A second-hand witness stand? Yes please! That's the joy of online shopping

IT WILL come as a surprise to absolutely no one that like many people possessed of a smartphone, I spend hours on it most evenings scrolling while pretend ing to watch TV.

- Abha Shah

But it isn’t Instagram that’s got me, nor TikTok. It’s Facebook.

Yes Gen Z, Facebook may seem as ancient as water, a social media platform that only dinosaurs join for niche chat groups like I Hate Mayonnaise. But it has its uses, specifically remembering birthdays (admittedly of people I used to know and am no longer in touch with), and increasingly gawping at other people’s tat.

Facebook launched its Marketplace arm in 2016, allowing users to list things to buy and sell locally. While take-up was slow at first, new HMRC measures rolled out at the start of this year, whereby the tax office could investigate individual sales and potentially issue a bill, spooked sellers who fled eBay, Vinted, Depop and Etsy et al and turned to Marketplace to set out their stalls instead.

Selling on Facebook is a grey area since the site doesn’t handle financial transactions: instead buyers and sellers hustle, haggle and arrange collection details between themselves.