BUTAC

2025-08-29 10:59:33

Intramoenia – Facciamo chiarezza butac.it/intramoenia-facciamo-…

Intramoenia – Facciamo chiarezza

Il 19 agosto 2025 l’avvocato Angelo Greco ha pubblicato l'ennesimo fumetto indignato, stavolta dedicato alle liste d’attesa e alla “sanità che non possiamo più permetterci”.

^{maicolengel butac (Butac – Bufale Un Tanto Al Chilo)}

404 Media

2025-08-28 15:02:10

Podcast: 404 Media Live—NYC!

Here's the podcast recorded at our recent second anniversary party in New York! We answered a bunch of reader and listener questions. Thank you to everyone that came and thank you for listening to this podcast too!
playlist.megaphone.fm?e=TBIEA2…youtube.com/embed/x0-YKLQ1B1U?…

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404 Media

2025-08-28 14:32:50

Trump Tariffs Cause Chaos on Ebay as Every Hobby Becomes Logistical Minefield

The Trump administration is throwing various hobbies enjoyed by Americans into chaos and is harming small businesses domestically and abroad with its ever-changing tariff structure that is turning the United States into a hermit kingdom. It has made buying and selling things on eBay particularly annoying, and is making it harder and more expensive to, for example, buy vintage film cameras, retro video games, or vintage clothes from Japan, where many of the top eBay sellers are based.

“Trying to figure out what the future of this hobby is going to look like for those of us in the USA (other than insanely expensive),” a post on r/analogcommunity, the most popular film photography subreddit, reads. “All of my lenses and my camera body came from Japan, they would have been prohibitively expensive [now], paying an extra $80 per item. I feel like entry level to this hobby is going to get hit especially hard.” Another meme posted to the community under the title “Shopping on eBay be like this now” reads “The age of the Canon Mint++ is over. The time of the Argus C3 has come,” referring to a common way that Japanese eBay sellers list Japanese-made Canon cameras. The Argus C3 was a budget mass-produced, American-made camera that was not popular in Japan, and so most of the people selling them are in the United States. Some people like them, but it has been nicknamed “the brick” because it “could serve as a deadly weapon in a street fight.” It remains very inexpensive to this day.

The photography hobby is a microcosm of what anyone who wants to buy anything from another country is currently experiencing. The de-minimis exemption, which allowed people to buy things internationally without paying tariffs if the items cost less than $800, made it very easy and less expensive to get into hobbies like film photography, retro video games, and vintage fashion, to name a few. The Trump administration is ending that exemption Friday and it will quickly become a financial and/or logistical mess for anyone who wants to buy or sell anything from another country. Communities and companies focused on electronics, board games, action figures, skincare, flashlights, sex toys, watches, and general ecommerce are also freaking out, stopping service to the United States, or telling U.S. customers to expect higher prices, higher fees, longer shipping times, more paperwork, more headache, and unpredictable delays.

In recent days, national mail carriers in the European Union (including DHL, which is widely used internationally), Australia, India, New Zealand, Norway, Singapore, South Korea, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, the United Kingdom, and, crucially, Japan, have started restricting many shipments to the United States. Some of the few remaining ways to send shipments internationally to the United States is through UPS and FedEx, which have warned customers that the end of de-minimis means more paperwork, higher shipping prices (both have increased their international processing fees), and also means that either the shipper or the receiver will have to pay tariffs on whatever is being sent, which of course adds both costs and processing time. This is on top of the fact that FedEx and UPS are often more expensive services in the first place.

All of this is a nightmare if you are an eBay buyer or seller, a small business that sells to the United States or that buys things internationally to sell within the United States, or are a mere American resident who has a hobby.
A chart from eBay telling sellers to expect "negative feedback"
Earlier this year, I bought a vintage Super 8 film camera. The vast majority of functioning, good-condition cameras on eBay are shipped from Japan, because that is where a lot of the cameras were manufactured and because there are a huge number of camera businesses there. The camera came in a matter of days, and I did not think at all about customs or how it would be shipped, what the additional costs would be, if it would be held up at customs, where and how I would pay the tariffs, or whether if the duties would be paid by the seller (Delivered Duty Paid or DDP) or by me (Delivered at Place or DAP). These are acronyms you are going to have to get to know and hate, that I have already seen percolating through ecommerce communities.

Lots of camera equipment comes from Japan, but so do lots of vintage electronics and rare video games. Many high-quality vintage and preowned designer clothes are also sold by stores in Japan, because Japan has strong anti-counterfeit laws, and so people who are into vintage fashion will regularly try to source things from Japan because they are less likely to be fake. This is to say nothing of all of the other hobbies and interests where products are made and sold elsewhere, but the problem is incredibly stark with camera equipment, because Canon, Nikon, Ricoh, and many other top camera manufacturers are Japanese.
A chart from eBay telling you to look up the Harmonized Tariff Schedule to calculate what the tariffs may be
Tuesday, I messaged about 25 eBay sellers located in Japan asking how they were going to ship their item to California if I purchased it, if I would be subject to tariffs, and how they are handling it. The answers were all over the place. Lots of the sellers told me to buy the item now because items shipped after Thursday would be subject to tariffs: “If you purchase today, I can send it before customs duties are incurred,” one seller told me. “We recommend purchasing as soon as possible,” another told me. “If you place your order today, we can still make it in time,” a third said.

“Starting August 29th, tariffs will be imposed on all items in the US, so if you purchase this item, you will be responsible for any customs duties,” another said.

Multiple sellers told me that I should expect anything I bought to be held up at customs, and that I should expect to pay tariffs when it arrives: “While the exact details are still being clarified, it seems that in addition to duties, extra fees may bring the total to around 18–20% of the item’s value,” someone selling a vintage handbag told me. “Because of the changes in customs procedures, shipments may experience additional delays during clearance.”

Multiple eBay sellers in Japan told me that they intend to lie about the value of the items on customs forms, which is a time-honored tradition in international shipping but still does not seem like a good solution: “We will put a 50% reduced product price on the address label. Only this one time,” one seller said, before later adding “we do not mark merchandise values below value or mark items as ‘gifts’ - US and international government regulations prohibit such behavior.” Another told me “the problem is the customs duty, but don’t worry. The amount on the shipping label determines the customs duty. I won’t go into details, but I won’t make it sound bad.”

Another camera seller told me they would charge $20 shipping, then followed up an hour later and said “the shipping cost is actually $30 … with the elimination of the de minimis rule, there is a possibility that services may be suspended. Increased workload from customs procedures could even lead to strikes.” Another said that “If U.S. customs clearance goes smoothly, the package usually arrives within about 5–10 days,” but “Due to recent U.S. customs regulations, the clearance process has become stricter and is taking more time than usual(2-3 weeks). Please understand that, under these circumstances, we are unable to predict the delivery date. We are sorry to tell you that all the import duties and taxes are unpredictable. Customs and duties are different from state to state and country to country and we do not keep track as this is a cost the buyer is responsible in paying.”

eBay is telling buyers that the new, simple process for buying internationally is to look up the item on the Harmonized Tariff Schedule, which is a gigantic list of every possible product and its potential tariff code, “apply some math” to estimate what the tariffs will be, “add shipping provider fees,” which are additional processing fees that shipment services may apply, then wait for a call or email from the shipping processor to go through the duty clearance process and pay them fees. This is instead of the old way, where you simply purchased something, paid a clearly demarcated price, and waited for it to come to your house. eBay has also added a message to item listings that says “Due to US policies, import fees for this item will need to be paid to customs or the shipping carrier on delivery.” eBay is already telling sellers that they can expect “negative feedback” from customers who do not understand this process and might blame it on the seller.

eBay also offers something it calls SpeedPak shipping, which is where an international seller ships their item to an eBay warehouse in their home country, and the item is shipped by eBay aboard a cargo vessel to the United States alongside other purchases. This process takes 8-12 days, eBay says. One Japanese seller who said they use the system told me in practice that shipment takes “about 1 to 2 weeks,” and that they have made the decision to pay tariffs ahead of time for the buyer. Naturally, this leads to increased overhead, however, and surely we will begin to see prices for items sent this way rise.

As you can imagine, people are stressed about all of this. On the eBay subreddit, a Canadian who says they sell their old clothes on eBay wrote “can someone explain the new US DDP [Delivered Duty Paid] rules to me like I’m 5?” Another post says “I sold an item to a buyer in the US, but due to temporary issues with international shipping from my location (Europe), I’m currently unable to send it out.” Another says “How to exclude USA completely from shipping? The tariffs are a complete mess and a joke for small businesses like mine here in Europe.” “I’m a seller who ships over 80% of my products to the US. The post office no longer offers service for US parcels, and I’m completely devastated by this policy change. My income has evaporated in thin air,” another post reads. “As someone that’s been building a sega Saturn and pc engine collection this news broke my heart today.” “I'm in some chat groups with people who bought a ton of things from Japanese marketplaces and this has basically made sure they're out of the game for good,” another says.

There are two ways this can go: One everything becomes much more of a pain in the ass, certain products are not available, the tariff prices and subcharges and processing fees and times end up getting paid transparently by the customer, and everyone becomes mad at this state of affairs. Or two, and unfortunately more likely: The rough edges of this process get smoothed out because big shipping companies and platforms are terrified of upsetting Trump and the burden of dealing with all of this is passed primarily onto overseas sellers who will simply incorporate all of these new fees into the prices of the actual products and will pay the tariff ahead of time, so everything costs more because of the tariffs but the artificial, completely self-inflicted reasons that it costs more to do your hobby become largely invisible and accepted over time. The “normal” state of affairs will be that buying things from small overseas sellers is expensive and slow. But it is worth remembering that none of this is necessary, that it wasn’t always like this, and that an immeasurable number of small businesses and regular people all over the world have been immensely impacted by these tariffs.

All of this means that if you have any hobbies that require buying stuff from another country, your life just got more expensive and more annoying. Back on the AnalogCommunity subreddit, one poster summed it up nicely: “Oh look, voting of [sic] an idiot has real world consequences? Who knew?”

eBay did not respond to a request for comment.

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404 Media

2025-08-28 13:29:28

Imgur's Community Is In Full Revolt Against Its Owner

The front page of Imgur, a popular image hosting and social media site, is full of pictures of John Oliver raising his middle finger and telling MediaLab AI, the site’s parent company, “fuck you.” Imgurians, as the site’s users call themselves, telling their business daddy to go to hell is the end result of a years-long degradation of the website. The Imgur story is one a classic case of enshitification,
playlist.megaphone.fm?p=TBIEA2…
Imgur began life in 2009 when Ohio University student Alan Schaaf got tired of how hard it was to upload and host images on the internet. He created Imgur as a simple one stop shop for image hosting and the service took off. It was a place where people could host images they wanted to share across multiple services and became ubiquitous on sites like Reddit.

As the internet evolved, most of the rest of the internet got its act together and platforms built their own image sharing infrastructure and people used Imgur less. But the site still had a community of millions of people who shared images to the site every day. It was a social media based around images and upvotes, with its own in-jokes, memes, and norms.

In 2021, a media holding company called MediaLab AI acquired Imgur and Schaaf left. MediaLab AI also owns Genius and World Star and on its website, the company bills itself as a place where advertisers can “reach audiences at scale, on platforms that build community and influence culture.”

The community and culture of Imgur, which MedialLab AI claims is 41 million strong, is pissed.

For the last few days, the front page of Imgur (which cultivates the day’s “most viral posts”) has been full of anti MediaLab AI sentiment. Imgurian VoidForScreaming posted the first instance of the John Oliver meme several days ago, and it’s become a favorite of the community, but there are also calls to flood the servers and crash the site, and a list of grievances Imgurians broadly agree brought them to the place they’re in now.

GhostTater, a longtime Imgurian, told me that the protest was about a confluence of things including a breakdown of the basic features of the site and the disappearance of human moderators.

“The moderators on Imgur have always been active members of the community. Many were effectively public figures, and their sudden group absence was immediately noticed,” he said. “Several very well-known mods posted generic departure messages, smelling strongly of Legal Department approval. These mods had many friends and acquaintances on the site, and while some are still visiting the site as users, they have gone completely silent.”

A former Imgur employee who spoke with 404 Media on the condition that we preserve their anonymity because they’re afraid of retaliation from MediaLab AI said that several people on the Imgur team were laid off without notice. Others were moved to MediaLab’s internal teams. “To the best of my knowledge, no employees are remaining solely focused on Imgur. Imgur's social media has been silent for a month,” the employee said. “As far as I am aware, the dedicated part-time moderation team was laid off sometime in the last 8 months, including the full-time moderation manager.”

Imgurians are convinced that MediaLab AI has replaced those moderators with unreliable AI systems. The Community & Content Policy on MediaLab AI’s website says it employs human moderators but also uses AI technologies. A common post in the past few days is Imgurians sharing the weird things they’ve been banned for, including one who made the comment “tell me more” under a post and others who’ve seen their John Olivers removed.

“There were no humans responding to appeals or concerns,” GhostTater said. “Once the protest started, many users complained about posts being deleted and suspensions or bans being handed out when those posts were critical of MediaLab but not in violation of the written rules.”

But this isn’t just about bad moderation. Multiple posts on Imgur also called out the breakdown of the site’s basic functionality. GhostTater told me he’d personally experienced the broken notification system and repeated failures of images to upload. “The big one (to me) is the fact that hosted video wouldn’t play for viewers who were not logged in to Imgur,” he said. “The site began as an image hosting site, a place to upload your images and get a link, so that one could share images.”

MediaLab AI did not respond to 404 Media’s request for comment. “MediaLab’s presence has seemed to many users to fall somewhere between casual institutional indifference and ruthless mechanization. Many report, and resent, feeling explicitly harvested for profit,” GhostTater said.

Like all companies, MediaLab AI is driven by profit. It makes money as a media holding company, scooping up popular websites and plastering them with ads. It also owns the lyrics sharing site Genius and the once-influential WorldStarHipHop. It’s also being sued by many of the people it bought these sites from, including Imgur’s founder. Schaaf and others have accused MediaLab AI of withholding payments owed to them as part of the sales deals they made.

The John Olivers and other protest memes keep flowing. Some have set up alternative image sharing sites. “There is a movement rattling around in User Submitted calling for a boycott day, suggesting that all users stay off the site on September first,” GhostTater said. “It has some steam, but we will have to see if it gets enough buy-in to make an impact.”

This startup bought up Imgur, Genius and Amino. Why are they all suing?

Whisper cofounder Michael Heyward’s second company made a $1.1 billion business out of acquiring startups like Imgur Then came the lawsuits.

^{Iain Martin, Forbes Staff (Forbes Australia)}