tofuflohmarkt a federated alternative to ebay and facebook marketplace
WildmimicThis sounds nice - when i’m done with getting my life back in order i’m gonna start selfhosting for real, and this goes onto the “to implement"-pile!
Don’t do a large pile, when you get to it, start with the smallest possible thingy thats easy and fun.
L3ft_F13ld!How do you know?
/s
I wanted to set up a kubernetes cluster and bought 2k worth of hardware, which ended up lying in a box for 3 freaking years before I gave up on kubernetes and just set it up with dokploy in swarm mode.
Holy shit, sorry to hear. Hope you found some kind of use for all that hardware.
(sorry for constant edits, check the edits)
Lol, no worries. Glad to hear it didn’t all go to waste.
Having spent a good amount of the last several weeks working on several self hosted things,I would have to agree. Simple projects shouldn’t take long… But some shit happens.
When something is done and working, it is satisfying.
Cool idea.
artyomWould be very cool if it actually had basic functionality, like searching for items that are actually near me and not 3045390 miles way…
poVoqBy default Flohmarkt recommends to set a location and only federate with instances in a certain geographic distance. So if you only see far away ads, then you are either using the wrong instance or the instance is misconfigured.
I only see far away ads because there are no public instances on my continent, as far as I can tell.
😆be the change you wish for
Brb, setting up tons of instances for my area so it looks popular
So location is by instance and not by user?
That seems an odd (and kind of problematic) design…
Why? To me that makes a lot of sense and this is also how similar popular platforms work (minus federation of course).
It should support both. On the instance side to limit a region/country matching the instance, then client side to set your actual reachable area.
Because we are talking about physical items.
The distance I would go to pick something up is relative to me, not relative to the server I’m connecting to. Shipping I may want to limit by country of origin/destination due to taxes or available shipping services.
It also means the issue of the user above - no one from North America even has a server option, which limits use. From a physical goods perspective, there is not a single option I’m aware of that limits region by server location.
Its always by user location.
No? The instance covers a certain geographic location, for example a city. So what you want is already included in that. Federation adds nearby city instances to the mix.
AFAIK all the major classified platforms (except ebay) are location limited very similar to the above.
I’m in the United States.
Can I join and see the city closest to me? Or search by distance from me?
Me, not the server.
You chose an instance that covers the geographic location you are interested in, for example your city. I don’t get what is do hard to understand about that. Afaik Craigslist or what ever you call that US platform started out the same way.
So by server.
There is no online classifieds I know of that work like that.
All the ones I know work like that here in Europe, except ebay (and even they have country specific pages).
Craigslist, freecycle, Facebook market, offerup - they all go by user region, not server region.
I literally linked you the Craigslist FAQ above that shows that they have server specific locations, just like Flohmarkt.
I think youre misunderstanding that page - those are regions, they are not server specific. You aren’t connecting to a different physical server hopping between 5 different cities across the United States (well you might be with CDNs but thats kind of besides the point).
They are designations - like an MQTT topic or a community here on Lemmy/piefed.
I can start a local community for my city here on anarchist.nexus, and a friend can create one for his local city in Canada. Its the same server, but the regions covered are different.
I can’t post on a Mastodon instance with another instance account, only comment on people’s posts. This is the same way Flohmarkt does federation.
I also can’t create an community on Lemmy with an account from another instance.
I can’t post on a Mastodon instance with another instance account, only comment on people’s posts. This is the same way Flohmarkt does federation.
Can you create a hashtag for australia with your account on a US server? Can you create a hashtag for France while living in Poland? Can you create a post with a hashtag for Romania while living in Scotland?
I also can’t create an community on Lemmy with an account from another instance.
I can easily create a post for any location without requiring an account for that instance.
Hashtags are only search filters, nothing gets posted anywere.
And Lemmy is designed like that because it doesn’t aim to be location specific, unlike classified ads pages where that is the design goal.
Please explain to me how I, as a user in the United States, can use flohmarkt, with the current servers available and online today.
You set up a server with the software that is available to you today 🤷 Don’t hide behind self-inflicted learned helplessness to be a lazy capitalist consumer…
Ok, now you’re just being an asshole rather than understanding why its a design problem.
We are absolutely done with this conversation now. Goodbye.
www.craigslist.org/about/help/posting/…/location
So what do you call this?
There aren’t servers in each of those locations.
Its a designated region for users to make use of. User based, not server based.
What? That is 100% exactly like Flohmarkt works with server specific locations.
server specific
Maybe there is some miscommunication here.
Does the user determine their geographic region of themselves as a user, or is that determined by the server?
(Again, Craigslist works by the *user* picking a location, there is absolutely not a physical server at those locations)
You can chose your geographic location by chosing the instance that covers the geographic location you are interested in, just like you chose the location of the server in Craigslist.
Obviously the server is on the internet an can be physically hosted where ever 🙄
chosing the instance that covers the geographic location you are interested in, just like you chose the location of the server in Craigslist.
No, I can’t.
Because as you just said, the server is limiting the region. Making it server and not user.
There is no server for my region (or continent), so its not something I can use without standing up my own server.
I would not consider that a good design. Its extremely limiting to adoption and expansion.
There is no server yet. Just like Craiglist doesn’t have a server for any place outside of the US afaik. Flohmarkt is very new and apparently more popular in Europe otherwise it is the same.
I think you are confusing Flohmarkt with an online retailer market like Amazon or Alibaba.
Classified listings have always worked by being location specific, and that is their main appeal and why they are popular. Flohmarkt is copying that exact tried and true design and just expands it a bit with region based federation.
There is no server yet
There shouldn’t need to be is my point. Its an arbitrary limitation.
Just like Craiglist doesn’t have a server for any place outside of the US afaik.
Thats a business decision, purely. They charge for certain types of postings.
Flohmarkt is very new and apparently more popular in Europe otherwise it is the same.
Its really not though - there is no technical reason to lock a user to a region or business reason like with Craigslist. It was a design decision.
One that limits use and adoption.
I’m glad its working out well in Europe! I, as an american, can’t use it without standing up a server and then being host to all of the United States (or North America? No idea).
Not “don’t want to” but “can’t”.
I think you are confusing Flohmarkt with an online retailer market like Amazon or Alibaba.
All of my earlier examples are direct comparisons. I’m not confusing it with anything.
I just think it wasn’t a well thought out design.
Classified listings have always worked by being location specific
Not based on where the server is set to. Based on where the user or item is.
Flohmarkt is copying that exact tried and true design
I would say they are copying hyper-localized newspaper classifieds, including the hyper-localized aspect, which caused newspaper classifieds to stop being used by the overwhelming majority of people when alternatives like Craigslist, eBay, and even Facebook market came about.
Tried, yes. True… Well, I’d have to disagree.
I would say they are copying hyper-localized newspaper classifieds, including the hyper-localized aspect, which caused newspaper classifieds to stop being used by the overwhelming majority of people when alternatives like Craigslist, eBay, and even Facebook market came about.
Good reply, I was coming to that conclusion based on the same response from them on my example of buying from another area. It is very odd that anyone would place such limits on functionality on an internet-bound platform.
I’m having trouble understanding if this person is representative of flohmarkt or not, but either way, I don’t think they understand any of our questions or arguments.
It is very odd that anyone would place such limits on functionality on an internet-bound platform.
And a federated one at that! Creating silos like this is… Counter intuitive.
I’m having trouble understanding if this person is representative of flohmarkt or not, but either way, I don’t think they understand any of our questions or arguments.
They admin slrpnk.net, no idea of their involvement with flohmarkt.
I think its safe to say they don’t understand or don’t care about any concerns though, agreed.
Yes but I can hi to Facebook market place Kijiji whatever and say search here at this distance. I’m not limited to searching Sweden because I joined a Swedish server.
Well, that is the difference between a centralized system like Facebook and a decentralized system like the Fediverse.
But why would you not join a Swedish instance that lists only Swedish offers when you live in Sweden and are interested in offers near you?
Flohmarkt isn’t a social media site or a global market place for ordering cheap crap from China 🤷
Decentralization is not the issue here. This is a design choice that doesn’t understand how the service will be used.
In the example of my country, Canada, let’s say I have two flohmarkt servers: east and west. To look for a certain make and model of car, I have to check my region first, then sign out, sign back into the other region?
Why would anyone continue to use this as a shopping mechanism?
This is for a classified page. Why would you expect to find offers from the other side of the country in it, especially for a large country like Canada?
That would be highly confusing and prevent browsing the listing for interesting offers near you.
Classified pages are not search tools for finding highly specialized offers to order by mail from the other side of the country. They are local listings for buying used stuff that that you might have not even have known you want before browsing the listing.
Lets say I live in the United Stats for 6 months out of the year, Spain for 2 months, Japan for 2 months, and Brazil for 2 months. Based on this design, I need servers to exist in 4 different regions.
Why?
If I’m on anarchist.nexus, I can browse lemmy.ca. I can make a local community on anarchist.nexus for my town. A user from feddit.dk can then browse and chat with me. Maybe they lived there? Maybe they’ll be back for a month in a few weeks! They can post about that in my extremely localized community.
If we switch that to items - that user from feddit.dk can’t post a listing to my local community, can they?
Why is it determined by a server region? Why isn’t it, for example, a server dedicated to listings about sports memorabilia? Do I care where the signed baseball I want to buy is? Do I care where the buyer is from that wants my tennis racket I’ve put up for sale?
What relevance is the region to the *server*? The relevance is to the *listing*.
Because this is a location specific classified page and not a global social network obviously 🙄
I really don’t get how this is so hard to understand. This is how all of these classified pages have always worked all the way back to when they were still printed in local newspapers or were just a pinboard in the local supermarket.
It seems like on CL the city labels are mostly for human readable convenience and behind the scenes it’s by distance. You can set a distance from any point:
This is correct.
You used to have to go by city/metro area only, but now you can do it by search area. That said, you can alter your metro area or search radius at any point.
LadyAutumnI have no clue where Facebook marketplace servers are. That has never been relevant to me. Kijiji is a popular online marketplace in Canada, and it let’s you pick location or have it choose automatically based on your location.
This may be a simple matter of European marketplaces and North American ones having fundamentally different approaches.
Craigslist has server specific locations. I am not familiar with how Facebook market works, but even ebay has country specific servers, which in Europe often means very location specific due to small countries.
Obviously the actual physical location of the server doesn’t matter. When you set up a Flohmarkt instance you can freely chose a location, the city you plan to advertise your market in for example, and then also specify a circular distance of how far to federate with other Flohmarkt instances, for example to also federate adverts from neighboring cities.
Craigslist has server specific locations.
No, Craigslist has region specific sections.
The location of the server is not relevant. The servers are all hosting the same information, the user is picking the region they wish to browse.
There are not physical servers (or even virtual) to host each of those locations. They are subdirectories on a web host.
This is ridiculous. Obviously we are not talking about dialup connections where you need to call a server with the region code and a physical location 🙄
Craigslist might host it all on the same physical server since it does not support an open federation, but it is exactly the same concept as instance (=server) specific locations.
I’ll ask again - can I join any server and set my location and get local content for me, here in the United States where there is currently no server listed as being online or available?
No you can’t. This isn’t a centralized platform.
But like with ebay for example, you sign up on a locaction specific instance (ebay Germany, not ebay Spain) and chose your location that way.
To my (very limited) understanding Craigslist works the same way. You sign up and as part of the sign up you are asked for the location you are interested in, which is like an instance choser which then redirects you to a server (instance, section, whatever) that only lists adverts for that specific location that you signed up for.
Craigslist does not work that way, no.
You can change the region you are looking at any time you’d like. You are in no way locked in by a region or the signup process.
You are asked for a location to direct you to your local community/topic/subdirectory. You can then change that location at any time by browsing the location section of the site. You can see this now if you’d like, go to Craigslist and click the location dropdown in the upper left, and you can change where you want to browse at any time.
This isn’t a centralized platform.
Its federated, thats not really a problem.
No you can’t.
Thats the problem.
From the Craiglist site:
craigslist sites are based on geographic location
This is a map and list of our sites:
www.craigslist.org/about/sites
You can find the closest craigslist site for your geographic location by zooming in on the map or browsing the list underneath the map.
Please note that the site location for a posting cannot be changed.
You will need to start your posting over again from the beginning if you have chosen the wrong site.
It is not possible to post to more than one site at a time.
This sounds exactly how Flohmarkt works, exept that they have a convinient map for you to find the location specific site. This would probably be a nice feature for Flohmarkt as well as part of an instance chooser.
I guess what you are stuck up on is browsing listings, not posting them. But that is more like an intra-instance search tool similar to how there is the Lemmyverse search engine for Lemmy. But I find that of very limited use for a location specific market place like Flohmarkt, where you already know which location you are interested in and don’t need a search engine or drop down box to confuse you with listing options from entirely different locations.
I think there is some talk about adding more fine grained location specific groups to Flohmarkt (a bit like Lemmy communities), that would probably also allow posting from another federated account into them, but that would likely be counter productive as it would dillute the explicit location specific focus.
Sites are not physical. Sites are not locked at signup. You are misunderstanding how Craigslist (and others) work.
What this page is saying is “If you post in the Berlin section, and want to offer it in Los Angeles, you need to make a new post”.
You don’t need a different account, a different server, or to otherwise associate with a different region.
I’d be happy to explain if there is a part here that is confusing, I’m really not sure what you are not understanding on this.
I’m also not putting down the idea of a federated marketplace, I would love it.
I just think its a bad design to rely on a server setting that users have no control over. What happens if that host moves to an entirely different region? They have to keep serving that region? They can change it and all those listings are invalid?
It isnt a good design.
So you are only complaining that accounts are not centralized? The entire Fediverse works like that and I don’t really see an issue with that.
And why would a host change the location for their “Classified site for Berlin” instance? That doesn’t make any sense, since it is location specific by design.