ValueAddedRS
The DOJ filed a lawsuit on behalf of the EPA against eBay in 2023, seeking to hold them liable for prohibited pesticides and chemicals as well as illegal emissions control cheat devices sold through the platform that violate multiple federal laws and environmental regulations.
There wasn't even really an argument about whether or not the items were actually illegal to sell - all parties including eBay basically stipulated to that and the judge even explicitly acknowledged it in her ruling - the entire case came down to whether or not eBay could be held liable for the actions of third party sellers on their platform who they failed to proactively prevent from selling illegal items.
In September 2024, U.S. District Judge Orelia Merchant granted eBay's motion to dismiss the case, ruling that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 provides eBay immunity for the actions of those third party sellers.
DOJ filed an appeal on December 1st so we'll see where that goes but as it stands now - no, you couldn't take eBay down even by listing stuff eBay does know to be illegal, based on current precedent.
Why the courts applied Sec230 that way in one instance and not another is the real question and the more cynically minded might also wonder how eBay founder Pierre Omidyar's various philanthropic and political endeavors (including but not limited to being the $ behind Lina Khan's whole "hipster antitrust" movement) could be a factor too. He's no longer an active board member but still a major shareholder whose existing shares would likely be worth a lot less if a case with a potential ~$2 Billion in fines had been allowed to proceed.
https://infinite.tcgplayer.com/author/Cassie-LaBelle?p=1
eBay acquired TCGPlayer in October 2022 and have been paying her to create content for them since.
https://x.com/CassieCeleste/status/1843702917314031759
"Hell, eBay OWNS @TCGplayer, the website I've given the past several years of my life to. They know me. They know I'm honest. They're still sending me paychecks for the last of my articles there. But I'm too dangerous to ever sell on their platform again. Because I sold THAT."
If she can't get through to someone who can review the situation through a rational, human lens and provide some real help, what hope does anyone else caught up in their automated bot dragnet have?
They gave the expected diplomatic corporate answer at the time as to why they left, saying they were focusing on their own direct digital efforts instead, but I have reasons to suspect Target may have encountered some not insignificant triangulation fraud issues on eBay that could have factored into the decision to stop selling there as well.
Court documents show eBay's Chief Legal Officer Marie Oh Huber was copied on the infamous Whatever It Takes email from Chief Communications Officer Steve Wymer wherein he referred to the twitter user Fidomaster/unsuckeBay (a frequent commenter and source for the blog) and the owners of the blog and said:
"I am utterly vexed by this! This twitter account dominates our social narrative with his CONSTANT obsession with trolling us. It's more than annoying, it's very damaging. There are a few people (this guy and the eComercebytes gal) infatuated with eBay who have seemingly dedicated their lives to erroneously trashing us as a way to build their own brand - or even build a business. It's genuinely unfair and causes tremendous damage because we look bad fighting back in public and standing up for ourselves. If we could engage, I'd welcome the fight and we have a lot of facts and truth to win with. But, instead we take shots broadside and sit on our powder. This issue gives me ulcers, harms employee moral, and trickles into everything about our brand. I genuinely believe these people are acting out of malice and ANYTHING we can do to solve it should be explored. Somewhere, at some point, someone chose to let this slide. It has grown to a point that is absolutely unacceptable. It's the "blind eye toward graffiti that turns into mayhem" syndrome and I'm sick about it. Whatever. It. Takes."
Oh Huber also engaged in multiple emails back and forth on the topic of Fidomaster/UnsuckeBay in particular as both her and Wymer had attempted to get Twitter to "kill" the account but had been unable to do so because, as mentioned above, there was not a strong legal basis for it.
And in fact at one point when Security Director Jim Baugh said he was investigating to try to identify the person behind the account and was making progress, Oh Huber replied with a smiley emoji and said "Thanks Jim, in light of this, I'll hold off on sending any letter."
Baugh's investigation included creating a fake Twitter account pretending to be an ex-eBay employee who engaged with Fidomaster/unsuckeBay to try to find some "connection" to EcommerceBytes and when that didn't work, part of the plan for escalating to all the crazy deliveries, online harassment and doxing, and in person stalking was a "White Knight Strategy" he hoped could convince the Steiners to "out" Fidomaster/unsuckeBay.
Per Assistant U.S. Attorney Seth B. Kosto:
"The campaign targeted victims one and two for their roles in publishing a newsletter that reported on issues of interest to eBay sellers. Senior executives at eBay were frustrated with the newsletter's tone and content and with the tone and content of comments that appeared underneath the newsletter's articles online.
The harassment campaign arose from communications between those senior executives and Mr. Baugh, who was at that time eBay's senior security employee. Mr. Baugh intended for the harassment and intimidation to distract the victims from publishing the newsletter, to change the newsletter's coverage of eBay, and ultimately to enable eBay to contact the victims to offer assistance with the harassment, what the government has called a White Knight strategy.
The White Knight strategy would earn goodwill with the victims, such that they might help eBay learn the identity of Fidomaster, an anonymous online persona who frequently posted negative comments about eBay underneath the newsletter's articles, and thereby allow eBay to discredit both Fidomaster and the victims."
Inexplicably, not only did Oh Huber keep her job after all this, but the entire security department at eBay was moved from Global Ops to Legal after their "internal investigation" into the scandal, putting it under her purview going forward.
Oh Huber has not been named in either the criminal or civil cases in this matter, but last week she did announce she was stepping down to "pursue a new chapter in her career, while exploring personal interests and passions" - which may or may not be related to the $3 Million fine and 3 years of compliance monitoring eBay will undergo as part of a deal they recently struck with the DOJ to try to avoid further criminal prosecution for the company or to the fact that discovery is moving forward in the civil case and more emails or other internal documents could soon become part of the public record.
https://www.valueaddedresource.net/ebay-chief-legal-officer-...
https://www.valueaddedresource.net/ebay-cyberstalking-scanda...
If you contact support they will likely tell you it happened for...reasons...but they can't share any details because then the bad guys could find out how to get around their super-duper AI security system so, sorry this is just where we part ways, no way to appeal.
I was finally able to get my account reinstated, but eBay admitted to me in writing that normally those kinds of suspensions are permanent/not able to be appealed and the only reason they lifted it was because of my "social presence" after I made some noise on Twitter (and tagged some high enough up the eBay corporate ladder accounts in the process).
If so, you might be interested to know the INFORM act requires sellers who meet the $20K threshold to disclose if a different seller is shipping the item and if so, if the buyer request, they have to provide the contact info for that seller.
"Whether the high-volume third party seller used a different seller to supply the consumer product to the consumer upon purchase, and, upon the request of an authenticated purchaser, the information described in clause (i) relating to any such seller that supplied the consumer product to the purchaser, if such seller is different than the high-volume third party seller listed on the product listing prior to purchase."
I know a lot of buyers have been frustrated with this kind of online arbitrage drop shipping for years and most of the marketplaces don't enforce their policies about it - it will be interesting to see if this helps curb the practice.
Two examples that I've seen play out repeatedly in recent history:
List a pre-sale item that is 60-90 days out, with no intention of actually shipping anything. By the time the buyer realizes they've been had, it will be past the time they can file an eMBG claim and eBay will tell them "too bad."
Or list hot items like a Steam Deck or MoonSwatch under "Specialty services" or "Business and Industrial Equipment" instead of the correct category (again with no intention of actually shipping anything)...if some poor sucker doesn't notice and buys it any way, once again eBay will tell them "too bad" because those special categories are exempt from the money back guarantee.
Sure in both of those cases, buyers can resort back to a chargeback with their payment method, but eBay absolutely allows the scam to happen and typically does nothing on their side to prevent it proactively or assist the buyer after the fact.
And then of course there's the perennial favorite - send an envelope with a piece of paper to an address in the same zip code as the buyer so you have tracking with a delivery scan and any "item not received" claim will instantly be closed in the seller's favor.
https://krebsonsecurity.com/2015/11/how-carders-can-use-ebay...
See also Confessions of a Nespresso Money Mule by Nina Kollars.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2IT2oAzTcvU
In 2020, I personally reported 150+ hijacked eBay accounts used to commit $160k+ in triangulation fraud against a company I worked for at the time - eBay did very little to help.
In February 2022, I collected about 80 reports from people who received 1099-Ks from eBay even though they had never knowingly created an account on the site - their PII (names, addresses, and in some cases even correct SSNs) were used to create fraudulent accounts that sold tens of thousands of dollars each with no vetting or verification of any kind by eBay.
And all of that is a tiny drop in the bucket.
I place a lot of the blame for where we are, and why this legislation ever came to be, squarely on the marketplaces.
They've known about rampant fraud and scams for years, could have put in stricter vetting and verification procedures, invested more in highly trained human powered Trust & Safety to deal with counterfeits and fraud etc. but for the most part they have done the minimum required to cover their own "assets" and nothing more...which still left room for a lot of consumer harm to be done.
While I don't think this will curb all of the fraud, like you said they will likely just jump to new accounts, having to produce actual documents to match the stolen PII may at least slow them down a bit.