The Grand Bazaar in Istanbul is one of the largest covered town markets in the world with 4000 shops. Imagine a cacophony of sights, smells, and sounds – it attracts from 250.000 to 400.000 daily visitors. With 61 covered streets, it is often regarded as the first shopping mall in the world, serving as a blueprint for the modern malls and shopping centers we are used to today.

With commerce moving online, digital marketplaces are one of the most lively corners of the internet. Online marketplaces provide a convenient space for third-party sellers and buyers to meet. As in the days of the Grand Bazaar, it’s an always-on arena where sellers compete for customer attention. 

Policing: The Marketplace Owner’s Dilemma

Characterized by fast growth, marketplaces receive a fair share of unwanted content. Illicit goods, fake products, spam, fraud, or even hate speech in the comments – not much has changed since the days of town markets. These aspects only went digital, potentially reaching a wider global audience.

Marketplace owners are faced with a dilemma. A laissez-faire approach and lax moderation will keep the marketplace bustling with new offers. However, the marketplace will quickly be overrun by spam, serve as a haven to fraudsters, and may even face legal challenges in the end. In addition, poor user experience is the key reason why shoppers choose to go elsewhere.

A strict policing approach, where every new entry is manually reviewed, requires vast human moderator resources, as well as slows down commerce in the sense that every new product entry needs to be manually approved. It’s only a temporary patch for smaller websites. It quickly becomes unsustainable with the business growth.