If buying a used car isn't hard enough, the misleading dealership listings that cluttered up selling platforms like Facebook and Offer Up don't make things any easier. In an update first spotted by a user on Reddit, Meta announced that it is limiting dealerships' ability to list cars on Marketplace, but this probably doesn't mean those listings will disappear for good.
If you have ever shopped for a used car online, you are familiar with the dealership listings. They often show only a car with a down payment, or list vehicles at $1 in an effort to grab your attention.
Dealerships will no longer be able to list cars on their business page if they want to post a used car for sale on the marketplace. What this will probably do is create an even larger influx of dealers that post free listings from personal Facebook profiles. This could make it more difficult to distinguish legit listings from dealer-backed ones.
Meta does not discourage the use of personal profiles for dealers. There are other ways for dealerships to reach buyers without posting Marketplace listings from their business page, and one of them is to buy a website that will allow you to create Marketplace listings for vehicles, home sales and home rentals.
There are a lot of dealerships who pretend to be real individuals when they post a listing on the marketplace. There is a "dealership" label below the listing's photo, but it is sometimes missing. Several scammy-looking car dealership listings posted by personal accounts were found when I searched for cars near me. The Verge contacted Facebook to see if it had any plans to address the misleading listings posted by individual accounts, but didn't hear back.
The US, Canada, France, UK, Mexico, Brazil, Indonesia, Germany, and Australia are some of the countries where the Meta rule applies. The rule is being extended to sellers of real estate and rental listings only in the US.
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