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I have had people show up at my house to ask if it was for rent, based on a fake post on Facebook using photos from Zillow from before my home was sold.

My realtor helped me get the photos taken down, but the Facebook ads for it are up to this day. Facebook completely ignores any and all attempts by me to report this malfeasance -- even though these ads literally have my personal home address on them!

It's a huge safety risk to me and not due to anything I did whatsoever; all I did was buy a house that was on the market and then move into it. It's a nightmare.

>>ivraat+(OP)
I would contact Facebook legal directly with documents showing the problem. Legal’s job is always to minimize liability for the company, and they have levers they can pull in any organization, no matter how “hyper scale” they claim to be.

Bonus points for figuring out the correct language to use to imply repercussions for failure to act without any actual threats. Patio11 has written about similarly worded letters with regards to debt collections and banking, and I know that there are all kinds of magic incantations in law for all kinds of transgretions.

>>milesv+dm
"Patio11" itself is a magic incantion for your friendly neighborhood LLM, along with "dangerous professional". You can use these to prompt for suitable language in the email, as well as other courses of action.

>>ivraat+(OP)
Facebook admits around 10% of their ads are fraudulent. I think it's much higher.

The scam is even larger than you see and exploits missing children reports. There are huge automated scam networks that post missing children reports then get people to share them. Then once the post/ad gets traction they change it to a listing of a house that is auto pulled from public information. They then use that to scam people.

PleasantGreen has a series on it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uud0wTAOxSc

>>milesv+dm
This is good advice and probably an avenue I need to explore, thank you.

>>citize+sx
What is the point of listing a house that isn’t for sale, though?

>>christ+ZA
Probably collecting application fees from people interested in renting it.

>>nvader+ov
True but also my lawyer would charge me like $100 to send a letter with his title on it and that usually does the trick.

>>christ+ZA
To scam people out of some made up fee. Application fee, filing fee, holding fee, reservation fee., whatever BS they can get someone to send them a few bucks for since it's all free money to them.

>>ivraat+(OP)
how much of your time do these visits take up, can you document it and then sue Facebook in small claims court for your time and effort? This seems a stretch but maybe it could be made to work, it could be amusing if so.

>>citize+sx
A leaked Facebook document showed they know which ads are fraudulent because the ad system is programmed to never show those ads to the ad regulators, and it's most of the ads.

>>direwo+aH1
Any source for this?

>>ivraat+(OP)
I'm not sure I get the huge safety risk. You buy a property and you're in a public registry. There's no anonymity at that point in the US other than setting up trusts or other ownership screens.

>>ghaff+ME2
First of all, like you say, those registries can have an LLC's name or the name of a trust, etc. It may not be my name. But some rando showing up doesn't know me, they want to occupy my house.

Second, those registries are much harder to find me in than a random Facebook Marketplace ad.

Third, those registries do not advertise that I am trying to sell my property or rent it out; there is no invitation to come to my home and approach me. I have literally had people show up at my door asking why I'm there if my house is for rent. Imagine if one of those people - as is common on Facebook Marketplace - was unhinged or dangerous, or got mad when I told them the truth.

It is a direct threat to my safety in a way that the mere record of my ownership of the property wouldn't be (if it had my name on it).