Marketplace is a far worse replacement for Craigslist in the North American market.

It hides what you're searching for, ignores your distance filters, and fills your results with items that are essentially ebay cross-listings. The pictures are extremely compressed so you're unable to validate the item from pictures before reaching out.

The only benefit is many people already have a facebook account, but now I'm unable to delete my facebook account because marketplace is the predominant classified sales channel in most areas. It was a EEE style effort to collect more data on people.

The past few years there have been persistent spam campaigns against Craigslist in various areas of the for-sale classifieds. It wouldn't surprise me if meta was behind it.

Groups are in a similar vein. They've put a log-in barrier on various communities, lowering the barrier to entry tech-wise, but forcing people into their ecosystem when forums have existed for years.

These are bad services. They gain traction due to facebook's other malicious actions.