I think education can be more beneficial in the long run than regulation.
It's really incumbent on the individual who engages in buying and selling on line to be aware of what scams look like, and just as important, to keep themselves up to date as scams morph and adapt. The scam where someone contacts you to tell you about "a friend of his who has the item you're looking for, and here's his email address", neatly circumvents the minimum message requirement to post in the "for sale" forum, because he isn't offering anything for sale; he's just helping out a friend. And it's really tough on unpaid volunteer mods to weed out every scammer that pops up on here like weeds in a back yard. You, your knowledge and your instincts are the first best defense against getting ripped off on line. It's absolutely not foolproof; smart people get scammed all the time (just look at Bankman-Fried's victims). But scammers pretty much rely on three things; ignorance, misplaced trust, and and/or greed. Even smart people can fall into one of those categories.
The ease with which you can now transfer money, like with Venmo, makes it even worse. People use it to send money without really understanding what Venmo is and isn't, and how there is absolutely no protection built into it. Venmo doesn't go out of their way to really explain the pitfalls of using this service, so it's up to the individual to make themselves aware of the risks involved.
Some time spent on google or youtube and searching for topics like "how do internet selling scams work" would benefit lots of people.
