Curation or Censorship? eBay's Very Public Decline

Recently, eBay crossed the Rubicon by prohibiting the sale of now-collectible Dr. Seuss works, relatively obscure books that are now out of print by the decision of the Seuss estate. With that action, among others, eBay lost its market distinction as an online emporium.

At one time, eBay was a unicorn. The online business achieved a level of trust in which customers feel comfortable carrying out large transactions in gold and silver, electronics and jewelry. The scammers are becoming more sophisticated, though, so security is an area where eBay must focus. In this new cybersecurity paradigm, eBay does not have time for nitpicking the merchandise decisions of its core sellers and buyers; nor can afford the overhead of having staff manually cancelling listings.

The premise of the online marketplace is that customers search for what they want and find it. If they can't find what they want, they will take their business elsewhere. I am sure that eBay lost bibliophiles who look for collectible and out of print works. That was eBay's niche in the book market, and they blew it in one week. Amazon and Barnes and Noble remain top sellers of commodity works like in-print books and textbooks. eBay was not competing effectively in that arena, nor should they try.

eBay is still the preferred marketplace of coin buyers. But if they go on a whim to cancel listing of coins from certain countries or regimes, then the credibility of eBay as an open marketplace diminishes for the numismatic community.

Now, staying above the line of the law was a founding value of eBay. Drug paraphernalia and cockfighting tools are banned. Prohibiting these sales likely helped to bolster the reputation of e-commerce. eBay has also engaged in well-understood social policy, such as not selling Hypodermic needles - though this is part of a lively debate on the risk and benefit of access to clean needles: deterrence and mitigation. Early in the current pandemic, it was advisable to stop marketplace sales of PPE- but small , certified, upstart manufacturers lost sales as they could not communicate with eBay et al. that they needed a wider distribution stream that e-commerce could provide. (NY Times)

User experience has suffered: by 2019 users were “bombarded” with irrelevant advertising. Sellers note that the pages have been overrun by “cheap Chinese merchandise”, and that “eBay can NOT operate as another Amazon”. To top it off, the flailing company is cancelling its longtime eBay bucks program in April.

eBay forgot it’s flea market roots, where buyers move on to the next seller's table, if they find one table to be distasteful. The browser does not quit the market, unless the majority of sellers have gone rogue. Or the owner of the market makes bad strategic decisions.