YouTuber Michael Reeves returned to the platform to reveal how he built a bot to “scam” people on Facebook Marketplace.
Ever since 2017, Michael Reeves has built a following of over 7M subscribers on his YouTube channel by doing fun tech-related tasks like making a robot that picks tomatoes out of your salad.
However, his videos are few and far between. Reeves only uploaded one video in 2024 and just two in 2023, and eight months after his last video, the YouTuber is back with another unique build.
Uploaded on February 6, 2025, Michael Reeves shared how, and why, he built a bot to “scam” people on Facebook Marketplace.
Michael Reeves builds a bot to “scam” Facebook users
“I wanna buy a motorcycle,” he said to start off the video. “I’m a drug addict and my drug of choice is lowballing people on Facebook Marketplace. Have I ever successfully lowballed someone? Yeah, I mean a couple of times. If I’m being honest, 90% of the time they ignore me cuz I’m just not that good at negotiating. I really, really want a motorcycle for cheap.”
“The sole purpose of this bot is to f**k with people on Facebook Marketplace. To lowball them nonstop. To break them down psychologically,” he joked. “When they’re at their lowest I’ll swoop in with an offer and get a massive discount.”
So, he set off to build a bot that uses Facebook accounts he created with fake personas to send people a message with his lowball offer.
He used ChatGPT to help generate the messages sent by the bot and gave it a bit of an attitude as well. Before shooting straight for a motorcycle purchase, he used it to get a lowball deal on a computer monitor.
“Hey there! I’m interested in that flickering mess you call a monitor. Since it’s busted, how about I take it off your hands for $20 with all that color popping and sh*t. Stop pretending it’s worth $50,” said the bot.
Surprisingly, the lowballing bot was able to secure the deal at less than 50% of the asking price. He went on to test it out a few more times before successfully saving a bit of money on a motorcycle.
“All we had to do was systematically gaslight a bunch of people on Facebook Marketplace,” he said.
It’s unknown whether or not he’ll use the bot to make any other purchases, but if he had built it back in 2024, he could have put in a lowball offer for a retired Playstation Experience semi-trailer.