Facebook Bans The Sale of All Kodi Boxes, Legal or Not

Facebook has expanded its ban on the sale of piracy-enabling streaming devices. According to the company’s latest commerce policies, all streaming devices that use Kodi software are now outlawed, which logically also applies to the many legal streaming boxes that are available.

Entertainment companies see streaming piracy as one of the largest threats to the industry. This is true for streaming sites, but also specialized pirate boxes, which are often sold with the popular media player Kodi installed.

While Kodi itself is a neutral platform, third-party add-ons can turn it into a powerful pirate tool. This is why Kodi and piracy are often mentioned in the same breath.

This negative stigma has already resulted in Google banning “Kodi” from the autocomplete feature of its search engine, among other things. And recently Facebook has piled on with another broad measure.

Facebook previously banned the sale of fully-loaded pirate streaming devices, as did Amazon and eBay, but the social network appears to have expanded this to all Kodi-powered hardware now.

This is made clear in the prohibited content section of the company’s commerce policies, as shown below.

Facebook states that users are no longer allowed to promote “the sale or use of streaming devices with KODI installed.” In addition, jailbroken or loaded devices are also banned from the platform.

The issue was first noticed by CordCuttersNews which notes that sellers who violate the policy may have their Facebook accounts banned.

Interestingly, Facebook will still permit the sale of “add-on equipment for KODI devices,” including keyboards and remotes. However, selling any devices with the software itself is no longer allowed.

TorrentFreak reached out to the Kodi team for a comment on the news, but at the time of publication, we had yet to hear back.

It’s unclear why Facebook has expanded its previous ban of ‘piracy-enabling’ devices to Kodi specifically. Kodi itself is not the problem here, which is something acknowledged by several anti-piracy groups. Perhaps the piracy-stigma is simply too big.