Oops. Facebook Marketplace Has Guns, Drugs, Even Babies for Sale

Marketplace, Facebook’s brand new service for buying and selling items within your community has already gone horribly wrong.

Within hours of its launch, Marketplace featured babies and guns for sale not to mention drugs. Someone was even trying to sell a hedgehog. The problem, Facebook said, was a glitch in the technology that runs the service’s approval system.

“As we expanded Marketplace access, we encountered a technical issue that prevented our reviewing system from identifying some posts that violated our Commerce Policies and Community Standards,” Facebook said in a statement to the media.

“As a result, certain posts with content that violated our policies were made visible to people visiting Marketplace. We … will be closely monitoring our systems to ensure we are properly identifying and removing violations before giving more people access to Marketplace. We apologize for this issue.”

Facebook has said the issue is now fixed and, indeed, the spammy listings appear to have disappeared from the buy-and-sell service.

As usual, some users of the service took to Twitter to post the dubious offerings.

Thank you Facebook Marketplace for giving me the opportunity to buy babies or guns… pic.twitter.com/4g08zXkpmk

— Zack Neiner (@ZackNeiner) October 3, 2016

This new Facebook Marketplace looks well good pic.twitter.com/JN7wmibNm1

— Sophie Weston (@sophie_westonn) October 3, 2016

Hey @facebook, #Marketplace is off to a good start. Dogs. Guns. Sweet. pic.twitter.com/NoEpePuV96

— Josh Chace (@JOSHinHD) October 3, 2016

Marketplace, which launched Monday, is a challenger to Craigslist, Kijiji and other online classified advertising services.

The service is easy to access: simply tap the shop icon at the bottom of the Facebook app to find images of items for sale by people who live near you. You can search for specific items and filter your results by location, category or price. If you want a wider search, simply click on one of the available categories such as Household, Electronics and Apparel. You can also change the built-in location tool if you want to switch to a different city or town. If you see something you like, tap on the image for a product description, the name and profile photo of the seller and where the seller is located or opt to save the item for later. You can also send the seller a direct message via Marketplace to ask questions or make an offer.

Marketplace, thus far, has rolled out to Facebook users 18 and older in the U.S., U.K., Australia and New Zealand and is available for both iPhone and Android.

Jennifer Cowan is the Managing Editor for SiteProNews.

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