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  • Geebo 9:00 am on March 9, 2021 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , personal ads, ,   

    Why is Craigslist failing? 

    Why is Craigslist failing?

    By Greg Collier

    Since Craigslist is a privately owned company, they do not have to disclose their finances. However, the AIM Group recently asserted that Craigslist has lost close to 50% of their revenue in just two years. The AIM Group is a sort of watchdog organization that keeps tabs on the online marketplace space. They once famously referred to Craigslist as a cesspool of crime.

    Using what the AIM Group calls their proprietary methodology, Craigslist’s revenue dropped from $1 billion in 2018 to $565 million in 2020. Again, that’s an almost 50% drop in just two years. Part of the drop can absolutely be attributed to the COVID-19 pandemic, but the decline started long before lockdown. Part of the drop can also be attributed to the number of competitors that have recently started occupying the marketplace space. Other niche sites like Airbnb have also taken a chunk out of Craigslist’s userbase. However, we think it’s because of poor business decisions Craigslist has been making for the past 20 years.

    For a large majority of Craigslist’s history, it was long rumored that they received the majority of their traffic from their erotic services section. Due to mounting legal pressure over human trafficking concerns, erotic/adult services was shuttered in 2010. Craigslist’s revenues took a slight dip in 2011 but continued to climb until 2018. So, what happened in 2018 to cause such a downward spiral? That’s when Craigslist shuttered their personals section over fears of the anti-sex trafficking laws FOSTA/SESTA. After Craigslist closed their erotic services section, traffickers would instead just post their ads selling women and girls to the personals section. By closing the personals after FOSTA/SESTA was signed into law, Craigslist virtually admitted that their platform had a sex trafficking problem.

    Craigslist’s problem is that in their 26 years, they’ve refused to moderate any section of their site to keep out criminals and scammers. Craigslist only seems to moderate content on their platform when threatened with legal action. Except moderation costs money and Craigslist has a reputation of maximizing profits above all else, even at the expense of the safety of their userbase. Geebo.com and several other platforms moderate their content and still manage to be profitable. The only security measures Craigslist has is a list of safety tips and unless they change their tune, they will continue to decline.

     

  • Geebo 10:01 am on May 2, 2018 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , personal ads   

    Amid scandals Facebook to offer dating service 

    Amid scandals Facebook to offer dating service

    After dealing with foreign meddlers, privacy breaches, data leaks and congressional hearings, Facebook is introducing a new feature that will undoubtedly allay the fears of Facebook users. During Facebook’s annual developer conference, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that Facebook will soon have its own dating feature which I’m sure will not be abused in any way. That’s sarcasm in case anyone was wondering.

    Of course, the most foremost concern in privacy. On that front, Facebook does not have the best reputation. Another concern is engagement as Facebook continues to try to keep users inside their walled garden by trying to be all things to all people. This is just another way for Facebook to keep its hooks in its users by incorporating yet another service into its platform. Facebook is desperately trying to be your only internet experience where no other site and apps are needed.

    My greatest fear, however, is that the proposed dating service will become the new online haven for human trafficking, taking over the void left by the seizure of Backpage. After craigslist got rid of their adult services section, the ads for prostitution moved to the personals section. The same thing happened with Backpage when they claimed that they shut down their adult section due to ‘censorship’. Before FOSTA was even passed, craigslist took it upon themselves to remove their personals due to the fear they might run into legal trouble with adult ads still littering their personals. Now that the social network with billions of users is planning its own dating feature, one can’t help but think that history may be repeating itself.

     

  • Geebo 9:06 am on March 27, 2018 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Andrew Turley, , , personal ads   

    Why you shouldn’t mourn the craigslist personals 

    Why you shouldn't mourn the craigslist personals

    As we posted last week, craigslist shuttered its personals section in anticipation of FOSTA being signed into law. Many in tech circles are lamenting the loss of craigslist personals as if it was some place where wholesome couples would meet so they could attend church and ice cream socials together. What they’re conveniently forgetting is that the personals section of craigslist had a much more sinister undercurrent that not much of the public was aware of.

    For example, recently, 30-year-old Andrew Turley was sentenced to 60 years behind bars for trying to sell his 4-year-old daughter for the purposes of sex on craigslist. According to investigators, Turley would drug his daughter to make her compliant. After police responded to his craigslist ad they found his daughter in a ‘groggy state’ and appeared to be under the influence of some type of drug.

    Sadly, this is not just a one-off occurrence as the Craigslist personals have a long history of this type of activity. This wasn’t even the youngest victim to ever be sold through craigslist as an Idaho man tried selling a 3-year-old girl through craigslist. In either case, none of the ads were flagged by craigslist’s community policing. For those of you who try to say that this will drive the predators underground, that’s the whole point. Without such a platform like craigslist, predators will have one less highly trafficked platform to find their victims and reprehensible parents won’t have the marketplace to sell their kids.

     

  • Geebo 8:59 am on March 23, 2018 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , personal ads   

    Craigslist pulls personal ads ahead of FOSTA signing 

    Craigslist pulls personal ads ahead of FOSTA signing

    Before the Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA) could even be signed into law, craigslist has taken it upon themselves to remove the personal ads section from their website. Anyone clicking on any of the personal ad links on craigslist are met with the above message. As is usually the case with craigslist, they’re playing the victim over something they should have done years ago.

    To hear craigslist tell it, they sound like FOSTA is about to kill all romance on the internet. What craigslist isn’t telling you is that their personal ads, like most sections of their site, have long been the home of criminal activity. When craigslist shut down its erotic services section after public pressure, whatever human trafficking ads didn’t move to Backpage moved to craigslist’s personals section. That’s not even taking into account that craigslist’s casual encounters section was often used by child predators looking for their next victim. So while craigslist is acting like some kind of martyr, let it never be forgotten that their personals section has mostly been a cesspool of crime.

    Eight years ago, Geebo decided to remove personal ads from its site. Not because of any public pressure or impending legislation, but because it was the right thing to do. Craigslist has only itself to blame since they failed to monitor their own site for decades.

     

    • Chad Frey 1:38 pm on March 23, 2018 Permalink

      Good , Something they should of done years ago. I never met anyone off of personals on craigslist. The only question is this what took them so damn long?

  • Greg Collier 9:05 am on March 19, 2013 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , journalist, Kamala Harris, personal ads,   

    Raising Awareness to Aid the Fight against Human Trafficking 

    A friend of mine, knowing that I closely follow news about human trafficking, introduced me to a new resource – a sharp journalist out of San Diego who is doing more than just following criminal cases that involve human trafficking.

    This reporter, a woman named Elizabeth Aguilera, is also looking at the trends around labor and sex trafficking – putting names and faces on the victims and, more importantly, illustrating how this isn’t just a crime that victimizes immigrants. Human trafficking is impacting kids right in our own neighborhoods, the kids we’ve seen grow from toddlers to teens before our very eyes.

    Earlier this month, Aguilera published a piece in the San Diego Union Tribune that raised awareness around a trend that, sadly, isn’t new. The headline of that story speaks volumes: “U.S. sex trafficking victims are mostly American kids.” The headline is based on the revelation in a report released by California Attorney General Kamala Harris last year that 72 percent of human trafficking victims are Americans, not foreigners. More importantly, it was also revealed that victims are now younger – typically ages 12-14, officials said.

    Statistics can be funny things. People like to twist facts and stats to meet the definitions of the point they’re trying to make at any given time. As a journalist, it would have been easy for someone like Aguilera to post the stats, find some official to talk about them and then write a simple story that might easily be overlooked.

    But Aguilera instead focused the beginning of her story around a typical teenager who found a job as a bookkeeper for a small, home-based business and instead found herself forced into a months-long ordeal of beatings and sexual slavery. Her employer – a pimp who set a $1,200 daily prostitution quota for the 17-year-old girl – is now serving 30 years in prison.

    As the owner of a classified ads business, I understand that people are being victimized through the Internet. I understand that predators use classified ads to find their victims and evade authorities. As such, I refuse to give these predators a place to lure victims into worlds of slavery. Geebo does not host personals ads where many of these encounters originate. Sadly, some of my counterparts in the industry still turn a blind-eye about the ads that are running on their sites, so long as the ads generate revenue.

    In the end, it all comes down to awareness – making our young children aware of the dangers on the Internet, making our law enforcement officials aware of the way predators use the Internet and, most importantly, making the public aware that these sorts of things are happening – not just in third-world countries, but in our own neighborhoods with our own kids.

    Trafficking cases are up across the nation – that’s the bad news. The good news is that, through education and awareness, this trend can be reversed. It must be reversed. I applaud journalists like Aguilera who work on the front lines every day to make sure that we, the people, are aware.

     

    • Marc DuMoulin 12:01 pm on March 22, 2013 Permalink

      You can also go to the International Justice Mission (IJM.org) and see the work they are doing in this field.

    • Allison Parks 11:18 pm on March 22, 2013 Permalink

      I wish they would finish the research on how the pornography industry goes hand in hand with trafficking these days, girls and women are being heavily trafficked in the porn business these days….they lure them with modeling jobs under false pretenses, isolate them and encourage drug use to keep them compliant.

    • Laurence Hudson 10:58 am on March 25, 2013 Permalink

      Profits of crime, terrorist financing, money laundering seem to be the big three in terms of building statistics, interpolating information from dozens of sources, and making arrrests. How is it that human trafficking does not have the same investigatory systems in place?

    • Derri Smith 8:14 pm on March 29, 2013 Permalink

      Good for Geebo! Great to hear that you do not carry personals.

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