Thread

1. rkagerer · 1790016658 · focus · HN ↗

   The right way to do this is to create an API or MCP or whatever catering to bots, and implement corresponding terms in your legal agreements (i.e. after approving a bot to interact with us, you're responsible for purchases it makes), along with some limits to prevent runaway shopping when Muse decides to binge.

   Less friction = more shopping = more profits.

   That used to be a concept companies like Amazon understood well. (As well as companies like Google in the context of web browsing and keeping it user-friendly as opposed to user-hostile).

   If the bots mean customers are getting a better deal elsewhere, then you're doing something wrong elsewhere in your business model and need to go address that. Or eventually free market economics will, no matter how big an artificial moat you try to build.

   1. steve1977 · 1790016835 · focus · HN ↗

      But how can they serve product suggestions this way?

      1. cyanydeez · 1790024135 · focus · HN ↗

         I asked this in another thread: who benefits from all these bot integrations?

         It's not the consumers of the AI, or the consumers of the real businesses? It just seems like everyone things "if they build it" it'll come.

         But it's clear Amazon cares about how it's costomers have to view all the items as both upsells and advertising, and a bot is going to either be _really_ into it or act much like ublockorigin does.

         But either way, no company making money on costumer direct sales sees a real benefit to allowing a bot to easily bypass all the necessary details.

         Whether it's advertisement, liabilities, manufacturer's recommendations; a bot will ignore these things and generate a costumer expectation that suddenly the producer has to live up to.

         Then you'll tell me: YEAH, that's why you need a MCP friendly website.

         And I'll tell you: that's how the mafia works.

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