You either have a government capable of controlling its corporations or you get corporations capable of controlling the government.

> They're pointedly worse than most other social media.

I agree that there's a lot wrong, but both Marketplace and Groups are actually pretty valuable and useful. To say that Facebook is just a feed of memes and politics is reductive.

It hides what you're searching for, ignores your distance filters, and fills your results with items that are essentially ebay cross-listings. The pictures are extremely compressed so you're unable to validate the item from pictures before reaching out.

The only benefit is many people already have a facebook account, but now I'm unable to delete my facebook account because marketplace is the predominant classified sales channel in most areas. It was a EEE style effort to collect more data on people.

The past few years there have been persistent spam campaigns against Craigslist in various areas of the for-sale classifieds. It wouldn't surprise me if meta was behind it.

Groups are in a similar vein. They've put a log-in barrier on various communities, lowering the barrier to entry tech-wise, but forcing people into their ecosystem when forums have existed for years.

These are bad services. They gain traction due to facebook's other malicious actions.

Craigslist created a new way to sell things and built up to what it is (was?) on being usable, having enough trust, and not fucking it up. Literally anyone could replicate that and add a shiny UI to rival it if they had a giant social network to support it.

Hyperbolic analogy: it's like pinning a medal to the guy who invented the roadside billboard and completely passing over the dude who actually invented the car.

In the long run the only innovating Facebook is going to do over Craigslist is monetization, and that just sucks for users.