Product design question

You are the PM of Facebook Marketplace. You have been presented a proposal for sellers to provide a government-issued ID before they can post their products. How would you decide whether to implement this feature?

Practice this question out loud. An AI interviewer asks it, follows up like a real interviewer would, and scores your answer. Type or speak.

What this question tests

Tests weighing a trust and safety proposal against real adoption friction, using a structured decision framework rather than a gut call.

Clarify the goal of the proposal: reduce fraud and scam listings by verifying seller identity before they can post.
Weigh the benefit: ID verification likely reduces fake accounts and scam listings, increasing buyer trust in the Marketplace overall.
Weigh the cost: this adds real friction for legitimate casual sellers, likely reducing new listing volume, especially from first-time or occasional sellers.
Propose a risk-based rollout instead of a blanket requirement: require ID only for high-risk signals, high-value items, new accounts, or after fraud reports, rather than every seller.
Define success as fraud and scam report rate reduction weighed directly against listing volume retention, tested via a phased or A/B rollout before a full launch.

Explicitly weighs both sides of the tradeoff, trust gain versus listing friction, instead of assuming verification is automatically good.
Proposes a smarter risk-based targeting approach rather than a blanket policy applied to every seller equally.
Insists on a phased or tested rollout to measure the real tradeoff before committing to full implementation.

Approving the proposal outright without weighing its friction cost on legitimate casual sellers.
Rejecting it outright without considering a scoped, risk-based version that captures most of the benefit.

How would you handle privacy and data-storage concerns around collecting government IDs?
What fraud threshold would trigger requiring ID for a specific seller?