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Comment by throwaway82931 | Hacker News Reader

Like prosecuting Facebook for colluding in the sale of stolen property?

Facebook has all the information any willing police officer/DA would need to capture the thieves. All they would need to do is go to a judge and ask.

Also the legislature could make laws to make it easier to send bike thieves to jail.

The government != Facebook and it's better that way since we can vote to change things that we find wrong with the government, but lack that ability with FB

I'm genuinely curious. How would you propose Facebook enforce this?

People selling bikes include both first-hand buyers and second-hand buyers (people who bought it from someone else).

Without a central registry like what we have for cars, I don't know what Facebook could do.

Disallow selling bikes. If you can't figure out a way to only allow legal resales, you shouldn't be in the business

And hurt everyone who is legit selling their own bike too.

If the question is: how do we prevent sale of stolen bikes, I’m not sure how that solves the problem.

Is there a possible way for FB and other similar places (offerup, pawn shops, etc.) to verify without some central registry?

bike index has an open API

Traditional retailers of used goods like pawn shops are usually subject to pretty stringent regulation - not necessarily to determine if goods are stolen, but to record identification of the seller to enable an investigation later. In some places this does include proactively sending a report of items to the police for checking against stolen reports. So there's a pretty clear precedent for regulation of this kind directed towards online marketplaces, but you can no doubt predict the questions around the difference between a pawn shop (being the seller) and Facebook (being not the seller but just a provider of listings).

States enforce pawn laws through electronic systems like LEADS. FB, offerup, and every other platform out there letting thieves fence things with impunity could implement same.

How does LEADS work and how could FB and OfferUp use it?

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