Just like Target, Walmart and other physical retailers often work with recalls on products sold through their stores.
It’s a hugely onerous task because it requires mapping every listing to a known product.
If someone sells a “green couch” then how do you track recalls for that?
You either force everyone selling anything to look it up in a big database you maintain and disallow generic sales, or everyone is just going to list things generically anyway to avoid the hassle.
It’s an idea that sounds easy when you assume everyone’s making perfectly formed listing, but sounds like a waste of time when you look at real listings.
EDIT: Replaced high chair example with a couch because people were pointing out that a high chair listing would be deleted. Though that proves my point, that any item covered by regulations wouldn’t be allowed on the platform, so if you extend regulations to cover every product ever made then you can forget about being able to buy things second hand. I’m guessing Amazon would actually love that, but you wouldn’t.
It would be nice. It would save lives and avoid tragedy. It is not required, and failure is an option. We've been failing for a long time already.
If we have to do it, it's a simple matter of finding who has the capability to do so and force them to, as you say. But we don't. Forcing someone to do only because they can is a tricky proposition.
You also do realize that there is a difference between a business selling many copies of the same item repeatedly, and individuals selling things one off, right?
If you don't, then maybe you need to learn about these things in the context of existing regulations before spouting off nonsense comments bashing strawmen.
Another big one that should make this whole topic moot: A corpo is a government created liability shield. The tradeoff of getting that liability shield is extra regulation to prevent easily-knowable liabilities. And remember, the sine qua non of a corpo is itself compelled speech.
The average listing is garbage. Devoid of useful information. You have to know exactly what you’re looking for and search broadly because people don’t make an effort to describe things.
LLMs absolutely will not solve this. If the only details are “table saw” and a dimly lit picture of a dust-covered table saw that looks like any number of generic table saws, AI isn’t helping you.
What will actually happen is this stuff just becomes less accessible to poor people and now their child had no safety equipment at all instead of a 1/100 chance of a recalled item that probably still would be better than nothing.
If the regulations cover everything, well then either the marketplaces all shut down or they cost $10 per listing and require you to agree to a lot of legal consequences if you provide wrong info in your listing.
Ideas like this only sound good to people who imagine no consequences will ever reach them, just billion dollar corporations.
