like flipping items on Ebay or drop shipping. I imagine this type of automation existed before LLM agents came along - what do they add? Is it just the ability to evaluate the product description? Item quality is already listed as a categorical variable.
- akersten 9mo agoDoes it need a known and enumerated use case to be allowed? I don't like that implication. An AI that shops for a blind user, for one free example of the untold and unexplored uses of new technology.
- pishpash 9mo agoHow do ticket scalpers make money? It's an automation war. You can run arbitrage strategies at scale if you can scrape markets with bots that understand unstructured data. Even if trades go wrong sometimes it can be profitable on average.
- observationist 9mo ago"Hey, ChatGPT/Grok/GeneriBot4000, please watch for a great deal on a 1982 stratocaster guitar - must be in good or better condition, $600 or less, and if you see it, go ahead and buy it without confirmation" Ongoing tasks, arbitrage for mispriced postings in ways that aren't currently exploited that LLMs make feasible - by banning auto-buy, maybe they're attempting to delineate between human seeming behavior and automation, and giving AI permission to buy looks too much like a real person? Seems pretty petty to me.
- subroutine 9mo agoYeah I guess that makes sense for some people. I'm just not in a financial position where I'd let an AI buy a $600 used guitar without me taking a look at it first.
- estimator7292 9mo agoHasn't eBay's traffic been 80% bots since day one? I haven't participated in an auction in forever because even 20 years ago you were guaranteed to get sniped by a bot on anything except actual garbage.
- dankwizard 9mo agoTried selling on eBay as a regular Joe lately? Item sold for roughly $190 and I lost $45 in fees - I didn't even have a premium ad or pay for any of the boosting. No wonder Facebook marketplace has destroyed them
- Fwirt 9mo agoThe problem is with items that have a national market but not a local one. For example - there may be very few local buyers who will pay a decent price for a vintage slide rule, but many on eBay. My general strategy is to list on FBM first for the eBay price that I hope to get, and then accept offers down to 75% of the price. If I don't get any bites after about a month I switch to eBay.
- g947o 9mo agoThis. I was selling an obscure book once. I doubt there is anyone local that would be interested in it. It was sold on eBay within a week. Same for a half functioning Xbox. No "normal" person would want that. But apparently, on eBay, something like a dozen people took serious interest in it, and it was sold in a few days in "parts only" condition. For sure I didn't like how much the transaction fee I paid, but at least I got rid of it for a decent amount of money.
- nja 9mo agoAs someone who hasn't sold on eBay in a looooong time but was thinking about it for some stuff I haven't been able to sell on Marketplace, their pages and pages of fee structuring were intimidating. What was the breakdown of that $45, if you don't mind sharing?
- dankwizard 9mo agoSure, I listed the item as $185.00 + $10.00 shipping. Order total = $195.00 - Transaction fees = $32.44 - Postage label = $14.65 Postage I can understand.
- 9mo ago
- syngrog66 9mo agoI loved early eBay but gave up on it once became clear how rife it was with bid snipers, fraudsters and stolen goods.
- qwertytyyuu 9mo agoOh so just “human review “ it
- davedx 9mo agoSmells like an opportunity
- loudandskittish 9mo ago...haven't bots been buying things off eBay since the 90s?
- TheCapeGreek 9mo agoMeanwhile Google announces UCP to go in completely the opposite direction (or make marketplaces like eBay do so)
- direwolf20 9mo agoYou don't have to obey user agreements.
- delaminator 9mo agoYou do if you don't want to get banned.
- Yizahi 9mo agoI'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that.
- mminer237 9mo agoIs so far as you don't have to use the site, that's true, but they are legally enforceable, and you could absolutely be sued for breaking them if you upset eBay enough.
- direwolf20 9mo agoThen most websites can sue OpenAI and Anthropic, but in reality, they can't.
- mminer237 9mo agoMy understanding from hiQ v. LinkedIn is that it depends on whether you have access controls contingent on the terms' acceptance. If you have to make an account and agree to the terms to view content or place bids, it's illegal to violate what you agreed to. If you didn't explicitly agree to anything, you don't bind yourself by viewing the site, so breaking them isn't illegal. However, robots.txt qualifies as an access control and therefore is legally binding, so if an AI company is breaking that, they probably could be sued (see: eBay v. Bidder's Edge), but OpenAI follows robots.txt to my knowledge. Maybe the Internet Archive would be liable. I haven't followed all the appeals though, and I'm not your lawyer.
- qznc 9mo agoIs my primary user agent, my web browser, still allowed? /s
- delaminator 9mo agoMaybe if you'd actually read the agreement > In connection with using or accessing our Services you agree to comply with this User Agreement, our policies, our terms, and all applicable laws, rules, and regulations, and you will not... > use any robot, spider, scraper, data mining tools, data gathering and extraction tools, or other automated means (including, without limitation buy-for-me agents, LLM-driven bots, or any end-to-end flow that *attempts to place orders without human review*) to access our Services for any purpose, except with the prior express permission of eBay;
- __jonas 9mo agoInteresting, I’m not big on AI but I have thought often it would be nice to have an ‘agent’ that monitors ebay or other classifieds sites for items based on a natural language description. Something like “I want an old mini PC to use as a home server, it should have roughly these specs and cost under this amount”, and then an LLM would run some searches every day, parse the results and send me a message if something comes up. It’s pretty easy to get alerts for when items are available for a certain price if you know the exact item you want, but on eBay and classifieds sites, I usually just want something in a rough ballpark, and the best way to find that is come back and check every day looking through searches. I don’t really see any value in having the AI do the purchase itself though.
- darkxanthos 9mo agoThe purchasing itself can important for it to jump on a great price. Maybe it finds what you're looking for at 1a while you're sleeping for example. Also if this were a business and you were going to resell it the AI could also create the listing as soon as the item is purchased.
- __jonas 9mo agoI can't think of a scenario in which me buying some used stuff on ebay is that serious to be honest, having the AI buy would be a huge risk as well. > Also if this were a business and you were going to resell it the AI could also create the listing as soon as the item is purchased. That sounds like an awful grift, but good point, people might use such a system for that.
- andrew_lettuce 9mo agoThis all sounds like janky, low margin day trading for physical crap.
- __jonas 9mo agoYes! Sounds fun to me, not sure what you're getting at, it's not supposed to be a business idea! Just a tool I would enjoy having because I sometimes like to buy used things.
- amelius 9mo agoSpeaking of which. Did anyone patent this 0-click buy method yet?
- MarginalGainz 9mo agoThis ban isn't about 'fairness' or bot protection; it's about protecting the Impression Funnel. Marketplaces like eBay are designed to monetize 'Wandering Attention'—sponsored listings, 'customers also bought', and sidebar ads. An AI Agent represents 'Laser Focused Attention'. It executes a transaction with zero wandering. It effectively turns the marketplace into a commoditized backend database / dumb pipe. From a Growth/Unit Economics perspective, an AI Agent is a nightmare customer. It has zero probability of impulse buying and generates zero ad revenue. They are banning them to save their business model, not their inventory.
- cheschire 9mo agoI suspect they might lose money on returns too, which are probably more likely if an AI misunderstands what the buyer wants or misjudges quality or can’t detect fake listings etc
- the_gastropod 9mo agoI don’t know if there are other ways eBay could lose money on returns. But my single data point: the very first thing I sold on eBay (a manual lever espresso machine) got returned because the buyer clearly didn’t know how to use it, and claimed it was defective. And because eBay has a money back guarantee, they just reached their hands into my back account and withdrew the earnings from the sale + the shipping costs for the delivery to the buyer + the shipping fees for the return. They even kept their listing fee and the sales tax. So… I don’t think eBay stands to lose money directly from returns. Maybe they risk pissing too many sellers off with an increased rate of this horrific experience?!
- andrew_lettuce 9mo agoeBay needs to focus attention, efforts and resources on this if it's an increasing problem so the alternative uses for those resources is a cost. If sellers like you get mad and don't list that costs them too.
- 9mo ago
- superultra 9mo agoThis is a case where it may be that people are outsourcing shitty user experiences to an AI. I’m not a huge ebayer but I’m usually watching one or two auctions at a time. The problem is that you can’t disallow marketing notifications. So, if I want to be usefully alerted for a new item in a search, or that I’ve been outbid, or the imminent end of an auction, I’ll also be getting notifications and emails about all kinds of shit I don’t care about. $5 off coupons (that only apply to 8 items that I don’t want). “You might like this!” notifications (spoiler: I never do). Group buying times (who cares?). So I either disable ALL notifications (and have an LLM write a script that crawls searches manually and much more appropriately notifies me on its own), or I enable notifications and get a bunch of trash spam. As it relates to specifically to buying, we’ve known for a long time that we’re all up against some kind of bot that’s timed the exact last moment and amount to outbid us. It’s no fun. I’ve been an eBay user since 1998 and it’s been on a very slow roll of enshittification since then. Make your experience better for humans and maybe we’d be less inclined to outsource negative experiences to AI.
- aunty_helen 9mo agoCan’t charge for something if you’re giving it away for free. Data’s the only moat left. Companies like stack overflow need to build revenue streams from AI or they will cease to exist. By banning bots and then licensing some kind of access, eBay can protect itself from merely being a listing point that no human actually visits. Tailwind and their adverts via docs model, eBay and its promoted listings model, we’re going to see businesses adapt or die on this.
- direwolf20 9mo agoNote that Stack Overflow has already ceased to exist. https://xcancel.com/marcgravell/status/1922922817143660783 https://xcancel.com/marcgravell/status/1922922817143660783
- phyzix5761 9mo agoHow can they tell its AI buying if the agent uses the right user agent and works through a real browser?
- moduspol 9mo agoIt may just be to stop third parties from creating a whole business out of "shop for me" AI bots. Individual users getting away with it might not be a problem, but with it being against ToS, it'd be a lot more shaky to build a business out of it. In fact, it may just be that eBay wants to be the business selling AI "buy for me" agents.
- dzonga 9mo agoexample of focused leadership - a commenter already noted how wondering listings drive revenue if it was some Bozo executive as we see at most tech companies - they would be advocating to implement the Open Agentic Commerce whatever being pushed by google while not noticing its killing their own company
- cat_plus_plus 9mo agoDumbest thing in the world, not wanting buyers who are ready to complete transaction the moment they find what they want. When my car broke down and cost too much to repair I described what I need - low mileage, big trunk, 40+ MPG, under certain price, close to dealership where my broken car sat in service. That I gave the query to Grok 4 Expert (because it does heavy web scraping), found a 2020 Ford Escape Hybrid and drove it away two hours later, because rationally speaking missing a lot of work in this economy is a bigger financial risk than missing $3000 on manual bargain hunting vs a good AI hunt. If any dealers blocked scaping on sales pages, too bad for them. Speaking of which, any good bargain / secondhand market AI agent friendly API?
- thunderfork 9mo agoAnd we enter the predicted cycle of "new thing that's going to Connect Everything" Just like faxes, the internet and the world wide web, sure, this new thing Could connect everything, but that's not nearly as much of a technical problem as a sociopolitical one. Same as it ever was.
- smusamashah 9mo agoThis is so ironic, eBay generates AI descriptions for the things you are selling which is so stupid already.
- piinbinary 9mo agoSomehow, there's a relevant XKCD: https://xkcd.com/576/ https://xkcd.com/576/
- dlcarrier 9mo agoThat's the first thing I thought of. I remembered the title text line about a Bobcat, but I had forgotten everything cost only $1, with free shipping.
- tracker1 9mo agoI'm not at a point that I trust an AI agent to buy something for me on a place like eBay... ex: "...parts only", "foo for bar", ... How likely am I to get the wrong product entirely or something that I can't actually use.
- hattmall 9mo agoWho cares? eBay has free returns with postage paid by the seller for any item, so it really doesn't matter if you get the wrong thing etc. Of course this is why they ban it because the odds of you getting something wrong is too high and sellers + eBay would lose out.
- ukuina 9mo agoOnly until Agent Commerce Protocol is more standardized: https://www.agenticcommerce.dev https://www.agenticcommerce.dev
- RadiozRadioz 9mo agoI don't see why this thing has much reason to be focused on agents or AI - a standardized API for ecommerce is useful regardless of that usecase.
- giancarlostoro 9mo agoThis does make me wonder. I see on HN (and hello if you see my comment) people who use screen scrapers or screen readers to read and use the web. I would be REALLY interested to know how many of these users use any of these newer AI browsers like Comet, I forget what the one from ChatGPT is called, but I know as a regular user I can make Comet do automated things like price comparisons across tabs and websites. I could totally see the immense value in someone who relies on a screen reader to access the web having access to an AI powered browser, but I don't know that any of them are designed with these users in mind necessarily. My question then becomes, does this policy violate the ADA for those users in particular? UIf it doesn't today, should it tomorrow? Especially if these AI browsers actually become viable for those users. Will there be a future where if you're protected by ADA you can be cleared to use a more automated browser? I would imagine a sane rule for such an exception would require you to fully identify yourself to the website in order to prevent abuse by bots pretending to need that type of access (the good old "trust me bro" problem). Or maybe they get to use it but it becomes more rate limited to the average user speed or whatever.
- tornikeo 9mo agoThey want to avoid the fate of tailwind. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46527950 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46527950
- JangoSteve 9mo agoAnecdotally, I've noticed an uptick in my eBay feeds recently of items being immediately relisted after having supposedly sold. This has always happened occasionally, but within the past couple weeks, I've noticed it happening for like 25% of my watched items. I'm wondering if bots are buying things for which the owners are then canceling when it comes time to pay. I've also had to return a few items for which eBay's AI-generated description was wrong in ways that couldn't be verified in the product's images. I can only imagine the increase in canceled/returned orders from all the different AI features and bots.
- pranavj 9mo agoBanning AI agents is the new "banning mobile browsers." Companies tried that too in the early smartphone era - remember when sites blocked mobile user agents to force desktop views? The businesses that win will be the ones that build AI-agent-friendly interfaces, not the ones that try to ban them. eBay is protecting their ad revenue and impulse-buy funnel in the short term, but they're ceding the future to whoever figures out how to make agent-compatible commerce work. Every product and platform will eventually have an "agent API" alongside their human UI. The only question is who builds it first.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- giraffe_lady 9mo agoIf they don't currently see a way to make agent commerce work, the smart move is to stay alive long enough for someone else to figure it out then buy them or simply copy it. And if it never works out this will have been far cheaper in the medium run. I do not endorse this approach but it is well established in the tech industry.
- johnsmith1840 9mo agoI think more likely we will unlock browser agents and no company will develop an agent api. They will have a user facing website used by agents or humans the same way. This also completely sidesteps any actions Ebay decides. It will have all credentials for them and mfa. To ebay this will look identical to the user with no real way to stop it.
- nprateem 9mo agoExcept speed and "translate the following to klingon", etc
- ethbr1 9mo ago> remember when sites blocked mobile user agents to force desktop views? You mean today, when web apps refuse to render to mobile browser agents, forcing redirect to mobile apps, but work fine when toggled to a desktop agent? TikTok, Instagram, etc.
- abroszka33 9mo agoWho cares, it's my browser, it is for me to decide what I run, not for eBay. LLM, AdBlock or whatever else I want I will run it.
- terminalshort 9mo agoOf course you can run anything you want on your computer. But it is also ebay's right to decide whether or not its computer will allow requests from your computer.
- geocar 9mo ago> But it is also ebay's right to decide whether or not its computer will allow requests from your computer. That is dangerous thinking right there: Ebay does not have rights. Of course ebay may do it anyway, and it may take time for justice to correct things, but it is not Right, nor their right, to violate law even to protect themselves.
- guywithahat 9mo agoYes they do, as they should. Ebay is in an extremely competitive market and you have lots of other options, if you're abusing their service they need to be allowed to ban you. Imagine if Amazon wasn't allowed to ban scammers, or if they couldn't refuse a login portal to a user, allowing infinite attempts. It's important they get to decide whether to deliver a page to you, let alone keep you as a user. If we were talking about some government-run water utility then sure, it would different, but a private online store can ban users without ruining their life, and if you're opposed to this new rule you should stop using them in protest.
- geocar 9mo ago> > Ebay does not have the right ... to violate law even to protect themselves. > Yes they do, as they should. No they should not, and I cannot believe you could say any such thing in good faith. > if you're abusing their service they need to be allowed to ban you Who said anything about "abusing their service"? > Imagine if Amazon wasn't allowed to ban scammers Nobody is talking about banning scammers. Don't do this: Don't argue in bad faith. You can still disagree and think companies have the right to commit crimes, but you don't have to act like I'm saying something that I'm clearly not! > but a private online store can ban users Actually they can't, because we're now talking about users instead of scammers and abusers: There's something called the Americans for Disability Act, and it protects access to storefronts and no a private online store CANNOT ban users who need an accessibility tool.
- SLWW 9mo agoI'm sure this will definitely not be ignored and taken very seriously
- realitydrift 9mo ago[flagged]
- Bombthecat 9mo agoScalpers work around it. But a normal person looking for something? Fuck! Man I hate this
- bhaviav100 9mo agoI’ve been working on a small experimental gateway that sits between agents and customer-facing execution paths and forces decisions through policy + approval before anything irreversible happens. v2 I just shipped adds: • risk scoring on drafts • policy path traces • approval chain previews • highlighted spans showing what triggered the block • admin review endpoints The motivation is exactly what people are pointing at here: once agents can transact, marketplaces end up banning them unless there’s a way to pause, inspect, and assign responsibility at execution time. Curious what failure modes you’d want intercepted first if eBay or Amazon ever exposed agent purchase APIs. https://authority.bhaviavelayudhan.com/v2/console https://authority.bhaviavelayudhan.com/v2/console