The Japanese online market begs people to stop selling ultrasound photos

Some people will tell you that nobody wants to see photos of your children, but they have apparently never been on the application of the Japanese market Mercari. According to Soranews24, there was a surprisingly robust market for ultrasound photos on the electronic commerce platform, which resulted in the end of the sale of this images.

Echographic images have landed on the list of “inappropriate articles” that Mercari maintains, which are limited to be sold on the platform. The ban will come into force on September 1, depending on the company, you therefore have a few more days to make offers on your favorites and complete your collection or whatever you do with the ultrasound of someone else.

Mercari did not specify why he decided to place ultrasound images under this restriction, although someone in the offices may be a little bizarre. Soranews24 hypothesized that the images could have been used to carry out programs of pregnancy fraud, which he describes as an attempt by a person to pretend to be pregnant “in order to demand money from a man with whom they had previously had sex”.

The publication does not really offer much evidence of this widespread question, and it is difficult to find anything suggesting that it is a problem in Japan in particular. There are a handful of publications on social networks in which people describe to be targeted by a similar scam, but they seem to be few and far. In Australia, there was a scandal a few years ago in which women received exactly the same ultrasound image of an ultrasonic operator who apparently worked without any reference, but that seems to be a completely different thing.

Anyway, Mercari seems to be used to becoming a home for strange articles. In 2022, it became a massive market for Zima after the company that produced the drink went bankrupt and saw people charge important bonuses for remaining bottles. In 2023, Soranews24 reported on people selling curses on the platform, as well as air bags from previous years. So, frankly, ultrasound images do not even seem particularly blatant in terms of odd sales items. But the market, at least on Mercari, will be closed anyway. No word to find out if Facebook Marketplace, Craigslist or maybe applications like Depop will take the same hard position against ultrasound images, so keep your eyes open.