How can they tell its AI buying if the agent uses the right user agent and works through a real browser?
eBay explicitly bans AI "buy for me" agents in user agreement update
191–200 of 363 posts
Re: eBay explicitly bans AI "buy for me" agents in user agreement update
#192Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 mon…
The logic of "you shouldn't ever need to snipe, just bid your max price" only works if we assume that the max price is a red line though. If I "value something" at $5000 (as in I want to buy it at $5000), and I bid $5000, and someone bids $5000.01, I would probably be happy if I sniped them and got the item for $5000.02.
I'm not defending "you shouldn't ever need to snipe, just bid your max price" as a hard principle, just trying to explain where the idea comes from. Sniping can be strategic for lots of reasons: you don't have to commit to a bid until the last second (in case you find a similar item for cheaper elsewhere), you deny other people information, you might avoid anxiety from wondering whether your bid will win, etc.
That said, the max price is supposed to be a price where you are not especially happy to get the item at that price, but not really sad either, a price where you would say "well, I hoped for better but I guess that's a fair deal". That's not realistically pinned down to the cent. But if you set a max price at $5000 and would be happy to get the item at $5000.02 (for some reason other than satisfaction from sniping), then you set your max price wrong, or at least differently from how economists expect you to set it.
Re: eBay explicitly bans AI "buy for me" agents in user agreement update
#193Earlier quoted context omitted.
The gap between total indifference and wanting something bad enough to bid on it is always going to be more than $.01.
I reckon that's empirically false. Shops set prices like $499.99 for a reason. (And it has to be theoretically false, otherwise $X is equivalent to $X + $0.01 for all X, and so if you'd buy something at 1c you'd buy it for the contents of your bank account.) If you still dispute this, you need to try to explain how a larger price difference can affect your decision. If you'd happily place a $1 bid, and you'd definite…
Regarding the last part: it's simple, $1.01 is less than $100
This process doesn't work endlessly. You can't just add $.01 a billion times and I'd still pay it. But it works once or twice.
Shops set prices like $499.99 due to funny psychological effects: $499.99 is still a price "in the 400s" while $500 is "in the 500s". Nobody sits down and thinks logically about it and concludes that no, the $.01 difference between $499.99 and $500.00 crosses the line. But people see $499.99 and the brain initially goes "oh, it's only 400-something".
Re: eBay explicitly bans AI "buy for me" agents in user agreement update
#194Interesting, I’m not big on AI but I have thought often it would be nice to have an ‘agent’ that monitors ebay or other classifieds sites for items based on a natural language description. Something like “I want an old mini PC to use as a home server, it should have roughly these specs and cost under this amount”, and then an LLM would run some searches every day, parse the results and send me a message if something…
I would expect a naive implementation would give you a "least worse" option everyday and can't judge when it is "good enough" Afterall, that's what most people would be when asked to make decisions for others without context. Making the agent understand your requirements would be quite a bit of work.
Yeah that's very possible, I have never built anything with LLMs and I'm not a heavy user so I'm not sure how feasible it is.
I do think I would already get value from a least worse option every day, a sort of 'digest', so I don't have remember, and to look through results myself. I think it's a best case for LLM use for me, there is no harm at all in false negatives or positives, there are no significant stakes and I think the vagueness / unpredictability of the output is an advantage, it might find something that I had not even considered (like for my example: here is a used laptop with roughly these specs, it could also be a good home home server, something like that).
Re: eBay explicitly bans AI "buy for me" agents in user agreement update
#195Earlier quoted context omitted.
Exactly. I could put $100,000 as my max bid, but if second place only bids $10, then all they know is I bid $11 (or whatever the increment is). eBay doesn't tell anyone my max is $100K.
I think the reasoning is that people are irrational, and people don't actually have "hard limits' so others will bid in increments to exceed it. So in aggregate you will end up hitting your max more often because of others' irrationality than if it was a sealed auction and you don't give them that chance.
This is my point. If you look at the actual behavior and read people's comments in forums you'll see that almost no one sticks to their "hard limit". Including me!
People's competitive behavior, or "you're not taking this from me," or "I've definitely got this item and have made plans" or any number of other emotional behaviors take over.
People's railing against sniping also demonstrates this.
Re: eBay explicitly bans AI "buy for me" agents in user agreement update
#196Interesting, I’m not big on AI but I have thought often it would be nice to have an ‘agent’ that monitors ebay or other classifieds sites for items based on a natural language description. Something like “I want an old mini PC to use as a home server, it should have roughly these specs and cost under this amount”, and then an LLM would run some searches every day, parse the results and send me a message if something…
The purchasing itself can important for it to jump on a great price. Maybe it finds what you're looking for at 1a while you're sleeping for example. Also if this were a business and you were going to resell it the AI could also create the listing as soon as the item is purchased.
I can't think of a scenario in which me buying some used stuff on ebay is that serious to be honest, having the AI buy would be a huge risk as well.
> Also if this were a business and you were going to resell it the AI could also create the listing as soon as the item is purchased.
That sounds like an awful grift, but good point, people might use such a system for that.
Re: eBay explicitly bans AI "buy for me" agents in user agreement update
#197example of focused leadership - a commenter already noted how wondering listings drive revenue
if it was some Bozo executive as we see at most tech companies - they would be advocating to implement the Open Agentic Commerce whatever being pushed by google while not noticing its killing their own company
Re: eBay explicitly bans AI "buy for me" agents in user agreement update
#198Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
#199Earlier quoted context omitted.
The gap between total indifference and wanting something bad enough to bid on it is always going to be more than $.01.
I reckon that's empirically false. Shops set prices like $499.99 for a reason. (And it has to be theoretically false, otherwise $X is equivalent to $X + $0.01 for all X, and so if you'd buy something at 1c you'd buy it for the contents of your bank account.) If you still dispute this, you need to try to explain how a larger price difference can affect your decision. If you'd happily place a $1 bid, and you'd definite…
Adding a single grain of sand to a small pile of sand never turns it into a big pile of sand, yet big piles of sand exist... well, how is that possible? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorites_paradox
Re: eBay explicitly bans AI "buy for me" agents in user agreement update
#200This ban isn't about 'fairness' or bot protection; it's about protecting the Impression Funnel. Marketplaces like eBay are designed to monetize 'Wandering Attention'—sponsored listings, 'customers also bought', and sidebar ads. An AI Agent represents 'Laser Focused Attention'. It executes a transaction with zero wandering. It effectively turns the marketplace into a commoditized backend database / dumb pipe. From a G…
I suspect they might lose money on returns too, which are probably more likely if an AI misunderstands what the buyer wants or misjudges quality or can’t detect fake listings etc
I don’t know if there are other ways eBay could lose money on returns. But my single data point: the very first thing I sold on eBay (a manual lever espresso machine) got returned because the buyer clearly didn’t know how to use it, and claimed it was defective. And because eBay has a money back guarantee, they just reached their hands into my back account and withdrew the earnings from the sale + the shipping costs for the delivery to the buyer + the shipping fees for the return. They even kept their listing fee and the sales tax. So… I don’t think eBay stands to lose money directly from returns. Maybe they risk pissing too many sellers off with an increased rate of this horrific experience?!