Facebook strips shoddy dresses following investigation

Stating that the social network conglomerate will “do everything we can” to scrutinize the accounts of vendors with “overwhelming unsatisfactory” feedback, Facebook is reacting to a Buzzfeed investigation. The company turned up eight brand names: DressLily, RoseWholesale, RoseGal, SammyDress, Zaful, Nasty Dress, TwinkleDeals, and TrendsGal are all linked to Chinese e-commerce giant Global Egrow. These vendors often grow “page likes” in huge numbers, at times as much as 100,000 in one day, all while appropriating photos from luxury design brands and delivering shoddy goods made of mystery materials with little if any resemblance to what was pictured.

Facebook stated that user complaints in the form of negative comments are often deleted before its ad monitoring software catches them. In an email to Buzzfeed, Facebook’s vice president of ads and pages Andrew Bosworth wrote, “We’re looking at ways to incorporate new signals that will help us identify which of the over 50 million active businesses on our platform are delivering products and services that are overwhelmingly unsatisfactory to people.”

The world of fashion is rife with knockoffs, but the instances that Facebook is now addressing are clearly ripoffs. Stories of unwearable garments that look nothing like the advertised clothing abound, as well as shipments delayed by months, and the absolute impossibility of obtaining refunds. Good clothing costs good money even if you don’t pay designer prices. The power of social media retailing, especially on Facebook’s massive global scale, has made policing vendor behavior exceedingly difficult. While Facebook figures out how to deal with this huge problem, take a clue and don’t expect to get amazing deals on clothing, especially from companies you’ve never heard of. And remember, a Facebook page like isn’t always real.