Does anyone know anything about this and why this is happening?
Its against Facebook’s policies - has been for years. They are just now cracking down on it.
they have been cracking down on it for a couple years, but it just comes and goes in waves.
Most people put the price in the comments or advertise a halter for sale (comes with horse)
This crackdown has been more extensive and more serious than prior efforts – some of the groups I was a member of have completely disappeared. Apparently some sellers are moving to MeWe pages (I say that as if I know anything about MeWe lol). It’s a shame, it was a great way for buyers and sellers to connect IMO.
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It goes against their policies has has for a very long time. I’ve been using MeWe a lot for social media horse sales. I even started a page for Michigan horses/tack/trailers etc for sale because I am so sick of facebook…
Has MeWe been working for you Madison? How do the buyers know to go to MeWe. Facebook has always been a way of the horse community to communicate.
What are other sites some of you have been using? BigEq? ProEquest? ???
I haven’t been actively shopping, my looking at the groups was leftover curiosity from prior shopping! So, I actually haven’t even ventured over to MeWe, I’ve just seen FB posts from a lot of sellers I had followed before saying they were moving to MeWe. BigEq, Warmbloods for Sale, and Exchange HunterJumper were some of the sites I always looked at.
Thank you for your reply.
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Most groups have now been removed, unfortunately. I’ve been looking into sites such as https://getmyhorse.com/. I believe they offer free listings too and seem to have a decent following.
It will be interesting to see if they start cracking down on Instagram, too. Definitely an adjustment for the horse sales world.
It’s been frustrating for me, too. I’ve been trying to navigate MeWe, but it’s not great. Most groups are still small, and too fragmented. It has a funky feature, too (group chat), which is really annoying.
Might have to go back to the old fashioned way of running a classified ad in the COTH magazine.
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I just joined MeWe this week, but it’s not nearly as active for horse sales as the FB groups were (at least not yet).
Facebook makes money by selling advertising, not by giving it away. The sales ads in people’s posts represents lost revenue.
But such a bummer!
Bingo. Don’t blame them either. It’s their business.
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I don’t know that I believe this is really driving it – they don’t charge for selling other items in the Marketplace or other sales groups. And it is not like individual sellers were otherwise paying to advertise a business on FB until the groups came along. I always got the sense it was more about it being live animals that were what were for sale. If it truly were revenue driven, it seems like they would have just instituted a fee not done away with the groups altogether.
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I still see a ton of horse sale ads on FB in the groups. But they have found little things to get around the bots. My favorite one I saw recently was a “lawn mower for sale”.
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Honestly the easiest way is to post the ad text and maybe a pic on your personal FB page, take a screen shot using your mobile device, then delete it off your page and use the picture to post to the groups (assuming groups rules allow). Says me, I’m not selling anything, but I’ve seen it explained this way and some of the groups I’m in are doing this as well. Until FB bots find it.
I did have a shelter I posted online for sale flagged and removed for selling animals, and I disputed it and it was reposted. The weird thing is I had it in several groups, and only one was flagged. It was clearly a shelter, granted there were burritos in the picture but that was it. It’s now a fancy chicken coop :lol:.
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“Offered For Consideration” and listing prices in the comments using emoji numbers works for us.
Are they actually deleting the groups where people post the ads for sale or just the posts themselves?
