Scammers are ruining Facebook marketplace

Sad really, but there is no safe recourse. Everything where money(or IRL valuables) changes hands will be infested by scam(mmer)s. Eventually, an arcane dystopian automated decision will be applied where basic joe smith trying to sell his couch due to hastily moving to new city for a job or grandma jenny trying to sell her goodwill sweaters will get banned as scam/suspicious activity, while jimmy will continue scamming people and articles like these will be written. This is the ultimate state of everything, because comprehensive scam detection solutions require money and people.

Same thing if you’re trying to buy something. I have tried to buy a second hand Nintendo Switch for months on Facebook Marketplace. Every seemingly good deal inevitably turns out to be a scam. It’s easy to spot because very soon

  1. Turns out that the location is not the advertised one (the city), but in the countryside
  2. The seller will only ship, but they need to receive your money first
  3. A check on their identity reveals that they don’t exist anywhere else and they signed up to Facebook in the past 3 months

Reporting the scammers to Meta is pointless. I was bored a while ago and scambaited about 10. I posted stuff like couches bed frames etc. I built up a long chat history that plainly showed they were scamming them reported them. Weeks later all the accounts were still active and scamming. Funny thing is ALL the responses to my items were from scammers. No real person inquired and everything I posted was very nice high quality.

"Zelle’s website notes that it will send emails only from domains ending in @zelle.com and @zellepay.com, and any others could be scams."

I don't know if Zelle really said this or if this is just a misinterpretation by the author, but spoofing email "From" addresses is trivial, and should never be used to confirm anything. Whoever said this is dangerously clueless about security.

I don't know any online marketplaces that aren't more than 50% scammers. Hell, Paypal aids and abets the scammers on ebay. The last few times I've attempted to use Craigslist I've seen plenty of scammers but the worst part is actually the real people I talk to who just waste my time with "I'll take it off your hands if you give me $10". What's even the goal there? Do they just email every single listing with that crap, hoping someone is desperate enough to pay someone to haul away their furniture? Online marketplaces really undermine my remaining faith in humanity.

I thought that the commercial product sellers are ruining it.

The always follow person to person sales .

Interesting to know we can still ruin Facebook in 2023, I thought it was already ruined years ago.