Greg's Corner

Facebook Marketplace already showing abuses

Facebook recently relaunched its Marketplace section. In a nutshell it’s a space on the Facebook app that allows people to buy and sell various goods to each other. The problem is that it didn’t take long for illegal items and items against Marketplace’s guidelines to be offered for sale on the Facebook App. Drugs, guns, dogs and ‘adult services’ have all been offered for sale on the revamped app.

Facebook has been slow to remove these ads but has said that in the future they’ll use a combination of community policing and employee moderation to keep future objectionable ads off their site. If history is any indicator it doesn’t seem like Facebook will remove these ads in time. If they take their usual 36 hours to remove an ad, that illegal item could have already been sold. More than likely Facebook will rely heavily on community policing, which if you look at craigslist’s community policing it will be more like the inmates running the asylum.

Another problem with Facebook Marketplace is that Facebook is trying to keep you in their ‘walled garden’. That means they’re trying to be all things to all people in order to keep them on their site or app for as long as possible. Facebook doesn’t want you to go to any other site besides Facebook. The problem with walled gardens is that walls collapse and gardens die. The more Facebook tries to contain their users the closer it gets to being AOL of the 1990s, and who still uses AOL?

Instead of using an unreliable service, your best bet is to use Geebo, the safer community classifieds. Here at Geebo we moderate our ads to make sure that nothing illegal or harmful is sold. As a socially conscious service, not only did our CEO Greg Collier eliminate the personals section to protect against human trafficking and other related crimes, but he also eliminated the sale of animals to discourage the use of puppy mills and animal related scams.

While some online classifieds say that they’re socially responsible, Geebo not only talks the talk but it walks the walk as well.