I went to Craigslist in my local area for the first time in awhile. I used to like “best of” Craigslist because some of them were great, there still are some, but its just not the same. A community I used to visit had about half the number of posts as I remember, and of jobs and things for sale, I would say roughly half the posts are just bottom feeding companies autoposting one post a day.
Is Craigslist going to be another web 1.0 app that just dies off? Is it the same in your area?
Craig himself is long since retired from doing stuff and they never seemed to be interested in working with other apps because most of them just scrape and don’t add value to CL, but the Fediverse can, if there was a filter for the spam. What do you think?
#craigslist #fediverse #federation
At least as far as apartment listings in California go, in my experience most of them are scams and phishing schemes. So yeah, 5-10 years ago most were legit postings, now it’s flipped.
Where are real listings found, instead?
Good question, I wish I knew. The closest I’ve found is sometimes Zillow, but it’s pretty different, not really comparable.
I’m not on Facebook, but from what I hear they’ve got the monopoly on this kind of thing now.
My pet peeve with Facebook listings, although it happens on craigslist too, is people advertising as if it’s a rental for an apartment to yourself but then it turns out it’s a share housing situation
Yeah there are a ton of these on Craigs List lately too. It’ll be a whole listing that appears to be a standalone separate unit, but it turns out to be shared. Sometimes there will be hints like “private entrance” or something, but it’s still pretty deceptive.
On CL there’s a dedicated place to seek roommates and no shortage of people seeking that arrangement. Not clear why people spam the apartment rental section
I still like it. But it does have two problems:
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Post spam. There is no enforcement of the posting rules, and nobody reacts if they are reported. For example, I’m looking for a Volvo, and people post a Dodge but put every car manufacturer name in the listing so they show up in every search.
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Scam fucking overload. Every time I post anything for sale, the scam traffic is overwhelming. I listed a car and got like 12 similar scam responses. Most appeared to be chat bots with no human behind it. Some surprised me by responding to my sarcastic replies.
But I still look there. The site works for the most part, especially if you use the search modifiers. And selling stuff works too. Sometimes you get murdered, but it’s rare.
Sometimes you get murdered, but it’s rare.
Yeah, I hate when that happens to me, its so inconvenient
I don’t believe you, because you can only get murdered once, and after that you wouldn’t be able to post comments on the internet.
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Facebool marketplace did a number on Craigslist. Also you need to pay five dollars to post a car ad now which sucks.
Fighting off bots and scrapers has become a huge problem for every site on the internet.
It’s not surprising that a site that has kept a web 1.0 ethos and style hasn’t updated the back-end to more appropriately deal with these types of attacks.
Further, craigslist functioned on not needing a ton of moderators for the whole shebang. Keeping it simple allowed costs to be low.
The bot armies have changed that calculus, now you need a ton of well-paid moderators to make it functional, and I would suspect a site like Craigslist simply doesn’t pull enough income to be able to justify those sort of costs.
So instead, it will wither and rot on the vine.
I posted several large wood working machines for sale there in the past year and every one was bought within 24 hours.
Oddly enough I’ve had the most success selling things on craigslist in the past few years. When I list things on OfferUp I get some messages but everyone is super flaky. People are still flaky on craigslist but I almost always end up closing the sale there instead of OfferUp
Nah I like to go through Craigslist. I live in the Orange County area and lots of people use it.
I saw the same when I lived in OC. It’s pretty lively up here in Seattle too.
Marketplace killed it. Thanks zucc
I was going to post something to CL a month or two ago, but was shunned away by new & intrusive PII collection… seemed offensive and discordant with the original spirit of CL, and I ended up “nope’n out” instead. RIP another internet era/icon.
Everyone here uses Kijiji or Facebook Markeplace. Craigslist isn’t on anyone’s radar because it has a reputation for being sketchy.
Facebook marketplace is killing it for classifieds
But how? It fuckin sucks!
Because the Zuck was like
right, so we’ve got this huge captive audience. If we copy Craigslist and add like 1% more functionality, we can steal that whole market, and also have a decent shot at taking a bunch of the eBay (et al) market share too
Critical mass
To put a finer point on it… Everyone is using FB marketplace, including old ladies, rednecks, and the local illegals who barely speak english.
I hate FB, but I use it to buy, repair, and flip cars cuz it’s the only place that has a broad view into things. Just as many scams as CL, but the UI is a little better.
And I hate every one of you for jacking used car prices way the hell up for everyone so you can play half legal car dealer, while also making it hard as hell to even find a used car from a real owner of a vehicle instead of guys like you who owned it for a week and adding $2k to the price.
Last one I tried buying a guy listed it on a Sunday night. Like 7pm. I arranged to meet him Monday morning. But guess what? Guy showed up 7:45 pm with cash and bought it. Then re-listed it out of my price range.
Just as many scams as CL, but the UI is a little better.
What a remarkable statement. Meta UI being better than bog standard Web 1.0. huh.
I happen to prefer bog standard
Why you gotta be so critical about that mass? So negative.
I wish this wasn’t the case. There’s no way I’ll ever create a FB account even for classifieds alone.
Same here. It upsets me. I hate the meta brand so much.
Can I still find chicks who want to trade sex for rent?
No, because FOSTA.
Not where I’m at. Less young people have Facebook so will use other services like Craigslist. Yard sales are also popular.
Really? I thought facebook martketplace was the big one.
Young people don’t use Facebook because it’s full of old people just like what happened to MySpace and young people moving to Facebook because it was… full of old people.
TikTok went from being a Gen Z hangout to being filled with millennials who wanted to stay hip and young, and now young people are bailing on TikTok, too.
It always goes: Youth find cool space. Older youth want to stay hip and young and so populate youth space. Older youth quickly age up, soon making it a non-youth space. Younger youth leave to find a new cool space for youth. Some kind of Samsara.
i think millenials are one of the main demographics along with genz since the beginning no?
Yeah maybe, but we’re 40 now.
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It would be nice to have a decentralized or federated buy/sell platform that replaces craigslist. Facebook marketplace has absolutely eaten craigslist for lunch, and I hate that I have to use it to sell stuff, but there are few viable alternatives for local sales.
eBay is great until you want to sell a $300 iPhone and don’t want to mess with buyer return fraud which is rampant on that platform (and most custodial payment services like PayPal). I don’t sell anything on eBay for over >$100, got burned too many times.
Like others here, facebook took over the market …market in my area as well.
However, I think we can all agree Craigslist really died the second they removed the casual encounters section.
You mean the “totally not prostitution, for real you guys, I mean it, don’t arrest me” section? Because that’s why all the hookup and dating sections vanished. It was even in the news at the time.
The one time I went on that site for that reason was in the early 2010s, pre-tinder. The other person was real, but substantially less female than advertised. At least they were polite when I told them I wasn’t interested?
At what point did you get the reveal? Did you have to meet in person first?
We meet in person, thankfully in a very public place.
Oh wow! That’s rough. Least you got a good story out of it!
