Recent searches conducted by Digiday showed that merchandise, including gun parts, branded with marks, logos and phrases associated with far right nationalist groups are readily available for sale on eBay, including numerous listings that were promoted by eBay’s advertising platform.

At the time of writing, searches for the word “boogaloo,” for example, still auto-populate results in the eBay search bar in the militaria category, and return items including a shirt with George Washington holding a gun and wearing a Hawaiian shirt, a symbol of the far-right Boogaloo Boys.

Similar products appeared as promoted listings, eBay’s version of self-served ads. There were promoted listings for an Oath Keeper (also a far-right militia) Glock cover plate, a Kekistan “Kek” flag (loosely based on the Nazi flag), and shirts depicting the Punisher skull, a symbol that has been co-opted by the far-right.

Searches for “iii percent” returned patches with the roman numeral III, a reference to the Three Percenters, a militia group.

After being contacted by Digiday, eBay began reviewing and removing many of the items mentioned above, a spokesperson said. The company did not respond to a request for comment about how the items Digiday found came to be listed as ads.

Merchandise for Antifa, the far-left group, also appeared on eBay, including shirts, stickers and flags, although none came up as sponsored listings.

The deplatforming of former President Donald Trump has caused marketplaces to reckon with what is being sold on their platforms; eBay said that it banned additional merchandise related to Boogaloo, Oath Keepers and Three Percenters, and “Stop the Steal” items after the insurrection. But while neural networks and keyword blocklists can catch and remove most prohibited material, observers said they won’t be able to stop all of it. 

“When companies have to scan millions of images, even if 1% aren’t caught, that’s a lot,” said Paul Bloore, cofounder and CTO of TinEye, a reverse image search engine. “Companies can’t fix that 1% without having a human look at everything. To achieve 100% review, you need people looking at 100% of images to catch anything bad. That’s just not feasible.”

eBay said that promoted listings go through the same filters as all other listings, and listings that violate the offensive materials policy cannot be promoted.

eBay sellers can opt to have their products come up as promoted listings by paying an additional percentage on top of eBay’s 8% fee. For example, a seller could pay an additional 3% to have a listing for a promoted shirt. The seller pays eBay the extra 3% only if the listing converts to a sale.

“eBay is pulling words from the seller’s listing description, and matching them with whatever was typed into the search …read more

Source:: Digiday

Author: Aaron