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Comment by MattGaiser | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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.

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!

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

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.

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...

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.

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?

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?

#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

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