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Bullying Is Not Innovation

perplexity.ai

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Re: Bullying Is Not Innovation

#11

Post by kelnos »

ctvo wrote: post #10
andreybaskov wrote: post #7

Agentic browsers raise a lot of questions that were hanging there even before LLMs. Can I ask my partner to buy a product on Amazon? Can I ask my personal assistant to buy a product on Amazon? Can I hire a contractor to buy products on Amazon? Can I communicate with a contractor via API to direct them what products to buy? What if there is no human on the other end and its an LLM? Same issue with LinkedIn. I know exe…

You've been spamming this in a few threads. A private business can 100% refuse service to you. Examples with regards to "delegation": - If you come in using a form of non-cash payment that doesn't belong to you. - If you're purchasing a car, and are filling out paperwork under someone else's name. FYI, you can buy cars on Amazon.com. - If you attempt to pick-up a pre-order or an item earmarked for someone else. ... O…

I don't think any of your examples are analogous to the questions/point the GP was trying to make. Your questions seem to be centered around someone trying to trick or defraud a retailer; GP's is about simple, straightforward delegation.

But yes, agreed, businesses have the right to refuse service to anyone (outside of illegal discrimination).

We should fight it, though, when those refusals are backed by anti-consumer practices. It's pretty clear that Amazon doesn't like agent-mediated purchases because it allows the customer to bypass Amazon's ability to put sponsored products in front of you, and try to get you to buy related and add-on products along with what you actually want.

Sure, it is their right to do that, but as consumers I think we shouldn't be complacent and just take what the big shopping overlords feed us. Consolidation (and races to the bottom such as this) is making it harder and harder to find competing retailers and products when we want to vote with our wallets as to what kinds of shopping experiences are acceptable.

And the bottom line is that if Amazon realizes that they're losing sales because people want to use AI agents to buy things, and they're banning those agents, they'll change their tune. But that only works so long as there are alternatives with better practices, and, well... there aren't many.

Re: Bullying Is Not Innovation

#12

Post by throwacct »

theturtletalks wrote: post #5

The reason Amazon doesn’t want AI involved is because then AI could skip Amazon altogether in the future and checkout directly on seller’s websites. It’s actually the idea behind the decentralized marketplace I’m building. It uses MCP-UI to bring the whole storefront and checkout into the chat. I’m keeping a close eye on e-commerce and AI and the recent deal Paypal made with OpenAI and Amazon getting aggressive, it’s…

Interesting. Your solution literally feel like switching from one garden to another one. This time, with "AI".

Re: Bullying Is Not Innovation

#13

Post by kelnos »

theturtletalks wrote: post #5

The reason Amazon doesn’t want AI involved is because then AI could skip Amazon altogether in the future and checkout directly on seller’s websites. It’s actually the idea behind the decentralized marketplace I’m building. It uses MCP-UI to bring the whole storefront and checkout into the chat. I’m keeping a close eye on e-commerce and AI and the recent deal Paypal made with OpenAI and Amazon getting aggressive, it’s…

I'm very concerned about the idea of about giving LLMs access to my credit card, but this is the kind of future I want. I prefer to buy products directly from manufacturers, but I keep going back to Amazon. Amazon's experience is pretty bad in many ways, but I still get value out of the fast ("free") Prime shipping, and Amazon's ability to aggregate products across different categories and manufacturers is still a strength.

I would love to be able to just type "buy me a FooCorp BarBaz" into an LLM, and have it take care of choosing the retailer based on whatever criteria I've decided, whether that's lowest price, best return policy, fastest shipping... whatever. That sounds like it could be a much better experience than what we have now.

But I do worry that a service like yours could be biased in myriad ways, and an unscrupulous owner of such a service could do shady things like allowing retailers to pay to be preferred over others. Ultimately I'd want the open source version of this that I can self-host.

Re: Bullying Is Not Innovation

#14

Post by lesser-shadow »

ctvo wrote: post #10
andreybaskov wrote: post #7

Agentic browsers raise a lot of questions that were hanging there even before LLMs. Can I ask my partner to buy a product on Amazon? Can I ask my personal assistant to buy a product on Amazon? Can I hire a contractor to buy products on Amazon? Can I communicate with a contractor via API to direct them what products to buy? What if there is no human on the other end and its an LLM? Same issue with LinkedIn. I know exe…

You've been spamming this in a few threads. A private business can 100% refuse service to you. Examples with regards to "delegation": - If you come in using a form of non-cash payment that doesn't belong to you. - If you're purchasing a car, and are filling out paperwork under someone else's name. FYI, you can buy cars on Amazon.com. - If you attempt to pick-up a pre-order or an item earmarked for someone else. ... O…

[dead]

Re: Bullying Is Not Innovation

#15

Post by andreybaskov »

ctvo wrote: post #10
andreybaskov wrote: post #7

Agentic browsers raise a lot of questions that were hanging there even before LLMs. Can I ask my partner to buy a product on Amazon? Can I ask my personal assistant to buy a product on Amazon? Can I hire a contractor to buy products on Amazon? Can I communicate with a contractor via API to direct them what products to buy? What if there is no human on the other end and its an LLM? Same issue with LinkedIn. I know exe…

You've been spamming this in a few threads. A private business can 100% refuse service to you. Examples with regards to "delegation": - If you come in using a form of non-cash payment that doesn't belong to you. - If you're purchasing a car, and are filling out paperwork under someone else's name. FYI, you can buy cars on Amazon.com. - If you attempt to pick-up a pre-order or an item earmarked for someone else. ... O…

Apologies, I didn't mean to spam, haven't seen the other thread that picked up more votes and was really curious about where the line is.

I completely understand private businesses having a right to refuse a service without a cause. But as others pointed, the question is to what degree "delegation" is acceptable if I'm acting in a good faith?

I'm guessing the answer is "to a degree it doesn't impact our business".

Re: Bullying Is Not Innovation

#16

Post by maerF0x0 »

American companies do this a lot. Rule for thee, not for me. For example lawyers. Companies have a team of lawyers to ensure you only play by their terms, on terms they can only understand, with disproportionate amortized advantages/disadvantages (who can afford to add $1000 to their disney+ subscription? Disney spreads the cost lawyers across millions of transactions...). Or they retain their right to sue you, but force you into arbitration.

Not that I suspect perplexity is any kind of innocent of that behavior (or at least will remain so if extremely successful)

Now companies are doing the same with AI. We can use AI, and other tools to maximize what we extract from you, but you cannot use AI to help yourself with better outcomes.

I also commented here that it sounds anti-competitive: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45816871

Re: Bullying Is Not Innovation

#17

Post by theturtletalks »

kelnos wrote: post #13
theturtletalks wrote: post #5

The reason Amazon doesn’t want AI involved is because then AI could skip Amazon altogether in the future and checkout directly on seller’s websites. It’s actually the idea behind the decentralized marketplace I’m building. It uses MCP-UI to bring the whole storefront and checkout into the chat. I’m keeping a close eye on e-commerce and AI and the recent deal Paypal made with OpenAI and Amazon getting aggressive, it’s…

I'm very concerned about the idea of about giving LLMs access to my credit card, but this is the kind of future I want. I prefer to buy products directly from manufacturers, but I keep going back to Amazon. Amazon's experience is pretty bad in many ways, but I still get value out of the fast ("free") Prime shipping, and Amazon's ability to aggregate products across different categories and manufacturers is still a st…

This is why the code is completely open-source, to keep us honest. All we use is a config file to keep track of stores. You can also bring your own key if you think our LLM is bias or going to give preference to certain stores. Check out our Ethos [0], it covers things in great detail.

0. https://marketplace.openship.org/ethos

Re: Bullying Is Not Innovation

#18

Post by theturtletalks »

throwacct wrote: post #12
theturtletalks wrote: post #5

The reason Amazon doesn’t want AI involved is because then AI could skip Amazon altogether in the future and checkout directly on seller’s websites. It’s actually the idea behind the decentralized marketplace I’m building. It uses MCP-UI to bring the whole storefront and checkout into the chat. I’m keeping a close eye on e-commerce and AI and the recent deal Paypal made with OpenAI and Amazon getting aggressive, it’s…

Interesting. Your solution literally feel like switching from one garden to another one. This time, with "AI".

Yes the marketplace supports our e-commerce platform, Openfront, for now but is built with adapters so any platform can be connected.

We felt AI was the perfect glue between different types of stores and could navigate them using intelligence. An example of this is being able to paste in your address in chat and AI will figure out which is the country, state, etc. Different stores handle addresses differently.

Re: Bullying Is Not Innovation

#19

Post by throwacct »

theturtletalks wrote: post #18
throwacct wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. Your solution literally feel like switching from one garden to another one. This time, with "AI".

Yes the marketplace supports our e-commerce platform, Openfront, for now but is built with adapters so any platform can be connected. We felt AI was the perfect glue between different types of stores and could navigate them using intelligence. An example of this is being able to paste in your address in chat and AI will figure out which is the country, state, etc. Different stores handle addresses differently.

Ok. How can this help businesses wanting to take "control" of their brand and customers? Won't this be equivalent to being an Amazon Seller?

Re: Bullying Is Not Innovation

#20

Post by theturtletalks »

throwacct wrote: post #19
theturtletalks wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes the marketplace supports our e-commerce platform, Openfront, for now but is built with adapters so any platform can be connected. We felt AI was the perfect glue between different types of stores and could navigate them using intelligence. An example of this is being able to paste in your address in chat and AI will figure out which is the country, state, etc. Different stores handle addresses differently.

Ok. How can this help businesses wanting to take "control" of their brand and customers? Won't this be equivalent to being an Amazon Seller?

The difference is stores own everything. When someone buys, payment goes straight to the store's account. Customer data goes to their system. The marketplace just queries their existing API and renders it conversationally. Orders show up directly in the store's platform. They don't have to log into anything new or manage multiple dashboards. We never touch the money or data.
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