Comment by pranavj
1 month ago
Banning AI agents is the new "banning mobile browsers." Companies tried that too in the early smartphone era - remember when sites blocked mobile user agents to force desktop views?
The businesses that win will be the ones that build AI-agent-friendly interfaces, not the ones that try to ban them. eBay is protecting their ad revenue and impulse-buy funnel in the short term, but they're ceding the future to whoever figures out how to make agent-compatible commerce work.
Every product and platform will eventually have an "agent API" alongside their human UI. The only question is who builds it first.
> remember when sites blocked mobile user agents to force desktop views?
You mean today, when web apps refuse to render to mobile browser agents, forcing redirect to mobile apps, but work fine when toggled to a desktop agent?
TikTok, Instagram, etc.
Reddit.
I think more likely we will unlock browser agents and no company will develop an agent api. They will have a user facing website used by agents or humans the same way.
This also completely sidesteps any actions Ebay decides. It will have all credentials for them and mfa. To ebay this will look identical to the user with no real way to stop it.
Except speed and "translate the following to klingon", etc
If they don't currently see a way to make agent commerce work, the smart move is to stay alive long enough for someone else to figure it out then buy them or simply copy it. And if it never works out this will have been far cheaper in the medium run.
I do not endorse this approach but it is well established in the tech industry.