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.

In many US states it's illegal to sell a mattress, maybe that's the case where you are?

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.

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?).

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.

> 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.

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.

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!)

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.

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.

>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)

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.

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).

Facebook marketplace has been taken over by scammers, including one scheme that involves Google Voice:

https://consumer.ftc.gov/consumer-alerts/2021/10/google-voic...

The other problem are "local" listings from people that don't even live in the same state.

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.

Someone at Facebook decided they didn't want to take the chance of being sued for bedbugs?

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.

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.

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.

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

I was able to list a used mattress on there 3 years ago (the only data I can offer, sorry)

undefined