On Tuesday, the Silicon Valley-headquartered social networking giant announced Facebook Shops, a new feature for Facebook and Instagram that will allow businesses to create digital storefronts and list catalogs for products for sale through the social network. It’s a move that takes Facebook into more direct competition with long-established online shopping platforms that allow third-party sellers, from the behemothic Amazon to eBay.
The new feature may help to diversify Facebook’s business and lessen its reliance on advertising revenues, at a time of immense economic instability and a cratering in online ad spend — while also helping Facebook to capitalize in the sudden boom in online shopping driven by corona virus lockdowns. But the ambitious effort brings new dangers to Facebook’s business. The $607 billion company has been beset by years of scandals, many centering around its failure to properly police its platform and curb malicious or illegal activity — from Russian agents’ dissemination of divisive propaganda and misinformation in the run-up to the 2016 US presidential election to Facebook’s role in the spread of hate speech that fueled genocide in Myanmar. By facilitating sales of random products by unvetted businesses, Facebook is at risk of being facing all-new types of scandals — being complicit in the distribution of dodgy, dangerous, or illegal goods — unless it takes a far more proactive approach to moderation.