EBay is an exception here, its also not a classified ads site.
EBay is an auction house. Auction houses have stricter rules.
Classified ads is you grandma posting her VCR for sale, or selling your used boat locally. Its a parallel to a newspaper classified section. There has never been any control on sites like this other than “buyer beware”. Craigslist, Kijiji and Facebunk Marketplace are all classified ad equivalents and have zero guarantee or protections usually.
Given these are meant to be local ads, the onus is on the buyer to go to the sellers house and verify what they are buying.
My use of eBay is closer to my use of Craigslist instead of being like an auction. I don’t like to wait for the long bidding windows used online. I also don’t like haggling on prices. In this case, people post what they’re selling, and if I decide to buy it a third party payment platform is used to transfer funds.
The differences are that CL is usually items I pick up personally instead of being shipped (but not always), and some CL sellers only accept cash. I have also picked up eBay purchases locally.
That’s fair, and people will use things different than the intention of the thing if it suits them. My point was more to highlight that you cannot group all things where buying and selling happen as “marketplaces” and expect the same protections/moderation etc.
This new tool is to replace the local ads/garage sale like equivalents with something self hosted. EBay is not one of these, regardless of how people choose to use it. As an auction site it is on a different level in both functional and legal experience. You cannot expect that from Craigslist, Facebook Marketplace Kijiji, or you local newspaper ads or garage sales.
Reputation via buyer/seller history on eBay. Not so much on craigslist.
On reddit, you’d have a bot that tracked purchases and sales and their successes, which would automatically post reputation on new posts/comments in each thread.
The various local options -like FB marketplace - don’t have anything. When shipping things, yes Ebay has a really decent dispute process (leaning in favor of purchasers). Something like this would be best to aim for the local market first rather than shipped items that are harder to manage.
What mechanisms are there to limit bad actors on ebay and other commercial marketplaces?
Very little.
EBay is an exception here, its also not a classified ads site.
EBay is an auction house. Auction houses have stricter rules.
Classified ads is you grandma posting her VCR for sale, or selling your used boat locally. Its a parallel to a newspaper classified section. There has never been any control on sites like this other than “buyer beware”. Craigslist, Kijiji and Facebunk Marketplace are all classified ad equivalents and have zero guarantee or protections usually.
Given these are meant to be local ads, the onus is on the buyer to go to the sellers house and verify what they are buying.
My use of eBay is closer to my use of Craigslist instead of being like an auction. I don’t like to wait for the long bidding windows used online. I also don’t like haggling on prices. In this case, people post what they’re selling, and if I decide to buy it a third party payment platform is used to transfer funds.
The differences are that CL is usually items I pick up personally instead of being shipped (but not always), and some CL sellers only accept cash. I have also picked up eBay purchases locally.
That’s fair, and people will use things different than the intention of the thing if it suits them. My point was more to highlight that you cannot group all things where buying and selling happen as “marketplaces” and expect the same protections/moderation etc.
This new tool is to replace the local ads/garage sale like equivalents with something self hosted. EBay is not one of these, regardless of how people choose to use it. As an auction site it is on a different level in both functional and legal experience. You cannot expect that from Craigslist, Facebook Marketplace Kijiji, or you local newspaper ads or garage sales.
I’m not here to cheerlead for eBay, but I don’t think that’s entirely true.
Reputation via buyer/seller history on eBay. Not so much on craigslist.
On reddit, you’d have a bot that tracked purchases and sales and their successes, which would automatically post reputation on new posts/comments in each thread.
The various local options -like FB marketplace - don’t have anything. When shipping things, yes Ebay has a really decent dispute process (leaning in favor of purchasers). Something like this would be best to aim for the local market first rather than shipped items that are harder to manage.
huh? any serious marketplace has cheap or free basic insurance for purchases.
But a classified ad site is not a marketplace, and that’s where we need to be mindful of the distinction.
The flea market I go to has none of that.