Just over four years ago, an insurrectionist mob found each other online, descended on Washington, stormed the Capitol and threatened the vice-president with a noose. But that was the good old days. We’re living in a different reality now. One in which the billionaires have been unchained.
Except it’s not. The filtering, sort, and search functions are truly awful compared to Craigslist, especially if you’re looking for cars. I find so many mislabeled cars because FB Marketplace has an extremely limited set of models and manufacturers, and also has a stupid system where you can’t price late model cars way over KBB, so people have to price things with really stupid values to get around it.
Not to mention the sheer number of blatant scams that Facebook does literally nothing about, regardless of how blatant they are and number of reports. I’ve seen accounts that have 1 star and have dozens of comments about how they’re blatant scammers, but their accounts are still up and they’re still running the same scam. Craigslist had its fair number of scammers, but it didn’t take much to report and get them taken down usually.
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It’s not that I’m getting scammed directly. It’s just the sheer prevalence of them, how much they clog up my feed, and FB’s unwillingness to do anything about them. It seems no matter how much they’re reported, I get the same “We’ve looked into it and found no issues” message. I agree having a payment platform built into the marketplace is nice, but that’s basically the sole benefit I see vs Craigslist.
My issues just really come down to how awful the search function is, and how filters do literally nothing. No matter how irrelevant the items might be to your search, they still feel the need to show you *something *, literally anything to maybe convince you to click on another item.
A while ago I was shopping for a piano, and given how difficult they are to move, I was looking in a fairly small area in Michigan, and some very specific brands/models. Naturally, this meant that when there wasn’t anything that fit those filters, it filled my list with pianos anywhere from Kentucky to South Africa, which at least to my knowledge, is a bit outside the 40mi radius I had set.
It does this constantly, which makes it insanely frustrating because I’ll find something that is within the state in a town I don’t recognize, get interested, only to find out it’s 4 hours away. It doesn’t even bother doing the “We couldn’t find anything that matches, so here are some similar items” thing. Just straight up puts items into the feed that don’t match my search criteria whatsoever, all for the sake of filling it with literally anything it possibly can.
Maybe it’s better for items that can be shipped, but I almost exclusively use Marketplace for local shopping/large items (like cars and pianos), so having even a basic thing like the search radius not even work is a major pain to say the least.
Only deal locally. I got a Mario kart 64 original cartridge, in box with the manual and the plastic around the cartridge for $75. If I went to eBay or a specialized dealer, that would’ve cost $200+.
NextDoor and OfferUp have a ton of scammers, too. It’s so fucking annoying - I’m looking for a decent used bicycle and 99% of the listings are either outright scams or semi-pro bike flippers who are just another variety of scam, essentially.