[numpad0]

It's surprising that the whole Western world is discovering the threat of organized or scripted scalping just now, when it's been a problem in places like Japan for over a decade. Account age requirements, lotteries, quick subject matter quizzes to chase away hired line-sitters, hidden ID code on tickets to ban scalpers on auction site pics, randomized queues for sales page etc etc has all been in use for years. It's been so commonplace that various city-run COVID free vaccine programs had different forms of them.

[swiftcoder]

It's been a problem in the West for decades too, for some reason we've only just decided to do something about it

[chorizo]

Organized/scripted scalping isn’t new at all in the Western world. Just look at concert/game tickets. It assumed that if you really need it, you’ll alarm clock the release and even then might end up paying a scalper.

[numpad0]

Scalpers targeted products sometimes don't last one full seconds. Which means they go from product page -> cart -> checkout -> payment in fractions of a second each, likely through JS injection. It's hardly Selenium speeds. Your alarm clock or Valorant skills are of absolutely no use. That had been the norm for years where scalping has been a problem.

[BlueTemplar]

Concert/game tickets are in a extremely different situation. SM doesn't become completely worthless past a certain (near, known) date.