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Comment by bko | Hacker News Reader

I think facebook does marketplace really well. Whenever I listed something it sold, and I'm talking about really trashy stuff like a $20 microwave. I get a lot of noise (weird messages) but haven't seem explicit scams like you see on CL and you can sell the stuff usually within a day.

They also do events pretty well. It's easy to invite people and most people my age have a neglected facebook account so you can usually find who you want to invite. You just have to make sure you don't miss seeing the event.

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I think Marketplace quickly became a goto over Craigslist because a Facebook profile is much more trustworthy than the essential anonymity of Craigslist.

Underrated comment. Facebook is an informal identity provider, which has value to market participants.

or cost depending on your perspective. CL is part of the weird, old internet being used in current times, with all the good & bad that comes with that.

Funny enough, I prefer craigslist because I don't want my personal identity involved in a simple transaction like buying electronics. It's not like you have much recourse if you get scammed on marketplace, the user can just use a fake account and delete it after scamming you

Yeah, but you can quickly look at a profile and get basic verification it looks real. If it doesn't just don't transact with them. I've been 100x more confident in facebook marketplace than craigslist

My only experience with FB marketplace had a gal selling an iPad from the northeast…only to receive a receipt from a dude in Turkey.

FB, PayPal, the bank all stopped the charges quickly enough, but it was 6 weeks of bullshit in the meantime.

Profile age doesn't guarantee anything. I sold an iphone 11 on Ebay and a scammer used the credentials from a ten year old account with many legit purchases to try and run some kind of paypal payment request trick.

However on the seller side, dropping anonymity is super effective at reducing scams.

Have you tried making a fake Facebook account recently? Not happening.

Until they very quickly ruined Marketplace by heavily promoting low quality new and "shipped to you" items rather than local used goods.

This. Otherwise Marketplace makes a giant sucking sound.

People should have a score and be excluded from it based on their shit ghosting behavior and lack of follow though.

Just as a counterpoint, I've sold almost 200 items on CL in the last 5 years in NYC as part of a decluttering project — everything from pro cameras to $3 adapters and cables to furniture. I have a process for when I switch from email to text, when I give my cross streets and train stop, and when I give my exact address, as well as boilerplate about cash, pickup only etc.

On the other hand, I'd been looking for a used car on FB Marketplace for about 3 years and couldn't find a single listing that seemed like it was from a legit owner (i.e. someone who wasn't selling a bunch of random cars parked on the street or a dealer posting fake prices).

Stuff does tend to sell quickly on Marketplace but searching for items is horrendous, there are so many puzzling things about the UI. Why have a 'max distance' field I can set to 40 miles if you are going to completely disregard it and show me things from neighboring states?

They do private events for your friends you're already connected to well.

However, they don't do social private groups well at all. For them it's all or nothing. Meetup, unfortunately, is still used for that.

They either force you to do all private events or all public and broadcasted events. Theres no way to maintain a community or a LUG on FB.

What sort of groups do you organize?

I've been working on an app inspired by challenges I had organizing hack nights and poker games. It's kind of a cross between Facebook events and Google Calendar, and allows you to send an invite link and send text updates. Would love to hear your thoughts!

https://regroup.app

I organized a semi public social meetup group for my city. People should be able to see the kinds of events we do .. but also rsvp/be a member to come out. Sometimes we enjoy the abiltiy to make the location private.

Makes a lot of sense, esp when making events more public. Thanks for your feedback!

I use marketplace. It's buggy on mobile, didn't work for a year or so, there are scammers on there. I saw a flood of dodgey adverts over the last week. Reported, persisted. I still use of for marketplace and a forum.

Marketplace and messenger are the most useful Meta apps. While I don't use it for any social media wall posting stuff I do know a lot of people my age who do. Mostly people from rural areas.

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