As if buying a used car isn’t hard enough, the misleading dealership listings that clutter up selling platforms like Facebook Marketplace and OfferUp don’t make things any easier. In an update first spotted by a user on Reddit, Meta announced that it’s limiting dealerships’ ability to list cars on Marketplace, but this likely doesn’t mean those pesky listings will disappear for good (via Jalopnik).
If you’ve ever shopped for a used car online, you probably know the kinds of dealership listings I’m talking about. They often show only a car’s required down payment, or — even more annoyingly — list vehicles at $1 in an attempt to grab your attention.
But starting January 30th, 2023, dealerships will run into a roadblock when trying to post a used car for sale on Marketplace: they’ll no longer be able to list cars from their business page. This is supposed to be Facebook’s way of nudging dealerships towards buying Marketplace ads, but what this will probably do is create an even larger influx of dealers that post free listings from a personal Facebook profile. This could make it even harder to distinguish legit listings posted by someone nearby, versus the dealer-backed listings that are often too good to be true.