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Comment by foerbert | Hacker News Reader

If you follow this line of thought, the conclusion seems to be that if Facebook were to run ads for illegal drugs, explosives, or humans, it would simply be an indication that some country should be enforcing it's laws better. And Facebook would be totally in clear to continue showing those ads.

This seems obviously wrong.

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Except it is outright illegal to sell drugs, explosives, or humans. Any ad selling those is almost certainly illegal. If humans for sale, post is illegal.

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.

Indeed. It is complicated, so perhaps not allow selling of land in Brazil than? Because something is hard to do doesn't make it ok not to do it. Facebook is selling illegal products and if it's not capable of getting properly, than it's part of the racket and should be held responsible as so.

Every marketplace has illegal products. Craigslist has stolen cars. Kijiji has stolen pets. eBay has fake collectibles. You will find all manner of scams on Reddit. Fiverr is filled with tons of people willing to do your homework.

Expecting marketplaces to police peer to peer transactions in depth is unreasonable.

Yes, that's all bad as well. But some platforms get removed entirely when there's enough illegal activity. A marketplace that is facilitating should be held responsible. If your community can't be trusted, than yes validation must be done. So yes, I think the platforms that you mention should be handled as well.

I really have to shamelessly plug my marketplace - https://vendiapp.com here. This is exactly why we started this with the goal of helping other marketplaces as well to completely protect its users. We believe marketplaces must start becoming more responsible and accountable for the transactions that they facilitate.

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.

This is quite interesting, especially given that you are doing one of items. I would have thought this inordinately expensive, but evidently not.

Interesting, I had a very similar idea for this, but I'm already doing a solo side gig so haven't had the time to work on yet another solo thing. Maybe we can collaborate or chat? Shoot me an email!

#freezuck the judge was just aiming to make an example of Mark for hosting a marketplace, like really, a website!? he wasn't even on trial for the murder for hire scheme

Wait so the only reason it’s bad for Facebook to show ads selling humans is that slavery is illegal in every country? So I guess if one country made slavery legal then it would be fine for Facebook to show ads selling humans everywhere in the world?

Facebook has the resources and technical expertise to make quite a good pass at figuring this out. This is also unlikely to be the only situation of this sort that they will ever deal with, so the experience of addressing it should be of some value to them too. And this is the sort of technically challenging yet fun and impactful project that helps keep skilled engineered happy. My point here is simply that trying to solve this problem is not some huge net negative for Facebook.

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.

Furthermore there are also specific laws against human trafficking and drugs online that seem to up the potential liability for those sales versus say facilitating a stolen iphone or in this case even less provable land sales.

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...

Some drugs (medicine but also recreational) are legal in some countries to just buy anywhere and not in others, as are some type of explosives. Is Facebook banning those outright or actually checking per country what is allowed and what is not? It's a question, I do not use Facebook... If banned outright, is that not the same thing but the other way?

If you take the opposite line, that Facebook is responsible for checking that the product is sold legally, then the conclusion is that Facebook would have to confirm legal ownership of every product before allowing a sale.

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.

Largely I agree with you, though I don't think your calculation of effort is quite complete. One factor that should be considered is the harm done by allowing the ads.

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.

If the sale of land on Facebook is not legal, then the government shouldn't record the transfer of title.

They don't, this is just random squatters occupying land that isn't theirs. This is basically on par with finding a vacant lot that the owner doesn't check up on and "selling" it while openly admitting that they don't have title to the land and have no rights to the property. What's surprising is that people are foolish enough to pay them anything. They aren't actually buying anything, they could just not give them a dime and go extract the lumber, slash and burn the lot, etc.

How is this different than someone selling the Brooklyn bridge on Craigslist?

It's not. And you could offer the Brooklyn Bridge on Facebook. Transactions don't take place on Facebook. If I browse Facebook for a basketball, we meet up and they want to hand me a soccer ball, I don't give them cash. If you're conducting a trade for land/property, you need to go through all the processes normally involved in property transfer -- survey, title insurance, etc...

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.

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