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Ask HN: Anyone getting their items removed for no reason from FB Marketplace?

37 points by talhof8 ↗ HN
I'm trying to get a used mattress on sale on the Facebook Marketplace, and they keep deleting it without providing any details. Any appeal I submit is immediately denied.

I mean, at least provide an explanation. What a sh*ty product.

Wondering if this happens to other users and is some kind of automatic false-positive, or am I just breaking the rules trying to sell a freaking mattress.

Edit: How could a company like Facebook ship such a slow and complex product, with little to no support, for so many years? Where did the FAANG Product Management quality go?

49 comments

[ 4.3 ms ] story [ 109 ms ] thread
version_five
I was able to list a used mattress on there 3 years ago (the only data I can offer, sorry)
ChoGGi
Someone at Facebook decided they didn't want to take the chance of being sued for bedbugs?
talhof8
Haha that was plausible if I wouldn't see any other dozens of mattresses on there.

Point being - such a horrible UX

theshrike79
Yes, the FB marketplace is a total crapshoot - especially if your listing is not in english.

They have zero native speakers moderating and the automated system will flag the weirdest crap as offensive.

datavirtue
I consistently run into listings that people put up and are not interested in selling when it comes to completing the sale. I tell them I'm ready, live near by, and I want to buy and ask where and when they want to meet. This is where they shut down because they realize that they don't want to invest any time in the logistics of the sale.

It is easy for these serial flake-outs to pollute the community because it is so easy to list and there are no threats of getting banned from selling for the bad behavior.

I have tried to buy items that were listed by multiple sellers in my area and I could only get maybe 20% follow-through. The same thing happens when selling. Aside: The trend of flake-out versus follow-through follows clear gender lines. When I see that the buyer/seller is a certain gender I know the likelyhood of follow-through is far greater and so I focus my attention on that buyer/seller.

Tldr; buying and selling on FBMP is painful.

mikece
Just a guess, but the threshold for removing something based on users flagging it might be pretty low. I also wonder if it could vary based on the product type. Another commenter wondered about the possibility of liability if someone sold a mattress that had bed bugs; it would make sense that certain types of products would have a lower threshold for flagging than others (eg: who is going to flag a 50mm f/1.4G Nikon lens as being a possible issue?).
voisin
> Edit: How could a company like Facebook ship such a slow and complex product, with little to no support, for so many years? Where did the FAANG Product Management quality go?

And why the hell did consumers adopt this “experience” over the robust incumbents? In Canada, Kijiji was and is 10x better. In the US, Craigslist.

talhof8
Truly a great question. Personally, I'm trying out other local alternatives, but my listings won't seem to get the same traction.
voisin
I agree. This is the issue. Now when I look for something I have to use FB because all the sellers have moved there because all the buyers have moved there. It is a great market in that regard as it is hard to turn that flywheel back. But it sucks for consumers.
talhof8
I wish a good alternative will rise soon enough that'll attract more sellers. Perhaps going deeper, by niche would play out better in terms of other marketplaces competing with Facebook?
cinntaile
Free listings and basically the same customers is hard to beat.
datavirtue
They need to charge for listings but FB is afraid to charge users for anything. All they care about is engagement and lock-in. The FBMP experience is horrid.
mooxie
I've done a lot of a relatively high-value item (motorcycles, cars) buying and selling on Facebook and Craigslist, and let me assure you: people didn't move to Facebook because Craigslist was a 'robust incumbent.'

As a seller, I am guaranteed to get 10-20 scam messages in the first 24h of my post on Craigslist; text, email, and phone. God forbid you were bold/stupid enough to put your real information in there. You have to use burners or congratulations, you've signed up for a lifetime of scam calls.

Facebook Marketplace has many faults, but it is relatively easy-to-use, has a wide audience, attracts more serious buyers in my experience, has low spam/scam volume, actually attempts to address scammers (albeit cumbersomely; this is still a differentiator from CL) and allows me to know something about who I am trying to make a deal with.

Marketplace is succeeding despite its faults precisely because the other options are generally such terrible experiences.

zucked
As a BUYER, the FB marketplace experience is TERRIBLE. Seriously, it's beyond bad. Searching for an item gives you different listings every. single. time. It's a dice roll if the faceted search works. And that's on top of the usual cruft of selling online - the requisite "is this available?" and ghosting being the most annoying. I'm a member of several B/S groups and half the content is split between posts and marketplace items and searching between them is obnoxious.

Full disclosure - I use the mobile web experience because I refuse to install the app. I would rather Craiglist 8 days a week, but because FB has the user already there, logged in, they've gained a lot of traction with a seriously inferior product.

fuzzer37
I wonder if this depends on the location. I've never run into that issue. Sure, a couple here and there. But nothing where I would ever consider needing a burner number or felt like I was getting scammed. Although I've only sold maybe 10-20 items, so maybe I'm just lucky.
olyjohn
It's easy. Facebook already had the users. Nobody had to sign up for an account to sell on marketplace. You just go on, post shitty pics, add a shitty description.

It sucks because Marketplace is such a piece of shit. The search doesn't work, it always interjects shit that you don't want. It doesn't find all items within certain search parameters, etc. About 1/20 times that I do a search, the entire page comes back blank, or with 30 sponsored listings and no actual results.

It's the same reason that Facebook Groups took over for a lot of forums. Using a forum took some effort. You had to create an account, log in, upload photos to a host. You had to be really into it... and so a lot the low-quality shit was filtered out in the forums, just by being sort of hard to use. Now you just go on FB Groups make a shitty post with some shitty pics, no effort, thought or time has to be put in. Flooded with low-quality crap and repeat questions and topics.

You go on the groups now, and the quantity of the same questions being asked over and over is ridiculous. The search sucks, Facebook Groups are trash.

This is just like how Microsoft Teams came to be. It didn't get popular because it was a good product. It's literally one of the worst software applications that I have ever used. They already had the userbase (all the O365 subs), and gave it away. People take shitty and 'free' over good and costs money. Competition crushed.

Gualdrapo
Not that recent since I don't have Facebook anymore, but when the Marketplace thing came up I tried to sell a Contra wallet I had. They kept removing it without explanation. That and the other stuff that was going around at the time (politics, the Cambridge Analytica stuff, etc) prompted me at the end to get out of there.
taude
I've had a lot of good luck selling stuff on FB Marketplace. Try getting rid of it on Craigslist. At least with a matress you won't be getting people wanting to pay extra money with cashiers checks. ;) Note: I'm surprised people actually pay for used mattresses. I had to practically beg to get someone to take it away.
talhof8
Looks like I'm going to be begging as well soon. :)
thedougd
Try your local municipal government first, if you live in one. I paid $11 to have my previous town pickup a mattress from the curb.
RajT88
I have had good buying experiences off FB. Of course avoiding a bunch of obvious frauds.

If I was going to sell something today, it would be Craigslist or OfferUp.

omgmajk
I don't sell stuff on facebook marketplace but I get recommended to buy the weirdest things that I never click on or look at. So I would guess the seller experience is even worse.
ComradePhil
One reason may be that you have a lot of common friends who like those things or you like pages or are part of groups which has a lot of people who like those things.

Ad-targeting is not supposed to work 100% for each and every one. That would be counter-productive, because the algorithm will be too conservative and not explore enough potential targets.

You can improve ad-targeting for yourself by providing feedback to the model through the menu that comes after "Hide ad".

omgmajk
I constantly hide ads that I don't like but that stuff just seems to creep back.
datavirtue
If you think selling is bad you should try giving stuff away. I got so tired of trying to sell on there that I started giving things away (nice things like newer battery powered weed eater, stainless gas grill, etc) and found it to be a real clusterfuck. I was just trying to give people a break and got bludgeoned for it.
jabroni_salad
The marketplace sucks but almost every town has a buy/sell page that also works. I refurbish lawnmowers as a hobby and gave up on marketplace years ago not just for that, but also because gaining entry to a buy/sell page acts as a slight filter for junk users trying to waste my time.
bityard
Or where I live, there are at least thirty and almost all of them are overrun by spammers and scammers.
Zak
I've listed things for sale in groups, which as far as I can tell an algorithm tries to detect and convert into Marketplace listings.

The items are usually high-end flashlights, which I review as a hobby. They get removed more often than not, to the point that people in those groups usually obfuscate prices so that the algorithm does not detect them as sales listings. When I've appealed those, I got no response.

Facebook does not seem to be very concerned about false positives, or with Marketplace as a product in general.

michaelmarkell
Feels like as a seller, I should report every other seller's similar products on fb marketplace to get mine more clicks...
Zak
I'm sure that happens, though I would be surprised if it happens frequently in the groups I'm in. The volume of sales is low, and the items are niche enough that they often aren't in direct competition.
paulmd
this absolutely happens, during the peak of the GPU crisis, salty gamers would report Craigslist/FBM listings for GPUs because they didn't like that they were being listed for over MSRP. Eventually they get taken down (even from an account in prior good standing) and you will probably get some kind of ban at some point.

I think it kinda let off over time as people resigned themselves that it was a real thing and was gonna be a while, but yeah, there's no real protection against abuse there.

talhof8
Their privacy scandals aside, up until recently, I honestly thought they're an excellent company in terms of Product Management processes.

Facebook’s disregard to their internal/less-visited pages is astonishing. Activity log is soooo slow (seriously, WTF?!), search won’t let you sort results by date, ‘Groups’ page is way over-complicated, and Marketplace price filtering just won’t work.

monkpit
Yes, I was trying to sell some clothing that was too expensive to ship back as a return. It was removed twice, with no details other than a vague canned message about the item being against terms (it was not).
jermaustin1
A side business of my sister relies heavily on FBM (furniture flipping - find free furniture, invest a few hours and dollars into them, and list them). To date nothing weird like that has ever happened. Sometimes the post get 0 views, but never been deleted.

Mattresses have a bit of a gray area. Depending on the state (yours or facebooks, could be either or both), you might not be allowed to sell a used mattress.

hugg
I once tried to sell a print in a frame, but the print was depicting a tiger.. so FB removed it for trying to sell animals.. Appeal also failed
Mindwipe
It is crazy how dumb and basic keyword linked FB Marketplace moderation is.

Got a GI Joe figure and want to say he includes the guns? Instablocked.

Mention Netflix? Same.

Like I understand a legitimate desire to control the reselling of probably illegal acquired accounts, and of dangerous weapons. But to do it in a blocking anything with flat keywords with no appeals process? Facebook always tells regulators how clever it's moderation is, and it's as dumb as a post.

chestnuttrees
I guess just blocking literal “Netflix” will cause 90% (99%?) of searches by consumers that “just want to watch Netflix” to fail. And if no one is finding scammers’ ads, maybe there will also be fewer scammers.

So perhaps the dumb approach is “effective enough”.

talhof8
Exactly.

Turns out they were deleting it because it had the word “orthopedic”.

jokethrowaway
Yes, it depends on the keywords you have in your posts. Some keywords are triggering deletion. Incidentally my mattress ad got taken down at the beginning as well. I think it was because I wrote "orthopaedic mattress" and they assumed it was something health related.

Appeals are useless, just go and check existing ads for whatever you're selling and write something similar to their description / tags (but not the same) and recreate a new one. As a precaution I also took slightly different photos to avoid being flagged as a duplicate of the reported product, but I'm not sure whether they're checking that or not.

FANGs product are notoriously bad. Big companies are not capable of innovating and don't care about providing good service - they likely make money from a large pool of giant clients they get by pushing sales or they get money from someone else (eg. advertisers) They have too many layers and too many smart people who know what's good. The bigger the approximation the more it resembles the waste and bureaucracy of a small government. That's why they acquire startups. They need a kick of something that works every once and then.

The sweet spot is a startup before it gets acquired by a massive company (think Trello, before they got acquired and ruined by Atlassian). Facebook got worse so many times I lost count, and ironically (given they made react) the thing that seems to get degrade every year is their frontend UI.

talhof8
That was it! “orthopedic” was the problematic keyword.

As for the rest, I generally agree. But FB was the exception for me in that regard. I guess it ain’t any longer.

zeta0134
Aren't you not supposed to resell a mattress though? Even used goods stores won't accept them for sanitary reasons. (Edit: ah, this appears to vary by state. Interesting!)
MiddleEndian
>What a sh*ty product.

On that topic, I got an integrated ad for literal shit when searching for furniture on the Facebook marketplace last night lol.

https://i.ibb.co/BTxXFv3/image.png (nsfw for depiction of a hand holding feces)

oceanghost
Yes. I have several "hi end" purses, watches etc that I have been trying to get rid of. Think Gucci, et all. The listings are removed or shadow banned within a few hours. I gave up on marketplace.