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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

#311

Post by owenversteeg »

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.

Yeah, it really says something about the state of HN these days that this account racked up (net) 261 votes in nine days writing absolute drivel.

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

#312

Post by 0x457 »

ramses0 wrote: post #226
pjc50 wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like etsy, they long since worked out that most volume is through dropshippers of products mass produced in China. Or a few physical businesses like houseclearers which can manage a high throughput. If you're a random private seller with a single item, you're an inconvenience to them.

"Power Sellers" - there was a statement that your business (for marketplace-type-business) needed to have an avenue to support "mega" suppliers for eventual symbiotic success. There was a business a while back that was like "pay $50-100 to carpool from SF to LA" and the post-mortem was: "your earning potential was limited, no power-seller support" b/c eventually just turn into a bus-driver/bus company. (Uber is an in…

> There was a business a while back that was like "pay $50-100 to carpool from SF to LA" and the post-mortem was: "your earning potential was limited, no power-seller support" b/c eventually just turn into a bus-driver/bus company. (Uber is an interesting contra-example).

I think Uber would absolutely turn into a bus company if their risk tolerance allowed for this. It did change from "I have a car and free time" to "I'm buying a car to be a full-time Uber driver"

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

#313

Post by asdff »

__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…

>eBay and classifieds sites, I usually just want something in a rough ballpark, and the best way to find that is come back and check every day looking through searches.

You already can do that on ebay. Whatever terms get you ballpark results can become a search alert. You don't need to know the items you want exactly. And you get a handy email with the results of that alert when they hit, which you can scroll over in about ten seconds.

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

#314

Post by mrguyorama »

some_random wrote: post #39
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 I want to build my own personal cloud storage computer, buy all the hardware for me then walk me through building and configuring it. My budget is $600, try to get the best deals and make sure that all the parts are compatible. I'm fine with used parts as long as they're a good deal and are in working order."

You will end up with expensive scam parts.

"Buy good quality for less than market value and don't get scammed" is so far beyond AGI complete that I cannot fathom how people think it will be reliably doable by LLMs

I think it's telling though how everyone's example of how an AI agent can help you shop is "I want it to take advantage of someone else's mistake or knowledge asymmetry to make me free money".

Are you all just embarrassed used car salespeople?

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

#315

Post by 0x457 »

whatevermom4 wrote: post #291
pjc50 wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thinking a bit more, it would be quite handy to have a "power seller" AI for all my random junk. Spread it out on a table, pan a camera over it, then leave it to the computers until someone's willing to pay an amount for one of those objects that's worth the work of packing and shipping it.

This is a really cool idea. A sort of table where you just leave the stuff that you want to sell. There could be a dedicated tablet / computer where to interact with the AI (adjust prices, receive orders) and a little printer to print the shipping labels.

Until that AI can take the item, take photos, describe the item properly, drop it off a post office - I assure you, dedicated AI will only slow you down.

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

#316

Post by cortesoft »

darkxanthos wrote: post #177
__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…

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.

This reminds me so much of an old World of Warcraft addon i used in 2005-6 or so… I believe it was called ‘bottom feeder’ or something.

Basically, you would leave your character logged in sitting at the auction house. It would observe auctions for a while, and generate pricing data and sales data. Then, you would enable automatic mode, and it would automatically bid/buy any item that someone put up for sale if the price was much lower than normal.

You would leave it running overnight, or whatever, then come back to go pick up all the items it bought, and then you would go back to the auction house and sell all your items you bought at the correct price.

Basically, you would see buy auctions created by people who didn’t realize what the correct price should be and sold too cheaply. Since this was an automated system, you could beat any human to take advantage of the deal.

I made a ton of in game currency doing this.

After a few months they changed the auction rules to prevent this… add-ons could no longer directly bid on items, and you had to sit there and click “buy” whenever the script found a good deal. This severely limited the amount you could make with the script.

Basically this mirrors the eBay timeline, with the same reasons I am guessing… eBay (like WoW) doesn’t want bots collecting arbitrage.

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

#317

Post by 0x457 »

TZubiri wrote: post #260
pjc50 wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like etsy, they long since worked out that most volume is through dropshippers of products mass produced in China. Or a few physical businesses like houseclearers which can manage a high throughput. If you're a random private seller with a single item, you're an inconvenience to them.

[flagged]

I don't think it's Etsy fault other than allowing it. If someone is selling artisanal wooden cutting boards, someone will see it and think how they can do the same-ish, but with less overhead. Someone will also make "How I make money of etsy" video and sell their courses, probably to double-dip.

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

#318

Post by geocar »

terminalshort wrote: post #306
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.

> But it is also ebay's right to decide whether or not its computer will allow requests from your computer.

That is dangerous thinking right there: Ebay does not have rights.

Of course ebay may do it anyway, and it may take time for justice to correct things, but it is not Right, nor their right, to violate law even to protect themselves.

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

#319

Post by guywithahat »

geocar wrote: post #318
terminalshort wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> But it is also ebay's right to decide whether or not its computer will allow requests from your computer. That is dangerous thinking right there: Ebay does not have rights. Of course ebay may do it anyway, and it may take time for justice to correct things, but it is not Right, nor their right, to violate law even to protect themselves.

Yes they do, as they should. Ebay is in an extremely competitive market and you have lots of other options, if you're abusing their service they need to be allowed to ban you. Imagine if Amazon wasn't allowed to ban scammers, or if they couldn't refuse a login portal to a user, allowing infinite attempts. It's important they get to decide whether to deliver a page to you, let alone keep you as a user.

If we were talking about some government-run water utility then sure, it would different, but a private online store can ban users without ruining their life, and if you're opposed to this new rule you should stop using them in protest.

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

#320

Post by dlcarrier »

JohnFen wrote: post #85
Fwirt wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was my belief for many years, but then I tried sniping (with the same prices I was putting as my maximum bid before!) and my success rate skyrocketed and the prices I was paying dropped. It seems that despite repeated reminders and explanations, there are three groups of people using eBay "incorrectly" that make the sniping strategy viable: 1) People who do not understand proxy bidding and think that they "need"…

> For some reason, auctions with more bidders seem to attract more bidders, whereas auctions with zero bids seem to go unnoticed. Huh. I'm a "buy it now" guy and filter out the auctions, but maybe I should start looking for zero bid auctions too.

Ebay has filters to display sold listings, so when you're looking to buy something, check out the closed auctions and see what they're going for. If the prices are similar, you might as well buy from fixed-price listings, but if auction prices are lower, you can save a lot by being patient.

You can also save searches for a fixed-priced listing below a specified value, and enable alerts, so that if someone lists something that's priced to sell, you can get it quickly.

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