Consumer Reports evaluated four major online marketplaces where people buy and sell used goods — eBay, Facebook Marketplace, Mercari, and Craigslist — and searched each one for four categories of banned children's products including drop-side cribs, padded crib bumpers, inclined sleepers, and in-bed sleepers.
We found these products on every website, but Facebook Marketplace was the worst offender with far more banned products than the other 3 platforms, particularly in-bed sleepers, which have been prohibited since 2022 due to the risk of infant suffocation. When CR reported these listings to Facebook Marketplace, the company did not take them down.
People shopping secondhand to save money shouldn't have to be product safety experts — and parents clearing out the nursery shouldn't unknowingly pass a deadly product to another family. Meta has the technology to find and remove these listings. They claim they’re working to make things better, but parents need to see results now.
Take action now and tell Facebook Marketplace to get banned products off its platform.
Petition to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg:
Consumer Reports' 2026 evaluation of consumer-to-consumer marketplaces found banned children's products for sale on Facebook Marketplace — more than on any other platform we reviewed. Our evaluators found listings for all four categories we searched: drop-side cribs, padded crib bumpers, infant inclined sleepers, and infant in-bed sleepers.
The findings on in-bed sleepers were especially alarming. So many in-bed sleepers were found that our evaluators stopped counting. These products have been federally banned since 2022 because of the risk of infant suffocation.
When CR reported banned listings to Facebook Marketplace, the products were not removed. And your reporting tool gives consumers no way to identify a listing as banned, recalled, or unsafe.
Most people selling on Facebook Marketplace are not professional sellers. They include parents passing along gear their own children have outgrown, and they have no way of knowing that a product has since been banned. Your platform is in a position to tell them — and to stop these listings before they reach another family.
We urge Meta to use its significant technological resources to proactively identify and remove banned products from Facebook Marketplace, screen listings before they go live, remove reported listings marketplace-wide within 24 hours, add a dedicated "recalled or banned" reporting option, and give sellers clear safety information at the moment they list an item.