Originally published at: Antique seller banned on eBay for "illicit" 1880s cast iron item - Boing Boing
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The real problem isn’t even automated detection of these things. You can’t do human moderation for the volume of items they sell.
The problem with all big tech services is that there is no functioning appeal process. The appeals should go through human hands. There are so many stories about people appealing, getting another bot-driven “No” and then not even being able to appeal again, or even finding an email address to contact.
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I stopped doing business with Ebay years ago. It’s an extremely risky place to buy and sell, and there is little if any recourse should you run into problems.
The fee structure and risk far outweigh the potential market value.
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et tu, ET?
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So sure it’s a pill press — one pill at a time … those underground drug makers will just love that! —- making an output of possibly 100 pills an hour!
You can just see the dollars rolling in for those dark web entrepreneurs!
dollars !!!
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Same. I had an account there for almost 20 years, but did not like the direction it was going. No thank you!
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Shows the dangers of building your sand castles in someone else’s sandbox.
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My dad had one of those. It comes with various plates and could make several at a time. He used it for making custom dosages and in-house compounding. Small batch, custom mixes.
It could be used for illegal drugs, but it would be the most inefficient drug lab in the USA.
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The incident also raised concerns about the reliability of AI-driven moderation systems.
No one, except everyone on discussion boards, is talking about the insane AI moderation that is harming people left and right, especially on Facebook. Grandmas and grandpas are getting told they are violating terms for imaginary crimes without being shown the violating posts. Sellers are banned for AI hallucinated trademark infringement apparently for including the name of the product they are selling in their post. Meanwhile sellers of “verified pay stubs” whose only purpose is facilitating fraud and other clear scams are deemed by AI not to violate community standards. Appeals of rulings by AI are referred to AI. Instead of explanations users are presented with check boxes which have no relation to the issue.
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That is ridiculous. That is just an arbor press with a mold. Shouldn’t have a policy against that.
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I guess this is what happens when the scammers outnumber the legitimate sellers.
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This sort of thing is maddening. Like, I get it that automated features are going to flag things it shouldn’t. But at SOME POINT a real person should be able to look at a broken antique and go, “Oh, this isn’t a problem, approved.”
I remember years ago trying to sell a paintball marker IN PARTS that would stay up for a few days and then get removed for being a firearm.
The problem is that it shared the same name as the Bushmaster AR. 
I couldn’t just leave off the name, because that brand of marker was semi-popular and why one would buy it over something else.
It finally went through when I posted in the description something like. “EBAY - this isn’t a firearm, it is a paintball marker. Literally nothing in these parts can fit on a real gun.” I don’t know if a real person read it or what, but it went through. (This was probably 15ish years ago).
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AI is so far from being reliable. In current form it’s still no smarter than the people who set it up and a lot of people aren’t terribly smart or well versed in the more exotic areas of human technology like antiques of this sort.
No one should be permabanned without human oversight. That’s simply good business. Ebay chopped off a chunk of their own revenue with this asinine method.
But ultimately, the blame lies on the executives who approved and supervised this entire poorly baked system.
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