Bonik Somiti: A Social-market Tool for Safe, Accountable, and Harmonious Informal E-Market Ecosystem in Bangladesh

TL;DR

Bonik Somiti is designed, a socio-technical system that supports structured reporting, admin-led mediation, and accountability in informal e-markets in the Global South and discusses how community-centered technologies can be designed to support safer and more accountable informal e-markets in the Global South.

Abstract

People in informal e-markets often try to deal with fraud and financial harm by sharing posts, screenshots, and warnings in social media groups. However, buyers and sellers frequently face further problems because these reports are scattered, hard to verify, and rarely lead to resolution. We studied these issues through a survey with 124 participants and interviews with 36 buyers, sellers, and related stakeholders from Bangladesh and designed Bonik Somiti, a socio-technical system that supports structured reporting, admin-led mediation, and accountability in informal e-markets. Our evaluation with 32 participants revealed several challenges in managing fraud, resolving disputes, and building trust within existing informal practices and the assumptions behind them. Based on these findings, we further discuss how community-centered technologies can be designed to support safer and more accountable informal e-markets in the Global South.

Figures (3)

• Figure 1: Screenshots of three Facebook fraud alert groups (shared by the group admins) in Bangladesh with different sizes and activity levels. The left group (a) shows very high daily activity (61 new posts per day) and a large number of members (around 290,000), indicating frequent fraud incidents and widespread public concern. The middle (b) and right (c) groups also show regular daily posts and tens of thousands of members, suggesting that many users rely on such groups to report scams and stay aware. These groups highlight the severity and scale of fraud in informal e-markets.
• Figure 2: Work-flow diagram of Bonik Somiti. (A) User End lets buyers and sellers file structured cases with role declaration, issue categories, accused account links, descriptions, and evidence, participate in admin-mediated conversation channels, and view lists of ongoing, decided, and dropped cases to support decision-making. (B) Support Group Admin End lets community admins review new reports, manually evaluate submitted evidence using page history records, initiate and moderate conversation channels between accusers and accused parties, update case statuses, and report verified and severe cases to external authorities including law enforcement agencies, banks, and financial service companies; (C) Server holds users’ reports, conversation records, case lists, and historical records of pages and related accounts, and functionalizes the application by connecting the User and Admin ends to support reporting, verification, conflict resolution, and institutional escalation.
• Figure 3: Example pages from Project Bonik Somiti’s Application. (a2–d2) Users’ POV of the accountability interface. (a2) Users file a structured case by submitting role information, issue category, accused account link, descriptions, and supporting documents. (b2) A moderated conversation channel where the accuser, accused, and support group admin communicate to clarify misunderstandings and attempt conflict resolution. (c2) A list of confirmed cases that have been verified by support group admins as potentially risky. (d2) A detailed case view displaying comprehensive information about a selected case, including accuser and accused page names, contact details, evidence, and verification records. (a3–d3) Support Group Admins’ POV of the case management interface. (a3) A consolidated view of newly submitted cases showing complete information about both accusers and accused parties, with options to initiate conversation, report to external authorities, or escalate cases. (b3) Access to the history of pages, allowing admins to review prior reports, linked accounts, phone numbers, and related records to assess patterns of risky behavior. (c3) After manual evaluation and verification, admins update the case status as ongoing, confirmed, or dropped. (d3) For verified and severe cases, admins report evidence-backed case records to banks or financial service providers to enable timely interventions.