Facebooks Marketplace Filters Fail, Letting in Guns, Drugs and Live Snakes
- Wednesday, October 5th, 2016
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After launching Marketplace on Monday, Facebook has had to apologise after the peer-to-peer commerce platform was used to list everything from guns, drugs, sexual services and live animals.
Sale of these items – some of which seem to have been listed as jokes, but others apparently seriously – is prohibited by Facebook’s commerce policy and community standards. A technical issue with its reviewing system meant it failed to catch the offending items and thus they were visible to the public.
“We are working to fix the problem and will be closely monitoring our systems to ensure we are properly identifying and removing violations before giving more people access to Marketplace,” said director of product management Mary Ku. “We apologise for this issue.” 
The full list of items spotted by users and posted on social media included baby hedgehogs, an AK-47 assault rifle, cannabis, used underwear and a python.
