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eBay explicitly bans AI "buy for me" agents in user agreement update

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Re: eBay explicitly bans AI "buy for me" agents in user agreement update

#151

Post by thornewolf »

mort96 wrote: post #137
ryandrake wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then just put your actual hard limit in as your bid, and sleep soundly, knowing that if someone pays $0.01 more, it's OK because you wouldn't have wanted to pay that anyway. I've never really been bothered by "sniping" in eBay. I always bid my absolute 100% maximum, and if someone bids more than me, then they can have it.

I don't understand this line of reasoning. I don't do auctions, but if I did, it would be because I want that item. When I want something, I never have an absolute hard price ceiling; if I'm willing to pay $10000, I'm willing to pay $10000.01. I can't imagine anyone who would be happy to pay $X for an item but not $X + $0.01. Like, if I'm at a store and an item costs $500, and I bring it to the checkout and the cashi…

it's because this argument of "what is $0.01 more?" can be extended forever, implying you are willing to pay an infinite amount of money for anything. since we know this is silly, we try to understand what our "real" maximum is. this is difficult to do for exactly the reasons you mention in your comment! surely $0.01 is negligible! there is a tension here.

and so, absolute max price is not a fantasy - the world would be absurd if it were - but instead its a real and difficult to construct value

Re: eBay explicitly bans AI "buy for me" agents in user agreement update

#152

Post by less_less »

mort96 wrote: post #137
ryandrake wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then just put your actual hard limit in as your bid, and sleep soundly, knowing that if someone pays $0.01 more, it's OK because you wouldn't have wanted to pay that anyway. I've never really been bothered by "sniping" in eBay. I always bid my absolute 100% maximum, and if someone bids more than me, then they can have it.

I don't understand this line of reasoning. I don't do auctions, but if I did, it would be because I want that item. When I want something, I never have an absolute hard price ceiling; if I'm willing to pay $10000, I'm willing to pay $10000.01. I can't imagine anyone who would be happy to pay $X for an item but not $X + $0.01. Like, if I'm at a store and an item costs $500, and I bring it to the checkout and the cashi…

It's not supposed to be some red line absolute max price, but rather "how much is this item worth to you?" You set that as your max bid price. If you get it at auction for less than that, you got a good deal, but if you buy it for more, you got a bad deal. If someone outbids you, then maybe it was worth it to them, but you (supposedly) would not have wanted to buy the item for that much, and would rather use your money for something else.

For tricky-to-price items like unique art pieces, the idea that you can pin this down might be a fantasy, but for commodity items it's pretty reasonable. If you can buy the same thing at costco dot com for $500, then it's probably not worth more than $500 to you, and if at auction you get outbid and it sells for $500.01 then you'll shrug and go order the same thing for a cent less, having wasted only a few minutes of your time. If the item you're bidding on is discontinued (e.g. it's last year's model) but you can buy a slightly better one for $550, and you can spare that extra $50, then again you won't be too sad about getting outbid. Online auctions are more popular for used items, but again in that case you usually still have an idea of what a used item is worth to you.

Re: eBay explicitly bans AI "buy for me" agents in user agreement update

#154

Post by duskdozer »

pwg wrote: post #71
HotHotLava wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you not know how ebay works? You put in the maximum price you're willing to pay, and if you win you're paying 2nd highest bid + 1. So you don't save any money by starting with a low bid.

From what I've seen discussed, it seems some percentage of "sniping" is to attempt to obtain both "winning bid" and "lowest possible price" (note, not the same as "max willing to pay for the same item"). The sniper is trying to hide interest, so as not to attract other interested bidders, and therefore grab "a great deal" of a small increment above the starting bid price. And this probably appears to work enough time…

they notify the bidder when they're outbid, and the incremental price increases can make it tempting for someone to adjust their idea of their max price. sniping deprives them of that opportunity.

Re: eBay explicitly bans AI "buy for me" agents in user agreement update

#155

Post by Yizahi »

observationist wrote: post #31
subroutine wrote: post #20

What 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 p…

"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 auto…

I genuinely wonder, would you do that, really? Sure 600$ is not the end of the world for certain countries, but neither it is a sum I'm willing to just lose on random. What if the electronic parrot buys from an obvious counterfeit vendor or obvious scammer? Or what if it buys you a stratocaster but different? Or a random 1982 guitar? What if it ignores 600$? Or what if it buys 600$ item with 300$ shipping and 500$ customs from god knows where?

I've seen enough by now and I know that some people will just unleash LLMs on anything without almost no oversight. We can already see people use agentic IDEs with "do all the shit" flag, they would probably easily add finances to the list of automation.

But, honestly, would you?

Re: eBay explicitly bans AI "buy for me" agents in user agreement update

#156

Post by robin_reala »

mmsc wrote: post #89
pishpash wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no need for that. They only need to implement a closing auction like stock markets. But eBay hasn't done anything since the 1990's except raise fees.

Nothing? Don't forget when their security team sent pigs heads to people and terrorized them:)

I think I missed this…

Re: eBay explicitly bans AI "buy for me" agents in user agreement update

#157

Post by Yizahi »

dawnerd wrote: post #52
observationist wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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 auto…

Yeah literally price mistakes being picked up right away. But also seems like a good way to get scammed.

I wager the scammer industry looking for active bots and exploiting them would thrive. Automate creation of fake listings using throwaway accounts using popular keywords and arbitraging price lower and lower, and until automatic buyers start bidding, remember the price and delete listing. Recreate listing with that price from a separate account selling bricks for 600$, and voila - free money.

Re: eBay explicitly bans AI "buy for me" agents in user agreement update

#158

Post by Havoc »

dankwizard wrote: post #58

Tried 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

Yes sold a fair bit and never had issues with fee deductions. Think it’s mostly deducted seller side

Re: eBay explicitly bans AI "buy for me" agents in user agreement update

#159

Post by cornholio »

cge wrote: post #124
BeetleB wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never understood why eBay set things up to enable sniping. Many years ago, there was an auction site called uBid. They had the sane rule: Bidding is open as long as there have been bids in the past 5 minutes. So the end date could be January 24th, 3pm, but if someone bids at 2:58pm, the deadline is extended to 3:05pm. And it keeps going. You know, like how auctions in the real world work.

In my experience, most purely online auctions, other than eBay, do work that way. Numerous auction houses, for example, including essentially all the major ones, have their auctions online now: when they are hybrid, that involves online live bidding where an online bid will cause the auctioneer in the room to keep the lot open for more bids; when they are "timed" or "online only", times are extended in some way on bi…

An alternative to ever extending the deadline is a Dutch auction model, where a bid consists of the maximum price you are willing to pay. It's a bit like integrating the snipping bot in eBay and allowing everyone to use it on fair terms.

For example, suppose the current price is $1 and the current winner is someone who bid $2 as their maximum bid ceiling. If I bid a $3 maximum, then I become the winner at a price of $2.

In this model, there is no need for snipping and those who honestly declare their maximum ceiling from the start are in no disadvantage compared to those who frequently update their bid, nor do they overpay.

Re: eBay explicitly bans AI "buy for me" agents in user agreement update

#160

Post by gond »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #130
gond wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Question: what kind of fun you are referring to here? Since, from the outside, it surely sounds like you get pleasure by inflicting some form of suffering on others. But that hopefully isn’t considered fun, is it?

The price, when between the seller's minimum and the buyer's maximum, is a zero sum game. So while this is definitely screwing with people , the seller gets paid more and the amount of suffering in the world shouldn't really change.

You are falling for the zero-sum fallacy and mixing categories on top of it.

Globally, wealth gets created, which leads to a positive-sum game, not a zero sum game.

On the other hand, if one quadrillionaire in a city owns all the money available in that said system except 100 currency units, the remaining 100 humans are in possession of exactly 1 currency unit. The suffering for the 100 humans is significantly higher for the 100 than for the one, even though it fulfils your premise of a balanced global suffering index.

Before the trade, the value for the seller and the buyer was zero. Whatever the trade involved, the moment the minimum of the seller gets hit, it becomes a positive-sum game.

If this would not be the case long-term rise of stocks would be impossible. That would mean a stock rise is a redistribution and you take it away from someone else . So, if the stock market were truly zero-sum, every currency unit earned would require someone else to have lost one.

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