Features – craigslist blog (original) (raw)
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Manual Screening Matters
August 18, 2010
craigslist is committed to being socially responsible, and when it comes to adult services ads, that includes aggressively combating violent crime and human rights violations, including human trafficking and the exploitation of minors. We are working intensively as I write this with experts and thought leaders at leading non-profits and among law enforcement on further substantive measures we can take. We are profoundly grateful to those offering us their expert assistance in this regard.
One of the many recommendations we hear from experts at NGOs, in law enforcement, and from politicians and regulators, is that craigslist is uniquely positioned to lead by example, and to exert influence over other advertising venues to follow in its footsteps. Indeed, as we intensify our efforts to make further forward progress, we continue to be hopeful that other companies will take an interest in adopting measures we have had in place for years.
craigslist implemented manual screening of adult services ads in May of 2009. Since that time, before being posted each individual ad is reviewed by an attorney licensed to practice law in the US, trained to enforce craigslist’s posting guidelines, which are stricter than those typically used by yellow pages, newspapers, or any other company that we are aware of. More than 700,000 ads were rejected by those attorneys in the year following implementation of manual screening, for falling short of our guidelines. Our uniquely intensive manual screening process has resulted in a mass exodus of those unwilling to abide by craigslist’s standards, manually enforced on an ad-by-ad basis.
Manual screening matters. We are proud of the difference it has made, along with the other measures we have taken. However, there is no shortage of US companies that have not yet implemented manual screening for this ad category, or any other of the steps that craigslist has taken, and that have not yet exhibited any interest in combating human trafficking and the exploitation of minors, and other forms of violence and human rights violations.
One of those companies, interestingly, is eBay — despite their touting their sites as a “family friendly” alternatives to craigslist. In response to criticismabout their management of one such site, LOQUO.com, where eBay offers tens of thousands of exceptionally hardcore pornographic ads explicitly offering sex for sale, yesterday eBay blocked access to all US IP addresses, presumably so that eBay investors, journalists, and other interested parties could not see. All the ads are still up, and can be viewed via proxy IPs.
Techcrunch has further coverage on these developments, and notes that eBay plans to eventually take down these types of listings as part of its “process of ensuring all of its sites are in alignment with its family-friendly values.” I’ll make a friendly wager that rather than taking down such listings, which eBay has aggressively marketed over the years to a very high level of profitability, upselling their users to higher and higher fees, eBay will instead soon sell their “non family friendly” sites such as this one to the highest bidder.
Back in the US, another company that does not manually screen adult ads, or take any of the other preventative measures that craigslist takes, is Village Voice Media’s backpage.com. When craigslist implemented manual screening of adult ads in May 2009, adult ads on backpage spiked by a factor of 5-10x, and you can see from the graph below that their page view traffic, which was flat until we implemented manual screening, more than quadrupled in the year following.
In addition to public nudges such as this blog entry, we’d like to offer our help to companies such as eBay and Backpage that may be interested in developing best practices. CEOs of such companies can email me directly, or you can drop us an email at legal@craigslist.org.
Posted in Features, Government, Law Enforcement, Legal, Media, Metrics | Comments Off on Manual Screening Matters
craigslist TV
May 14, 2010
Sample below, lots more at craigslist channel on YouTube
Posted in Features, Media, People | Comments Off on craigslist TV
Striking a New Balance
May 13, 2009
As of today for all US craigslist sites, postings to the “erotic services” category will no longer be accepted, and in 7 days the category will be removed.
Also effective today for all US sites, a new category entitled “adult services” will be opened for postings by legal adult service providers. Each posting to this new category will be manually reviewed before appearing on the site, to ensure compliance with craigslist posting guidelines and terms of use. New postings will cost 10,butonceapproved,willbeeligibleforrepostingat10, but once approved, will be eligible for reposting at 10,butonceapproved,willbeeligibleforrepostingat5.
Unsurprisingly, but completely contrary to some of the sensationalistic journalism we’ve seen these past few weeks, the record is clear that use of craigslist classifieds is associated with far lower rates of violent crime than print classifieds, let alone rates of violent crime pertaining to American society as a whole.
The relative safety of craigslist compared to print classifieds is likely due to some combination of:
- Measures such as blocking, screening, and telephone verification
- Community moderation via our flagging system
- Electronic trail ensures violent criminals are quickly caught
- Personal safety tips prominently posted
- Unusually high level of cooperation with law enforcement
Community moderation as exemplified by our flagging system is arguably the most successful system ever conceived for eliminating inappropriate activity from a massive internet community. Working in tandem with various other protective technologies, it is an inescapable force to be reckoned with for anyone set on abusing free internet communications across a broad array of posting types.
However, with respect to this new paid category for advertising by legal businesses, we will experiment with some of the methods traditionally employed in paid print classifieds.
We’d like to thank everyone who has provided helpful input over the past few weeks, all of which was closely considered:
- Our users, whose suggestions shape every aspect of craigslist
- Attorneys General, who provided valuable constructive criticism
- Law Enforcement officers nationwide, hugely supportive as always
- Legally compliant businesses wishing to advertise their services
- EFF and other experts defending free speech and Internet law
We are optimistic that the new balance struck today will be an acceptable compromise from the perspective of these constituencies, and for the diverse US communities that value and rely upon craigslist.
Note: Our announced intention to contribute 100% of net revenues for the “erotic services” category to charity has been fulfilled, and will continue to be fulfilled, notwithstanding criticism questioning our good faith in this regard. However, in light of today’s changes, and to avoid any future misunderstanding, we are making no representation regarding how revenue from the “adult services” category will be used. Our commitment to philanthropy remains, and craigslist will continue to develop its charitable initiatives.
Posted in Features, Government, Law Enforcement, Legal, Philanthropy | Comments Off on Striking a New Balance
Fight Spam, Digitize Books
June 10, 2008
We’re experimenting with CAPTCHA images from the reCAPTCHA project at Carnegie Mellon, here’s an excerpt from the reCAPTCHA wikipedia entry:
“reCAPTCHA supplies subscribing websites with images of words that optical character recognition (OCR) software has been unable to read. The subscribing websites (whose purposes are generally unrelated to the book digitization project) present these images for humans to decipher as CAPTCHA words, as part of their normal validation procedures. They then return the results to the reCAPTCHA service, thereby contributing to the digitization project. The result is that the university receives approximately 3,000 man hours per day of free labor to help in the preservation of books.”
Luis Von Ahn, who originally coined the term CAPTCHA back in 2000, is also the guy behind the reCAPTCHA project, not to mention the ESP Game, and several other “games with a purpose.”
Posted in Features, Technology | Comments Off on Fight Spam, Digitize Books
Slobber Train
May 2, 2008
Get your weekend rolling with this skate boarding bulldog.
Posted in Features, Uncategorized | Comments Off on Slobber Train
New Language Support Launched
March 25, 2008
In addition to spanish, support for french, german, italian, and portugese has been added, some example sites are linked below:
http://berlin.de.craigslist.org/
http://paris.fr.craigslist.org/
http://montreal.fr.craigslist.ca/
http://zurich.de.craigslist.ch/
We plan to add additional languages before long, and requests for particular languages are welcome in our feedback forum
Posted in Features | Comments Off on New Language Support Launched