This week, social media giant Facebook Inc. launched a Craigslist competitor called Marketplace, which allows users to buy and sell items in their local community through the Facebook app. Now, it looks like the platform has already run into some trouble.

According to Facebook, a “technical issue” is responsible for allowing hundreds of illegal listings to be posted to Marketplace, including live animals, drugs, adult services and more. According to Mary Ku, director of product management at Facebook, an error in the company’s systems prevented it from identifying Marketplace content that violates the online storefront’s policies.

“As we expanded Marketplace access, we encountered a technical issue that prevented our reviewing system from identifying some posts that violated our Commerce Policies and Community Standards,” Ku said in a statement. “As a result, certain posts with content that violated our policies were made visible to people visiting Marketplace. We are working to fix the problem and will be closely monitoring our systems to ensure we are properly identifying and removing violations before giving more people access to Marketplace. We apologize for this issue.”

With the sheer number of people on Facebook, these sorts of problems seem almost inevitable for a service like Marketplace, especially with differing commerce laws between states and countries. While it may be obvious that some items, such as guns and drugs, would be forbidden, there are other items that might not be so clear.

It was surprisingly difficult to track down Facebook’s specific policy for what can and cannot be sold on its platform, but here is the list of forbidden items (via facebook.com/policies/commerce):

1. Illegal, prescription or recreational drugs;
2. Tobacco items and related paraphernalia;
3. Unsafe supplements;
4. Weapons, ammunition or explosives;
5. Animals;
6. Adult items or services;
7. Alcohol;
8. Adult health items;
9. Real money gambling services;
10. Goods, items or posts that we determine may be or are fraudulent, misleading, deceptive or offensive;
11. Items or products with overtly sexualized positioning;
12. Non-physical items are prohibited on Facebook Marketplace, including but not limited to services, subscriptions, digital products, or rentals.

Interestingly, these restrictions leave out some items that may still be illegal to sell through an online marketplace such as food, which often must meet certain health code requirements to be sold. If Marketplace is to be successful, Facebook will have to keep a close eye on the service to ensure that it is not violating these sorts of local laws.

Image courtesy of Facebook