Facebook Marketplace Facing Legal, Decency Issues on Launch Day

Within 24 hours of the US launch of Facebook’s Craigslist killer named ‘Marketplace‘, a rush of illegal posts have began to appear that include illicit drugs, animals, food and adult services.

According to Facebook’s Director of Product Management Mary Ku, it is a technical issue and the company is working to fix the problem. Ku told Business Insider that Facebook is closely monitoring their systems to ensure they are properly identifying and removing violations before giving more people access to Marketplace.

Facebook will be relying on its employees to proactively scour Marketplace looking for offensive listings and users reports of posts they think should be removed.

Marketplace is accessible to users over 18 years old in the US, UK, Australia, and New Zealand through a new “shop” icon, replacing the Messenger App shortcut in the bottom tray in the mobile apps. The app openings with photos of items listed for sale by people near you. Search offers filters for location, category and price.

Marketplace also has a save function so you can come back to it later. Facebook Messenger handles the chat between the two users, though as with other online classifieds, the transaction is left up to the buyer and seller.

The original plan was to roll out Marketplace to additional countries over the next few days, though that could take much longer while Facebook fixes its review process.