Yeah, I'll try to look into this for clarity. It really depends on what they mean here - I think they're referring to curated server following between admins, which is what PeerTube does.
When I tested out the messaging system, I was able to federate back and forth with Mastodon. Maybe it works fine at a user level, it's just the search entries that don't get federated automatically?
One of the biggest challenges with online marketplaces is personal safety for physical meetups and scam prevention for online sales. It'll be interesting if there are any efforts to solve this, such as an escrow system or other process to keep buyers and sellers honest.
I can't speak for Craigslist, but in my area Gumtree is big, and I know from first-hand experience that they "handle it" by waiting for the crime to occur and be reported to police, then they give police the list of all IP addresses that viewed a listing. Having stared down the pointy end of a knife right outside my own home, I feel there's an opportunity to build a better system that keeps people honest and discourages thieves.
Yeah, very nice. It will be tough to bootstrap since you need a critical mass of people who ideally live close together so that it's cheap and quick enough to deliver the items in question.
I was thinking something like this for jobs on the fediverse would be great, then thought it would probably be filled with high paying, highly technical jobs or low paying garbage jobs, or both with no between space. I'd love to be wrong.