The black market in stolen antiquities on Facebook | Hacker News Reader

The black market in stolen antiquities on Facebook

slate.com

104 pointslaurex28 comments

Are these really stolen antiquities? Even actual reputable auction houses tend to have quite a few fakes - surely the black markets would be flooded with them?

That was my first thought, too! A naïve (stolen-)antiquity buyer who sees offers on facebook would be a prime target for someone selling knockoffs. Get them made in China and sell them in Yemen! If the local authorities come after you, just show them that they're not real. It's really a win-win.

See: https://blog.britishmuseum.org/fake-antiquities-made-for-uns...

From this article:

> This is evidence for a side of the trade in antiquities which is rarely discussed – there are more fakes in circulation than genuine articles. It is easier and cheaper to make copies than it is to hire dozens of workers to look for originals. Fakes can also be conveniently complete, whereas almost everything from antiquity has been broken, either deliberately in episodes of destruction, or accidentally in the case of everyday items. There is also the simple economic truth of the laws of supply and demand.

Depends on the item - there are plenty of hand carved 300 year old statues and bits of furniture that would be far more expensive to fake than to just buy the real thing...

Paying someone for a month to hand carve some intricate wood with metal inlays costs a lot more than $50 for some old junk antique, even at china labour rates.

But you can train a CNC machine to replicate a carving that you do once, and then replicate it indefinitely.

Yeah, but that involves upfront costs, walking into a house and other location to forcibly take an antiquity is free...

> If the local authorities come after you, just show them that they're not real

I've heard that selling fake illegal drugs (like passing off dried basil as cannabis in jurisdictions where the latter is illegal) is also illegal. Is the same true for illegal artifacts?

Yes, often so - it would just come under the heading of fraud.

The pity is, some of the fakes are themselves exquisite pieces.

Like paintings indistinguishable from the original until a chemical analysis is performed on the pigment. At which point you really have to wonder at the monetary value placed on the original. To someone appreciating the piece visually, pretty much the whole point, what does it matter?

This topic has been explored since the advent of photography and cinema. When advances in technology allowed to produce indistinguishable copies.

"The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" (1935), by Walter Benjamin [1] is a good starting point on this topic. He was the first to ask what actually constitutes a work of art, if you can cheaply mass produce copies of it.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Work_of_Art_in_the_Age_of_...

You can get charged with far more than fraud in the US, depending on the state. In Illinois, selling "look alike" drugs is a class 3 felony. [0]

> A look-alike drug can be any substance that would lead a reasonable person to believe that the look-alike is the real thing, such as its color, consistency, dosage amount, shape or markings. Or a drug can be considered a look-alike if you imply or expressly represent that the look-alike is real. For example, a court can consider any statements you made in advertising or distributing the drug, whether you asked for money and how you packaged the look alike. [ibid]

---

[0]: https://www.skokiecriminallawyer.com/2013/01/look-alike-drug...

Even actual reputable auction houses auction stolen antiquities or lots with dodgy provenance information. They don't care at Christies and similar houses.

For example: https://www.christies.com/lot/lot-5546862/

Also don't forget eBay, plenty of stuff to find there too

It’s much less catchy headline “someone found some stolen antiques - more investigation needed”.

Can we step back and laugh at how all these comments agree that Facebook isn't reputable?

Let’s spare a breath for the also unreliable Craigslist, eBay, Sotheby’s, and the other high end auction houses that have also been used as a fence.

In other words, a marketplace.

Facebook is a carnival of random people involving themselves in whatever amuses them, including any nefarious scofflawery they can get away with. I find some humor and no little despair discovering that anyone ever expected much repute in such places.

Sure, and all the "reputable" auction houses also have a whole lot of stolen ones. Read https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/408207.Sotheby_s or https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/41218855-the-idol-thi... (the last is by a friend of mine) for example. As far as Indian art is concerned, almost everything on the market is either stolen, or fake.

Facebook is much more convenient as a marketplace for illicit goods compared to a darknet, but wouldn’t it also be much easier for authorities to hunt down participants in that marketplace?

They're selling your data to everyone else. If authorities pay enough, sure.

Facebook isn't selling data, it's their most valuable asset, that'd be unbelievably stupid. They're renting out your attention span.

It would be much easier for authorities to track down participants in that marketplace. It requires them caring and following through. When it comes to antiquities these things can be resold often, so even if there is a case for seizure when found, the liability isn't always there to pursue someone.

Maybe authorities not caring should be the headline.

Actually, it's a statistical certainty that a certain number of illicit transactions take place on Facebook Marketplace. If we were writing a program that we knew would have a bug in a certain number of cases then we would write a test for it or write exceptions. If Facebook is handling this responsibly then I'm sure they have a process for identifing wrong do-ers and handing everything they know to the authorities.

if ( Facebook.HandlesResponsibly(“black market”) == TRUE ) then me.colour = “surprised”

When they figure a way to monetize it, they will sure do it. But then we all will end up in jail.

Opening the article by implying Facebook enables ISIS.

Did not see that one coming!

Slate deserves extra credit for imagination. Real world reporting? Not so much.

Ross Ulbricht

What would be awesome is if the authorities were actually monitoring the group and basically supplying fakes with hidden "traps" in them (like microscopic etchings that say "congratulations, sucker").

Then after letting this scam run for a few years, they hold a conference and announce this, and where to look to see the "trap".

This hurts buyers not sellers.

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