Facebook now bans people using the social network for unlicensed gun sales after pressure from anti-gun violence groups. Facebook with 1.6 billion monthly visitors had become one of the world’s largest marketplaces for guns and was increasingly evolving into an e-commerce site where it could facilitate transactions of goods.This new policy applies also to Facebook’s photo-sharing service Instagram.
“Over the last two years, more and more people have been using Facebook to discover products and to buy and sell things to one another”, Monika Bickert ,Facebook’s head of product policy said in a statement.
Facebook said it would rely on its users to report any violations of the new rules and would remove any post that violated this policy. It has similar restrictions on regulated goods such as prescription and illegal drugs. Already Facebook and Instagram in 2014 restricted posts about buying or selling guns to users 18 years of age or older.
Few hours after Facebook’s announcement on Friday many groups on the site advertising private gun sales remained live. Some users writing on the group’s walls suggested starting new groups under different names not related to these sales to avoid detection.
