Today I was reading Cory Doctorow’s Enshitification on my way back from the FOSDEM conference, in Brussels. One of the ideas that really caught my eye was the terrible impact that Amazon has on the customers, business partners (producers), and Delivery Service Partners (logistics companies). In a nutshell, nobody except Amazon wins here. No, not even you, customer, who orders a product on Amazon and get it delivered the next day. Not even you. I’m not going to reproduce the details here, just read the book and countless other testimonials, and you’ll know what I mean.

And something clicked in my mind.

As a community, we (and by that I mean other people smarter than me) have been able to build sustainable free and open-source alternatives to Twitter/Bluesky, Instagram, TikTok, Windows, Microsoft Office, and countless other proprietary solutions. The fediverse as a whole (including Mastodon, Loops, Pixelfed, etc.) and many other projects (some of which I’ve seen this weekend in FOSDEM) are the perfect example of how something different, better, is possible. Maybe not hegemonic yet, but viable.

So a now-obvious question came to mind. When are we going to replace Amazon?

Core principles

So, here is my dream. I want to build something that replaces Amazon. But not any replacement. This time, I want it to be a community project, the core principles being:

  1. Transparency. No more obscure positioning algorithms. No bribes to appear first on the list. No more dark patterns to induce users into buying things they don’t need. No Amazon’s choice to trick you into buying a product that is not best in its class. This platform must be free, open source software, to guarantee that the algorithms to search, order, and rate products are transparent, honest, and fair.
  2. Decentralization and federation. We’re not building the next multi-billion dollar company. We’re not even building a company. There won’t be thousands of servers operated by a single corporation. Following Mastodon’s example, there will be thousands, millions of servers (instances) operated and moderated by local communities, and federated with common sense. For example, it makes sense that communities 10 kilometers apart federate their inventory, so someone in one server can buy from a nearby community. It does not make sense that a server in Madrid synchronizes its inventory with another server in Nebraska.
  3. Direct sale. We don’t want to replace a middleman with another one. The purpose of this project is to connect sellers, buyers, and carriers, and provide them with the best tools possible. Not to make profit by exploiting them all. The money paid by the customer will go to the seller and the carrier. Period.
  4. Community moderation. We should provide the users (and specially the instance admins) with the tools to moderate the companies and products on sale in the platform. Everything from rating a product to flagging illegal content. Each instance has its own rules, and decides which products and companies are allowed to sell therein. Some examples include vegan-only markets, local-producers-only, apartheid-free instances (please), etc. Similar to the fediverse, instance admins should be able to establish federation rules, deciding which companies or entire instances are allowed to sell their products in their market. Of course, buyers should have similar tools to completely block a company/instance if they don’t want to hear from them.
  5. Privacy. No adds. No buying or selling behavioral data to manipulate prices. No stealing personal information from customers to build profiles. Sorry, no built-in marketing or possibility to pay to show your products to a segment of buyers. No bullshit.

Sustainability

This is all very cool, but who pays the bills?

First, we need to realize that models like Amazon exploit producers and carriers, and promote low-quality products with high prices. Everybody except Amazon needs an alternative, and it is in their own benefit that this alternative exists.

Second, we need to evaluate the convenience of small VS big instances. We could have few (virtually one) big instances, which would require a lot of resources to run, and be managed by very few hands with a lot of power (even with goodwill). Or we could have many smaller instances, each needing fewer resources, each implementing their own rules and paying their own bills. Both could work. But if you ask me, I’d rather go for the second approach, even if it is collectively more expensive. I think it’s important that each community can build their own set of rules rather than accepting whatever is imposed by the single instance operating on my territory.

Third, we should analyze the level of professionalism each instance may require. Maintaining the instance could be the side project of the cousin of the butcher. Or the community could pay a professional service provider to host the instance for them. Some may require on-call to ensure 24/7 uptime, some may not. Each community should find a balance between resources required, stability, and cost. The yearly costs could go from €50/year (cheapest hosting) to… well, any amount you want to imagine if you need to support dozens of millions of users buying from the same store, an on-call team, etc.

Now, each community is free to organize the funding or their instance the way they wish. Some ideas include:

  • Single-company instance. This would be like setting up your own e-commerce (like Shopify, PrestaShop, etc.) with the advantage that, through federation with other instances, your products would be discoverable by customers in other servers as well. This breaks the old constraint of “you need to know my site and buy directly from it”.
  • Associations of neighbors, consumers, or commerces could dedicate some resources to maintaining an instance where they can buy and sell local products. If they already have some sort of membership, part of that could go to funding an instance.
  • Political movements may want to set up an instance that is more aligned with their vision of how commerce should work.
  • Local or regional institutions may see this as a tool to protect the businesses and consumers they represent, and decide it’s a good idea to fund an instance. Compared to the investments needed for a real-life market, a virtual one built with open source should cost close to nothing.
  • Existing supermarkets may realize maintaining their own software is too expensive, and maybe they want to spin an instance. Why not?

Multiple instances may coexist in the same physical area. It would be like having several markets on different squares in the same city. Stores should be able to decide in which market they want to sell, and buyers should be able to choose which store to buy from.

Feasibility

But isn’t this too complex? Aren’t products going to be more expensive? Doesn’t goodwill Amazon optimize costs by volume, and therefore can provide more competitive prices? What about compliance with local laws?

Calm down.

Businesses existed before Amazon, and they will exist if Amazon shuts down. Amazon didn’t invent logistics. Some things will indeed be different.

Marketing is the biggest lever companies have to make sure their products get the first positions in the search results. Not better quality. Not lower prices. Higher investments in marketing equals more views and usually more sales. By removing the possibility to bribe the platform, sellers don’t need to invest absurd amounts of money trying to convince you that their product is better, allowing them to set lower prices. Take into account that when you’re buying a product, you’re also paying the indirect marketing cost of selling it (which often is more than the real price of the product itself). After removing marketing from the equation, sellers will have to compete on other factors that are beneficial for the buyers: quality (rating, reviews, etc.), price, and locality.

Logistics companies exist beyond Amazon. We should be able to integrate them into the platform. Not only the big ones, but also smaller, local delivery companies that may operate in smaller areas. Companies already sell off-Amazon. Some sellers may want to offer free-shipping (that is, assuming the cost of the delivery and including it in the price of the product) or charge for the shipping. Some things need to change, though. Maybe the system cannot afford free shipping for a 50-cent sale, delivered from 50 km away to your home. Perhaps this is not the world we should aim for.

Such a big initiative will not solve all the challenges in the first year. Not even in the first 5 years. We will need inputs from hundreds, thousands of buyers, sellers, and carriers. We will need to have tough discussions, discuss what is good or bad. Different instance admins will make different decisions based on their ethics. This will be less of a big store ruled by a multi-billionaire and more of a 21st-century network of digital markets.

Not for venture capitals or billionaires. For us, producers and consumers.