Facebook Marketplace Has Done Nothing But Destroyed The Third Hand Market, Tell Friends and Family To Stop Posting There or Post To Other Places Alongside It. As soon as I heard Facebook was creating a marketplace, I knew this is exactly how it would end up…
Facebook is absolutely killing the third hand market for buying and selling goods. You have to make an account to do anything, and this is exactly what they wanted. When people start flocking over to Facebook marketplace, they need to create accounts if they don’t already have, therefore trying to lock them in like parasites. I refuse to create an account, but this has also brought a lot of personal frustration. Since the marketplace opened, it has heavily drawn away from similar services such as Craigslist. It really is true that “all the good stuff is on Facebook Marketplace”, not all but a solid amount. I rarely come across good deals on other services anymore, and this is extremely frustrating. Again, this is exactly what Facebook wanted.
Not to mention the massive privacy concerns over this, not only are you locking into the Facebook ecosystem, but you have to give out a solid amount of personal information over to Facebook if you ever plan to meet people for items, which means it’s pretty pointless to use Facebook on an anonymous account for this purpose. I am also in no way saying that other services such as LetGo are in any way privacy friendly.
Anyways, Facebook Marketplace is turning third party selling into a decentralized nightmare, and it is extremely frustrating. I don’t see a lot of people putting up any fight over it besides the few who dislike Facebook, and even then they simply give in and make accounts because as I stated, there are good deals on there unfortunately. It honestly baffles me, how often I hear about Facebook in the news, how much I hear people complain about Facebook, yet they still use it.
But I think it’s extremely important, to suggest to people to either stop using Facebook Marketplace, or at the very least post to other sites as well like Craigslist. This goes for friends, family, and even people you know on the internet. Just keep suggesting.
Which also brings me to a side-note, that it would be very awesome to see a libre alternative to these third party selling services. Of course I don’t really expect it to pull massive business away from Facebook Marketplace, as much as I’d like it, but hopefully it will pull some business from the privacy disrespecting sites such as LetGo and others and also give us a better place to post. I think this would be very cool. A service may already exist, if it’s good I’m all ears if you know of it.
I agree that Facebook being the gatekeepers is bad. However, you’re going to need more than just “Facebook bad” to get people to use something else. The bulk of the population just doesn’t run the same calculus in regards to privacy vs convenience.
I understand the argument here, but again, this is more than just a privacy concern. Economically this gate-keeping approach is bad for the used market, not to mention I’d personally consider it monopolistic, and Facebook should be held accountable for stuff like this, especially after being able to get away with calling themselves not a monopoly in anti-trust cases. This isn’t even just a privacy, Facebook bad issue, it’s an issue of centralization and monopolistic gate-keeping that can hurt the economy and the used market.
Despite that, privacy is most definitely an issue here, and the issue is it is starting to come down to the point where you lack any choice. As I’ve stated, this goes in hand with the gate-keeping and locking users into Facebook. If you wish to buy something from someone, or contact them, for something they posted over Facebook Marketplace, you are required to make an account to even discuss with them. If this user did not decide to post to other platforms (Craigslist as an example) and only onto Facebook, this means users aren’t likely to find the post unless they are part of the Facebook ecosystem, and even if they did find it, they have to “join” the Facebook ecosystem just to even discuss it, never-mind purchase it. This means handing over personal information directly to Facebook, all the way down to your location and possibly meeting location if you decide to buy it. This is absurd.
Now there is an argument against this, you do technically still have a choice, you do not have to buy that item. If you did not buy an item off Facebook Marketplace, you do not have to hand over your information (never-minding the issue of if you visit the site, information can be gathered by them still), but this goes back to the bigger issue of destroying the used market. It can at anytime, end up a place where individuals do not even have access to be able to access Facebook, therefore creating an elitist situation of used goods. Ontop of this, it could cause prices to fluctuate heavily, or even inflate. There are many things that could go wrong, and many things that are already wrong with Facebook Marketplace, never-mind Facebook themselves which we have years of evidence based issues. Again, I never said people cannot use Facebook Marketplace, all I am stating is there are inherent issues here that people should be looking at that I rarely see discussed, and it was on my mind so I decided to rant a little.
I do think as I’ve stated, there are solutions that could help negate these issues. One being a libre platform alternative marketplace, this could maybe be integrated as a Fediverse platform where people could host instances as if they were their own online shops. This would kind of be like having a seller page on Ebay or Amazon, yet significantly more powerful. This could also be extended to eventually providing online services if users wished, offering shipping and what not. This could become a libre, Federated, ebay platform in time if users felt it should. You of course could always have the local used market right alongside it. In the time of constant issues, not being able to shop without encountering tons of third part dependencies just to browse, I think this could be a great idea. Of course this would require someone to create the platform, and this is only an idea that I wanted to throw out in the wild. But I’m sure there are a lot of users interested in the libre/FOSS community who would hop on a platform like this, and sell their merch. This could eventually increase to open source companies as it gains traction, and eventually big businesses and normies if interested. Of course, saying something like this sounds great on paper, executing it is the issue which involves time, effort, and hope that people will actually use it. Again, only an idea.
In the end I think a very easy start, would be if you talk to anyone about Facebook Marketplace, to just suggest they also throw up their post on another site. Something as easily as, not everyone has Facebook accounts, so people are more likely to find your post to buy it, would be a great excuse without even needing to mention economical issues, centralization, or privacy concerns.