Comment by oefrha | Hacker News Reader

Comment by oefrha | Hacker News Reader

To be clear I know nothing about Bangladesh, but obvious contradictions cast doubt on this piece of reporting.

An obvious one: subtitle says

In Bangladesh, there is no Amazon. There is no eBay. If you want to buy a dress or a crested finch from the comfort of your home, you have to use Facebook.

Then somewhere in the article:

The phenomenon has grown so much over the years that the number of stores on Facebook now eclipse the number of sellers on local e-commerce websites like Evaly, Ajkerdeal, or the Alibaba-acquired Daraz.

It links to this Daraz site, so I checked, and sure enough, there's a women's dresses category: https://www.daraz.com.bd/womens-dresses/ Of course there's no crested finch category, but it's not like you can buy live birds on Amazon or Ebay.

So, there's no Amazon or Ebay, but there are smaller online marketplaces (yes, at least the Daraz site is an online marketplace, it says "open your online store now" on its home page) selling things sold on Amazon and Ebay. How is this qualitatively different, and why does the author try to paint a picture where Facebook login is required (for things that aren't live birds)?

Then there are poorly explained claims like

all an aspiring entrepreneur needs is an internet connection and around $350 to cover startup costs

Why does starting a facebook page/group and accepting cash on delivery cost $350 upfront? <s>Registration/license?</s> (No, "most sellers are not licensed".)

I'm always surprised when garbage articles like these make it to the top of HN. I guess HN is not immune to "i only read the title" kind of threads. And since it sounds like an anti-facebook kind of article, it gets HN's blessing, and off to the top it goes.

There was one more thing you missed that is not explicitly in the article. In virtually any country there are groups on facebook to buy pretty much anything, including live birds. Is Bangladesh really so different?

I'm not sure if you think it's legitimate or not, but one of the effects of upvoting a story on hacker news, is that the thread stays around on the front page, and the discussion grows.

Users can upvote stories either because the story itself or because of the HN discussion thread; and it's often the latter that we come to this site for, isn't it?

Isn't that legtimate, to upvote something if you already like or think you'd like the to read the discussion about it?

Irrelevant note: This story didn't earn my vote.

> I guess HN is not immune to "i only read the title" kind of threads.

It's obviously not, and the effect is often exaggerated when you read the comment section early on: it simply takes more time to read the article and write thoughtful responses than replying to the title immediately with canned talking points.

Calling this a garbage article may be overly uncharitable, but I do put myself on high alert and try not to fall prey to Gell-Mann amnesia whenever I read one of these weird-phenomenon-in-unfamiliar-country stories, even when there's no obvious propaganda value behind it, since half of the time I read one about a country I'm actually familiar with, the phenomenon is misunderstood, blown way out of proportions, or sometimes even foreign to local residents.

Luckily, the website provides us with flag & hide features in case you want to pop an article out of your front page or if you want to ask the mods to take a closer look at it.

I think the article and headline are fine for HN. I clicked on it and read it and am not sorry I did. I read the Amazon and Ebay comment to mean just that! There are no other juggernaut e-commerce sites that have dominated the market, not that there are NO other e-commerce sites.

I find that Facebook has managed to fill the void without explicitly being an e-commerce site interesting.

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