The individual cashier won’t care, but the manufacturer might, especially if they’re returned as defective because they then make their way back as RMA.

Shops will also stop stocking the item if it stands out because more people return them.
They want to make a profit after all and if they have to discount items as “open box” then they’re losing out on profit, especially since the margins on some of these are already pretty low for retailers.

I think it makes sense for a “redditlike” to be searchable, while also understanding that Mastodon is a different beast and can benefit from lack of search.

Don’t know if Mastodon posts on Lemmy instances have a specific characteristic, but perhaps you can consider filtering them out while keeping “regular” Lemmy posts and comments?