Facebook to Ban Illegal Sales of Amazon Rainforest Land on Marketplace

• On Friday, Facebook announced it would crack down on the illegal sales of protected Amazon rainforest land via its platform, according to a blog post by the company.
• The move comes after a BBC investigation found that the company's Marketplace product was being used to broker sales of protected lands, including Indigenous territories and national forest reserves.
• Experts raised doubts about the effectiveness of Facebook's approach since the social media company doesn't require users to specify the coordinates of the land they are selling.
• "If they don't make it mandatory for sellers to provide the location of the area on sale, any attempt at blocking them will be flawed," Brenda Brito, a Brazilian lawyer and scientist told BBC News. "They may have the best database in the world, but if they don't have some geo-location reference, it won't work."

On Friday, embattled social media giant Facebook announced it would crack down on the illegal sales of protected Amazon rainforest land via its platform, according to a blog post by the company.

11 October 2021

EcoWatch