Resale Platforms Must Face Hefty Penalties for Inadequate Checks

There are indications that the photos you have stored on your mobile phones might not solely belong to you.

Recently, a woman surnamed Gu from Jiangsu Province alleged that "The platform secretly listed a photo of a cultural relic saved on my phone for sale!"

The photo in question was of a Gilt Silver Pot Embossed with a Dancing Horse, which has a goblet in its mouth and is modeled after a leather water container used by nomads.

This item is a flagship treasure from the Tang Dynasty (618-907), unearthed in 1970, and is now part of the collection at the Shaanxi History Museum.

The priceless item was listed for sale on Gu's account on Xianyu (Idle Fish), a second-hand trading app, at a price of 6,000 yuan (US$870).

To her dismay, the entire listing, including the descriptive text, estimated price, and its publication, was entirely generated by AI, without her knowledge or any scrutiny from the Idle Fish platform.

Gu claimed that the platform uploaded the photo from her mobile photo gallery, although representatives from the platform insisted that she might have shared it in her Xianyu space at some point.

On June 1, the platform responded that the woman had already removed the treasure from her listings.

However, Gu's situation was not an isolated incident.

Some pet owners recently discovered that their dogs, along with corresponding photos, had been listed for sale on the platform for several hundred yuan each, after the owners shared pictures of their pets in their personal Xianyu spaces.

Potential buyers called some owners in the middle of the night to alert them to the listings.

The listing of such items for sale without the owners' prior consent is undoubtedly a blatant violation of users' rights to know and a serious infringement on privacy.

Whether these photos originated from a user's gallery or a personal space on the app, it is alarming to realize that these platforms no longer consider human intervention necessary in the review process for listings.

Over 100 Android users in China reported in March that the Meituan app had deleted photos or videos stored in their phone galleries without informing them, even though some documents had been encrypted.

If secondhand platforms lack the motivation to conduct due diligence before listing items for sale, regulatory bodies should ensure compliance by imposing meaningful penalties.