My keyboard has a mind of it’s own

I went rolling through the internet the other night. I do that sometimes, and I’m sure most of us have fallen down an internet rabbit hole at one time or another. This particular rabbit hole landed me on a local Buy, Sell and Trade Facebook page that represented itself as Robertson County.

That caught my attention.

My son Roy uses these pages all the time. I’ve overheard him complain more than once about how hard it is to tell what’s actually local and what’s coming from outside the county. These pages attract buyers because of convenience — quick pickup, no shipping — and sellers for the same reason. The idea is a simple transaction with a neighbor.

But what if it’s not your neighbor?

That was my first concern. The second developed as I started digging deeper into Facebook Marketplace and these county-branded Buy, Sell and Trade pages. I started with RobertsonCounty, then branched into neighboring counties and cities, then on to Hardin County, and that’s when it really hit home: this wasn’t isolated. It was everywhere.

So what’s the situation?

Companies outside the named area — Hardin County, in this case — advertising goods and services directly to local residents while appearing, at first glance, to be local. Many of these are car dealerships, but other industries are represented as well.

You might be thinking, So what?

Let’s say you’re a local Hardin County car dealership. Every day you’re competing with other lots that appear to be local residents selling used vehicles. The listings look like private sales until you click on them. Then you realize you’re being routed to a dealership somewhere else.

How is this different from traditional advertising, like a billboard or radio spot? Simple: these listings are designed to mislead. In regulated advertising, you cannot deliberately publish or air a misleading ad. On the internet — especially social media — those rules are far looser. After taking a hard look at these pages, I found a lot of that gray-area behavior.

That realization happened in real time.

I was scrolling when I saw a truck that looked overpriced. I clicked on it and landed on a dealership outside Robertson County. I would never have gone there and won’t. I make a point to keep my money at home whenever possible, and in this case I have two homes now, and I need need a new vehicle, so I guess my options just opened up a bit. Finding myself at a Waco dealership annoyed me, and when I get annoyed on the internet, I can get a little keyboard-pirate-ish.

So I commented on the post.

I simply pointed out that the listing was not from a local resident or a Robertson County business. Then I saw another post. And another. Different industries, same issue. I researched each one — who posted it, where they were located, where the business was based — and I kept pointing it out.

You can imagine how that went over.

Eventually, I came across a dirt-work company called LWB Trucking. I want to say this clearly up front: LWB Trucking is local, Robertson County business. But based on what I could find at the time, it didn’t appear that way. The owner, Lane Bestor, had a Facebook profile that listed Bryan as his home and workplace. I made an assumption — Lane is in Bryan, therefore not local.

That assumption was wrong.

Lane called me, and we talked it through. He hasn’t updated his Facebook page in a while. I apologized, corrected the post, and owned the mistake. About the same time, I realized something important: if I got this one wrong, others probably do too.

That’s where I landed.

First and foremost, do your research before spending money through these platforms. A county-branded page does not guarantee county-based sellers.

Second, many of these pages are run by “content creators” who are paid by Facebook based on engagement. That means they’re incentivized to allow as many posts as possible, from as many places as possible. Do not assume a local resident is moderating the page to protect you or prioritize truly local content. That isn’t always the case — but I found enough examples to be concerned.

Finally, I want you to seriously consider where your money goes. A quick look at Hardin County Buy Sell and Trade Facbook trade and the owner’s location is set to United States · Elizabethtown, Kentucky.

When you spend money in Hardin County, that money stays home an average of 90 days and circulates more than 20 times through our local economy. That’s paychecks. Utility bills. Groceries. Student fundraisers. Church collections. The list goes on.

When you buy groceries outside the county, another community pays its employees — not ours.

I’m currently working on a study, and if local economics is a topic that interests you, I could use one person to help. The idea is simple: local cost versus outside cost. Take a 20-item grocery list and price it at three to five different stores. Where is it actually cheapest? In today’s economy, that information matters, and with the right help, we could publish something genuinely useful for Hardin County residents.

I’ll stop here for this week.

As always, my cell is 979-250-2733. Holler if you want to help, text me, I answer that faster.