Facebook Is Just Craigslist Now (theatlantic.com)
- Reference: 0177006663
- News link: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/04/12/0720212/facebook-is-just-craigslist-now
- Source link: https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2025/04/facebook-marketplace-craiglist-buy-sell/682420/
The feature's growth accelerated following the pandemic's supply chain disruptions and subsequent inflation, which increased demand for used goods. Facebook reports that Marketplace is attracting younger demographics who have otherwise abandoned the platform's social features.
This shift represents a fundamental transformation of Facebook's core function from "digital connector" to "digital bazaar," with the platform increasingly hosting transactions rather than social connections.
[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2025/04/facebook-marketplace-craiglist-buy-sell/682420/
Facebook is working fine for me (Score:3)
It provides me with a steady flow of interesting conversations with people I would never have met in real life, often making me think hard. Of course that's not popular... Meanwhile amusing memes and other bits to entertain make it a good place for me, and I've never BOUGHT anything from it, though I've taken up free offers of stuff being otherwise thrown out.
It works because it offers a forum that some of us can use to our benefit. Eternal navel gazing about how it's mostly doing 'X' now is irrelevant. Of course it, like the internet generally, will be abused by some; like any sharp tool some people will get injured by it. We need to learn to us it correctly, and yes, that's hard. Our propensity to expect other people to do the hard stuff for us is one of society's least attractive features.
Re: (Score:2)
I dont really give a fuck about interesting conversations with people I dont know. Theres a perfectly good pub down the road from me.
The value of facebook was keeping in contact with my ACTUAL friends. And facebook seems to be doing everything in its power to make that hard. Like , its forgotten that its actually a social network.
Re: (Score:2)
> My other beef is that public institutions exclusively use Facebook to post and retain information and data. City government, county government, public schools. I can't access some things because of the deep ties to Facebook.
This shits me to tears. Most of these organisations have proper IT staff and a real website, but instead they post shit to facebook where I need an account with zuckerberg to see it.
Facebook is at best ... (Score:2)
... an Internet protocol, at worst a global mental illness.
Facebook only ever had a business case because email is a clunky historically grown service and protocol from the steam age of computing. And the alternatives such as Usenet or IRC aren't that much user friendly either if you aren't willing to learn the basics and set up a client.
If we would replace email, Usenet, IRC and a few others with a fresh unified protocol with full on Ident/Auth/Auth/Signature/Crypto and build useable clients for regular pe
Facebook Marketplace (Score:2)
is a spammy kludge. a few years ago before i deleted my account i remember scrolling through and it was such a spammy kludge i quit using it,
Freecycling (Score:2)
There's a local 'freecycle' group that has massively helped me out in the past. It uses the marketplace, but the
only rule there is that everything must be free, no charge. It's amazing how someone will always turn up who
wants something.
Quoted from TFA: (Score:3)
> A feed creaking with ads, an infinite garage sale two tabs over: Facebook’s final form is not digital connector, but digital bazaar. The platform hosts not connections, but transactions. In fact, that seems to be the lesson Facebook has been gesturing at this whole time: Connections are transactions. Facebook introduced the “Like” reaction in 2009, and quickly [1]seized on its potential [bookshop.org] to collect data on users’ preferences, which it then auctioned to advertisers. That addictive affirmation, which kept us refreshing the page to count the “likes” from our friends, masked a market. Click over to Facebook Marketplace, and the mask comes off entirely.
The evolution of [2]whatever this was [thecrimson.com]. And apparently the guy is [3]still shapeshifting [theverge.com].
[1] https://bookshop.org/p/books/an-ugly-truth-inside-facebook-s-battle-for-domination-sheera-frenkel/15467876?ean=9780062960689&next=t
[2] https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2003/11/4/hot-or-not-website-briefly-judges/
[3] https://www.theverge.com/news/646288/congress-zuckerberg-wynn-williams-careless-people