Building a spare parts marketplace?

It’s a cool concept for sure. Being able to automatically list all the components of any device would be really useful for a lot of people and really help with repair.

But I agree it would be incredibly difficult. Just thinking about the sheer number of devices out there and how frequently new ones are produced, I’m not sure that even crowdsourcing would be enough to build and maintain this kind of tool. Looking only at smartphones, there were already over 24,000 models of Android phone in active use from nearly 1,300 different companies back in 2015. So I think you’re right that it would need to make use of either AI or an existing database (if one exists).

More broadly though, I think a complementary approach is through Right to Repair legislation. One of our key demands is for companies to make spare parts available to consumers at an affordable price. Ideally, this would cover the majority of common repair scenarios and place the burden more squarely on manufacturers to produce this kind of documentation.

Language is a really important consideration, agreed :slight_smile:
We do have automatic translation here on the forum. Just set your language in your preferences, then you’ll see a globe icon :globe_with_meridians: at the bottom of each post in a different language - click that to translate it (instructions here).

But of course, you’re right that “language is not enough, we need something that is culturally and locally responsive too”


Oh and I moved this conversation into a new topic to keep the previous one focused on the original post. Hope that’s ok :slight_smile:

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