Every time I post something for sale on Craigslist/Kijiji/FB I get reminded that this is a use case we should be able to handle. We could also offer a non-profit alternative for wider audiences instead of generating revenue for Meta. It could also serve as another channel for new users to our Fediverse, people not necessarily interested in social media alternatives. The American corporate services won’t be getting any better over time so an alternative is likely to be needed.
This project seems to be implementing a federated marketplace. If a Fedecaner finds themselves with even more time to donate than they already have and a similar desire, maybe that could be the next service to standup. :D
Thoughts?
Yeah I’ve played around with flohmarket before, and I think it’s a great idea. I’m willing to casually set up an instance if there’s real interest in using it. People in Vancouver love to give away and get stuff on classified ads sites, so if enough people know, I think it would work. The version I fiddled around with was the one before CAPTCHA was implemented, I need that to avoid spam.
Main thing is interest in people using it. Get my comment 100 upvotes by Sunday and I’ll start working on it.
@AvidAmoeba@lemmy.ca Follow up: It doesn’t seem like this post gained a lot of traction (25 upvotes as of midday Sunday and 18 on my comment) but I see there is a little bit of interest. I won’t start immediately, but I’ll think about it on and off over the next several months, maybe I’ll set it up trying the latest version, maybe I’ll go check to see if there’s interest with UBC students, but I can’t promise anything on specific timelines.
I’m terminally on Lemmy, so if I spot more discussion of flohmarkt with clear expressions of interest, I might press on with more urgency, we’ll see.
It can take a long time for good ideas to propagate widely enough for a lot of people to become aware of it. Mastodon was around for years before people started jumping on the activitypub bandwagon.
I have no programming skills and wouldn’t be able to help. But I hate using eBay and Kijiji and something federated would be mighty cool.
Are you in Vancouver, Montreal or Toronto, or somewhere else in Canada and would want to try it out and put some listings if I started it?
Whenever I get to it, I will need “completely unskilled” people to try it to see where the pain points of using the site could be.
I’ll buy the domain/s if you decide to start a trial.
I think it’s one of those infrastructure things where the availability of it creates demand. Let us know if you decide to do it. We can discuss and research names, etc. I think we have a chance to target laypeople looking for a nicer, ad-free, perhaps moderated (provided volunteer labour exist) alternative to the existing platforms. Imagine if we can offer a place where there’s clear delineation between personal and store listings. That on its own would be significant draw. If there’s usage and popularity long-term, we could charge some cheap, flat sub fee to cover the costs. E.g. a toonie or two per year, or some cents per listing, perhaps on voluntary basis.