How often do you purchase products through social media platforms?

Question

Answer

I’ve never purchased anything through social media and a caveat I would make is that any business doing such must consider the reputational harm due to platforms like Facebook doing an abysmal job of filtering out scams and low quality offerings from its platform. This association will often negatively affect any brands that are not already well known.

90% of the ads for products I get through the platform are new (less than 3 months) Facebook pages claiming “going out of business” while reselling items from Alibaba at a 4-8x markup, “free samples” with marked up shipping, or outright scams using photos of legitimate products that will never ship.

It’s an unfortunate thing that will harm real businesses trying to use these platforms but Facebook has shown zero interest in preventing scams on its platform (look at its support forum and notice how every thread is just 30 replies by competing scammers)

Answer

Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Twitter are cesspools of scammers.

If a firm is advertising on these channels, there’s a high chance they are scammers.

Facebook marketplace is where scammers go to sell.

YouTube is where pseudoscience cures live.

So to answer your question, no way.

Answer

Too concerned about fake sellers. Facebook do not seem to filter the criminals out much at all.

How often do you purchase products through social media platforms?

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