This seems obviously wrong.
It is not illegal to sell land. A moderator would need to delve into Brazilian law and mapping to determine if that specific sale was illegal.
Expecting marketplaces to police peer to peer transactions in depth is unreasonable.
We are currently focussed on the verification of electronic products. But our goal is to verify listings in all verticals with a high risk of fraud.
They don't need to be perfect. A rough solution would not require a full and complete legal analysis of Brazil's laws and topography. However their current stance seems to be that they won't even bother trying.
Just a few first google hits: FOSTA/SESTA: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_Enabling_Sex_Traffickers_...
Prosecuting dark net markets using 'crack house law': https://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=56...
This also seems wrong.
The right solution is in the middle: Facebook should spend some effort validating the legality of the sale. The required standard of effort should depend on how much money Facebook is making from the ads, and on an estimate of the proportion of products sold illegally, amongst other things. The former to ensure that a very small similar website is not held to the same standard, the latter to ensure that if 99% of the products are sold illegally then Facebook is responsible.
Without knowing the total volume of these land ads and the proportion of illegal ones, it is hard to tell if there is anything to fix here.
Facilitating the sale of a stolen phone is not going to be as harmful as facilitating, say, adulterated nutrition supplements.
This dovetails nicely with the full-on terrible and illegal side of things. There are likely not many ads for human trafficking on Facebook, but they are so horrendous that it is still worth expending significant effort to detect and remove them.
And while not comparable to the above situation, I would argue illegal Amazon land deals ads are causing an outsized harm compared to ads for similarly mundane-sounding illegal goods/service/whatever. They deserve special attention.
How is this different than someone selling the Brooklyn bridge on Craigslist?
Facebook marketplace just links buyers and sellers. Settlement is something else.
Why is everyone so intent on Facebook/Twitter/whatever being the arbiter of truth? These problems aren't new to any of the new tech.
You gotta be kidding me. Facebook is a multi-billion dollar corporation. Just make them do it. Their legal departments will figure it out. They'll probably do it even faster than the brazilian authorities too. Google once fed brazilian judges this exact same excuse after being ordered to take down content. They got told to figure out a way to comply since surely Google has the capability to do it. As far as I know, they did.
How many problems would be fixed if we stopped feeling sorry for the rich corporations and started requiring them to assume responsibility for the messes they create?
> How many problems would be fixed if we stopped feeling sorry for the rich corporations and started requiring them to assume responsibility for the messes they create?
Instead of "problems would be fixed", it would be "how many more problems would be created".
- USPS should assume responsibility for scam mails since they help deliver them. Laws would be created to require USPS to "screen" all mails and refuse to deliver if it deems the mails are spam. After all, it's USPS "greed" to allow those spammers/scammers to send mail.
- Telcos should assume responsibility for telephone frauds. Breaking News: Costco got hacked via telephone social engineering, T-Mobile is being sued. After all, it's the Telcos's "greed" to allow those scammers to make the phone call. They should have an army of operators listening to the phone call and stop the fraud before it happens.
The worst outcome? By "stopped feeling sorry for the rich corporations", we are actually pushing to give them even more power, over our live.
- By asking Facebook to police what is legal, we're handing them the right to decide what's right/wrong. At the same time, it creates even more regulatory captures, discouraging upstart alternatives to join the ring.
The emotionally charged call might appeal to the popular us-vs-them, rich-vs-poor climate, but if we're not careful, it might lead us to the wrong solution.
It's actually illegal to tamper with mail or wiretap phones without a warrant. The post office and telecommunications companies can't know what is going on. Same logic applies to networks and it's actually enforced via encryption. Facebook has complete knowledge of everything. It has every bit of information required to make these decisions. Failing to do so is negligence.
The whole idea is absurd to me. 20 years ago you had a marketplace section in a newspaper, you rang them and placed an ad for whatever it is you were doing or selling. Sometimes it was even free if it was short enough. It would never ever cross my mind that the newspaper should be responsible for what people post, because...why would they be? They couldn't print ads for drugs or prostitution, but neither can Facebook.
One could argue that the Ministry of State Security can and should do full surveillance of all citizens, collect all available information, including wiretapping all phones using blanket warrants, and act on it to detect and deter crime, including the crime of political opposition, at all cost, and not doing so is negligence, because it is possible and if it is possible it must be done.
In fact I'm getting fed up with the extraterritoriality of big tech.
And then there's no site that can ever compete with their ability to do the compliance department bullshit.
That's how the world ended up with two banks. Is this how you really want to play it?
What person to person marketplace is held to this standard? Certainly not Craigslist, eBay, or Fiverr. Arguably not even Amazon.
Craigslist completely nuked their personals sections because of the illegal activity on them, along with the resulting bad publicity and legislation that made it very clear what the standard is and that Craigslist needed to meet it.
They can't even be bothered to follow up on vendors dumping foreign country SKUs in the US and stomping on licensed frequencies. I got a nice letter from AT&T a couple months ago for a European SKU DECT phone from an Amazon listing that was confirmed to be the US SKU that I had purchased a few times prior. The order was even fulfilled by Amazon and they couldn't be bothered to check that the SKU on the box didn't match the product listing.
Enforcement doesn't need to be perfect, but they need to at least try some enforcement or it becomes a place where no one can trust anyone or anything.
Because Facebook is making money directly off those ads.