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Comment by tlianza | Hacker News Reader

> and “for sale” became Facebook Marketplace.

Ummmm... 1. Does the data suggest that is true? 2. If it were true, would it support the "unbundling" narrative given that it would be a case of something being part of another bundle?

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FB marketplace is literally the only thing I fb for anymore. It's pretty much the only decent place to buy and sell furniture, lawn equipment, etc. I valiantly tried to stick with craigslist, but it's just become a wasteland of scams and spam where I live.

The fact that Craigslist hasn't done anything to cut down on spam, scams, and duplicate posts is maddening to me. Whenever I do a search I see dozens of phone repair advertisements and completely unrelated posts for cars and trucks. And those posts have the same title and thumbnail!

I simply do not understand why Craigslist refuses to improve in this regard. Look, I get why Craig doesn't want to change the design of his site, but how in the hell do they justify such crap not being removed?

Craigslist's unchecked spam, moderation and safety problems have slowly made it unusable. And yes the data does show exactly this. FB Marketplace had 800 million users in 2018 (https://www.cnet.com/news/facebook-marketplace-is-used-in-70...) while Craigslist's revenue has been falling year over year (https://www.foxbusiness.com/technology/craigslist-revenue-fe...).

I don't see how fb marketplace avoids these issues

Simply having a real Facebook account tied to listings and purchases eliminates 99% of them. Both parties can also see when the account was created.

Also everything you list goes through manual approval, so the most obvious spam never makes it through.

It's trivial to make a fake facebook account, and I really doubt most people vet the seller to such lengths. Scams aren't always obvious. I could see how you could generate a fake account, get fake pictures of a fake apartment, and make a fake ad, and not get caught at all.

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