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Want to Understand What Ails the Modern Internet? Look at eBay

nytimes.com

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Re: Want to Understand What Ails the Modern Internet? Look at eBay

#131

Post by IOT_Apprentice »

steven2012 wrote: post #21

I use eBay frequently. I have only bought things, but I want to sell things, however I'm terrified of getting scammed. And eBay does nothing to ameliorate those fears. I got as close as taking pictures, writing a description, and stopped at the last step before putting my item for sale. Everything I've read suggests that it's simply not worth it to try to sell things because you have no protection from scammers. As a…

Your comments regarding change in 20 years is rather over the top. I used to work at eBay and there has been massive change to the platform both internally and on the UI front. There were major changes rolled live to site in terms of search, mobile and web/desktop. Behind the scenes, there was movement from in-house to open source technology in a major way. Movement from 30k windows servers, to linux cloud (w/250K VMs on openshift), to docker to kubernetes. Moves on the client facing code from new implementations in java(raptor), then to node.js and more. eBay has embraced open source and also open sources many of their solutions as well.

Re: Want to Understand What Ails the Modern Internet? Look at eBay

#132

Post by behringer »

setquk wrote: post #128
behringer wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That may be true in general but if I were to receive a broken item and it was listed as working but no returns, I'd file a claim anyway. Sometimes I do pass these up too if the item is available from another seller.

It’s a combination of reputation and the description. I’ve sold hundreds of mid value items with no negative feedback.

Yeah but how many of them arrived broken? I suspect you've gotten lucky so far and/or haven't had a buyer like me that would hold you to the phrase (or whatever variation you use) of "tested and working".

Re: Want to Understand What Ails the Modern Internet? Look at eBay

#133

Post by setquk »

behringer wrote: post #132
setquk wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a combination of reputation and the description. I’ve sold hundreds of mid value items with no negative feedback.

Yeah but how many of them arrived broken? I suspect you've gotten lucky so far and/or haven't had a buyer like me that would hold you to the phrase (or whatever variation you use) of "tested and working".

Not a single item has arrived broken or non functional. I’ve had some extremely discerning buyers. I don’t sell generic stuff for ref. Specialist restored items. Mainly specialist equipment 40-50 years old that has been restored to new condition.

Re: Want to Understand What Ails the Modern Internet? Look at eBay

#134

Post by mirimir »

unclebucknasty wrote: post #91
mirimir wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe "stated mission"? Do you believe that Facebook's mission is actually social connection?

> Do you believe that Facebook's mission is actually social connection? Exactly. I laughed out loud at how insanely cynical it is that they suggest that as their mission. After reading it, you can almost hear Zuckerberg laughing and sneering, "dumb f___s".

He could have seen the light. Some sort of light. God. Landmark. Qigong. Some Hawaiian spiritual practice.

Re: Want to Understand What Ails the Modern Internet? Look at eBay

#135

Post by [deleted] »

mirimir wrote: post #134
unclebucknasty wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do you believe that Facebook's mission is actually social connection? Exactly. I laughed out loud at how insanely cynical it is that they suggest that as their mission. After reading it, you can almost hear Zuckerberg laughing and sneering, "dumb f___s".

He could have seen the light. Some sort of light. God. Landmark. Qigong. Some Hawaiian spiritual practice.

[deleted]

Re: Want to Understand What Ails the Modern Internet? Look at eBay

#136

Post by behringer »

setquk wrote: post #133
behringer wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah but how many of them arrived broken? I suspect you've gotten lucky so far and/or haven't had a buyer like me that would hold you to the phrase (or whatever variation you use) of "tested and working".

Not a single item has arrived broken or non functional. I’ve had some extremely discerning buyers. I don’t sell generic stuff for ref. Specialist restored items. Mainly specialist equipment 40-50 years old that has been restored to new condition.

Indeed and that's the kind of stuff I buy too. But lucky for me, I've never had an item arrive non-functional that I can remember. I find ebay to be particularly reliable :)

Re: Want to Understand What Ails the Modern Internet? Look at eBay

#137

Post by DrScump »

vxNsr wrote: post #116
DrScump wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Adyen will be replacing PayPal as eBay's official payments affiliate.

If true that's a huge coup! I'd guess that over 3/4 of paypal revenue comes from ebay.

10 years ago, maybe. Paypal evolved into a full-service payments processor since.

(By "full-service", I am not saying good service; just that they offer a broad spectrum of services now.)

One irony is that eBay was originally very hostile to Paypal as they tried to get traction for their own Billpoint system. They even killed listings for having Paypal payment buttons in them.

Fast forward a few years... eBay becomes so protective of Paypal's de facto monopoly, they made it a policy violation to even mention accepting cash in a listing. (!)

Re: Want to Understand What Ails the Modern Internet? Look at eBay

#138

Post by DrScump »

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #106
oldcynic wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of their UI changes have been user hostile or added dark patterns. For instance where once you got local items and sellers by default, now it defaults to international and you have to change a setting to exclude overseas sellers. Almost everyone will want to shop nationally first. It's the same arrogant "knowing better" seen in Facebook's show recent posts constantly resetting. Picking out one feature that they…

> Almost everyone will want to shop nationally first. It's the same arrogant "knowing better" seen in Facebook's show recent posts constantly resetting. A lot of people want to shop price first then see how much cost would increase by buying from someone already on the same continent. Including shipping when sorting by price is the opposite of user-hostile and they've done this since forever, most online retailers do…

  Including shipping when sorting by price
Actually, they give search results preference to items with "free shipping" (their so-called "Fast and Free" cobrand) regardless of final price to the consumer.

Re: Want to Understand What Ails the Modern Internet? Look at eBay

#139

Post by adrianratnapala »

FearNotDaniel wrote: post #62
adrianratnapala wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. For hundreds of years English has had a rule that proper nouns are capitalised; it is pretentious to imagine that "myThingy is soooo cool that you can't even use the rules of English on it." Now in some fields, like computer documentation, there's practical reason to change. It would be confusing to capitalise command-names if they are lower-case in their (case sensitive) native language. But newspapers aren't b…

Actually, look in any book printed 18th/early 19th century and you'll see that the rules were quite different then: all nouns were capitalised, as in modern German, and the 'long s' was frequently used in the middle of words. Mass literacy, almost-universal schooling along with physical punishments for children not doing exactly what the textbook said have given us moderns the idea that the 'proper' English of our gr…

> all nouns were capitalised

But that is still a rule that all proper nouns are capitalised. It's also beside the point. No one is claiming that rules don't change, or even that they are sharply defined. I was claiming that it is presumptuous complain about other people when they follow the traditional rules.

Re: Want to Understand What Ails the Modern Internet? Look at eBay

#140

Post by brokenmachine »

imgabe wrote: post #74
steven2012 wrote: post #21

I use eBay frequently. I have only bought things, but I want to sell things, however I'm terrified of getting scammed. And eBay does nothing to ameliorate those fears. I got as close as taking pictures, writing a description, and stopped at the last step before putting my item for sale. Everything I've read suggests that it's simply not worth it to try to sell things because you have no protection from scammers. As a…

I've sold a few things on eBay and never gotten scammed. Maybe it's just random luck, but it's nowhere near the 100% scam-rate that posts like this lead you to believe.

Me too. I've sold maybe 30 items from $50-$1000 in value and not been scammed yet.
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