[HN Gopher] The greatest social media site is Craigslist
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The greatest social media site is Craigslist
Author : pseudolus
Score : 127 points
Date : 2024-06-27 16:36 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (slate.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (slate.com)
| asdff wrote:
| 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.
| explaininjs wrote:
| 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.
| asdff wrote:
| 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.
| explaininjs wrote:
| 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.
| sweetjuly wrote:
| 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.
| spott wrote:
| 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.
| noman-land wrote:
| 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.
| alexpotato wrote:
| 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
| mrweasel wrote:
| > 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.
| kube-system wrote:
| > 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.
| renewiltord wrote:
| And that's why these two services exist. They want spam
| control and you want anonymity. About the clearest example
| of separate markets.
| loufe wrote:
| 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.
| BrandoElFollito wrote:
| 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.
| Tallain wrote:
| 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.
| crazygringo wrote:
| 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.)
| AlbertCory wrote:
| 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.
| Tallain wrote:
| 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?
| AlbertCory wrote:
| 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.
| everdrive wrote:
| 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.
| elevation wrote:
| 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.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| Marketplace has posts? I thought the only thing you could
| do was message the seller directly.
| jandrese wrote:
| 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.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| > _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.
| carabiner wrote:
| 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.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| 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.
| parpfish wrote:
| 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
| SoftTalker wrote:
| 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.
| lowtech8 wrote:
| AI is spam.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Maybe for you.
|
| Spam is spam. _Advertising_ is spam. AI makes it easier,
| but then it makes many other things easier too.
| mrweasel wrote:
| 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.
| nox101 wrote:
| 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.
| ryandrake wrote:
| My bugaboo is people who list things for sale and fill $1 as
| the price in the structured data, and then in the description
| reveal the real price they are asking. All just so when I
| filter by price their listing still shows up.
|
| You can manually flag things but it feels like whack-a-mole,
| and I don't know if Craigslist actually deletes/punishes
| posters who get flagged for this reason.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| Same thing happens on Facebook.
| xeromal wrote:
| I just filter above about 50$ depending on what I'm looking
| for.
| RunSet wrote:
| > In 2018, Craigslist permanently shuttered its personal ads
| section following a federal amendment to Section 230 of the
| Communications Decency Act, a bedrock piece of legislation that
| enabled early websites to flourish by removing liability for
| user-generated content.
|
| https://LokiList.com provides a (somewhat more private)
| replacement for the lost Craigslist personals. Since websites are
| now liable for user's content, users can only post text. Users
| may include a Session Private Messenger ID in their post or share
| their preferred contact information in their post body.
| candiddevmike wrote:
| I like the conspiracy theory that craigslist was cutting into
| the sex market by letting workers go direct without any
| middlemen. That law was passed to maintain the status quo.
| senderista wrote:
| Big Pimp strikes again
| labster wrote:
| Pimpin' ain't easy. You need lots of lobbyists and a
| continual presence on The Hill.
| chx wrote:
| Nah, there are a lot of powerful organizations fighting
| pornography and sex work in the United States.
| CleanRoomClub wrote:
| And yet far more propagating it. I wish the "powerful
| organizations" fighting pornography were half as powerful
| as its purveyors.
| rustcleaner wrote:
| The Anti-Sex League is hard at work tamping down normalcy
| and overrepresenting [standard-]deviancy.
| jmann99999 wrote:
| For reference, Section 230 still provides liability protection
| for most types of user-generated content (in the U.S.).
|
| The 2018 ruling was centered on removing these protections
| related to sex trafficking.
|
| There is still a drumbeat to remove legal liability protections
| for other types of content but they are not in place yet.
| thr0w wrote:
| Wonder what the difference in traffic was before/after
| personals got shut down. I've heard first-hand stories about
| what a scene that was.
| animex wrote:
| In my area, Craigslist has been usurped mostly by Kijiji. The
| personals section shutdown has spawned many "clones" over the
| years.
| xnx wrote:
| Craigslist really nails practical and boring design. There have
| been countless small updates and improvements in functionality
| and appearance without falling victim to passing fads.
|
| I do wish it was more streamlined to create a listing directly in
| the category you're currently viewing.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| My son believes this.
| cableshaft wrote:
| I feel like I can't really trust anything on Craigslist now, so I
| don't really use it. I did post my furniture for free pickup on
| there last year, but that's been about it in the past ten years.
| I remembered it being pretty much dead from then, but I just
| checked it again and it seems to still be getting quite a few
| posts, so I guess that was just a false memory.
|
| I also used to check it for software jobs way back in the day,
| and got a couple interviews from it, but that seems totally dead
| now. I see 5 postings in the software jobs section, and none of
| them are anywhere close to Chicago.
| fkyoureadthedoc wrote:
| I just bought a fish tank off some guy on Craigslist a week
| ago, since I don't have a Facebook account to use Marketplace.
| He told me it was in good condition, and the pics looked ok but
| were from kind of far back and it was full of crap. I drive 45
| min to get it and the thing is horrendously scratched up on the
| inside because he used it for turtles and then storage.
|
| Falling victim to the sunk cost fallacy, since I drove all that
| way, I took it off his hands for 25% less than we initially
| agreed.
| unholythree wrote:
| If the scratches are on the inside it might not look too bad
| after you fill it with water, but still a bummer.
| jacobgkau wrote:
| I did something similar with an Aeron chair on Facebook
| Marketplace recently. Drove around an hour to the next city
| over to take a look at one, apparently the good ones had been
| picked over already (and he only posted photos of one out of
| the batch, presumably the best), but I felt a little
| obligated to buy something since I'd taken the person's time
| and driven all that way.
|
| After cleaning it up at home, it ended up being usable for
| now, but definitely felt crappy driving back with it knowing
| I wasn't really happy with it.
| givemeethekeys wrote:
| Software jobs began disappearing from Craigslist around 2018, I
| think. Not sure why.
| segmondy wrote:
| craigslist is dead, the news should be how marketplace quietly
| disrupted craigslist and the power of Meta integrating any
| product. if you're a B2C company and Meta decides to compete with
| you, you have no chance.
| devbent wrote:
| Facebook marketplace is a better experience.
|
| CL had a miserable mobile experience up until a few years ago,
| no good mobile app, and spam has always been a problem on the
| platform.
| zucked wrote:
| I logged in just to respond to this - I could not disagree
| more. FB's faceted search is truly awful. I regularly search
| for specific items on FB and get totally different results if
| I run the same query multiple times. Sometimes, I'll even get
| "suggested" items that 100% match my search query and have
| been posted for weeks but still don't appear in my original
| search.
|
| I loathe using FBMP, but it has been slowly absorbing all the
| CL traffic. On one hand, I like that CL charges for high
| value items now (ex: Cars) because it means you're getting
| better quality, but on the other hand it has absolutely
| hastened people's abandonment of CL for FBMP.
| switchbak wrote:
| Maybe I have a different perspective, but I find both
| platforms to be absolutely awful. I had to find a car with
| CL years ago ... uggh, what a shite platform.
|
| Now - FB is decidedly worse though. These walled gardens, I
| swear the spartan simplicity of Usenet was better than
| these.
| nitwit005 wrote:
| Strange that a dead website generates hundreds of millions of
| dollars of revenue.
| niemandhier wrote:
| That is more or like the perfect case to apply the Sherman
| Antitrust Act.
|
| Legal practice is slow to adapt but we will see more and more
| cases against gate keepers and monopolists.
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| I have no problem with them dying, since they're as responsible
| for the elimination of funding of quality journalism in the US
| as much as any other entity on the planet. Not that they
| planned for it to happen, but it's still largely their fault.
| Duwensatzaj wrote:
| Ebay took out a share of classified revenue as well.
|
| Quick search said classified ads were 40% to 70% of revenue.
| samothrace wrote:
| Alright, but what's the actual best minimalist social media?
|
| I'm so fed up with Meta/X and while Reddit is decent, it's no way
| to connect with friends or carry on conversations that last
| longer than 2 hours.
|
| I'm convinced that many people feel this way, and while I'm sure
| there will be a big "don't reinvent the wheel" response here,
| convincing mom, grandma, and that guy from high school to make
| and maintain a blog/website/rss feed is a no go in reality.
|
| (And yes, I and my imaginary cohort are ready and willing to pay
| a monthly fee!!)
| ryandrake wrote:
| I think all you really need is decent _universal_ chat. Not our
| current siloed ecosystem with 15 different chat systems run by
| 8 different companies, none compatible with each other. But a
| truly universal chat system: like E-mail where you can E-mail
| anyone no matter what their ISP, computer manufacturer or phone
| manufacturer is.
| samothrace wrote:
| That would be a good step, and I see how that allows for
| everyone to remain in the marketing cesspool of their
| choosing. But as for myself, I want "posts" and a
| customizable feed. Without the ads and attention-maximizing
| bs.
| rustcleaner wrote:
| >Reddit is decent
|
| Karma anxiety inducing echo chamber.
|
| What is decent exists: FMS with Web of Trust moderating, on
| Freenet/Hyphanet. It's 4chan style anyone-can-post with non-
| destructive subscription-based moderation.
| scelerat wrote:
| Despite Facebook Marketplace, Craigslist is still great for most
| typical local classifieds. Furniture, bicycles, motorcycles,
| cars, musical instruments, electronics, garage/estate sales, etc.
| And it's wide open: you don't have to participate in someone's
| walled garden to read, respond or post.
|
| The fact that its simple -- some would say ugly; I simply think
| "utilitarian" -- design has endured with very little change for
| two decades has a lot to teach about UI and graphic design.
| Doctor_Fegg wrote:
| Ah, a chance to wheel out one of my favourite quotes ever.
|
| > Jim Buckmaster, the chief executive of Craigslist, caused lots
| of head-scratching Thursday as he tried to explain to a bunch of
| Wall Street types why his company is not interested in
| "monetizing" his ridiculously popular Web operation. Appearing at
| the UBS global media conference in New York, Mr. Buckmaster took
| questions from the bemused audience, which apparently could not
| get its collective mind around the notion that Craigslist exists
| to help Web users find jobs, cars, apartments and dates -- and
| not so much to make money.
|
| > Wendy Davis of MediaPost describes the presentation as a "a
| culture clash of near-epic proportions." She recounts how UBS
| analyst Ben Schachter wanted to know how Craigslist plans to
| maximize revenue. It doesn't, Mr. Buckmaster replied (perhaps
| wondering how Mr. Schachter could possibly not already know
| this). "That definitely is not part of the equation," he said,
| according to MediaPost. "It's not part of the goal."
|
| https://archive.nytimes.com/dealbook.nytimes.com/2006/12/08/...
| o11c wrote:
| Is this an example of Blub?
| wnc3141 wrote:
| chucking a platform onto the internet without a form of high
| touch maintenance of the community is I think what causes social
| media to die. Its very difficult to buy on craigslist for the
| reasons other commenters have mentioned.
| rchaud wrote:
| I saw a story on HN the other day about how NYC hotels are more
| expensive following an Airbnb ban.
|
| Back in the mid-2000s, Craigslist _was_ Airbnb in NY. I never
| stayed at a hotel when I visited. There were always rooms and
| apartments available to rent, especially on weekends. In 2008, I
| booked a ground-floor apartment in Brooklyn for $80 /night for
| myself and some college friends.
|
| I miss that era. Airbnb reminds me of the Jobs quote about
| Dropbox: it's a feature, not a product. Craigslist did lots of
| things, that's what was great about it. It specifically eschewed
| the Silicon Valley ethos of trying to turn a side hustle into an
| IPO, and the mass regulation-skirting that involves.
|
| CL intentionally flew under the radar, and thus never created a
| situation where where investors and speculators reduced the
| supply of rental/for-sale housing to create inventory for Airbnb.
| With CL, we could have good things that didn't get enshittified
| as soon as the VC play money dried up.
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