I was forced to create a Facebook account to buy/sell second hand stuff. No one browses Kijiji, shit just stays there for ages until someone lowballs you 3 months later. Same for LesPACs.

On Marketplace, my stuff was gone within 2 days.

Fucking sucks. I really hate Meta. I held out for as long as I could, but if you want to buy / sell second hand goods, the competition is 100% dead, at least in Montreal.

I got dogpiled for saying it, but Marketplace is remarkably unenshittified. It’s bare bones internet from 2010. The worst thing about it is including ads, or annoyingly pushing you to mail items (where they can take a cut), but compared to the main social feed, it’s much more focused on what you actually want.

That’s why everyone uses it. If it were actually enshittified, there’s plenty of competitors out there.

I tried one the other day, but it required a photo ID to sell, so I said naw to that.

I didn’t need any form of ID, I post “anonymously”. I use Firefox’s containers feature, I use a fake name and I strictly only use marketplace and messenger.

I am an old fart and still find pretty solid deals on craigslist.

Calling marketplace, which requires a login and a scan of your face and probably a blood sample these days, barebones is hilarious. Have you never used Craigslist? It accomplishes the exact same thing and is actually barebones.

I’ve had a facebook account from early days, so haven’t had to go through that. Fair crticism, though.

we have a locally-run online auction house near us that’s pretty popular.

I get dogpiled for saying it, but craigslist was and is fine, and there’s no reason to move off of it

You’ve given more away to Facebook. If Facebook hasn’t asked for photo ID it’s because its system is confidant it knows who you really are. Other people will be asked for photo ID when signing up for a Facebook account.

Yup. I know that. And even if I’d done nothing but create an account with my phone number, Facebook will know I’m in the contacts for all they people they gave it access.

But so what? As long as I keep my webrowser clean, they can’t track me anywhere else.

Sadly, the main competitor to facebook marketplace I found on the app store also requires a photo ID.

Probably that leaves Craigs List.

Yep, that’s all I use it for. I used to run ads on both Craigslist and FB, but NOBODY looks at Craigslist anymore.

You have an account, you count as an active user. Congrats. You are part of their profits.

Delete the account of support their platform. There is no grey area.

I’m open to another suggestion regarding buying and selling used goods. As previously stated, I don’t see a viable alternative. All the good stuff is on Marketplace. Very few bother to sell outside of that platform anymore, and few look at other platforms.

I just still use good old Craigslist. The last honest site on the Internet. You know it wasn’t built by AI, because the damn thing hasn’t changed since 1998. It’s absolutely glorious.

We don’t have CL in Quebec. I mean we do, but no one uses it, it has never been a thing here.

Ah. I’m sorry. I’ve actually tried to recreate a Meta account just for FB Marketplace reasons, but for some reason the setup process always fails. It just doesn’t work, and I think after a few to many failures (or maybe because I deleted the account), it just seems to lock me out of the process entirely. IDK. Thankfully in my area Craigslist is pretty active.

You’re supporting their bullshit. There’s no justification for it.

ok

As expected.

Just be sure not to complain about the practices of any company or their mistreatment of their employees when you have shown that boycotts are only an option if they’re convenient to you. Otherwise:

You got yours. That’s what matters.

ok

Fucking clown.

ok

I actually forgot that LesPAC was a thing, I’ll check it out.

I have a FB account only for a Buy Nothing group, which is way more good than the harm my occasional logging on to FB is creating.

So you’re wrong.

No, I’m not. And Facebook’s shareholders thank you for numbering among their active users.

You support everything they do.

If only there was some way to share free stuff with your neighbors without using fb… sigh

It’s always interesting to me when I run into a holier-than-thou type like this. They’re typing out their critiques on a device that was either manufactured using slave labor or assembled from parts using slave labor, but everyone else is the bad guy.

Sometimes bad things have a good use case here and there, and yes it is unfortunate. A good example is steroids, which can be abused but also used to strengthen one’s immune system and fight off an infection. At the end of the day, the question for me is whether or not my use outweighs the bad of having an account, and I think keeping good things out of a landfill is worth it. That is literally all I use it for.

For now, we’re stuck with some of these bad things as part of the ecosystem we live in.

I need to send my id to facebook to unlock my account to login if i want to delete it

Typical behavior by this company and I expect worse. If it makes you sleep better at night, they probably don’t actually delete accounts when requested. They have ghost profiles, after all.