http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/05/technology/facebook-marketplace-posts-violate-policies.html 2016-10-04 23:01:46 Facebook Marketplace Goes Wrong: Sex, Guns and Baby Hedgehogs The social media giant says a technical issue allowed inappropriate content to be offered for sale. === On Monday morning, By the evening, the social giant was apologizing for an issue with the section, which featured some posts that would not have been out of place on the online black market Silk Road, which was Illegal drugs. Dogs. Guns. Sexual services. Baby hedgehogs. Selling all of these items and services on Facebook goes against the site’s Mary Ku, Facebook’s director for product management, who had cheerfully introduced the Marketplace app She said that the issue had caused “certain posts with content that violated our policies” to be visible to users. “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,” she said. “We apologize for this issue.” In her blog post Monday morning, Ms. Ku said that Marketplace had been introduced as the company recognized that its users had been buying and selling products and services through Facebook groups. She wrote that “more than 450 million people visit buy and sell groups each month.” Users who bought and sold products within groups had also violated the website’s commerce policy. In July, Mike Monteiro, a web designer who started a campaign to help monitor the social network for sales of guns, Facebook has natural advantages as a digital bazaar. Its core purpose as a social network would allow users to more easily avoid anonymous strangers and dubious deals that are available on sites like Craigslist, which allows for anonymous posting. And according to the company’s first-quarter results this year, Facebook already takes up Others are critical of the marketplace effort. Dan Rosensweig, a former executive at Yahoo, expressed his skepticism in “Why would I leave Amazon’s marketplace or eBay’s marketplace or anybody else’s marketplace to go to Facebook unless I thought I could sell more or make more money?” he asked. Marketplace is being introduced gradually and was not available to all the app’s users on Monday. Facebook plans to make the app available to users in the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand within the next few days. It will be available on desktop in “the coming months,” the company said.