I have realised that eBay runs the same kind of algorithms that social media does.
They are tracking and personalizing the feed for you....but it's even worse than just normal tracking
eBay is whale hunting.....
They are committing a crime and actively using their algorithms to hunt out whales and to extract as much money as possible from them without being noticed.
They are committed a major crime and fraud should be investigated because they are hiding posts which have the same items for lower value to extract higher fees from the purchase based on machine learning.
They track and spy on your budgetary allowance and then they hide anything too cheap which is lower than they think you may pay even if a cheaper option is available...then they will artificially raise the prices and manipulate the listings for 'discounts' which are still higher than other available options.
They are not just doing it based on your purchase history but also when you look at a product it gets priced and that price affects your window ....
Try this out......look up something you normally would buy for cheaper prices that you know the fair value on.....then look for the pricier listings and click them and click only the pricey stuff and nothing in y The normal price range...add to your cart and then watch as you suddenly are inundated with more eand more expensive items beyond the fair price that are 'competive' with the very high priced item you added to you cart.
There were quite a few changes over the last couple years, at least in the android app. I have all advertising notifications turned off, but every day, when I wake up, the first time I turn on my phone screen, it pushes a notification for something I have looked at in the last 48 hours or so with a message like "only x amount remaining" or "selling fast" or whatever. And then when you search it has a disclaimer at the top "streamlined to show most relevant results." Which yes, it does cut out a bunch of the generic LED lightbulbs and shit crammed with keywords, but at least 50% of the time it also doesn't display identical items with the lowest prices. For example, search "Milwaukee impact wrench 2767-20" and it'll streamline the authorized sellers but if a pawn shop has a new in box for $20 less, it'll remove that one unless you "unstreamline" the results. I've also caught it completely removing those results, even on the non-streamlined results and they won't come back until I slightly change the search.
Yeah a ton of independent lower priced goods are removed from the search completely and yet a bunch of scam products are constantly intermixed so it's not blocking out scammers.
They even hide links on different devices for the same account and different if you are not logged in. I looked for an item which is very limited and has been forever since they only made about 500 or so ever. I can usually find a stable price on the item that has very slowly and steadily increased in value with an occasional step back during a few times. So there should be not a lot of listings and should not need to be filtered. Yet, I watched it show about 40-50 listings on one, 30 on another, and 15 repeatedly throughout whilst the cheapest items (and not scammers btw) were not showing except that I had bookmarked it on a different device so I went back and sure enough it was still live....so I went to the listing and it showed up only on the actual store for the seller not the link, then when I looked up a slightly different phrase later, that magically showed up over and over because I had clicked it and it was not showing as many fraud scammers with inflated prices anymore, until I went to the old device and it was all scammers with 2x the price
nice find, OP.
this pdf on commercial liens might be an interesting way to take the fight to ebay if it can be shown they are improperly messing with search results.
Thank you 🙏
I was looking at ways to go after them and a lien may be the way. They force arbitration in their clauses so I wasn't sure how to work around that, but maybe a lien is the way
Thank you for the info because it seems like it can be applied in other situations so it's definitely going into my toolbox
is the converse true, perform your test, but select the least expensive items
I quit using eBay in large part, due to such shitty sellers. Amazon does similar shit. I search a specific thing by name and brand, and their search shows me nothing but Chinese made garbage. The Chinese need to stick with cooking, because they can't manufacture a single item that isn't a disposable piece of plastic garbage.
Yes, I said it. Stick to the rangoons, leave manufacturing to cultures who can do it.
The scams are getting bad that it's becoming less and less clear what the purpose is.
I assume that eBay is losing money somewhere due to the rise in scams since they refund the amount if a scam occurs.
Seems like they have decided to focus on getting larger big hits at the expense of general quality
I don't think there's a conspiracy here, I think this is just how business is conducted everywhere in 2023. I have not really noticed the type of algorithmic behavior you're talking about because I always spend a little bit of time to filter my search results. Of course the promoted/advertised store-type sellers are absolutely always at the top of the list. Hence, after I search for the widget I want I always go down to the lower left and select the "Used" option and I put in my max price, also select one or two other options to narrow things down to the exact item I want, that gets rid of half of the spam and irrelevant items, and shows me the reasonably priced items. I hardly buy anything new off of eBay. eBay is still better than these spammy phone apps like OfferUp or LetGo - those are spammed with even worse commercial scams. Never had luck buying or selling even one thing on there. Don't even get me started on Facebook marketplace, it's such a waste of time. People who aren't serious about buying or selling aren't using eBay.
Is this item still available?
Is this item still available?
Is this item still available?
I still like and use Craigslist :)