I got a facebook account because I wanted to use marketplace. I just use one of those CSS browser plugins to hide the newsfeed which is where all the ads pop up. The following does the trick for me:

    [role=main] {
      display: none;
    }

I also don't have any friends on it.

Marketplace has video ads that play with sound as you scroll by now. It's incredible

Ah, well I guess I'll be seeing those soon then? I don't use Marketplace too much (and just got burned recently so I've soured on it).

If you're still using Facebook, it's because you're required to or you're the kind of person who won't be fazed by this.

Correct, for better or worse facebook is the meeting ground for many communities and if you are in those communities you have to use it.

Marketplace. It's horrible, but the area I live in has mostly abandoned craigslist and if you want to buy/sell used stuff, marketplace is where you have to be.

I feel like Craigslist squandered its effective monopoly with online classifieds.

While I do not think that the company needed to modernize the site’s UI, it baffles me that their anti-spam tools are so rudimentary. Most searches yield irrelevant keyword-bombed results, and, such results tend to be nearly identical listings.

I had yearned for a viable Craigslist alternative for years. Sadly, Facebook Marketplace won. I don’t feel comfortable searching for anything due to the fact that Facebook will inevitably use my queries to further profile me.

It wouldn't have helped. In Australia we have Gumtree which has a UI that is just as modern as Facebook but it was still crushed. No one can compete in a space that lives on network effect.

I recently perused Marketplace, and it appears to be so thoroughly infested with barely disguised scams, bogus prices and other garbage as to be usable by only the most intrepid and determined shoppers.

Marketplace aggressively curates to your searches and interactions. So much so you have to be careful with your browsing otherwise your recommendations get off.

My guess is that the default state is the scam garbage. It quickly learns your preferences. Which I hate. I miss having my 5 sections of craigslist I could browse over my morning coffee and not feel like I'm missing a deal.

It really depends on what you're looking for, there's a lot of great stuff in my local area, but there's also a lot of shit too

If the Karrot buy/sell app has launched in your area, I recommend it. Think of it as Kijiji if eBay had not stopped investing in it.

you could use NoBook or MaterialBook, both on Github, personally I don't have FB account 10+ years and not missing it (besides marketplace, though don't see even there better deals than local classifieds website)