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Comment by roksprok | Hacker News Reader

Craigslist is often held up as an example of a company "doing it right", but what is never mentioned in these posts is that a large portion of their revenue comes from facilitating scams. Around 25% of rooms/apartments I contact are scams, and Craigslist has so far done nothing to prevent these. A common scam is to take pictures from a real estate site of a house that recently sold and advertise it as for rent, but they don't even let you say "I live at this house and do not want to rent it, don't let anyone post it".

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Craigslist doesn't make any money from those scams because they don't charge for rental listings. It sucks that it's there, but for them to hire staff to deal with it, they'd have to charge for the rental listings.

Right now they rely on volunteers to combat that problem, in the form of legit landlords reporting the scams.

So why not charge for rental listings? i'm sure the number of scams would go down, while posting would still be of good value for someone looking to rent out a $3000/mo apartment.

They do in some markets like NYC specifically because of scams.

It’s not what they do, and it’s a crowded market where they don’t really have an edge. If you want well-vetted products, don’t go to Craigslist. They’re just digital classifieds, the tradition is basically “anyone can list them, no one checks them, caveat emptor”.

It’s weird to me they even carry real estate listings, because I’m surprised anyone would trust them with that kind of money on a good you can’t easily self-validate. I wouldn’t spend more than $100 on something from Craigslist if I wasn’t confident that I can judge the quality of it myself.

The people who get scammed are the ones that rent sight-unseen. But most people visit the apartment they are going to rent, and the smart ones don't pay any money until they've done so. If you're really paranoid, you verify that that the person you are talking to is actually the owner, or a valid representative of the owner.

I've bought most of the cars I've ever owned from CraigsList. A tool chest, that was $400 or so. An oscilloscope, various cameras, loads of furniture. I wouldn't be surprised if I've spent nearly $10,000 on Craigslist stuff excluding the cars.

Have I gotten a bad deal a few times? Yeah. Would I have gotten a better deal elsewhere? Unlikely.

Consider the thesis of the "craigslist is sketchy" argument the next time you look something up on Amazon and the first 3 results are from WODBEP, QXJEFN, and PLUDJ.

IMO the thing that actually spooks people about CraigsList is interacting with strangers, but Facebook isn't better. If you're stalking someone's FB because you want to buy their old TV, well guess what, you're the creep, not them.

From Craig's Wikipedia article [0]. He sure cares about fighting scams. Craigslist != Craig I know, but may these are intractable problems, not that there's necessarily negligence

> In 2022, Newmark committed $50 million to the Cyber Civil Defense initiative.[39] As of April 2022, approximately $30 million of this commitment had been awarded.[40]

> In 2023, Craig Newmark Philanthropies announced it would double its donations from $50 million to $100 million for fighting cyber threats.[41]

> In 2026, Newmark founded a public service campaign, "Take9", encouraging users to pause and think before responding to a text or email to help avoid being scammed.[42][43] A video for the campaign featured Newmark teaming up with Count von Count from Sesame Street.[42][43]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craig_Newmark

Yes.

Even if you take out revenue from scams, it does not change the question of what Craigslist could or should have done regarding governance.

Craigslist adhered to basic features and community volunteers partly to avoid responsibility.

The org had no problem enforcing its moat around UGC (posts) with lawsuits but only at after extraordinary foot dragging did they implement basic advancements in the best interests of their own community.

This has resulted in untold numbers of scam victims, yes but also it allowed bad landlords, (and tenants) to carry on with no repercussions. This continues, actually.

Craigslist was a benevolent dictator. It squandered an opportunity to be a low profit leader of p2p, instead yielding it to Facebook and a variety of venture backed products.

I have first hand knowledge of Craigslist response to market competition because my cofounder on Gliph and I are the creators of the product that Craigslist privacy relay email service is based on.

This point of who actually created the concept and tech is actually being litigated right now between Apple and a patent troll over the Hide My Email feature of iCloud in Rally vs. Apple Inc.

Anon.penet.fi is clear prior art - from 1993[1].

Anyone who thought they had invented something new here were kidding themselves.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penet_remailer

Wow, I wasn’t aware of this and it definitely predates our work.

I’d have presumed this would have come up in the evidence for that case but afaik it has not.

IANAL, but perhaps Craigslist’s response to our product, which included blocking its usage on the site after they implanted their version, served as a stronger example of the commercialization of the product still well ahead of the Rally Patent.

[wasn’t aware of this] That's odd. Anyone familiar with the history of anonymous email services and remailers would know about the penet, cotse, and cypherpunk communities in the 1990s. It was a fertile field. Odd that you haven't bumped into anyone from that space.

https://codamail.com/aboutus.html -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixminion -- https://www.spamgourmet.com/index.pl?printpage=faq.html

I suppose from some perspectives it is.

When I designed our take on it, I was solving a problem I experienced on Craigslist. I had not seen this prior art.

I built a simple refresh for a new email address interface that people really loved to mash, and it is nearly identical to the Use Different Address link behavior on Hide My Email.

To get to my original point, if Craigslist was aware of all of these examples, they did not seem to serve as impetus to provide it, despite it being in the best interest of their users.

I would highlight again that the system described by the Rally patent, if realizable in the example services means these groups also left potentially valuable IP on the table.

As the lawsuit over Hide My Email, afaik, is serious stuff.

I appreciate folks sharing links to prior art. I have more to say, that might explain my initial comment a bit more, but have to wait on that.

> Craigslist has so far done nothing to prevent these

You could make your point without this lie. Craigslist moderators are both very active and quick to respond. Their moderation system is explained on the website. Try flagging scams when you see them.

Airbnb has the same exact problem. Also doesn’t seem to give a crap when they’re reported.

Except AirBnB _does_ make money off of those scam listings.

If only 25% of one section of CL is scams, that puts it well ahead of the cryptocurrency industry, the social media industry, the adtech industry and the AI industry.

2026, where "We're scammy, but not as scammy as the rest of tech" is a genuine USP.

Craigslist doesn't even charge for rental listings, do they? I thought they only charge for help wanted ads.

They charge for rental listings in some markets.

Interesting. I wonder why they feel it is not necessary or not profitable to do it in the Bay Area.

They now charge to list your car, even as a private party. I'm not sure it was the right choice because it drove so much traffic to Facebook Marketplace, which is an absolute disaster.

It's also one of the major things the destroyed newspapers. I'm not saying that's bad, just pointing out it happened.

Of course I've found some too good to be true auto listings on cl (so I stayed away), but this is a weird thing to fixate on when there are scams on Amazon, fb marketplace, newspaper classifieds, etc.

As an aside, I think getting involved in making people prove they live at an address to cl is not the right way to do anything, especially in the context of cl, where many listings may have many different people who live together at that same address.

Even beyond scams they are one of the biggest factors leading to the collapse of the local news industry that was funded by local classified ads. So it’s hard at a macro level to view them as doing it right in a global sense, but they did make Craig rich.

> a large portion of their revenue comes from facilitating scams. Around 25% of rooms/apartments I contact are scams

they don't charge for rental posts in most cities, so your conclusion is false

Additionally, they are one of the few for-profit companies that uses “.org” with a straight face.

Even if it was not the original intent, it’s somewhat deceptive to keep it.

Ask for more regulation.

I once wanted to build an alternative to Craig’s list. There were SO MANY things I had ideas to improve. Then I realized I had literally no idea how Craig’s list makes money. None. They did not charge for ads and they didn’t have advertising. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

IIRC, he said the bulk of revenue comes from job listings.

Thanks!

You misspelled "ads for prostitution." Which they eventually stopped doing, only after considerable public pressure and state AGs threatening criminal prosecution.

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/craigslist-drops-adult-ser...

Everyone need stop making out Craig and James out to be super moralistic dudes. They both profited, enormously, off sexual exploitation and human trafficking around the world by (knowingly) serving as a directory for pimps.

Its not a private business fault that US did not create a legal framework protecting sex workers and instead continue facilitate exploitation and traffiking by keeping it illegal.

US have legal porn industry and its strictly regulated and mostly safe for those wofking in it. Imagine how it would look like if it was illegal too.

Are you proposing that forming an S-corp somehow eliminates an individuals moral or ethical obligations?

It does not since morals and ethics are relative.

Having legal framework and regulation solves problems with exploitation and traffiking though.

If sex work is illegal there will be pimps, illegal ads, criminal organizations facilitate it and abuse.

> They both profited, enormously, off sexual exploitation and human trafficking around the world by (knowingly) serving as a directory for pimps.

From what I read back when this happened you have it backwards. The classifieds on CL and other sites for sex were were largely individuals choosing to do it. They were not being trafficked or pimped. By closing those listings down it would end up pushing sex workers to find other sources of clients, like pimps.

> The classifieds on CL and other sites for sex were were largely individuals choosing to do it. They were not being trafficked or pimped.

Yep. Just like with marijuana and other such "vices", the thing that takes most of the violence and exploitation out of the industries that produce, market, and sell a "vice" [0] is to make it legal to produce, advertise, and sell.

There's also a side angle here where some folks absolutely disbelieve that an attractive human who really enjoys fucking would rather make their own hours getting paid to fuck than get abused by a shitty boss at an entry-level job.

Are there people coerced into sex work? _Absolutely_. But, there are people coerced into nearly every sort of job out there, so that's not saying much.

[0] Well, actually this applies to any industry. No matter what it is, if you have to do illegal shit to create, distribute, and sell it, and if there's notable amount of money to be made in selling it, then there's inevitably gonna be violent folks involved in the process.

Legalization reduces the risk of violence to sellers and buyers and external parties. This in turn reduces the risk premium and quick score potential of the "business".

The problem with the legalization strategy to reduce violence is that it has its limits.

It turns a high-risk game into a high-volume high-scale game.

It validates the creation of a corporate ecosystem who then are incented to create demand for the "vice" while simultaneously concealing what they know (or come to learn) about the vice's side effects.

> ...who then are incented to create demand for the "vice" while simultaneously concealing what they know (or come to learn) about the vice's side effects.

Indeed. Organized Crime is [0] known for being entirely up-front about the side-effects of the things they break the law to sell, as well as being extraordinarily circumspect about both whom they take on as customers and how their products and business practices affect the long-term well-being of those customers.

Anyway. I agree that dealing in the public eye and ensuring a merchant's customers can air their grievances in the courts absolutely isn't a magic cure-all. I think we both know that for "vices", it's nearly always better than the black market.

[0] ...not...

Its the ultimate libertarian paradox.

How can you both preserve peoples rights and also intervene to stop when you subjecivley think something should be regulated?

Craigslist also undermined the entire newspaper classifieds business, which paid for local news reporting in communities of all sizes.

Yes, someone else would have addressed this niche eventually, or newspapers would have gotten their acts together on the digital front. The fact that Newmark started so early and was almost completely non-commercial in Craigslist operations and attitude allowed it to proliferate quickly, quickly gutting the revenues of local newspapers.

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