This is one of those rare times I agree with facebook. Why is this Facebook's problem? Sounds like Brazil should be enforcing their laws better. Facebook hosts for-sale postings, how reasonable is it for them to vet every post against scams and illegality?
If you follow this line of thought, the conclusion seems to be that if Facebook were to run ads for illegal drugs, explosives, or humans, it would simply be an indication that some country should be enforcing it's laws better. And Facebook would be totally in clear to continue showing those ads.
Except it is outright illegal to sell drugs, explosives, or humans. Any ad selling those is almost certainly illegal. If humans for sale, post is illegal.
It is not illegal to sell land. A moderator would need to delve into Brazilian law and mapping to determine if that specific sale was illegal.
Indeed. It is complicated, so perhaps not allow selling of land in Brazil than? Because something is hard to do doesn't make it ok not to do it. Facebook is selling illegal products and if it's not capable of getting properly, than it's part of the racket and should be held responsible as so.
Every marketplace has illegal products. Craigslist has stolen cars. Kijiji has stolen pets. eBay has fake collectibles. You will find all manner of scams on Reddit. Fiverr is filled with tons of people willing to do your homework.
Expecting marketplaces to police peer to peer transactions in depth is unreasonable.
I really have to shamelessly plug my marketplace - https://vendiapp.com here. This is exactly why we started this with the goal of helping other marketplaces as well to completely protect its users. We believe marketplaces must start becoming more responsible and accountable for the transactions that they facilitate.
We are currently focussed on the verification of electronic products. But our goal is to verify listings in all verticals with a high risk of fraud.
Interesting, I had a very similar idea for this, but I'm already doing a solo side gig so haven't had the time to work on yet another solo thing. Maybe we can collaborate or chat? Shoot me an email!
Yes, that's all bad as well. But some platforms get removed entirely when there's enough illegal activity. A marketplace that is facilitating should be held responsible. If your community can't be trusted, than yes validation must be done. So yes, I think the platforms that you mention should be handled as well.
Furthermore there are also specific laws against human trafficking and drugs online that seem to up the potential liability for those sales versus say facilitating a stolen iphone or in this case even less provable land sales.
Facebook has the resources and technical expertise to make quite a good pass at figuring this out. This is also unlikely to be the only situation of this sort that they will ever deal with, so the experience of addressing it should be of some value to them too. And this is the sort of technically challenging yet fun and impactful project that helps keep skilled engineered happy. My point here is simply that trying to solve this problem is not some huge net negative for Facebook.
They don't need to be perfect. A rough solution would not require a full and complete legal analysis of Brazil's laws and topography. However their current stance seems to be that they won't even bother trying.
Some drugs (medicine but also recreational) are legal in some countries to just buy anywhere and not in others, as are some type of explosives. Is Facebook banning those outright or actually checking per country what is allowed and what is not? It's a question, I do not use Facebook... If banned outright, is that not the same thing but the other way?
Wait so the only reason it’s bad for Facebook to show ads selling humans is that slavery is illegal in every country? So I guess if one country made slavery legal then it would be fine for Facebook to show ads selling humans everywhere in the world?
#freezuck the judge was just aiming to make an example of Mark for hosting a marketplace, like really, a website!? he wasn't even on trial for the murder for hire scheme
If you take the opposite line, that Facebook is responsible for checking that the product is sold legally, then the conclusion is that Facebook would have to confirm legal ownership of every product before allowing a sale.
This also seems wrong.
The right solution is in the middle: Facebook should spend some effort validating the legality of the sale. The required standard of effort should depend on how much money Facebook is making from the ads, and on an estimate of the proportion of products sold illegally, amongst other things. The former to ensure that a very small similar website is not held to the same standard, the latter to ensure that if 99% of the products are sold illegally then Facebook is responsible.
Without knowing the total volume of these land ads and the proportion of illegal ones, it is hard to tell if there is anything to fix here.
Largely I agree with you, though I don't think your calculation of effort is quite complete. One factor that should be considered is the harm done by allowing the ads.
Facilitating the sale of a stolen phone is not going to be as harmful as facilitating, say, adulterated nutrition supplements.
This dovetails nicely with the full-on terrible and illegal side of things. There are likely not many ads for human trafficking on Facebook, but they are so horrendous that it is still worth expending significant effort to detect and remove them.
And while not comparable to the above situation, I would argue illegal Amazon land deals ads are causing an outsized harm compared to ads for similarly mundane-sounding illegal goods/service/whatever. They deserve special attention.
They don't, this is just random squatters occupying land that isn't theirs. This is basically on par with finding a vacant lot that the owner doesn't check up on and "selling" it while openly admitting that they don't have title to the land and have no rights to the property. What's surprising is that people are foolish enough to pay them anything. They aren't actually buying anything, they could just not give them a dime and go extract the lumber, slash and burn the lot, etc.
How is this different than someone selling the Brooklyn bridge on Craigslist?
It's not. And you could offer the Brooklyn Bridge on Facebook. Transactions don't take place on Facebook. If I browse Facebook for a basketball, we meet up and they want to hand me a soccer ball, I don't give them cash. If you're conducting a trade for land/property, you need to go through all the processes normally involved in property transfer -- survey, title insurance, etc...
Facebook marketplace just links buyers and sellers. Settlement is something else.
Why is everyone so intent on Facebook/Twitter/whatever being the arbiter of truth? These problems aren't new to any of the new tech.
> how reasonable is it for them to vet every post against scams and illegality?
You gotta be kidding me. Facebook is a multi-billion dollar corporation. Just make them do it. Their legal departments will figure it out. They'll probably do it even faster than the brazilian authorities too. Google once fed brazilian judges this exact same excuse after being ordered to take down content. They got told to figure out a way to comply since surely Google has the capability to do it. As far as I know, they did.
How many problems would be fixed if we stopped feeling sorry for the rich corporations and started requiring them to assume responsibility for the messes they create?
> How many problems would be fixed if we stopped feeling sorry for the rich corporations and started requiring them to assume responsibility for the messes they create?
Instead of "problems would be fixed", it would be "how many more problems would be created".
- USPS should assume responsibility for scam mails since they help deliver them. Laws would be created to require USPS to "screen" all mails and refuse to deliver if it deems the mails are spam. After all, it's USPS "greed" to allow those spammers/scammers to send mail.
- Telcos should assume responsibility for telephone frauds. Breaking News: Costco got hacked via telephone social engineering, T-Mobile is being sued. After all, it's the Telcos's "greed" to allow those scammers to make the phone call. They should have an army of operators listening to the phone call and stop the fraud before it happens.
The worst outcome? By "stopped feeling sorry for the rich corporations", we are actually pushing to give them even more power, over our live.
- By asking Facebook to police what is legal, we're handing them the right to decide what's right/wrong. At the same time, it creates even more regulatory captures, discouraging upstart alternatives to join the ring.
The emotionally charged call might appeal to the popular us-vs-them, rich-vs-poor climate, but if we're not careful, it might lead us to the wrong solution.
Not really. Facebook is not some neutral carrier of information. It's not a packet switched network. It's pretty much an advertising company. How could they not be responsible for the adverts they run?
It's actually illegal to tamper with mail or wiretap phones without a warrant. The post office and telecommunications companies can't know what is going on. Same logic applies to networks and it's actually enforced via encryption. Facebook has complete knowledge of everything. It has every bit of information required to make these decisions. Failing to do so is negligence.
> It has every bit of information required to make these decisions. Failing to do so is negligence.
One could argue that the Ministry of State Security can and should do full surveillance of all citizens, collect all available information, including wiretapping all phones using blanket warrants, and act on it to detect and deter crime, including the crime of political opposition, at all cost, and not doing so is negligence, because it is possible and if it is possible it must be done.
>>How could they not be responsible for the adverts they run?
The whole idea is absurd to me. 20 years ago you had a marketplace section in a newspaper, you rang them and placed an ad for whatever it is you were doing or selling. Sometimes it was even free if it was short enough. It would never ever cross my mind that the newspaper should be responsible for what people post, because...why would they be? They couldn't print ads for drugs or prostitution, but neither can Facebook.
Facebook doesn't write the laws they just have to enforce them. I don't see how telling Facebook to police their platform according to the laws of the land increases their power.
In fact I'm getting fed up with the extraterritoriality of big tech.
It sounds like Facebook is running into a very controversial form of selling counterfeits. Some land is legal to sell, but some is not and it is the responsibility of the platform not to facilitate crime. In this case Facebook is failing to vet their advertisements, so it should stop offering this service until it is capable of doing so within the confines of the law.
> In this case Facebook is failing to vet their advertisements, so it should stop offering this device until it is capable of doing so within the confines of the law.
What person to person marketplace is held to this standard? Certainly not Craigslist, eBay, or Fiverr. Arguably not even Amazon.
> What person to person marketplace is held to this standard? Certainly not Craigslist
Craigslist completely nuked their personals sections because of the illegal activity on them, along with the resulting bad publicity and legislation that made it very clear what the standard is and that Craigslist needed to meet it.
They can't even be bothered to follow up on vendors dumping foreign country SKUs in the US and stomping on licensed frequencies. I got a nice letter from AT&T a couple months ago for a European SKU DECT phone from an Amazon listing that was confirmed to be the US SKU that I had purchased a few times prior. The order was even fulfilled by Amazon and they couldn't be bothered to check that the SKU on the box didn't match the product listing.
If Facebook can't even attempt to stand by the listings on their marketplace, they might as well just shut it down. It will be flooded with fake stuff & scams.
Enforcement doesn't need to be perfect, but they need to at least try some enforcement or it becomes a place where no one can trust anyone or anything.
One way to enforce a law is by making a marketplace comply. This happens all sorts of places where transactions are made. Eg. you can not sell pizza in Denmark without having the proper training.
