From Criagslist's Blog

Ebay has filed suit against craigslist and its board of directors:

http://news.ebay.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=305980

We are surprised and disappointed by Ebay’s unfounded allegations, which came to us out of the blue, without any attempt to engage in a dialogue with us.

Coming from a shareholder that views craigslist as a prime competitor, filing suit without so much as mentioning these assertions beforehand seems unethical, and hints at ulterior motives.

Ensuring the future well-being of craigslist and the craigslist community is admittedly very important to us. But Ebay has absolutely no reason to feel threatened here — unless of course they’re contemplating a hostile takeover of craigslist, or the sale of Ebay’s stake in craigslist to an unfriendly party. (In which case, they’re out of luck.

For our part, we have always treated Ebay very fairly as a minority shareholder, and plan to continue doing so, despite this unfortunate development.

Addendum in response to commenter question - To be perfectly clear, Ebay’s stake in craigslist has not been unfairly diluted as they have claimed.

Ebay said this:

The complaint is being filed under seal because some of the information about craigslist contained in the complaint is governed by confidentiality restrictions.

Add this to the laundry list for CL.

Other reports: here, here, here, and here

Sensitive military items are being offered for sale through Craigslist, the Government Accountability Office said in a report, a practice that puts U.S. service members and allies at risk. reported here.

GAO found numerous defense-related items for sale to the highest bidder on Craigslist and other sites,  the report said.  "A review of policies and procedures for these web sites determined that there are few safeguards to prevent the sale of sensitive and stolen defense-related items using the sites."

The GAO report expressed concern that items such as the protective gear could be reverse engineered by adversaries in order to design countermeasures.

I found this interesting:

In a statement to a congressional subcommittee Thursday morning, Jim Buckmaster, CEO of Craigslist (pictured above), said that GAO mischaracterized his site by calling it "a global marketplace with international reach." He said it was a collection of separate, local marketplaces and that sales involving shipping are rare and strongly discouraged.  He said that Craigslist nonetheless does not accept misuse of its site and is eager to solve this problem.

"Contrary to what the GAO report implies, Craigslist has more people actively engaged in its anti-fraud efforts than any Web site on earth," said Buckmaster. "In addition to our in-house anti-fraud team numbering a dozen or more staff members, and the automated blocking and screening routines we have developed, Craigslist benefits from tens of millions of passionate users diligently reviewing every ad on the site, with each user having the power to delete inappropriate ads, which power they exercise to the tune of several million ads removed each month."

The latter of course is misleading.  Makes it sound as though readers have absolute power to delete inappropriate ads (which would mean over 90% of the personal ads) and from my experiment THAT IS JUST NOT THE CASE!

 Jim Buckmaster ^wiki 

Craig Newmark ^wiki
Founder and Customer Service Rep

According to Financial Times

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a2e99572-64b5-11dc-90ea-0000779fd2ac.html?nclick_check=1

Jim Buckmaster. CEO 

spends his existing salary renting a nice house in San Francisco with his partner, who also works for Craigslist. He doesn't own a car, but he does admit to enjoying travelling. On a whim I ask how much his jeans cost.

"I buy much more expensive jeans than I used to. These were one-two-five bucks," he says.

Considering all the recent discussion on this blog about Craigslist and the hypothesis that it is a front for homosexual porn, it seems fitting that Mr. Buckmaster be gay. Now it's becoming more clearer why they don't invest in following the policy to flag certain ads.  

I should not jump to conclusions though, but give them the opportunity to explain,  Will keep you posted.  

A mild "pic" from a real ad. 

Hypothesis:  Craigeslist is a front for gay pornography and illicit gay sex.
 
Craigslist provides free and nearly instantaneous self-publishing for tens of 
millions of user postings each month, subject only to our Terms of Use and 
other posted guidelines.
 
When parties post on Craigslist they agree under code # 7. CONDUCT,          
In its Terms of Use (TOU) not to post, email, or otherwise make available 
Content:
 
b) that is pornographic or depicts a human being engaged in actual 
sexual conduct including but not limited to (i) sexual intercourse, including 
genital-genital,  oral-genital, anal-genital, or oral-anal, whether between 
persons of the same or opposite sex, or (ii) bestiality, or (iii) masturbation, 
or (iv) sadistic or masochistic abuse, or (v) lascivious exhibition of the 
genitals or pubic area of any person. 
 
Almost all ads with pictures from men seeking men violate above. 
Most could be classified as pornographic. Some even showed acts of 
unprotected anal sex.  I could not locate any that matched these in
 the other categories.
 
Craigslist, does not monitor all posts, but it does provide its viewers 
an option to “flag” posts which violate its rules. (“By using the flagging 
feature located at the upper right corner of each post, you can take 
action if you feel a posting is inappropriate.”)  When an ad is flag the
 content is removed and the post is labeled “flagged” and the poster 
receives an email explaining that his ad was flagged. That way he has a 
chance to rebuttal if he feels it was flagged erroneously. (1-2% of ads 
removed through flagging are within the terms of use.)
 
Please report any violations of the TOU, by flagging the 
posting(s) for review, or by emailing to: 
 
abuse@craigslist.org
 
As an experiment I used the flag option to request removal of all men 
seeking men ads that violated its terms of use in Columbus, OH and 
other communities. I later rechecked to see if they were indeed flagged 
(posts therefore removed). When I followed up, NONE of these were 
removed.  This was a consistent pattern. 
 
I am now in the process of emailing CL to see why they have failed to 
follow its own terms of use.  I will keep you posted.
 
So why am I going through these extremes:
 
1.  Kids have very easy access to CL, and if it's a porno site then let it be known
     and let parents keep their kids off it.
2.  If it's a porno site then it must be held accountable like those sites.
3.  If CL wants to be of porno status and not follow its own terms, Christians 
     and people of moral value need to be aware and not support it any longer. 
    .
   
 
 

In September 2006, a woman plead guilty in federal court to running an underage prostitution ring through Craigslist. In October 2007, a young woman was found murdered after replying to a Craigslist ad about a babysitting job http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/10/31/national/main3435416.shtml?source=mostpop_story .  Recently, I posted an article where Craigslist was used to solicit an ad for “Zombie Sex”.

Craigslist is in the news again:

Hit man allegedly sought in Craigslist ad

http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9859100-7.html

I've been doing a review of CL in my own town (Columbus, OH) and nearby major cities (Cincinnati, Cleveland, Pittsburg, and Chicago).  I will keep you posted)                                                                                        

 

Below was posted on Ace of Spades Blog recently http://ace.mu.nu/archives/252522.php#252522 (I was not too shocked at this considering it came out of San Fran., however, I've been doing a review of CL in my own town (Columbus, OH) and nearby major cities (Cincinnati, Cleveland, Pittsburg, and Chicago).  I will keep you posted)

 

 

Www.Ace.mu.nu

 

Craigslist: San Francisco Transsexual Seeks Woman For Public "Hot Zombie Sex"

At least I assume "t4w" means transsexual looking for women.

S/he is willing to consider males, too, but you have to be good at zombie make-up and be attractive as a zombie.

Thanks to dri.