eBay Live 48 Hours of Drops Or Flops? Users Rage At Disruptive Homepage Takeover
eBay Live is pushing a 48 hour livestream bonanza with major publicity blitz promising exclusive drops, but disruptive homepage takeover threatens to alienate regular shoppers who are flooding social media with hot takes on the live selling trend.
The company hyped the event as "must watch" programming with non-stop access to pre-loved fashion, collectibles and exclusive inventory and celebrity hosted marquee events.
But it appears eBay may have severely underestimated the degree to which their average users are not interested in live shopping, with many taking to the eBay community forums and social media to passionately voice their very strong opinions about the homepage takeover.
Searching the eBay community for the word "live" brings up over 100 results just from the last 2 days from users desperately seeking ways to block the infiltration of eBay Live into their homepage and browsing experience.
Here are just of few for example:
"LIVE" crap on homepage
Suddenly the eBay home page is filled with "Live" crap. How do I get it back to normal?
eBay keeps crashing
eBay keeps crashing due to eBay live. The only way around it is to try to get to a different screen before it loads. This needs to be either an option to turn off or it needs to be fixed.
Turn off eBay live
I don’t want this garbage. You’ve ruined the app. I want my home feed back or I’m done with eBay after 27 years.
The ability to discover items based on my previous buying and browsing has turned up some real gems over the years. You’ve ruined it. Absolutely destroyed this app with this utter garbage. If I wanted to browse tv shopping channels I’d be perfectly capable of doing so. I don’t want or need junk selling con men in my auction app.
EBay live is awful
Please remove eBay live is made me want to leave the platform it’s really bad it’s just streams unwanted products at me all the time it’s full of low quality AI rubbish and has made the app unpleasant to use
Users on Reddit went even further, posting expletive-laden comments about the eBay Live homepage takeover.
Is there any way to remove eBay live? It’s so fucking obnoxious
by u/Roadkillgoblin_2 in ebayuk
Hyperconsumerist, AI-ridden slop that’s meant to incite/promote impulse purchases for shit that nobody will really need. I don’t have any interest in the slop that’s being sold, nobody needs or asked for livestream shopping
The entire eBay app home page is JUST Live shit. AI pictures and idiots peddling tat. It's horrid!
Why can't eBay just accept that they absolutely own the internet auction market, and stop chasing these ridiculous fads from china apps.
Some suggested using eBay's in app feedback feature to provide the company with thoughts about the Live takeover.
You can feed back on this inside the app and I've just done so saying it's terrible. Please do this! It was a fairly clean and snappy app and the front page is a hellhole with all these shitty live streams. Whenever I paused an ad another one started playing. Completely diverted me from the tasks I wanted to do, towards things I did not ever want to engage with or buy.
eBay's social media posts about the event are also receiving some very pointed feedback about the homepage takeover.
And it's not just buyers who are frustrated. Regular sellers are also feeling increasingly alienated as eBay pivots to focus on Live and consumer to consumer (C2C) selling in key categories like fashion.
Liz Morton
The good news is the homepage will return to normal after tonight.
But the backlash exposes a bigger problem: eBay’s core users aren’t buying into Live, while rivals like Whatnot, Poshmark, and TikTok are winning over younger, more social media-savvy audiences with livestream shopping.
What do you think of the eBay Live 48 Hours of Drops homepage takeover? Let us know in the comments below!
