by Craig Silverman, A.C. Thompson and Peter Elkind: ProPublica identified thousands of Marketplace listings and profiles that broke the company’s rules, revealing how Facebook failed to safeguard users…
For years, Carman Alfonsi relied upon Facebook Marketplace to buy and sell used pool tables for his Michigan billiards business. He banked a steady stream of income from the wildly popular online bazaar.
But this July, Alfonsi’s Facebook account was hacked and used to post roughly 100 scam listings for cell phones and vehicles. The Marketplace posts directed buyers to contact an email address controlled by the scammers. When customers were left empty-handed, they sent enraged messages to Alfonsi by phone and Facebook Messenger.
Alfonsi repeatedly contacted Facebook to warn that his account had been hijacked by fraudsters. Instead of fixing the problem, the social media giant banned him from using Marketplace, at one point removing his profile from its platform.
Now Alfonsi carries a gun in his own home. He’s concerned that an angry Marketplace customer might show up at his front door.
“I’m thinking I’m in trouble and someone’s going to come to my house and kick my ass,” Alfonsi said.
Facebook’s Marketplace is unquestionably a business success. It hit 1 billion users a month this spring, and the company recently told investors that it’s one of its most promising new sources of revenue.
That growth has been built, in part, on the company’s assurances about the safety of its platform.
“Marketplace lets you see what real people in your own community are selling. You can see their public Facebook profile, mutual friends and seller ratings so you can feel confident in your purchase,” the company says.
That confidence may be misguided. Facebook says it protects users through a mix of automated systems and human reviews. But a ProPublica investigation based on internal corporate documents, interviews and law enforcement records reveals how those safeguards fail to protect buyers and sellers from scam listings, fake accounts and violent crime.
Marketplace’s first line of defense consists of software that scans each listing for signs of fraud or other suspicious signals before it goes live. But Marketplace workers said these detection services frequently fail to ban obvious scams and listings that violate Facebook’s commerce policies. The automated systems also block some legitimate consumers from using the platform.
ProPublica reporters discovered a network of fake and suspicious accounts posting listings for dubious male enhancement supplements, which violated multiple Facebook policies. Facebook removed thousands of listings and took other punitive action against more than 100 accounts after being informed of the activity. In another case, Facebook temporarily banned the account of an amateur fraud investigator who, an automated message said, was filing too many complaints about scam listings on Marketplace.
As a backstop to its automated systems, Facebook Marketplace relies upon roughly 400 workers employed by consulting firm Accenture to respond to user complaints and to review listings flagged by the software. Until recently, Facebook Marketplace allowed these low-paid contract workers to police its site by giving them largely unfettered access to Facebook Messenger inboxes, ProPublica has learned. This broad access resulted in workers spying on romantic partners and other privacy violations, according to current and former Accenture employees. The employees said the efforts they made were rarely successful in preventing fraud.
The social media giant’s shortcomings in overseeing the service have made it easier for fraudsters to perpetrate a litany of scams. Internal Marketplace documents, law enforcement bulletins from multiple countries and media reports describe frauds involving lottery numbers, puppies, apartment rentals, PlayStation 5 and Xbox gaming consoles, work visas, sports betting, loans, outdoor pools, Bitcoin, auto insurance, event tickets, vaccine cards, male enhancement products, miracle beauty creams, vehicle sales, furniture, tools, shipping containers, Brazilian rainforest land and even egg farms, among other enterprises. Scammers target both buyers and sellers, resulting in financial losses, hacked Facebook accounts and stolen personal information.
Since the start of the pandemic, criminals across America have exploited Marketplace to commit armed robberies and, in 13 instances identified by ProPublica, homicide. In one high-profile case, a woman was allegedly murdered by a man who was selling a cheap refrigerator on Marketplace. The alleged killer’s profile remained online with active listings until ProPublica contacted Facebook.
In many ways, Marketplace’s flaws reflect Facebook’s approach to overseeing its platform. It launches and scales new products rapidly thanks to an unrivaled user base of roughly 3 billion people, and then leans heavily on automated systems, low-paid contractors and a smaller number of full-time Facebook employees to enforce its rules. This approach allowed misinformation to run rampant in News Feed, saw Facebook groups become hotbeds of violent speech and radicalization, and enabled scammers to earn millions by placing ads that rip off users.
Much of the commerce on Marketplace is perfectly legitimate, and all companies that connect local buyers and sellers — called peer-to-peer sales in the industry — experience problems with user safety and fraud and other crimes.
Major law enforcement investigations have uncovered crime rings selling stolen products on Amazon and eBay. By one accounting, Craigslist has figured in more than 130 murders since 2007. The recent spate of murders with links to Marketplace occurred during an overall upsurge in violent crime in the U.S.
Gauging the scale of the criminal activity on Marketplace — or making comparisons between it and its competitors — is difficult. FBI statistics don’t effectively track all online marketplace fraud, nor do they provide incident rates for individual companies. The bureau’s Internet Crime Complaint Center, or IC3 — which collects consumer reports of all types of online crimes — documented nearly 792,000 total incidents in 2020, an almost 70% increase over the previous year.
A Facebook spokesperson said the company invests heavily in automated systems and teams of reviewers to prevent scams and fraud on Marketplace, and that it works closely with law enforcement. He declined to comment on individual user cases or violent crimes linked to Marketplace transactions.
“All online marketplaces face challenges and ours is no exception, which is why we’re always working to prevent new ways to scam and defraud people. Any suggestion that we aren’t trying to solve these complex problems or protect people who use Marketplace is not only false but misunderstands our entire approach to safety,” said Drew Pusateri, the spokesperson. “People use it because their experiences are positive, and to help make sure that continues, we are working to improve our enforcement and deliver the highest quality peer-to-peer online marketplace available.”
Pusateri said Accenture analysts working on Marketplace could view Messenger inboxes in the past, but that this access was recently restricted to messages exchanged on Marketplace.
Marketplace entered the internet classified game years after other companies put in place tools to combat scams and the sale of stolen goods. Yet Facebook, experts and former employees told ProPublica, has failed to create comparable safeguards despite the company’s considerable financial resources and expertise in policing online activity.
EBay, for instance, has been praised for introducing an escrow service and providing refunds for fraudulent car sales. The company also created a program that proactively looks for stolen goods being sold on its platform. After grappling for years with widespread used vehicle fraud, Craigslist began charging users to post car listings, which experts said reduced such offers.
