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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

#301

Post by dang »

MarginalGainz wrote: post #180

This 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…

We've been getting complaints about your account posting generated comments. Is that the case?

(Generated comments aren't allowed here - we only want commenters who write in their own voice. More explanation at https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... and https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...)

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

#302

Post by NickC25 »

direwolf20 wrote: post #288
burnte wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Mint condition MacBook Pro M5, 64GB RAM, 2TB storage, midnight black, box only" and it sells for $1800 because someone didn't see "box only".

... Is fraud.

it is?

I mean, it's deliberately misleading, but it's not fraud. If it says "box only", it means box only.

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

#303

Post by mrguyorama »

__jonas wrote: post #166

Interesting, 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…

Does the tools and features ebay already has not meet this need?

Can't you set up a saved search that ebay will notify you of?

>“I want an old mini PC to use as a home server, it should have roughly these specs and cost under this amount”

This is a bad example because at pretty much all times, there is sufficient inventory for you to find the actual item you want, so you don't need the "agent" to repeatedly check. In instances where there is limited inventory, saved searches have been the reliable solution for decades. It's how niche youtube channels have acquired niche hardware forever.

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

#304

Post by jjmarr »

ianferrel wrote: post #299
pranavj wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great analysis of the real motivation here. But this feels like the record labels trying to ban MP3 players. You can protect the impression funnel today, but the trajectory is clear - consumers will increasingly delegate purchasing decisions to agents, and the platforms that adapt will capture that flow. The marketplace that builds "agent-friendly" commerce (verified listings, structured data, transparent pricing, AP…

>The marketplace that builds "agent-friendly" commerce (verified listings, structured data, transparent pricing, API access) becomes the default backend for AI shopping. I'd like to believe this, but claims like this have been made since the early days of internet commerce. After all, it's not hard to specify structured data about items and run queries against it. But it largely has not materialized outside of a few…

Because agentic AI can parse unstructured data and make purchasing decisions regardless of whether your site allows it, which avoids the chicken-and-egg problem.

It's similar to DoorDash. If your restaurant didn't want to sign up, they added you anyways and took orders on your behalf, then sent a physical courier over with a prepaid card to order takeout. Sometimes the menus were parsed incorrectly and customers blamed the restaurant.

This forced restaurants to sign up, claim their page, and keep their menus up to date, since not offering delivery wasn't an option.

At least 1 agentic AI tool will ignore these new terms and buy stuff on eBay anyways. Inevitably there'll be bugs or it won't get the best deal. At first this won't matter, but eventually competitors will offer a bug-free purchasing experience and consumers will move over.

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

#306

Post by terminalshort »

abroszka33 wrote: post #305

Who cares, it's my browser, it is for me to decide what I run, not for eBay. LLM, AdBlock or whatever else I want I will run it.

Of course you can run anything you want on your computer. But it is also ebay's right to decide whether or not its computer will allow requests from your computer.

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

#307

Post by ianferrel »

jjmarr wrote: post #304
ianferrel wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The marketplace that builds "agent-friendly" commerce (verified listings, structured data, transparent pricing, API access) becomes the default backend for AI shopping. I'd like to believe this, but claims like this have been made since the early days of internet commerce. After all, it's not hard to specify structured data about items and run queries against it. But it largely has not materialized outside of a few…

Because agentic AI can parse unstructured data and make purchasing decisions regardless of whether your site allows it, which avoids the chicken-and-egg problem. It's similar to DoorDash. If your restaurant didn't want to sign up, they added you anyways and took orders on your behalf, then sent a physical courier over with a prepaid card to order takeout. Sometimes the menus were parsed incorrectly and customers blam…

>Because agentic AI can parse unstructured data and make purchasing decisions regardless of whether your site allows it, which avoids the chicken-and-egg problem.

People can do that too, and also benefit from actual structured data. But the avoidance of the chicken and egg problem didn't seem to result in widespread structured data stores beating out the SEO-spam-style listings.

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

#308

Post by haritha-j »

direwolf20 wrote: post #286
haritha-j wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or probably even wrose, it actually shifts the attention and the wandering. That phase will happen inside the LLM, where the LLM decides which link to suggest, i.e. whoever pays the LLM the most. And worse yet, that will apply not just for products, but for platforms, so if amazon pays chatgpt more than ebay does, there goes your sale.

Or if eBay blocks ChatGPT while Amazon doesn't.

The same amazon that sued anthropic for their AI trying to order stuff on Amazon?

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

#309

Post by WheatMillington »

malfist wrote: post #215
MarginalGainz wrote: post #180

This 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…

This reply has hallmarks of AI slop. Green name, 2x its not X its Y, em dashes. If you want to be a productive member try commenting what you put into your prompt instead of the slop that comes out. Also classic ai drivel: This is about protecting the business model, not their inventory. My brother in AI, eBay doesn't have inventory. They're a platform.

What does green name signify on HN? I've always wondered.

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

#310

Post by [deleted] »

ianferrel wrote: post #307
jjmarr wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because agentic AI can parse unstructured data and make purchasing decisions regardless of whether your site allows it, which avoids the chicken-and-egg problem. It's similar to DoorDash. If your restaurant didn't want to sign up, they added you anyways and took orders on your behalf, then sent a physical courier over with a prepaid card to order takeout. Sometimes the menus were parsed incorrectly and customers blam…

>Because agentic AI can parse unstructured data and make purchasing decisions regardless of whether your site allows it, which avoids the chicken-and-egg problem. People can do that too, and also benefit from actual structured data. But the avoidance of the chicken and egg problem didn't seem to result in widespread structured data stores beating out the SEO-spam-style listings.

[deleted]
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