Facebook Marketplace, launched in 2016, to convert Facebook groups into a marketplace, has become a hub of scammers and fraudsters who regularly dupe users, according to a new report. The social media marketplace, which has grown to a user base of around 1 billion people, is unable to moderate harmful content and restrict cybercriminals, as per the report by ProPublica, a non-profit media organisation that claims to do investigative journalism in the public interest.
According to the United States-based publication’s report, the tech giant is not weeding out cybercriminals even when they spot rogue or suspicious accounts, and the hackers and scammers dupe people with impunity. The online marketplace has a total of 400 workers employed across four countries – India, the US, Singapore and Ireland. These 400 workers, hired by Accenture, are responsible to handle 600 complaints in a day. This gives one worker less than a minute to address one incident. The investigation reveals that even if the workers are aware of scams, they rarely stop them. The workers, who mostly work on a contractual basis, only get involved after such a crime has already happened.
According to a former contractor, who talked to ProPublica during the investigation, their work is mostly reacting, not proactive. “I don’t think I’ve ever stopped anyone from getting robbed,” they told ProPublica.
The marketplace largely depends on Facebook’s automated algorithms to scan listings for suspicious signals. Workers claimed that the automatic system rarely bans even obvious scams. Moreover, the algorithms misidentify genuine users and block them. While legitimate users lose their money, hackers steal personal information and flourish.
There are cases of even murders in which the murderer posed as a seller and murdered a buyer when the buyer went to purchase the listed item. In one such case, 26-year-old Joshua Gorgone confessed that he stabbed 54-year-old Denise Williams, who went to his house to buy a used fridge for $160 (roughly Rs 11,900) that he had listed on Facebook Marketplace.
According to Facebook, they are always working to fix these issues and the suggestions that they are not trying to prevent scams and protect people are false and misunderstand their “entire approach to safety,” the company told ProPublica.
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