FB is a monster and driven many a business under, I loathe their marketplace even though it works sometimes. If I have a problem I’ll never be able to contact zuckface for a resolution, I can and have been able to reach Erik.
I’m a big fan of a vouch or community based solution.
Ebay takes 12% so I avoid them as much as possible, and the early adopter “tax” is steep enough which makes selling gear quite the losing proposition.
At the end of the day I’m grateful forums like this are still around and I support whatever they need to keep going.
Ok, I think another thing that would help…New users tend to post their phone number (scammer bait) because they don’t have DM privileges yet. Limit their posting privelages in buy and sell as well! They can wait, have an IRL friend help, or buy retail!
Or, go the other way. Allow them to DM but have a little message pop up “This user has less than 1 year on Progression Project. If you are doing a financial transaction with them make sure they have been properly vetted.”
Oho yeah, now that you say that open up DMs on day one (buyer scams are RARE) and maybe restrict posting new topics or new buy and sell topics for a year.
Yep, I like where your heads at. Train the AI bot to delete any incorrectly categorized sale posts (or even better, allow the community to simply flag them and have active mods remove them). Posting a new buy/sell topic requires the buy/sell privilege, badge, whatever, earned after X number of posts on the forum or something.