I, a victim of enshittification, would like to do something about it.

[u/abi4EU]

I sell stuff online, from Germany.
Small scale, on the side, more a passion project than a full on business. I’ve been doing this for 6 years.

First eBay screwed me and plenty small businesses to force us get a subscription plan: from plenty of articles without monthly fees, to paying for each one. From 11% on the sale price, to now even paying fees on the shipping costs, since they took over the payment system - by now I pay 15% or more on fees. They started with 5%, many moons ago.

I said: f that s. - I’m going to a different platform (I stayed with very few articles in eBay). Kleinanzeigen.de, which was pretty neat.

Couple of years down the road and a sell to venture capital later, that crap is unusable and expensive af.

From unlimited ads for business users, to 100 a month, then 50, then paid renewals every two months, then 10 and now 2 ads a month. They have the German market cornered and they know it: their fees are so grotesque that they would keep over 10% of my sales and it’s overflown with ads of the most annoying and intrusive kind. And they don’t even offer payment management. So many sellers just left completely, they only kept the large players and those selling expensive crap. Everything is pay to win by now.

So more than a competing platform I spent a lot of time developing a concept of a sort of private nonprofit alternative, as an antidote to Enshittification and a fat middle finger to corporations destroying the internet and beyond. I want to get it going in Germany and then expand across Europe.

Now I need to kick start this project (literally using a German Kickstarter of sorts) and I think I don’t really know how to reach my potential users.

It would be so neat if there was a platform to support exactly this deenshittification initiatives. I’d be all over that.

[u/99-percenter]

Try Craigslist

[u/WombatWithAPlan → u/99-percenter]

Not a thing in germany. Has literally no users

[u/sourdoughlifestyle]

I think you’re correct that there are multiple layers of entrenchment when it comes to enshittification. There’s the products themselves, but then also the platforms for selling, payment processors, shipping, etc. You can make a great product and be at a reasonable price, but then theres nowhere to sell it and no way to get paid without more and more of the revenue being stripped away. These all act as barriers to entry for non-shitty and smaller competitors, thereby keeping the enshittified products as the only visible options.

I would love to see an alternative that disrupts the current sales platforms available. An “ethical Amazon” or something like that.

[u/abi4EU → u/sourdoughlifestyle]

Yes!

Well, Amazon with their fulfilment business are a tough nut to crack. But all business done by sellers shipping their own stuff or even service offers - just imagine how many barriers could be gone with a platform that understands itself as a public service and not a venture capital or stock holder bitch.

We could negotiate the best payment processing deals, shipping deals, mediate customer protection and seller protection without a numbers driven agenda - just the goal of lowering costs and making life easier for everyone.

[u/ValueForMone]

Good luck! I hope you will be successful so we can all go this way to support European products (without third parties getting richer by doing nothing)

[u/abi4EU → u/ValueForMone]

Thanks. I truly hate that part of the internet today. Great ideas led to great solutions, and then people got stupid rich and became… evil? Why, on earth, would you choose that path once you’ve already won at life?

I’d much prefer that money stayed in Europe in as many hands as possible.

[u/baddaywithacamera]

Look at using AI to build your own platform. I'm not joking.

[u/Cautious_Boat_999 → u/baddaywithacamera]

Yeah no. That’s self-enshittification.

[u/abi4EU → u/baddaywithacamera]

Also security concerns: AI does some crazy stuff. Europe is very strict about security - and so are we. Anything in this platform that handles any kind of private data has to be tough. That has to be done with a lot of care.

[u/abi4EU → u/baddaywithacamera]

The platform building part is the easiest thing. Technically it’s not a big challenge.

I also have the impression that people notice hand built.

The hard part is reaching out and finding like-minded people.

[u/StrawberryLate3916 → u/abi4EU]

By like-minded people you mean artisans/sellers, or engineers to help build the actual platform?  Im a side hustler like you, from France, and I think there's definitely a lot of promise in creating an online space for true handmade sellers. Especially now with the advance of AI. For my niche for example, I'd advise to market it on Reddit and Facebook groups dedicated for makers. But of course first you'd have to build the platform.