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Comment by asdff | Hacker News Reader

If there was one thing craigslist could improve on, it would be managing the spam listings. I think we all can close our eyes and imagine how these listings look: dozens and dozens of identical listings on a single point on a map about some scam used car loan, or an apartment that doesn't actually exist, or stolen playstations. If its so easy for us regular craiglist users to see this spam and subconsciously tune it out, then why is it such a hard problem for the craiglist developers to establish what I would guess are pretty trivial filters to set up to catch these listings that I stress again are posted dozens and dozens of times identically over the years? Seems they have tacitly acknowledge the issue with the hide duplicates checkbox, but why even have the user need to check that at all? I don't think anyone wants to see duplicate spam.

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My bugaboo is people who list things for sale and fill $1 as the price in the structured data, and then in the description reveal the real price they are asking. All just so when I filter by price their listing still shows up.

You can manually flag things but it feels like whack-a-mole, and I don't know if Craigslist actually deletes/punishes posters who get flagged for this reason.

Same thing happens on Facebook.

I just filter above about 50$ depending on what I'm looking for.

Mine are the used car dealers that have every make and model ever created (or maybe just the 1500 most popular) in every description. On cars that aren't even close.

So even if you're looking for a 1999 Honda Civic, every car for sale by Bill's automotive or whoever shows up as a description containing that text.

Extremely annoying.

I set a minimum price and select for sale by owner and it usually filters all the dealers out.

just include -bmw, and it filters all that crap out.

This goes the other way too.

I stopped selling on Craiglist b/c EVERY SINGLE TIME I posted something I immediately started getting the "hi! I'm moving so I'm going to send the movers with a check that includes their pay and the balance to pick up your item" scam.

At least on Facebook Marketplace, I can see who the person is, do they have a rating, do they know anyone I know etc etc.

As a side note:

For the Twitter folks, I've written a bunch of funny threads about selling things on FB and Craigslist that you can find here: https://twitter.com/alexpotato/status/1305311410579214336

> At least on Facebook Marketplace, I can see who the person is, do they have a rating, do they know anyone I know etc etc.

Yet it doesn't stop scammer at all.

> At least on Facebook Marketplace, I can see who the person is, do they have a rating, do they know anyone I know etc etc.

I don't want that when I sell random stuff out of my house. I want to meet a random dude at a gas station, exchange cash, and never know anything about each other again.

And that's why these two services exist. They want spam control and you want anonymity. About the clearest example of separate markets.

Great way of seeing it. While I don't like being on Facebook, I now almost always tend towards it over Kijiji (Canadian alternative) and Craigslist for the reputation system.

What is the scam? That the cheque won't clear?

France must be one of the last countries to still use cheques and they are often refused, but at least there is a reasonable threat for the account owners whose cheque would not clear.

It's a very common scam to send a cashier's check for an amount + some extra, where you are expected to cash the check, keep the change, and return the amount. Later, the check will reverse, having been caught as a fraudulent check, and you're left on the hook for the entire original amount of the check.

Just so everyone knows -- you should always be able to call the issuing bank to verify the legitimacy of a cashier's check. They can confirm whether the check exists for the given check number, date, and amount, and that it has not been cashed. (Also, Google the phone number for the bank, don't use a phone number listed on the check itself.)

This is what makes cashier's checks fairly scam-free if you know that.

(Also remember, this is about cashier's checks, not ordinary personal checks.)

Of course this does require that you make your buyer wait while you phone the bank (and possibly do this during bank business hours), get put on hold, etc. And deal with the social discomfort of so obviously not trusting them. And then the risk of what might happen afterwards once you discover they are trying to scam you -- do they just go away or do they get violent or something?

But if you tell them upfront that you'll be calling to verify the check when you meet, it's much more comfortable. Especially because if they're trying to pull the scam, they'll just give up and not meet in the first place.

(Oh, and obviously never accept extra payment and then separately refund a difference. That's scam avoidance 101. If they even suggest that, stop talking to them.)

Cashier's checks are not the same as cash.

If you're selling, you should always specify cash-only. Period, no exceptions. You can meet at a bank if you're nervous about having cash.

True, we have however in Europe a limitation on the amount you can pay by cash (3000€ ~ $3200).

Some transactions are prohibited by cash (notably when you buy a house, but that would not be through a classified ad :))

craigslist is a US company. "cashier's checks" are a US concept, AFAIK.

Maybe interestingly, my experience has been the exact reverse of this. Craigslist is the only place I get legitimate responses to my listings, and Facebook Marketplace is where I get people who try to pull of these scams, or people who want to pay half of the price I list. I wonder if it has to do with the types of items being sold?

I've sold things to real people on Craigslist, for cash. The scammers are easy to filter out, but I'm sure there are smarter ones out there whom I just haven't encountered yet.

They do warn you about scammers, and my feeling is that if they tried to filter out the vermin who say "my agent will arrive with a cashier's check to pick it up" the scammers would just find some way around it, and people would get a false sense of security to boot. Whack-a-mole games, in other words.

A site for discussion would be Discogs, where I've had almost nothing but great experiences: all nice, honest people. Maybe the fix for Craigslist would be to split into verticals, where a community could develop, something that's absent now.

I’m less concerned about scammers ripping me off

What I don’t like is the emotional energy it takes to filter them out.

> Maybe the fix for Craigslist would be to split into verticals

Feels like the time is ripe for something like that, too. I think you're right, that would really up Craigslist's game.

We've had trouble selling on Facebook marketplace. On craiglist, if people don't like your list price they just ignore you. On facebook people can start flamewars in your posts or harass you directly.

Other people have had trouble selling as well because of Facebook's moderation system.

A coworker's son participated in a high school archery team as a sophomore, then lost interest. My coworker listed the equipment on Marketplace, but after a day his listing was flagged for selling weapons.

He requested an appeal: the school has a zero tolerance policy for 'weapons' but allows students to carry their archery gear. By this reasoning, the listing should be fine, but Facebook's reviewer disagreed and banned him from marketplace for life.

Marketplace has posts? I thought the only thing you could do was message the seller directly.

Your experience is the opposite of mine. FB Marketplace is 100% scammers as best as I can tell. I've never had success. Also, never ever ever buy a product advertised on Facebook. Chinese scammers outright lie about the products and there are zero customer protections.

Craigslist on the other hand has generally been alright, although it is better to be a buyer than a seller. Most of the time I've had someone flake or ghost me they were a buyer.

> Chinese scammers outright lie about the products and there are zero customer protections.

The only way to use Facebook Marketplace to buy things is to purchase locally. Anything else is sheer insanity.

I have an "Intelligent Human Turing Test" when I sell things on Craigslist (usually professional/pro-sumer music/audio equipment). If someone doesn't pass it I don't respond. If they do they are generally thrilled to be getting a real deal on gear that's in the shape it's been described. This has worked in the greater SF Bay area through good and bad economic times over the last 20+ years.

"In person, cash transactions ONLY, no shipping or trades. Scammers will be ignored. Prices are firm, please don't respond if you don't understand what that means - I monitor markets daily on (CL, eBay, Reverb, XYZ music sites), here are links to recent similar condition gear sold for $xxx more. Respond with a phone # and 2-3 times this week that work for you to talk or meet."

At my work some of our best employees (including myself!) were found through Craigslist. And as a hiring manager, CL ofter brings me better applicants than Zip Recruiter, Indeed, Idealist and other "mass application spam cannons" HR inexplicably favors that have made being a hiring manager a real PITA in the last 5 years.

> At my work some of our best employees (including myself!) were found through Craigslist

I had a co-worker in the pas who met his wife on Craigslist.

Most people assume this happened via the personals/missed connection sections but apparently it was b/c he saw a comment of hers on the forum section, messaged her to say he thought it was funny and the rest is history.

In some sense it’s actually a genius answer to the spam arms race: refuse to participate. This way, the spam is immediately obvious. In the proposed word where sophisticated spam detection algorithms are built, the adversary develops sophisticated spamming techniques that become difficult for even an experienced user to detect.

Why no arms race in this theory though? If spam is sure to ratchet up to meet whatever defense craigslist has today in order to continue to be effective, they might as well do a better job today as it is to not make themselves stand out so explicitly so they can get a higher click through rate. Seems to me there is some underlying reason or incentive why the current arms race on the half of the spammers might be stalled. Maybe there are enough people who fall for these scams as low effort as they seem to day, but if that were the case then craigslist is being a bit unethical allowing this susceptible population to be routinely victimized to ensure the rest of us don't get fooled by tougher spam.

Because the content hasn’t been filtered. If the adversary attempts to make a post and is prohibited from doing so (or is unable to see their post on a different browser/etc.), they will try harder to make the post “sneaky”.

On the other hand if they make a post, see the post, open their phone, see the post there (tons of times! how effective!), they move on with their day.

There's also the theory that obvious scams and spam is helpful to adversaries because it filters out people who will realize it's a scam later and not follow through. Like, making the Nigerian Prince emails more convincing might lead to more work for little to no new real leads because these new people that were slightly less gullible are more likely to realize it's a scam later on too.

Because easy scams to detect prevent false negatives for the scammer.

If you get a response to a badly written scam, chances are the respondent will be a sucker and the scam will be successful.

If you get a response to a hard to detect scam, chances are you will spend more time for a less likely payout.

Microsoft wrote a paper on this. The same reason email scams are so bad.

There are also legit but over zealous listings. There are apartment complexes that re-post the listings every single day. So, checking if any new apartments appear is always manually filtering over 40% the apartments you've already looked at but which were reposted.

This drives me crazy. I have saved searches for various power tools within a few hundred mile radius. Most of what I see are duplicate posts from people cross-posting in adjacent regions, the same items re-posted weekly (or more frequently), and irrelevant listings that show up due to keyword spamming. I wish there was a way for me to say "I've seen this ad, don't send it to me again unless the price drops". Have been thinking about building some kind of filtering software to eliminate re-posts -- anyone know of a project that does this?

It's a game of whack-a-mole.

For every "common sense" spam filter rule you develop, the spammers will quickly find a way around it.

Maybe AI could be trained on spam and do a better job spotting it.

Right now I feel like the economics of AI/LLMs are in the spammers favour. You're almost suggesting that AIs be trained to recognise other AIs. Don't misunderstand, I think it would be great if we could opt to have all AI or auto-generated content removed from our internet experience. It's just not really in the interest of the shareholders.

The best thing I've seen in a long time is the "Say potato" tactic against bots, not sure how well it works against LLMs though.

For car sales, they started charging to post. It's worked wonderfully and now most ads are from serious sellers with fully fleshed out posts and who are responsive.

To me, this is the obvious answer. Posting an ad is clearly worth some small cost to a legitimate seller. For spammers, it's a much bigger impediment, and it also establishes a money trail to who they are.

Minor nit about their car postings:

Old dudes need to learn that this isn’t a newspaper classified that limits characters.

Don’t write “Pw/pl”, just write out power windows, power locks.

Actually DESCRIBE things, don’t just give a phone number and no info

As a visitor, the downside to ignoring anything that even smells of spam is very low. You might miss out on the occasional real post. If you're Craigslist, every false positive is a headache. User complaints, support costs, vetting, bad publicity.

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