B8| Saturday/Sunday, August 17 - 18, 2019 ** THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.**
EXCHANGE
BYKHADEEJASAFDAR
The Wild West
Of E-Commerce
Facebook’s online flea market is used by one in three people in the U.S.
But do its user profiles create a false sense of security?Young people are fueling a dramatic rise in the sale
of used clothes. On online marketplace Depop, 90% of the
15 million users are under 26. Some are buying secondhand
because it’s better for the environment, others just because
they’re fans of vintage fashions. A few manage to make it
their full-time job. Here are some of their stories:BYSARAHNASSAUER ANDMICHAELBUCHER
Generation
Depop
Young entrepreneurs are flipping clothes for
profit, tapping Gen Z’s penchant for vintage gear
THE TREND WATCHER
GIANNI MLETZKO, 21BAYTOWN, TEXAS“A lot of people like me are trying to give clothes a
second chance,” said Ms. Mletzko, who works a 4 a.m
shift stocking shelves at a grocery store. She defines
vintage clothes as anything “from the 2000s.”
THE POWER DUO
JLYNN NORVELL,
28, AND MASHA
ROUSH, 23
SLIDELL, LA.They met on Depop.
Ms. Roush, at right,
moved from California
so they could grow their
clothing-resale business.
With a small barn
for photoshoots,
they run one of the
10 most-followed
accounts on Depop.
THE FIXER-UPPER
SARABETH
FERA, 27
LOS ANGELESMs. Fera attended fash-
ion school and uses her
fabric knowledge when
picking clothes at thrift
storesinneedofrepair.
She uses patches or
other techniques to
cover holes.
“Sometimes I see a
stain and I ask, OK, is
it worth the effort?”
she said. Thrifting and
reselling on Etsy, De-
pop and local flea mar-
kets are Ms. Fera’s full-
time job. So far she is
selling around $3,000
worth of clothes a
month and says she is
“scraping by.”
THE LABEL LADS
ALEX TAYLOR, 19, AND
SAM BERBRILL, 19
BROMHAM, ENGLANDSelling on Depop is a way to
earn enough to buy more
clothes, share their style and
chat with others on the plat-
form, said Mr. Taylor, at left,
who works as a salesman.
Friends since age 3, he and
Mr. Berbrill, a pool lifeguard,
find eye-catching items, build
outfits around them and find
interesting places to photo-
graph them. Depop is “like a
combination of different
charity shops in one app. It’s
absolutely perfect.”PHOTO BY MAGGIE SHANNON
FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
THE INFLUENCER
ZIGGY
MACK-JOHNSON, 23
NEW YORK CITYMr. Mack-Johnson has
over 35,000 followers on
Instagram. Depop reached
out to him around two
years ago, asking him to
start a Depop store and
sent someone to his
house to take pictures.
Depop is a way to
connect with his follow-
ers, not make money, he
said. “I take a picture in
a piece and then sell it,
mostly because I don’t
believe in wearing the
same thing twice unless
it’s an iconic piece.”
It’s “giving my follow-
ers a chance to shop
what I have in my
closet,” he said.
PHOTO BY DOLLY FAIBYSHEV
FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNALPHOTO BY ANNIE FLANAGAN
FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNALPHOTO BY BRANDON THIBODEAUX FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNALPHOTO BY CHARLIE KWAI
FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNALPHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY JOHN KUCZALA; PHOTOS: ISTOCKperson meetups seamless. Brian
Nowak, a Morgan Stanley analyst,
told Facebook executives on a
February conference call that he
used the marketplace to unload a
50-pound steel anchor in the yard
of a house he had purchased. “It
sold in a day,” he said on the call.
Then he listed old shoes, which
also went quickly.
The marketplace’s initial rollout
in 2016 resulted in Facebook issu-
ing an apology for allowing guns,
drugs and wildlife to be listed for
sale. The company blamed the
posts on a technical issue with its
system for identifying posts that
violated its policies.
Facebook Marketplace still allows
sellers to list items that wouldn’t
normally be allowed on other retail
platforms, such as leftover tacos,
worn dentures and used makeup.
“You can sell anything on this
thing,” Facebook Chief Operating Of-
ficer Sheryl Sandberg said in re-
sponse to Mr. Nowak.
Facebook doesn’t police prod-
ucts that don’t violate its policies,
Ms. Liu said. “We are not in the
business of telling people what
they can buy and sell,” she said.
Frank McKenna, chief fraud
strategist at PointPredictive, which
makes software to detect transac-
tion fraud, said the lack of over-
sight makes Facebook Marketplace
ripe for fraud. “It is a scammer’s
haven,” he said. “They love it be-
cause they can create a fake pro-
file and it legitimizes them.”
Facebook said its requirements
for sellers say they can’t be new to
Facebook and must be over 18.
At the end of last year, Face-
book estimated duplicate accounts
represented about 11% of the site’s
2.23 billion monthly active users,
while false accounts made up 5%,
totaling over 100 million profiles.
Facebook said it removes fake
accounts regularly and is working
onasystemtomakereviewsmore
transparent. The company recently
announced that people will soon
be able to pay for their purchases
directly on Facebook. Ms. Liu said
buyers can contact Facebook
through its help page if a scammer
blocks a victim to escape scrutiny.F
acebook Inc. created an
online flea market where
users not only see all the
bicycles, bird houses and
BMWs for sale nearby, but
also the names, profile
photos and general locations of
buyers and sellers.
It is so popular that more than
one in three people in the U.S. use
it monthly, according to Facebook.
Because Facebook startedasa
platform for people who knew
each other, its Marketplace—at
least in theory—operates on the
notion that on the other side of
every online deal is a real person
with a network of friends and a
social-media history.
But the experiences of many us-
ers suggest that creates a false
sense of security and a fertile
ground for scams or misconduct—
on both ends of transactions.
Some buyers say Facebook sell-
ers list stolen or fake products, or
are scammers operating under
multiple profiles. Sellers say they
are sometimes dealing with fraud-
ulent payments or no-shows at
scheduled meetups.
Bad actors sometimes disappear
after blocking the victim—a feature
that prevents someone from seeing
a profile. Facebook Marketplace also
allows buyers and sellers to put
their reviews on private mode,
which many people say defeats the
purpose of creating a community of
reviewers and building trust.
Sgt. Robert Parsons of the Dun-
woody, Ga., police department said a
Facebook Marketplace sale in his
town ended up as a robbery at gun-
point. Such incidents have prompted
Dunwoody and police depart-
ments across the U.S. to open up
their offices as a safe meeting
place for people making Face-
book transactions.
“Criminals have turned it
into a place where they can get
access to victims,” Sgt. Parsons
said. “Just because someone has
a Facebook profile doesn’t mean
that’s who you are talking to.”
On help forums, Facebook ad-
vises users who say they have
been the victims of crimes to call
law enforcement or report an of-fending profile to Facebook.
“We are constantly working to
make Marketplace as safe and reli-
able a place to buy and sell as possi-
ble,” a Facebook spokeswoman said.
“Ultimately these are transactions
between real people and, while we
have robust measures and advice in
place to try to keep people safe, no
system is perfect.”
Deborah Liu, Facebook’s vice
president of marketplace and com-
merce, said she spearheaded thelaunch of the marketplace three
years ago to encourage the barter-
ing behavior that was taking place
in informal Facebook user groups.
Like Craigslist, the social-media
giant doesn’t exercise control over
payment, delivery or pricing. It also
doesn’t charge users. Facebook
makes money by selling ads.
Facebook groups can boot a
member for violating rules, but
Marketplace offers no such control
to users, though Facebook itselfcan revoke a user’s buying or sell-
ing privileges after a review, ac-
cording to Ms. Liu. She said re-
viewers scrutinizing flagged
profiles need to ensure they aren’t
booting people unfairly. “We actu-
ally have to do some due diligence
and understand what happened.”
Lindsey Sterling, a 30-year-old
nurse in Toronto, said she often
sells makeup on the marketplace
because it is so easy to use, but
the lack of oversight is problem-
atic. This year, she
purchased a Kylie
Jenner lip kit from a
woman in Toronto and
transferred $30. “The
profile looked legit,”
she said.
The package never
arrived, she said. She
and her friends have
been scammed so
many times that they
joined a Facebook
group called “Face-
book Marketplace
Scammer Alert,”
she said. The pur-
pose of the group
is for members to
warn each other
about bad actors,
particularly those who
have set up multiple
profiles. It has over
2,000 members.
The number of us-
ers on Facebook
makes it easy for sell-
ers and buyers to find
each other and chat
capabilities make in-