HACKER Q&A
📣 bruceb

12 of 17 vehicles (71%) listed first in FB marketplace are scams, Why?


Clicking on Facebook Marketplace vehicles section am confronted with onslaught of scams listings. https://imgur.com/a/DPSUBhC

First three rows show 21 results, 17 vehicles and 4 sponsored ads. Out of the 17 vehicles, 12 are scams, 71%.

Reporting these seems to do nothing. Is FB that powerless to stop this?

There was a story on this 6 months ago but maybe got worse? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28676973


  👤 999900000999 Accepted Answer ✓
The best is when you literally ask to see the car / apartment.

"I'm in the military deployed / in Africa doing charity work."

99% of scams can be avoided by seeing it in person. That said, you can definitely look for apartments online, but just go out and see it first. With both apartments and cars, I found it significantly easier to just deal with and established company. Individuals tend to be super sketchy even when they don't want to be, for example, when I was looking for a used car once I had a guy try to sell me a vehicle that hadn't been legally registered in like 10 years.

I was on a thread here the other day and there was some person talking about how you can get a rust bucket for cheap, when you try to get a cheap car. You'll have so many people trying to rip you off. It's ridiculous. People who don't legally own the car in the first place, people who don't actually have the title to the car.

Then again, I've had friends tell me that you don't need a license to drive, you don't need to register your car, and you don't need any insurance.

A significant amount of America just lives like that


👤 bitxbitxbitcoin
Craigslist has less spam because it costs $5 to post a car listing. That is an option FB could explore.

👤 monkmartinez
I hate it soooo much. FB marketplace is literally the only reason I have a FB account. It was a heaven send when we moved a year ago. I fire sold 50% of our belongings in like a week. Gave away a bunch of stuff and it was just great. I have looked for vehicles, but searching through the scams is nightmare.

👤 bitcurious
Different scale, but I found the same to be true of other in demand items. I looked to buy a PS5 and the listings were either obvious scams or scalpers asking for $200+ over MSRP.

The cynic in me suggests that the two are one and the same - the scams make the scalpers look comparatively appealing.


👤 mhh__
Facebook marketplace in general seems like a bizarrely terrible site considering how facebook should have useful data flowing out of all their orifices and eBay being relatively meh compared to the standards of big tech these days.

If there was one place on the internet I would go to buy low to sell high elsewhere, it probably be facebook marketplace.

Some of the listings are very funny, I recall one person selling a TV which "comes with Netflix" i.e. he'd just stolen the TV and hadn't bothered to reset it to cover his tracks.


👤 say_it_as_it_is
FB avoids licensing and regulation by minimizing scrutiny of listings. The terms governing FB marketplace absolve it of responsibility of fraudulent listings as FB claims a passive role in exchanging information but not scrutinizing it. There are some things that FB may do, and it will be interesting to see what is legally within their rights to do so. Otherwise, FB will need to register and license itself, and meet compliance requirements, in thousands of regulated markets.

👤 sonicggg
I bought my car via FB marketplace two years ago, and I've been very happy with my purchase so far. I could have lucked out, but don't remember seeing any obvious scam back when I was browsing for cars there. I wonder if it's a new trend.

👤 cm2012
Also I am pretty sure all the random women selling lingerie with full body pics are escorts.

👤 AussieWog93
How do you know those listings are all scams?