Facebook Marketplace Has Done Nothing But Destroyed The Third Hand Market, Tell Friends and Family To Stop Posting There or Post To Other Places Alongside It. As soon as I heard Facebook was creating a marketplace, I knew this is exactly how it would end up...
Facebook is absolutely killing the third hand market for buying and selling goods. You have to make an account to do anything, and this is exactly what they wanted. When people start flocking over to Facebook marketplace, they need to create accounts if they don't already have, therefore trying to lock them in like parasites. I refuse to create an account, but this has also brought a lot of personal frustration. Since the marketplace opened, it has heavily drawn away from similar services such as Craigslist. It really is true that "all the good stuff is on Facebook Marketplace", not all but a solid amount. I rarely come across good deals on other services anymore, and this is extremely frustrating. Again, this is exactly what Facebook wanted.
Not to mention the massive privacy concerns over this, not only are you locking into the Facebook ecosystem, but you have to give out a solid amount of personal information over to Facebook if you ever plan to meet people for items, which means it's pretty pointless to use Facebook on an anonymous account for this purpose. I am also in no way saying that other services such as LetGo are in any way privacy friendly.
Anyways, Facebook Marketplace is turning third party selling into a decentralized nightmare, and it is extremely frustrating. I don't see a lot of people putting up any fight over it besides the few who dislike Facebook, and even then they simply give in and make accounts because as I stated, there are good deals on there unfortunately. It honestly baffles me, how often I hear about Facebook in the news, how much I hear people complain about Facebook, yet they still use it.
But I think it's extremely important, to suggest to people to either stop using Facebook Marketplace, or at the very least post to other sites as well like Craigslist. This goes for friends, family, and even people you know on the internet. Just keep suggesting.
Which also brings me to a side-note, that it would be very awesome to see a libre alternative to these third party selling services. Of course I don't really expect it to pull massive business away from Facebook Marketplace, as much as I'd like it, but hopefully it will pull some business from the privacy disrespecting sites such as LetGo and others and also give us a better place to post. I think this would be very cool. A service may already exist, if it's good I'm all ears if you know of it.