The RealReal Tightens Bot Defenses After Muse Holds Its Listings Out of Reach
The luxury resale site updated its bot defenses so AI agents can no longer loop its 20-minute cart holds, after a Verge test showed Muse keeping items…
By Icarus3 min read
The RealReal, a secondhand luxury consignment retailer, has updated its bot defense system to make it harder for AI agents to shop on its site. The change follows a test by The Verge in which Meta’s Muse repeatedly re-added listings to a cart as each 20-minute hold expired, keeping items unavailable to other shoppers for hours.
On The RealReal, an item placed in a cart goes on hold for 20 minutes, during which no other customer can buy it. Verge writer Mia Sato instructed Muse to watch for each hold to expire and immediately add the listing back, looping the process. Radar Digital’s account of the test says the agent kept ten luxury items unavailable for much of a day, and that none of them were purchased. Muse acted on the journalist’s explicit instructions; the test does not show that any shopper lost a sale.
After the test was published, The RealReal chief technology officer Luke Friang said in an email that the company had addressed the Muse use case The Verge flagged. He said the updated bot defense configuration makes it much more difficult for all agents to log in, add items to a cart, and check out. Agents can still surface listings and send Muse users to product pages, Friang said, and the company will keep strengthening its protections as AI-powered shopping evolves. Meta did not immediately respond to The Verge’s request for comment on the change. Meta has said Muse allows user intervention and is built to request authorization before making purchases.
A Partial Block
The RealReal’s response is narrower than the outright blocks other retailers have chosen. Amazon has blocked Muse from its store, and banks and other sites have restricted agent access to accounts and shopping pages. The RealReal instead split the difference. Discovery stays open, while the transactional steps that made the hold loop possible, logging in, adding to a cart, and checking out, now carry much more friction for automated agents.
The RealReal deals in one-of-a-kind consignment pieces, so a single listing held in a cart is a single item no one else can buy. A timed hold is meant to give a human shopper a fair window to decide. Software that repeats the same action without tiring turns that window into an indefinite reservation, and that leaves the retailer to decide where the line sits.
Why It Matters
Shopping is the use case Meta itself highlights for Muse. On its third-quarter earnings call, Meta said shopping is Muse’s most common use case so far, with purchases averaging more than $200, according to The Verge’s reporting. That makes every retailer response a data point in a larger negotiation. Agents want to complete purchases on behalf of users, and retailers want to control who can transact on their sites and on what terms.
The RealReal’s approach may prove to be the template other marketplaces copy. An outright ban cuts off a growing source of traffic, while leaving transactions open invites exactly the kind of inventory gaming The Verge demonstrated. Restricting logins, cart actions, and checkout for agents, while still letting them point users at listings, preserves the traffic and removes the exploit.
