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Facebook finally says no to selling Amazon rainforest land on Facebook Marketplace

Marketplace posts offering chunks of Amazon rainforest land began popping up in February. Now the company is banning it.

by
Alex Gatewood
October 11, 2021

Image: KnowTechie

Facebook really hasn’t had enough of a PR dumpster fire to clean up in the last couple of weeks. Now, the company seems to have outed itself as having a problem with people selling Amazon rainforest plots on Facebook Marketplace. Fortunately, the company says that it’s taking measures to fight against this practice.

Late last week, Facebook announced in a blog post that it would be actively combatting the sale of protected ecological conservation land across the world.

In the post, the company said it has specifically prohibited the sale of “land of any type in ecological conservation areas on our commerce products across Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp.” And the company will start actively monitoring Marketplace posts to try and remove those listings altogether.

The platform said that it would begin closely monitoring Facebook Marketplace posts that could potentially fall under this category.

I like that Facebook is ending this epic week by saying “By the way, you can no longer sell the Amazon rainforest on Marketplace.” Just really wrapping it all up with a bow https://t.co/2apNrXR3Pb
— Casey Newton (@CaseyNewton) October 8, 2021

The company will then compare those listings against “an international organization’s authoritative database of protected areas” to identify and halt the sale of protected lands.

This is quite a ridiculous problem to have, and I don’t envy Facebook’s complex job when it comes to moderation. Still, this was brought to the company’s attention back in February. So it shouldn’t have taken this long to establish a system to combat the problem.

The company initially said that it would “work with local law enforcement” to help with the problem, but it didn’t look like the company would take any action of its own. Fortunately, it seems like someone at Facebook has come to their senses.

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