AI descriptions shown without clicking description
just wondering if anyone else noticed that on the Ebay mobile app when I click on the item it will show the item description without having to click the " see full description". seems odd that they are favoring AI descriptions.
8 comments
my-cottage-books-and-antiques
·2 years agoI've seen that with some non-AI descriptions as well, so I'm not sure it is tied to AI...suspect it has more to do with character length and lack of special html formatting.
chapeau-noir
·2 years agoI sell on three mobile sites and none allow special characters- hence my deduction that any formatting gets sequestered because of special characters- mobile apps are pretty primitive.
selsa84
OP2 years agois font size considered "special characters"?
a_c_green
·2 years agoNo, font size is an "attribute" or a modifier of the text to be placed on the page. It gets declared in a special tag that dictates the appearance of the text following. Special characters themselves might be accented letters (e.g. "é"), Pi or WingDing symbols (e.g. "§", "˧"), basically things you can't type in directly on your standard QWERTY keyboard. (In a lot of cases you can type them via their character codes, such as generating the accented é by holding down your Alt key as you type 0233 on your side keypad.)
I haven't tested to be sure, but tags declaring font size and such might also trigger that "See full description" link. I rarely need to use special characters in my descriptions, but I notice that most if not all of my listings in mobile form seem to be shown with the "See full description" link instead of directly-placed text.
selsa84
OP2 years agoThank you,
chapeau-noir
·2 years agoAnything that requires HTML modification from the default used by the site - that would be font size, colour, etc. Plain text is about it.
chapeau-noir
·2 years agoThis is like the old http/https days when a link was created that redirected to an interstitial page with just the description if the seller used non-secure (http) elements. The AI descriptions are just gibble-gabble without any formatting, so just format into mobile as plain text. If/when I start selling again I'm wondering if I'll have to use just a mash of text without any formatting that makes it easier for the buyer.
a_c_green
·2 years agoIf I remember right, the "See full description" link is put in when the user-generated description has some kind of embedded HTML coding, whereas the AI-generated description from eBay is presumably "cleaner" in some way that permits it to be directly embedded in the mobile format of item listing.