I sell stuff on eBay and FB marketplace. In the vein of platforms that you love to hate. What would it take to build software on the fediverse for the purpose of selling things?
With all due respect, I think money exchanging hands can stay out of the fediverse. It doesn’t line up with it being free of advertising.
Setting up local swap shops would be more in line with the ethos I’ve seen on the site so far.
Speaking of advertising it wild how Ublock origin doesn’t have any numbers alerting me of trackers and ads it has blocked.
I imagine the biggest challenge is some kind of central payment authority and dispute management. I won’t touch anything to do with Meta, and as a former 6 figure a year eBay seller, the total percentages and final margin for the seller are just not viable. Between tax, shipping, and fees I averaged 35% overhead with a 100% positive feedback. With a keystone product, that just doesn’t work. This should be more like 20% to make a sustainable business. I have no clue how anyone would build a more effective dispute and payment system but from my experience on eBay, around 5% of all customers are scammers.
Crypto. Since chargebacks dont exist and no central entity is needed
I think a good starting point would be to have your Wordpress website with the ActivityPub plugin installed (which makes every product page a Fediverse-friendly post) and WooCommerce or some other type of e-commerce product on it. The payment will still not be free software (Stripe & Paypal, usually), but at least you own your shop and you can easily share it with the Fediverse.