There’s a community on Facebook called Bunz. They’re about trading things you don’t need for ones you do.
Would there be interest in a thread or a dedicated community here? I’m suggesting a thread, too, because there’s obviously some advantage to locality.
It exists… Freecycle.org.
Oh nice, didn’t know this one. Thanks.
I love Bunz so, so much (although I really do wish they would abandon the Bunz affiliation and become a PALZ group, Bunz as an organization has been very exploitative of its community in Toronto in the past after VC-funded expansions involving an official app- sound familiar? Aaaanyways…) but I think one drawback of establishing trade spaces here is the relative anonymity. People can still be anonymous on fb, of course, but I can see common friends, past posts and comments in groups I’m in with them, etc. Plus, you can’t really msg with a PM here, can you? I wouldn’t be comfortable giving out contact info to arrange a trade, nor would I be comfortable coordinating trades publicly in a thread. I think if there’s a way to account for safety concerns, maybe, it could work.
The app is basically dead, which is why I didn’t mention it. Also it’s irrelevant to the community’s core concept. And yes, the organisation had some major fuck-ups.
You can see past posts and comments here, but you’re right, there are no direct messages (yet?) so Lemmy maybe isn’t the ideal platform to expand to, for now.Oh, I was just drawing a parallel to spez’s shenanigans there referencing the app and VC influence. I think the head mod on fb has to maintain good terms with the organization to continue using the Bunz brand, so I don’t fault them for not wanting to rock the boat. But just like with reddit, it’s the people that really make it the awesome space it is, that’s one of the things that PALZ really emphasizes and why I always advocate for them when I get a little snarky about Bunz lol.
Maybe a trading meetup could be organized sometime in the future or something, I don’t know how feasible that might be but I could see this being a good platform for something like that, at least. Like a group trade yard sale of sorts.
No PMs!? We are in early days!
I like your idea!
There isn’t really a good way to filter posts within a community yet on Lemmy, so I was worried about users getting flooded with buy/sell posts. There’s a reason this community and r/Montreal has rules about buy/sell posts.
However I, too, do see an advantage in keeping the community united. We could have a weekly buy / sell thread for the greater Montreal region, as you suggested.
If people are interested, I could make a bot that automatically creates the thread for the current week every, let’s say, Tuesday, and automatically pins it and unpins the old one. Let me know!
Bunz, at least, actively encourages trades instead of sales. It attracts a different clientele. If we don’t need anything specific were usually trade for consumables.
Interesting concept, I’m not on Facebook so I didn’t know about Bunz.
Encouraging trading instead of selling sounds like it would probably be healthier than encouraging a buy / sell thread. People will tend to trade only for what they need.
