[HN Gopher] Why Craigslist still looks the same after 25 years
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Why Craigslist still looks the same after 25 years
Author : simonebrunozzi
Score : 249 points
Date : 2022-09-16 06:29 UTC (16 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.pcmag.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.pcmag.com)
| JJMcJ wrote:
| Another site that has changed little is the Drudge Report.
|
| I don't agree with the somewhat right-wing political bias of the
| site, but it's clear and easy to use.
| MatthewORyan wrote:
| There is little if anything that is still "right-wing" about
| Drudge today. If you doubt me, load it a few times every week
| and see what is featured. It's not the Drudge of 5 or 10 or 15
| years ago.
| zasdffaa wrote:
| I (here in the UK) did have occasional luck meeting others for
| sex in the 'personals' section. Until that was shut down.
|
| Thanks, American prudes!
| hedora wrote:
| People used to complain that Craigslist's accessibility support
| was abysmal. Has that changed?
|
| I like the aesthetic of the site, and see no reason why it would
| cause havoc with screen readers. However it was a common
| complaint in the past.
| danjoredd wrote:
| Simple answer: its enough.
|
| Long answer: Its good enough
| AlbertCory wrote:
| I still use CL, after I try NextDoor (and less often, eBay).
|
| Many of the scammers are pretty easy to spot: they say "my agent
| will pick it up and give you a cashier's check (or money order)."
| I think CL could easily make it harder for the scammers, with
| minimal effort.
|
| For the ghosting buyers: this isn't just limited to CL. On the
| last item, I was _giving_ something away on NextDoor, and still
| had around 8 ghosts. What I finally resorted to was asking for
| the exact time they were coming, and making it clear that I was
| not holding it for them if they didn 't show up.
|
| If there were several on the same day, I'd tell the later ones
| that someone was (supposedly) coming before them, and it might be
| gone so they should double check before coming.
| paxys wrote:
| I have no problem with Craigslist's interface, but the site is
| pretty much Scamlist at this point.
|
| I often simultaneously list stuff on Craigslist, FB Marketplace
| and Nextdoor. The latter two have a near perfect success rate.
| Craiglist replies are all the most obvious scams in the world.
|
| This is becoming more and more the case for apartments as well.
| The majority of listings in my area are scams with pictures
| stolen from Redfin or elsewhere. Reporting will remove them but
| five more will show up the next day. Zillow Rentals, Strerteasy,
| Hotpads are a lot more reputable.
|
| Craigslist needs to take all the money they have saved in design
| and put it towards anti spam and fraud detection tools.
| aresant wrote:
| An aged but still relevant article - "Increase your conversion
| rate by making your site ugly" is a good parallel read
| particularly with regard to accessibility
|
| https://www.conversionvoodoo.com/blog/2010/04/increase-your-...
| HWR_14 wrote:
| I feel like that article misses the biggest differentiator. "Be
| early enough that this looked reasonable at the time - win -
| rely on network effects to never need to upgrade your site."
| badwolf wrote:
| I feel like Nilay Patel and the designers at The Verge take
| this article as their mantra...
| tomtheelder wrote:
| I agree totally with the accessibility bit, but overall I think
| this article is based on a totally flawed premise. For starters
| most sites that gain traction look very good, and they are just
| citing the extremely small number of exceptions and acting like
| they represent some sort of trend. Second, almost all those
| sites gained traction in an era when their designs looked good
| or at least fine compared to their contemporaries and then
| lived off familiarity and network effects.
| malikNF wrote:
| Thank you for posting this gem. I really enjoyed it.
|
| For anyone wondering, there's a previous discussion on this
| article on HN[1]
|
| [1]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1338459
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| My problem with Craigslist isn't that it looks old, the problem
| is that they seemingly refuse to modernize anything else about
| the site. Craigslist is chock full of spam and people abusing the
| search feature. I'm no anti-spam guru, but surely there is a way
| to cut down on people submitting the same thumbnail dozens of
| times using as many keywords as they can so their cellphone
| screen repair service shows up when looking for just about
| anything.
|
| Craig is no saint, and actively goes after any competition to his
| site. That, coupled with the complacency or refusal to go after
| spammers leaves me with a very sour opinion of the platform and
| Craig himself.
| Solvitieg wrote:
| It's fair to point out that Youtube and Twitter have spam
| problems and apparently can't solve it either. I don't think
| it's trivial.
| sc00ty wrote:
| > and actively goes after any competition to his site
|
| What do you mean by this? Is he acquiring the competition or is
| there another way he's going after them?
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| https://archive.ph/YbZbA
|
| "Craigslist has sued or issued cease-and-desist letters to
| dozens of startups in recent years. A New York Times
| technology blog last year complained that the site "has dug
| an effective moat by cultivating an exaggerated image of
| 'doing good' that keeps its customers loyal, while behind the
| scenes, it bullies any rivals that come near and it stifles
| innovation."
|
| The article itself is a little old, but it still holds true.
| c4Km7V3D wrote:
| Re-read the article, the author does not give a primary
| source and cites a different article. The subjects of the
| lawsuits (from many years ago) seem to be sites that are
| scraping ads/listings on craigslist and mass populating
| their own site to make it seem as if they have users OR
| they are sites that are aggregating the information on
| craigslist and trying to pass themselves off as affiliated
| with craigslist by using their trademarks.
|
| If you've ever searched for an apartment or a car for sale
| you'll find that many of the new and popular sites are
| literally just posting ads scraped from craigslist.
| frankharv wrote:
| I love it and I despise the fact that they pulled down personal
| ads.
|
| It was like a virtual clipboard in the laundromat.
|
| Then the feds came and kicked in the doors.
| joegahona wrote:
| I thought they pulled their personal ads because people were
| getting murdered -- the Phillip Markoff interrogation is a
| must-listen for fans of that genre; it's a shame there's only
| audio available. According to this QZ article from 2018
| though, it was for human-trafficking reasons.
|
| > In March, Craigslist pulled its personals section in
| response to a sex-trafficking bill that holds platforms
| liable if they are found to be facilitating sex trafficking
| and prostitution. The reaction was not without merit: over
| the years, websites like Craigslist and Backpage had become
| online marketplaces for illegal sexual activity.
| https://qz.com/1310350/what-we-lost-when-craigslist-shut-
| dow...
| reaperducer wrote:
| _It was like a virtual clipboard in the laundromat._
|
| The corkboard is still there. If you start using it again,
| others will. Same way CL, FBM, and the others got traction.
| RunSet wrote:
| I'm on a mission to keep encounters casual.
|
| https://lokilist.com/about.php
|
| It's slow going but fortunately text is cheap to host so I
| can keep this up indefinitely.
|
| Edit: If you like it make a post. Even better share the link
| to the post. Network effect is real.
| CharlesW wrote:
| A recent experience trying to find something on Craigslist was
| shocking. As much as its UI is frozen in time, so are its anti-
| abuse measures.
|
| I have no doubt that lots of people are getting hurt using
| Craigslist. I would never recommend it to friends or family.
| defterGoose wrote:
| Can you provide a concrete example?
|
| IME any online platform is going to be a staircase into the
| bowels of human nature. It's all about being aware you need
| to protect yourself online. If you're encountering things
| like child porn or prostitution, or anything illegal really,
| it's your responsibility to at least report it.
| humanistbot wrote:
| Housing is terrible on CL. Bot farms take past listings
| from sites like Zillow and apartments.com, cut the rent to
| a deal that seems too good to be true, then when you are
| interested you get connected to a "missionary traveling
| abroad who just wants their place taken care of." They will
| even be happy to rent to someone who is not yet in the
| area, which is otherwise really hard and expensive to do.
| All they need is you to wire a deposit and they'll have a
| friend deliver the keys......
| iudqnolq wrote:
| An obvious example is zero-dollar listings with a different
| dollar amount in the title.
| CharlesW wrote:
| > _Can you provide a concrete example?_
|
| Sure. I spent a few weeks looking for an Xbox Series X, and
| I don't believe that I'm exaggerating when I say that 90%+
| of the listings were scams. For about half of those, the
| scammers just weren't very good, and automated or semi-
| automated checks should've flagged those listings before
| anyone saw them. The other half were various scams
| documented in thousands of articles by a cottage industry
| created in lieu of anti-abuse measures.
|
| > _IME any online platform is going to be a staircase into
| the bowels of human nature._
|
| Granted, but some bowels are cleaner than others.
| Craigslist clearly does not get enough fiber in its diet.
|
| > _If you 're encountering things like child porn or
| prostitution, or anything illegal really, it's your
| responsibility to at least report it._
|
| I did, of course, but I got tired of working for Craigslist
| for free after a while.
| amatecha wrote:
| Yeah, for a while I would flag any listing I felt
| violated the ToS. but I started to notice that THE SAME
| LISTING would come up shortly (if any action was taken on
| the initial listing to begin with). I'm not going to
| bother wasting my energy trying to flag listings when CL
| isn't doing their part to _learn_ and improve their
| detection of blatantly-obvious fraud or ToS violations. I
| mean I'm talking like blatant keyword spam (which is
| against ToS) that's even prefaced by "Keywords:", the
| same listing made in every possible nearby jurisdiction,
| stuff like that. It's so obvious and and easy to detect.
| The worst are car ads. You search for a really specific
| model, of a specific year, and somehow you get like 500+
| results. Because every car listing is just a wall of
| keyword spam, of completely unrelated makes/models. Cool.
| defterGoose wrote:
| Cars: just filter by only "cars and trucks" and "owner".
| Bingo bango.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| My experience with Craigslist has been that there are a
| lot of keyword-stuffed scam listings in search results,
| but they are generally sorted below more useful results,
| and generally easy to spot and ignore.
|
| It makes sense to me as a strategy for leveraging fuzzy
| automation. Sorting is less risky than hiding or
| deleting. If the system gets it wrong, there is a still
| an opportunity for motivated users to dig down and find
| incorrectly down-sorted items.
| gernb wrote:
| I would argue the biggest reason craigslist is doing well it it's
| free and semi anonymous (it forwards all emails though generated
| addresses)
|
| The UX has areas clearly neglected. For example in apartments
| there is a trashcan icon to hide a listing. But, it's inserted at
| the end of the description. If the description is long then the
| button does not appear.
|
| Another is the categories. In SF, SOMA and Mission Bay arguably
| need to be separated but craigslist only lists SOMA and groups
| Mission Bay in with it. That's one of several areas that need to
| be split
|
| I used it a ton over the last 6 months trying to find an
| apartment but in the end I found the apartment on apartments.com
| ... which is far from perfect but has some features arguably more
| suited to apartment hunting.
|
| That I think might be the point. Different products can benefit
| from unique features
| princevegeta89 wrote:
| Still works well for the little functionality it has. Having a
| great UX and UI is always a good thing but at the same time if it
| only means putting a lot of new cognitive load on the user I
| would rather not have it.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| Craigslist >> NextDoor >> OfferUp >> eBay >> FB
|
| But definitely YMMV depending on the city you're in.
|
| I'm glad it's stayed the way it is. Arguably the best marketplace
| website, period. Simple to post, simple to use, local pickup
| only. Not infested with ad/promoted listings.
| PaulBGD_ wrote:
| Agreed, although the sad thing is that eBay/FB have a large
| audience.. so if I fail to sell something elsewhere I'll
| usually have to switch to one of those two :(
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| I closed by FB account 10 years, not opening it up again even
| if it's to access their Marketplace. Was big on eBay back in
| the day when bidding was fun (before sniper bots took over),
| you could find good deals, and wasn't full of scams. Used it
| just this week probably for the first time in 10 years to
| find an obscure part that I needed replacing--still good for
| that.
| sojournerc wrote:
| Rock Auto is another such site. Looks old but is so much more
| effective than modern sites for finding the right car parts. If
| it ain't broke, don't fix it.
| brokenodo wrote:
| I love Rock Auto. The way they make it easy to see which
| warehouse your items are shipping from and choose other items
| from the same warehouse is super cool too.
| amatecha wrote:
| Just ordered something from them earlier this week. They got
| my repeat business because the last time I ordered something
| from them it was effortless (other than their kinda poor UI
| lol) and the item arrived super fast. I guess the shipping
| was a bit pricy, but that's fine. They had the part and got
| it to me promptly, and charged a fair price for it. Works for
| me!
| ugh123 wrote:
| CL wins on a lot of fronts but they need to do something about
| the spam and for-sale bloat submitted by stores.
| yboris wrote:
| Craigslist might work well in large metro area like SF, but when
| your state is carved up into numerous non-overlapping regions and
| you're 60 minutes away from the center of either one to your side
| - it's just a sad roulette to see if you have to drive an hour to
| pick something up. With a simple distance-from-zipcode search
| implementation Craigslist could still be useful.
|
| Sadly I'm stuck with Facebook Marketplace for now (which has been
| amazing for distance searches).
| s0rce wrote:
| Its also annoying when its the opposite, if I want to search
| for a car in California, I just stick myself centrally in
| Frenso and click all the adjacent areas since you can get SF,
| Sac, LA, Vegas.
| mindprism wrote:
| Extreeeeeemely careful regression testing.
| JohnFen wrote:
| I'm glad Cragislist hasn't changed. It's pretty much ideal as it
| is.
| creeble wrote:
| It's odd that this article came out only a few months after CL
| did a semi-significant change in the way they display listings --
| the "gallery view" now lays out the screen differently, and it's
| fairly broken on mobile, pushing the left menu in and out
| randomly as you scroll (iOS Firefox and Safari anyway).
|
| FWIW, I still use CL quite a lot in the SF Bay area. The cars
| listings are full of spam and scams, probably double what they
| were 5 or 6 years ago. This, despite the fact that they started
| charging for cars/trucks listings.
| system16 wrote:
| I don't particularly like Craigslist's UI, but I still prefer it
| to other online marketplaces because it's fast and simple. I do
| find it cluttered and not very nice to navigate, but I'll gladly
| take a bit of clutter and clunkiness over MBs of hideous banner
| ads shoved in my face, and god-knows what trackers and scripts
| are being used on the other sites.
|
| Similarly, I still use old.reddit and will continue to do so
| until they force that new monstrosity on me.
| defterGoose wrote:
| See, I completely equate "clutter" with things like banner ads.
| CL is amongst the least "cluttered" sites I use.
|
| It absolutely doesn't live up to the latest trends in UI/UX
| design, but the fact that it feels more like basic HTML forms
| with little styling is a feature, not a bug.
| tomtheelder wrote:
| > It absolutely doesn't live up to the latest trends in UI/UX
| design
|
| I'd have to disagree pretty strongly here. It is- excluding
| the homepage- a paragon of modern UX design, and I think many
| other sites have taken a lot of inspiration. Search oriented,
| minimalist design elements that stay out of the way of the
| user, key filters to narrow search, saved searches, alerts,
| etc. It's even almost entirely flat aesthetically! You could
| do a completely surface level reskin of Craigslist and it
| would appear, from a UX/UI perspective, to be a totally
| modern interface. I think people see the older visual
| aesthetic and assume that it's not in line with modern UX
| best practices, but it largely is! Again home page is
| excluded here. I think that's still the way it is for
| familiarity/nostalgia reasons, because they have made tons of
| changes to the main search UI but left the home page
| basically untouched.
|
| The trends that it doesn't keep up with are mostly
| technological rather than UX/UI.
| seydor wrote:
| I dont think craigslist has a nice look. It's just stuck because
| it was the first in the world. I don't mean he needs to make it
| look like another cookiecutter bootstrap rounded-edges website,
| but he can reorganize to make it be more functional
| onemoresoop wrote:
| Craigslist works fine, I'm okay with the older UI. Yes, there are
| scammers but there are scammers on FB marketplace as well. Now
| it's lost it's users to FB but it's possible it may see a
| resurgence after a bad move by FB or some trend change.
| layer8 wrote:
| > Because that serves people better. I've learned that people
| want stuff that is simple and fast and gets the job done. People
| don't need fancy stuff. Sometimes you just want to get through
| the day. [...] It's fast and easy for people, and that's a big
| deal. [...] For me as an engineer, simple is beautiful.
| Functional is beautiful.
| amatecha wrote:
| I still use CL frequently. I actually have a few search terms I
| literally search every day. I have got SO MANY amazing deals
| because of this. Yeah, you have to be patient, but stuff does
| come up. I have both bought and sold over CL and never once been
| scammed, but then again I do my due diligence and trust my gut.
| Anyway, one of the best things about it is that it has stayed the
| same and you know what to expect. No insane UI overhaul that
| makes it all "latest trend", no scummy user-exploitation dark
| patterns (that I've noticed), no animated video ads covering 1/3
| of the screen... Yeah, it has some flaws, but for me it's still
| the optimal "local buy/sell" service.
| [deleted]
| hammock wrote:
| No better outlet to write this story than "PC Magazine."
| scyzoryk_xyz wrote:
| When I lived in the US, at a certain point I realized literally
| every major aspect of my life in some way could be worked back to
| a craigslist ad - cars, places to live in and jobs.
|
| We don't have craigslist where I live in Europe, and I miss it.
| Instead it's an endless parade of for-profit services like olx.
|
| I tell people about craigslist and it's alien to them, this idea
| that something on the internet could be managed to be run by a
| dozen people and not be changed.
|
| It's not even the simplicity that is so appealing to me, but that
| you get this feeling that it is a totally neutral platform. Like
| air, you don't see it but it's there. And nobody is trying to put
| perfume in it.
| kazinator wrote:
| Craigslist superficially looks the same if you don't care about
| the removal of RSS.
| egberts1 wrote:
| And none of those ad-filled crapola too!
|
| Craigslist. Short and simple.
|
| Find all my spare parts to most anything there
| Ken_At_EM wrote:
| It's because it prints money. Is just a straight money printing
| machine. Of all the Golden Goose's, it's best to just leave it
| alone and let it do it's thing.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| Article says it has "10s" of employees. They are just
| maintaining the money printer.
| laundermaf wrote:
| Facebook prints money too but that didn't stop them from
| turning the clean perfect interface they had in 2010 into the
| steaming pile of eggs it is now.
| Ken_At_EM wrote:
| I mean, yeah, that was a huge mistake. They should have left
| it alone entirely, they would have had so much more money to
| build the Meta-verse with!
| wildzzz wrote:
| It's because Facebook has to constantly "innovate" to raise
| the share price. I'm sure Craigslist makes some decent income
| for it's owners and can pay it's bills every month but it's
| never going to explode in growth. They don't need new
| investors constantly because they don't do anything new.
| Their whole site is basically LAMP except for Perl instead of
| PHP. The latest part of their tech stack is a mail server
| that's 10 years old.
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| I think this is intentional. The more you scroll their ugly
| interface to find what you are looking for, the more ads you
| see.
| z9znz wrote:
| I gave up on CL years ago when the apartment rental lists for
| Amsteram became overrun with obvious scams. I would flag them,
| but it never seemed to matter.
|
| Then also because of the Backpage disaster they stopped all the
| person to person (dating or hookup) groups. It's a shame too,
| because I actually met some good people in the past on those
| groups.
|
| So on one hand, they over-moderated by eliminating whole segments
| of their site while apparently ignoring other segments which
| became rife with garbage ads or outright scams. And once the real
| audience finds wading through garbage to be too much effort, we
| leave and the site becomes irrelevant.
| ihsoj wrote:
| We need more sites like HN and Craigslist. primarily text based
| but fully functional. And most importantly no ads.
| jerrybender wrote:
| HN has ads
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| A: Because that serves people better. I've
| learned that people want stuff that is simple and fast and gets
| the job done. People don't need fancy stuff. Sometimes you just
| want to get through the day.
|
| That mindset is worth more than anything else Web 3.0 can throw-
| up. (pun intended)
| [deleted]
| bilsbie wrote:
| There's nothing wrong with how it looks. They just needed to fix
| the scams and let people set up alerts.
| alberth wrote:
| Why hasn't HN design changed in last 15 years ... because it
| works.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| Craigslist is proof that you do not need to occasionally "refresh
| the look and feel" of your website or app.
|
| I have a real chip on my shoulder for the occasional design team
| that seems intent on justifying their own existence and nothing
| more.
|
| I'd love to learn about big user studies that concluded with,
| "don't change a thing. It's good as is." Surely that case must be
| appropriate some % of the time. But I think when you've got a
| hammer you just see nails and work for you.
| bluedino wrote:
| Craigslist is basically dead in my area.
| inanutshellus wrote:
| I hate FB Marketplace.
|
| It's actively hostile to buyers.
|
| Like, try to find a "kinda nice" bicycle. You can't find the
| bicycle category (though it does exist as a sub-group of Sporting
| Goods), you can't just say "show me bikes" unless you hack the
| URL, you _can_ search for the word "bicycle" but for some reason
| people selling a "Specialized Rockhopper" think you know it's a
| bicycle so don't use that word.
|
| Oh, and when selling, they just suggest random categories instead
| of letting you choose from their heirarchy. So you get bicycles
| in Hobbies. You get them in Sporting Goods. You get them in
| Bicycles. But... You can't search for them by type.
|
| That's not even complaining about the lack of attributes, like
| "type=BMX" or "type=Mountain" or "Size=Large" or "Frame
| Material=Carbon Fiber"... all of which are in Craigslist and
| eBay.
|
| And! when searching, they actively work to inject ebay-like
| selling (non-local) into the mix by resetting my distance
| preferences every time I change the search. "Find bicycles" ->
| "Find bicycles in 30 miles" -> "Find 'Specialized Rockhopper'" ->
| Why am I getting "Ships To You" results?! Why am I getting non-
| bicycle results?! Oh. They reset my distance again.
|
| ^-- BTW they do this because they actually make money when the
| sale happens through FB. If you just buy it in-person with cash
| they don't get a cut. Misaligned incentives, as they say.
|
| And! even if I do find the bicycle category, if narrow the
| category by searching with a word in there, like "Rockhopper" it
| takes me out of the bicycle category to do the search!
|
| G. A. R. B. A. G. E.
| adolph wrote:
| Dammit Jim, I'm a cyclist, not an ontologist!
|
| [edit to correct snowclone]
| legitster wrote:
| It's been so frustrating to use FB Marketplace. It was
| surprisingly awesome for the first year. But they just couldn't
| help themselves.
| latchkey wrote:
| Is this still available?
| elcritch wrote:
| It surprises me how much companies fail at the basics of online
| shopping.. FB market is a garbage fire. They're more interested
| in selling ads than making a market place.
|
| For new stuff Amazon is huge and cluttered yet still manages to
| run circles around almost every other online store for similar
| reasons to what you listed. The only exception I've found is BH
| Photo and Video. But all the others like Walmart/Jet, Home
| Depot, Newegg (now) etc all just "don't get it".
|
| Craig's list really nails the simplicity and usefulness of
| online used markets. It still amazes me.
| 762236 wrote:
| Isn't Home Depot licensing Amazon's store logic? I don't
| remember why I have that impression, as I haven't been to
| Home Depot in ages, but for some reason it made me feel that
| Amazon was running their store.
| shabbatt wrote:
| Sellers too. Not to mention harassment/racism/phobia when the
| price isnt "right".
|
| Facebook usage seems to be correlated with reduced cognition,
| it invites the bottom rung of society
| alanwreath wrote:
| I used to blame eBay for the lack of updates to Craigslist - but
| it seems that Craigslist is now back in the hands of the original
| creator...so the reason is probably that he's got his and is
| doing something else while it runs on fumes.
| rosywoozlechan wrote:
| I rent a couple of properties out in the bay area and up until
| this year I've always relied on craigslist to get new tenants,
| but this year we tried out Zillow and we got tons of applicants,
| and the whole application process including vetting and setting
| up a lease and everything was done through Zillow. On the other
| hand someone noticed our Zillow listing and created a fraudulent
| listing of my property on Craigslist. I'm pretty much never going
| back to Craigslist. Apartments.com is also good for creating
| leases and managing properties, but Zillow seems to be the place
| to get high quality tenants.
| exhilaration wrote:
| Did Zillow charge for this service? You mentioned "vetting" -
| does that include background and credit checks?
| rosywoozlechan wrote:
| Yes, I think the prospective applicants pay for the
| background checks and then they are submitted for all the
| places they apply on Zillow. We can pay for them also. It
| includes a criminal check and a credit score check.
| jeffbee wrote:
| As far as I have been able to determine, literally 100% of the
| rental listings in Berkeley, CA on Craigslist are fake. They
| take MLS descriptions and photos of properties and repost those
| on CL as rentals with unrealistically low prices. The postings
| are identity theft scams. They want you to "apply" to rent
| these properties that don't exist.
|
| The real problem for me is that the elected officials and even
| sometimes professional staff of the city will point to
| Craigslist as inventory of low-priced housing, but it's totally
| fake so their impression is inaccurate.
| tomcam wrote:
| Thanks for sharing. I'm about to rent out a house so this helps
| a lot.
|
| One thing I don't get is why someone else would copy your
| listing? Do they somehow get a slice of the pie if a respondent
| rents?
| jstarfish wrote:
| > One thing I don't get is why someone else would copy your
| listing? Do they somehow get a slice of the pie if a
| respondent rents?
|
| Usually this is a scam. You advertise someone else's vacant
| property, break in to conduct tenant tours, collect
| fees/deposits/first month's rent, then bail.
| [deleted]
| tomcam wrote:
| Well that's just evil. I never gave that possibility a
| thought.
| jstarfish wrote:
| I tried to find a succinct name for this scheme but
| failed. I did find a blog where a retired attorney
| discusses this and some variations on it (and learned
| something new in the process: pulling this stunt on
| _multiple_ prospective tenants at the same time makes
| this a hell of a lot more lucrative):
|
| https://livingstingy.blogspot.com/2017/07/house-rental-
| scams...
| tomcam wrote:
| Excellent article, thank you. And you're right, this scam
| needs a name.
| O__________O wrote:
| Basically financial identity theft and fraud combined
| with breaking and entering -- there's no need to makeup
| new names for simple combinations of crimes.
|
| Long list for crimes people commit using Craigslist.
| Another similar one is for an attacker to post saying
| your moving of the country, out of town, already removed
| everything you're not taking, but asked neighbor to leave
| the door open and anything in house is free to take; then
| they simply know when you're away, pick the lock, leave
| the door open, and post the listing. Unknowing strangers
| rob you OR have a plausible explanation of why they are
| robbing you.
| jstarfish wrote:
| Interesting. Haven't seen that one, but it's reminiscent
| of the "revenge" personals where you solicit randos to
| randomly drop in on your [ex] to fulfill their supposed
| rape fantasy.
|
| > no need to makeup new names for simple combinations of
| crimes
|
| Fraud schemes are sophisticated and the better ones are
| not easily understood (by victims, investigators and
| jurors alike). It may be unnecessary/unconventional but I
| find it useful to reduce the complexity of schemes to a
| buzzword with a common meaning that anybody can reference
| without ambiguity. Gets it into the popular vernacular--
| everybody knows to be wary of "catfishing" without having
| to explain it.
|
| From the crimes they comprise to their implementation,
| it's function definitions all the way down: a concise,
| reusable reference that avoids repeat articulation of a
| more-complex set of behaviors :)
| code_duck wrote:
| Most of the similar scams I've seen don't involve entering
| and showing the property, or being even anywhere near it. A
| common style is to post a duplicated listing on Craigslist
| (it may be a house currently on the market, but often is an
| inactive listing on Zillow - they just need an address and
| matching photos) with a story written in a style that would
| be familiar to scam aficionados. The owner is a god-fearing
| good person who just wants their house to be safe while
| they are overseas on missionary work or in the military,
| and they're willing to rent it to the right people for a
| generous below market rate. Kindly do this-or-that, god
| bless you, etc. They request a sum of money, making it
| enticing by naming a rate 3/4 of what would be going rent
| for the property, and say they'll mail the key.
| nostromo wrote:
| It's also common for them to say that this apartment has
| "just been rented," and then show them a completely
| different apartment for their clients. Usually these
| apartments are both worse and more expensive.
| tbihl wrote:
| I don't think we ever had break ins, but in our small house
| near the beach in San Diego, my wife and I regularly had to
| break it to people that they were not moving in next
| morning/weekend/week/month, and that they had been scammed.
| Don't know how much they were paying in.
| orsenthil wrote:
| I had a need for AC repair, and 3 CL service men let me down.
| Nextdoor of all places seem to have landed me with right service
| man in my locality.
| aeharding wrote:
| Craigslist has an awesome UI. But I really wish they'd switch out
| their clunky JS-based gallery component for pure CSS scroll
| snapping!
| anarticle wrote:
| I would say because it is a tool, and tools should stay
| relatively the same. It's ok to make a new tool!
|
| I have this discussion with people who make physical objects all
| the time, and their frustrations with the software world. Imagine
| learning to use a Heidelberg offset press 20y ago, and if you
| enter your workshop, it performs the same as before. Now imagine
| you are a painter who uses photoshop elements once in awhile. For
| some reason, your printer is printing all your pictures with a
| red tinge. You buy a new version of photoshop elements, and the
| problem is gone. The moving targets of saas and other remote
| updated software changes the perspective on tools, especially for
| production purposes. Many people who produce physical objects
| with software run into these problems. I fix up motorcycles in my
| spare time, and I dread the day my torque wrench needs an update!
| hedora wrote:
| My aging German automobile's radio failed to display an o that
| a cloud service sent it yesterday. I really wonder how that
| regression slipped through. It has been able to display German
| in the past, along with all sorts of other unicode characters.
|
| The only thing I can figure is the band that named the song is
| Mongolian, so maybe they used a U-1803 (Mongolian full stop . )
| as a modifier on the o?
|
| But then why did my phone display it correctly?
| ravenstine wrote:
| People use (or at least _used_ ) Craigslist because they like it
| when websites and apps actually work. I never encountered bugs or
| bizarre UI problems when using Craigslist. It turns out the only
| people who care about flashy animations, fancy drop shadows,
| "native" looking UI elements, Material/Human design principles,
| etc., are developers and designers. Normal people only care about
| those things when functionality is solved first. If it functions
| like crap, but it _looks_ good, you 're just putting lipstick on
| a pig, and lipstick might not have even been called for in the
| first place.
| ddejohn wrote:
| Not disagreeing at all. I get irrationally angry when a website
| shits the bed because of flashy UI BS.
|
| One thing I will say is that I personally appreciate "modern"
| UIs (when they work) because I have ADHD and the visual clutter
| of "old fashioned" websites is a serious problem for me. I have
| old reddit set to 200% magnification just to keep the amount of
| content on the screen to a minimum, and to minimize the width
| of lines of text.
|
| Again though, I do still prefer snappy and functional over
| 'elegant' and sluggish, even if it's more difficult for me to
| focus.
| ravenstine wrote:
| I also have ADHD and have an adoration for old-style website
| design. Not necessarily the 2008 - 2013 era (which I like to
| call the 1970's of the web), but websites before that which
| were more cluttered and unrefined.
|
| Websites from the old days surface far more relevant
| information on the first fold than do contemporary sites,
| which I believe have gone overboard with Swiss Style design
| inspiration such that they think empty space is always
| preferable. The fact that many websites today use extremely
| large fonts in order to pass accessibility tests also doesn't
| help, but this is partly subjective because I personally hate
| reading text greater than 16px.
|
| Maybe I would think differently if I did lots of heavy
| reading, but that's hard to do these days because most prose
| on the internet is filler and total rubbish. If I want to
| just find something, a website being designed like a magazine
| cover really doesn't help.
|
| Allow me to illustrate my perspective.
|
| This website, which has been online since 1994, would today
| be considered one of the most poorly designed sites of all
| time.
|
| http://amasci.com/
|
| Bask in the dark repeating background, the neon colors, and
| the quirky use of font size.
|
| And yet, unlike 95% of sites online today, it loads
| instantly, and is organized such that I can find what I might
| be looking for without distraction. The author provides a
| header guiding new users to categories, and underneath is a
| list of links to pages the author thinks I might be
| interested in. And that's it. No Fontawesome, no TypeKit, no
| box shadows, no hover animations, no hover dropdowns, no
| sticky headers, no scroll jacking, no transparencies, no
| accordions, no hamburger menus, no bullshit.
|
| A "modern" website would make the first fold into a glorified
| billboard, hide anything interesting in horizontal navigation
| of categories that have to be expanded out, use 19px font for
| prose because The Google, a masonry type layout because CSS
| grid bro, a sticky header that annoyingly animates in/out,
| and one to three popup modals asking me to give them my
| email.
| sigmonsays wrote:
| in light of "Updating the UI to be modern just because", my 4yr
| old says "because" is not a reason. Even she knows, yet so many
| choose to have a modern look for no gain (likely the opposite).
|
| I'm happy he left the UI the same
| moolcool wrote:
| Craigslist is one of my favorite tech companies. They have a
| fantastic product which they don't sabotage in the interest of
| growth. Huge respect to them for quietly being the best.
| LegitShady wrote:
| I don't think craigslist is a tech company.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| I feel like there is a risk of sabotage through complacency and
| a refusal to adapt to competition. People looking for rentals
| and homes to buy don't go to craigslist first, they do to sites
| like Zillow and Redfin. As I've mentioned in a different
| response, the spam and junk listings are a persistent problem
| and none of the spam seems particularly sophisticated or hard
| to stop - most are literally the same image and content with a
| ton of tags posted under different categories.
| JohnFen wrote:
| To be honest, I've never even thought about going to
| Craigslist for rentals in the decades I've been using it.
|
| But I use it a lot for other things.
| scelerat wrote:
| Craigslist to me, beyond something I still use regularly to hunt
| for musical instruments, electronics, bikes, furniture, garage
| sales, etc, is an enduring shibboleth when it comes to "design."
|
| When someone says "Craigslist design sucks," I can probably guess
| how that person thinks about design and what it means to them.
|
| IMO Craigslist has survived as long as it has, in spite of no
| promotion, no advertising, no partner deals, no api integrations,
| yadda yadda, precisely because it is designed very well for its
| purpose and its users. I would never claim that CL is the most
| _aesthetically pleasing_ site to look at, but when it comes to
| posting, searching and browsing classified ads (and even
| participating in its message boards), it does the job quite well
| and with minimum hassle.
|
| For the first three weeks after I moved to San Francisco, more
| than sixteen years ago, I couch surfed at my boss's place on
| Stanyan street in Cole Valley. At the time, Craig also lived
| nearby. My boss and he were friends and would frequently meet at
| a coffee shop, and I would often join them. When I was first
| introduced to Craig, I quipped that I had recently moved, and did
| he know a good place to search for apartments? He gave me a
| gentle smirk and a merely mildly condescending roll of the eyes.
| Very pleasant, intelligent, and unassuming person.
| jlukic wrote:
| Nice vignette, thanks for sharing this.
| JohnFen wrote:
| Agreed.
|
| > I would never claim that CL is the most aesthetically
| pleasing site to look at
|
| Which, I think, is a good thing. Experience has taught me that
| if a web site obviously put a lot of effort into being
| aesthetically appealing, it's probably not a great website.
| wly_cdgr wrote:
| Cos it ain't broke and the people running it are a very rare
| breed who know better than to fix it. Same with McMaster Carr
| website and a very few others
| DesiLurker wrote:
| I wish more sites maintained that sort of minimalism and stayed
| away from selling out as much as possible. Great job CL!
| jethro_tell wrote:
| Man, just 10 people working there, couldn't have done that with
| vc backed funding. Have to grow, then have to add people to
| grow, then have to add features to try to pay for the people.
|
| But man, if you think about every $25 car/apartment/job post,
| it's plenty of money for 10 people. Pretty insane.
| ghaff wrote:
| >plenty of money for 10 people
|
| I'm guessing a lot of people here wouldn't consider it plenty
| of money.
| xapata wrote:
| Craig Newmark has roughly $1B.
| ghaff wrote:
| I doubt if he's typical of people working at Craigslist.
| thfuran wrote:
| A billion split ten ways is still a decent chunk of
| pocket change. Clearly there's money in Craigslist,
| regardless of how it has been apportioned.
| adolph wrote:
| has != earns
|
| Makes me wonder: if people were offered a lump sum up
| front which represented their lifetime take-home pay +
| fringe for the job they will do for the rest of their
| life, what would people's number be?
|
| Or another way, a choice of a 10 year contract to do X
| worth 100k/annual take-home with 1m delivered at start,
| or an unchanging biweekly paycheck. Would the biweekly
| need to be higher to make it more attractive than the
| one-time payment or could it be lower yet still be the
| favored choice.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > if people were offered a lump sum up front which
| represented their lifetime take-home pay + fringe for the
| job they will do for the rest of their life, what would
| people's number be?
|
| You literally couldn't pay me enough to be locked into
| the same job for the rest of my life.
|
| I also wouldn't want to be locked into a 10 year
| contract.
| thfuran wrote:
| >has != earns
|
| Yes, and?
|
| >a choice of a 10 year contract to do X worth 100k/annual
| take-home with 1m delivered at start, or an unchanging
| biweekly paycheck. Would the biweekly need to be higher
| to make it more attractive than the one-time payment or
| could it be lower yet still be the favored choice.
|
| You can only make the up front payment so large before
| employees start quitting early and moving to Montenegro.
| adolph wrote:
| >>> Craig Newmark has roughly $1B.
|
| >> I doubt if he's typical of people working at
| Craigslist.
|
| > A billion split ten ways is still a decent chunk of
| pocket change.
|
| The difference being that Newmark has an equity stake of
| some hypothetical value and the people working there
| would receive some fixed value per unit of time. If
| Newmark were to pay each of 10 workers $1B/10 then:
| * their paychecks afterward would be much smaller
| * their next tax period would be much larger *
| someone else would control Craigslist since the equity
| stake would have been liquidated (probably causing it to
| be worth less than $1B)
|
| Thus `has != earns`
|
| > quitting early and moving to Montenegro
|
| I'm of the thought that there is only so much leisure a
| person can take before there is a drive to contribute
| toward the betterment of humanity. If someone trusted you
| and you were trustable, would you take a large lump sum
| and work for work's sake? Would it make a difference if
| the sum was an equity stake in the work's environment?
|
| https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/1501096-let-s-suppose-
| that-...
| neonscribe wrote:
| He said "in the 10s", so I guess it could be up to a couple
| hundred. Still, a remarkably small number for a business like
| that.
| layer8 wrote:
| I think "in the 10s" means less than a hundred. Probably
| not close to a hundred as well in this instance.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| I remember watching a Harvard System Design intro lecture by
| David Milan on YouTube. He was talking about tradeoffs and said
| that craigslist stored all their listings as static html. which
| was extremely cheap and performant but made it harder to edit and
| stuff like that.
|
| I wonder if they have changed since then.
| FearlessNebula wrote:
| I recalled the same, and was hoping to read some more
| information about that in the article.
| strangattractor wrote:
| Because it works?
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| * I far, far, far prefer Craigslist interface to anything else in
| that space. It's clear and focused
|
| Its search engine too - I get things I search for in the area I
| search for.
|
| For me, Kijiji and Facebook marketplace are awful UI, awful
| distractions, and give me 10,000 "suggested" or "fuzzy searched"
| things in random order, suppressing things I'm actually looking
| for. And I've _completely_ given up on eBay over last decade.
|
| However.
|
| * Nothing is on Craigslist anymore in my area (Greater Toronto
| Area). Until about... 5-6 years ago, I could find comparable
| number of photography, computer, music & kids stuff on Craigslist
| and Kijiji. Today, Craigslist is a desert, a void, an oasis of
| empty search results.
|
| So network effect wins, as always :-/
| rcpt wrote:
| Used to feel this way but I really like OfferUps built in chat.
| With Craigslist you end up with people who expect phone calls
| or emails or texts and it's never clear which is which
| cyanydeez wrote:
| Network effects+ Astroturf
| spaniard89277 wrote:
| In Spain all old craiglist equivalents are mostly gone or full
| of spam. We've got Wallapop though, and it's fine. It feels
| modern, not too clunky, and IMO it's a right balance.
|
| Until someone decides it needs to be more flashy.
| xahrepap wrote:
| A local media company runs a "classifieds" on their online
| site. It dominates locally. Craigslist has been worthless for
| ages here because of it.
|
| However, Facebook Marketplace seems to be slowly gaining
| traction. Which I hate for all the reasons you mention. I dread
| the day it takes over :(
| nerdponx wrote:
| Facebook Marketplace has completely taken over in most parts
| of the US. It sucks.
| neilv wrote:
| Any idea about Boston? Boston Craigslist has seemed a bit
| stale, but I'm not on Facebook to see how that compares.
| don-code wrote:
| I've found it pretty rare to _not_ find something I'm
| looking for on Boston Craigslist. As something of an "out
| there" example, I found ten old tube TVs for my Halloween
| decorations just a few weeks ago. Also: I got an
| absolutely great deal on a car through Craigslist about
| five years ago.
|
| That said, I've definitely had less success on the sales
| side than I did in years prior, but I can't tell if
| that's what I'm selling being worth less used these days
| (desktop computers?), or if Facebook Marketplace is the
| de-facto place to check.
| meragrin_ wrote:
| Are the TVs going to be a functional part of the display
| or just decorative?
| don-code wrote:
| Functional - I'm leaning into the "analog horror" genre
| with some fake newsreels of things like the COVID-23
| pandemic, $6 per gallon gasoline, and (of course - I live
| in Boston) the Red Sox losing the World Series to the
| Yankees.
| nerdponx wrote:
| Boston CL is indeed very stale, FB is way more active.
| Young people (< 35) seem to have mostly forgotten about
| CL or don't care about it.
|
| Boston has a lot of good stuff in _some_ areas. Need
| random leftover shelves? A pile of screened loam?
| Secondhand office furniture? An unused China set from the
| 1960s? No problem. But good luck trying to buy and sell
| normal home goods with any efficiency there; it will
| clear much much faster on FB marketplace. Maybe even for
| a better price.
| colanderman wrote:
| Photography and Musical Instruments, it still seems
| pretty active. Though FB Marketplace is unfortunately
| making inroads the past couple years.
| behnamoh wrote:
| Yeah, unfortunately the main reason I'm stuck on FB is its
| Marketplace in my area.
| defterGoose wrote:
| As I noted above, not as much of a problem here in LA, but
| I totally believe you that it's true elsewhere. And
| honestly, I'm probably missing some great stuff not
| perusing FB and OfferUp.
|
| But there's one simple, guiding principle that I'm always
| following. And that's refusing to reactivate my FB account.
| mikestew wrote:
| Much like 25 years ago when I said to myself, "there's
| nothing on the internet that I need to see so badly that
| I'll install RealNetworks", I'll put stuff on the curb
| with a "free" sign before I'll reactivate my long-
| deactivated FB account (or buy new, depending on the
| direction of the transaction).
| atlasunshrugged wrote:
| I was right there too but all the rental apartments are
| via FB marketplace now to the point I literally could not
| find a place without getting back on it (DC). Absolutely
| pain, I miss craigslist
| njarboe wrote:
| Same here in the Roaring Fork Valley. Two months of
| Craigslist, apartments.com, bulletin boards, etc. Finally
| I posted a "Place Wanted" on some local Facebook groups
| and I got something pretty quick. Tons of scammers on
| Craigslist here.
| JohnFen wrote:
| DC doesn't have property management places you can
| contact directly? The ones around here are happy to help
| you find units for rent.
| ghaff wrote:
| Honestly, especially for bulky stuff, I've had great luck
| leaving things at the end of my driveway with a free
| sign. I wouldn't get much money for them and they're out
| of my house with almost zero effort.
| bombcar wrote:
| And if it doesn't move with "free" put a $5 sign on it
| and it'll be gone in the morning.
| hedora wrote:
| In fairness, the only valid complaint I've heard about
| Craigslist is that it diverted classified ad revenue away
| from reporters, destroying local newspapers, and then local
| elections.
|
| With Craigslist, this always felt like an unintended
| consequence. With facebook, it seems like one of their top
| ten strategies for getting us to devolve into mineshaft
| dwelling mole people that live in the metaverse.
| throwaway0x7E6 wrote:
| >elections
|
| what?
| reaperducer wrote:
| "Democracy dies in darkness."
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Dies_in_Darknes
| s
|
| It's sixth-grade Civics class: Without strong local and
| national press to hold politicians and public figures
| accountable, the country crumbles.
| scarface74 wrote:
| The local newspapers were horrible about keeping anyone
| involved in the justice system accountable. They always
| took the words of the police and it wasn't until everyone
| had a camera that police mistreatment of minorities
| became exposed.
|
| On the other hand, national newspapers completely ignored
| the needs and concerns of "rural White America" and
| that's why they were caught flat footed and couldn't
| understand the rise of Trump.
|
| The press has never been concerned about anyone outside
| of Middle class White America it needed to die or evolve.
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| The Fourth Estate is probably a better place to start.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_Estate
|
| Sadly, it seems even the Fourth Estate doesn't know its
| name and/or role. Being a parrot and/or sock puppet
| doesn't qualify (as journalism).
| egberts1 wrote:
| Just so you know, fourth estate was originally by
| lawyers, and not printers.
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| Originally? Good to know. Thanks. But also not relevant
| in the context of the now.
|
| "The term Fourth Estate or fourth power refers to the
| press and news media both in explicit capacity of
| advocacy and implicit ability to frame political
| issues.[1]"
|
| My point is, we have "journalists" whining about "the
| democracy" and those same "journalists" aren't aware how
| badly their profession has already failed said
| institution / ideal.
|
| Imagine pulling up to a fire. Tossing on buckets of
| flammable liquids. And then with a straight face claim to
| be a firefighter. It's Orwellian. The lack of self-
| awareness is not only embarrassing, but it's become down
| right dangerous.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Blaming technology for obviating business models is not a
| valid complaint.
|
| In this case, I would say the participants of the local
| society are responsible for paying for journalism and
| working to support local elections. But even then, you
| could come up with arguments such as so and so population
| was too poor and had to work two jobs and did not have time
| to attend city/county/state meetings, or were not
| sufficiently educated or literate to understand them, etc.
| lkrubner wrote:
| You write "Blaming technology" in response to a comment
| that does not mention any technologies. You might want to
| examine what your preconceptions are, that you would see
| "technology" in a comment that does not refer to
| technology. You were responding to a comment that
| describes two business strategies, perhaps you should
| respond to that.
| throwaway743 wrote:
| They're either assuming printed local classifieds were
| overtaken by a website, or that CL is a site that
| performed better than the local classifieds website.
|
| Not hard to extract, nor worth getting heated about.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I wrote technology on purpose, to cut through useless
| information. It is not relevant that "Craigslist"
| obviated classified ads. The root problem newspapers were
| solving was a seller being able to provide information to
| a wide audience of buyers. Technology brought about a
| better way of solving this problem, so the root problem
| newspapers were getting paid to solve with classifieds no
| longer exists.
|
| Not having local newspapers/journalism causing problems
| with the local civic process is a separate problem, that
| has nothing to do with technology enabling sellers and
| buyers to reach each other more easily.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| I'm curious where you live. After all, craigslist famously
| decimated classified advertising in the US, primarily because
| classified ads in newspapers are hella expensive, and
| craigslist is usually free.
| mrkstu wrote:
| Probably KSL Classifieds in the Utah market:
|
| https://classifieds.ksl.com/
| xahrepap wrote:
| Yup. :)
| [deleted]
| martyvis wrote:
| Interesting. In the late 1960s in Australia a classifieds-
| only paper called the Trading Post grew and absolutely
| dominated this space by the 1990s. My Dad would buy it
| every week to look for bargain junk, cars, etc. I'm sure
| the main newspapers took a hit because of it. They had
| local versions for each region. It was eventually bought in
| 2004 by Sensis (they were part of the main telco Telstra)
| for $636M which also owned the Yellow Pages with the intent
| of going online. It totally bombed and is surplanted here
| by Gumtree (now owned by eBay) and FB marketplace.
| https://www.theage.com.au/business/sensis-confident-of-
| onlin...
| JJMcJ wrote:
| CL isn't as useful as it once was, but the interface is still
| very straightforward.
|
| Compare e.g.
| https://sfbay.craigslist.org/search/sof#search=1~list~0~100 for
| Bay Area software jobs, compared to something like Dice.
|
| Once again, NOT the quality of the jobs listed, just the ease
| of scanning for something of interest.
| mytdi wrote:
| To me it seems like CL never cought on outside of the bigger
| cities in Canada, but Kijiji became very popular. But I agree,
| Kijiji is not as clean with the results as CL, and yes,
| Facebook Market Place is a mess. Varage Sale is a small player
| in certain regions of Canada.
| SN76477 wrote:
| _Did you find the results you were looking for?
|
| *Would you like to see results for Books, Used, Sorted by
| publisher instead?
|
| *Often purchased together with ___ + ___ + ____
| TheRealPomax wrote:
| Although unfortunately, it doesn't understand the fairly
| typical non-urban "yes, you found something that's less than 10
| miles from me as the crow flies, but is about 80 miles away if
| I need to actually drive there because of the fact that my car
| can't cross a river/strait/lake on its own". Even after 25
| years, that part can _still_ do with improvement.
| rightbyte wrote:
| Careful what you whish for. That sounds exactly as one of
| those fuzzy algorithms that will hide posts randomly due to
| stupid reasons. Eg. some address has a glitched road and
| Google Maps believes it is only reachable by boat or
| helicopter.
| TheRealPomax wrote:
| This is craigslist, not facebook: don't over-engineer what
| you don't need to over-engineer. You just look at already-
| made datasets that give the real world distance between two
| places, and remove search results based on that.
|
| Never, ever, use google maps for this, and definitely don't
| use it "per query, as needed". The overwhelming majority of
| infrastructure doesn't change on even a yearly basis: use
| someone else's precompiled dataset, and update whenever
| they push an update.
| bolasanibk wrote:
| >already-made datasets that give the real world distance
| between two places
|
| Can you point me to a source? Thanks.
| TheRealPomax wrote:
| I got you fam: https://www.google.com/search?q=US+distanc
| e+between+cities+d...
|
| (aka if you actually need this for your project, you
| already know how to search for the things you need. If
| Craigslist needs one-time access to a GIS system to build
| an initial dataset for high volume countries, they can
| easily afford the limited time access and dev time to
| generate the dataset they need, as well as afford the dev
| time required to do a deep dive into which -free or paid-
| datasets already exists and are suitable, or not, for
| this purpose, as well as what licenses they come with)
| hedora wrote:
| Isn't this what the map view is for?
| sleepybrett wrote:
| They wouldn't have to update the interface to do that, but
| they could give you 'crow-flies' and 'driving' distances for
| sure.
| jaredhallen wrote:
| Well since Facebook seems to update the user interface
| about every 15 seconds anyway, that shouldn't be a major
| roadblock. I swear if I'm on marketplace and I take a sip
| of coffee, the UX has changed somehow. Seems like they just
| have a pool of different interface designs and they just
| serve them up at random.
| TheRealPomax wrote:
| Not really: the search parameter is "km/miles from
| location", not "within a radius of..." (the circle is just
| a visual estimate). The distance in km/miles from A to B is
| not as the crow flies, it's the number found in any of
| quite a lot of datasets that gives you all the real world
| distances between two places so you can do proper distance
| filtering.
| tempestn wrote:
| FBM also has some glaring deficiencies in its search. For
| example, you can't do a keyword search within a category. So
| they have a bunch of categories like Vehicles or Electronics,
| but within those you can only use predefined filters. If you
| want freeform keywords you're stuck with the general search.
| AussieWog93 wrote:
| I really, _really_ like Facebook Marketplace 's fuzzy
| searching.
|
| Random people listing stuff on local classified sites don't
| always use the correct keywords, and it's in everyone's best
| interest for these listings to actually get a good amount of
| views.
|
| I suspect this "fuzzier" algorithm accounts for the far lower
| amount of spam too. A search for "heat pump dryer" on Gumtree
| will return 25 listings in a row from the same shop in
| Oakleigh, whereas Facebook will show different products from
| different sellers (some businesses, but mostly randos) - not to
| mention the people selling their heat pump dryer without
| including those magical two words in the title.
|
| It's uncanny how good this algorithm is at returning what the
| buyer is actually looking for.
| SL61 wrote:
| Craigslist is basically unusable in my area if you're selling
| something. 90%+ of the people who respond to you will express
| interest, chat about the item, set up a time to meet, and then
| no-show and ghost you. I don't know what they're getting out of
| it. It's not worth the time for me to go through 5-6 of those
| people for everything I want to sell.
|
| Maybe Facebook, etc., have this problem too, but I gave up on
| selling things locally. These days I just try to pass things on
| to friends and family.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| Dunno why the downvotes when this is something I experience
| too.
| pavon wrote:
| Yeah. All of my posts have some flake that is stringing me
| on but can't set a time to meet. Nearly a quarter of
| scheduled meets end in no shows. One was after I drove 30
| miles to meet someone halfway. I won't meet more than 5
| minutes out of my way after that - you want the item you
| can come get it.
| bombcar wrote:
| I got two kids bikes for the price of one and he dropped
| that one by half because I was the only one to say I was
| coming and actually show up.
| SQueeeeeL wrote:
| I'm not trying to justify or validate this behavior, but in
| my own experience you basically want the _ability_ to buy the
| item, but may change your mind. So you string a buyer along
| while you make up your mind.
|
| (personally, I've found myself doing this and then having to
| stop because the seller isn't some big mega corp, but just
| some random other working class friend)
| mardifoufs wrote:
| Yeah, craigslist never really had any marketshare (at least not
| for the past decade) in Montreal. Kijiji was king, and honestly
| I prefer it to CL but even then it is getting dominated by Fb
| marketplace.
|
| I'm not often on Facebook, so I sometimes miss kijiji but
| honestly the fact that you can at least know a little bit about
| the seller on Facebook is a huge plus, even if I fully
| understand how that can also be a huge problem for some. The
| seller ratings, plus the ability to see what else they are
| selling/sold can be super helpful to make sure you aren't
| getting scammed or buying a stolen item.
| jaredhallen wrote:
| The FB algorithms drive me bonkers. I can be looking at a
| listing on one computer, and then search using the exact same
| terms and filters on another computer moments later, and be
| completely unable to get the search to deliver the same
| listing. Absolutely infuriating.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| Facebook Marketplace seems to have all but killed it, here.
|
| You have to check Facebook anyway because schools, HOAs,
| businesses, even local governments often treat it as their
| primary outlet for information, as in, stuff gets posted there
| first, and sometimes _only_ there. Though IG is taking over
| some of that (but of course that 's still Facebook)
|
| Luckily my wife does that, so I can get away without having an
| account, but I'd basically have to have one otherwise. If
| you've already got one and already have to visit Facebook
| sometimes, may as well use FB marketplace....
| soperj wrote:
| I don't know why anyone would want to attach their name and
| everything to stuff they are selling.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| It's more that you're more likely to have some context as a
| buyer that you aren't meeting a scammer or criminal.
|
| Craigslist attracted drug dealers, hookers and fences for a
| long time. People like that figure out that it's easier to
| scam a buyer than do the honest work of stealing shit to
| sell.
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| To be fair; lack of anonymity _CAN_ increase confidence and
| safety in the transaction /meetup.
|
| (I'm not saying it always does, or that it cannot be
| exploited, or that it won't eventually be scammed beyond
| usefulness, etc; but it's not always a clear negative
| today).
| behnamoh wrote:
| It helps buyers to know who the seller is. FB suffers from
| bot sellers and scams. I check the person's profile before
| proceeding and it gives me a sense of confidence in my
| purchase/sale.
| CharlesW wrote:
| I personally deactivated my Facebook account, but note that
| this less anonymity is a benefit for buyers. It makes
| Craigslist a far more attractive target for scammers.
| jollyllama wrote:
| I think the reason people use marketplace is because they
| already have a facebook app on their phone. One less password
| to remember. The upload "just works" - never mind that the
| data is poorly tagged, etc.
| debaserab2 wrote:
| The killer feature that Facebook marketplace has is the fact
| that you can do some basic verification of the person you are
| selling or buying an item from.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Interesting. My impression has always been Facebook is
| somehow more riddled with scammers than CL despite the
| associated accounts. It seems like it has more to do with the
| transaction.
|
| It is hard to scam someone with an in person exchange of cash
| for goods.
|
| Annecdotally, many CL sellers have told me to just get the
| item from their yard and put the cash under their doormat
| snek_case wrote:
| > It is hard to scam someone with an in person exchange of
| cash for goods.
|
| You would think so, but some asshole tried to do this to
| me. We had agreed on a price ahead of time, and when he
| showed up, he tried to low ball me with a 50% lower offer.
| I refused to sell the item to him, and then he became
| aggressive and I had to call the cops to get him to leave.
|
| I won't get into the details, but based on what I saw, I
| think this guy runs kind of a side-business acting as a
| middle man reselling tech gear. I think he does this
| routinely, probably low balls people and then tries to re-
| sell the same stuff on marketplace afterwards. I think tech
| gear attracts assholes/scammers more than anything else
| because it has a potentially high resale value.
|
| So, just be careful out there. Never share your phone
| number with people from marketplace, and don't reveal your
| home address if at all possible. Try to have a friend over
| if you have people coming for transactions or do it in a
| public place.
| aerovistae wrote:
| Weird. On the east coast it's still as populated and reliable
| as it ever was. Although I don't typically buy consumer goods
| on it.
| JohnFen wrote:
| In my stretch of the west coast, it's still as good as it
| always was, too.
| 8jef wrote:
| CL lost Canada to Kijiji a few years ago. Now FB is taking
| over. I'll probably eventually stop looking for classified ads
| because of that.
| dewert wrote:
| Oddly enough, Kijiji never took off in Vancouver. We just
| went straight from CL to FB.
| pmelendez wrote:
| > Until about... 5-6 years ago
|
| That kinda correlates to when they moved away from the
| personals business
| greenie_beans wrote:
| you gotta search other locales to find what you want. search
| nashville craigslist for guitars, search rural areas for
| agricultural equipment, search lake areas for boats, etc
| boatsie wrote:
| Related, so many sellers are now "pro" sellers like what
| happened to eBay. Keyword stuffing, prices that are comparable
| to sale prices of new, constant automated reposting, etc.
| TheRealPomax wrote:
| Right, which is great: because CL forces folks to say whether
| they're a private owner or a dealer _you can filter for those
| properties_.
|
| And not hidden and tucked away either: it's the absolutely
| very first top-most set of options on the search results
| page. See those three [all] [owner] [dealer] buttons? Click
| "owner". You're welcome.
| tbihl wrote:
| I've always wondered: what is the mechanism keeping people
| honest about being owner vs dealer?
| philovivero wrote:
| Nothing. Dealers know to check the owner button.
|
| Whenever I'm buying something on CL, like say a car, I
| always ask the person who answers the phone: "I'm calling
| about the car. Tell me X about it."
|
| If they reply "Which car?" then you've reached a dealer,
| not an owner.
| TheRealPomax wrote:
| And then, of course, you go back to CL and flag their
| post, right? ...You _do_ report abuse on this free
| platform so that everyone 's experience can be improved,
| right?
| TheRealPomax wrote:
| Other than "getting your account banned for multiple
| reports on multiple postings"? Nothing. If you see
| someone abusing CL, you report it. If you don't, you're
| just helping make sure people can keep being dishonest on
| the platform.
| defterGoose wrote:
| CL is still alive and well here in LA. It's possible it's just
| in the markets I'm looking in (tools, machinery, cars, etc),
| but I've always preferred it over things like FB, OfferUp etc.
| I feel like the people I meet from CL are generally much more
| knowledgeable about what they have and its value. Other
| platforms often feel like a relative selling grandpa's stuff
| and have done the bare minimum of research to find a price
| point. Usually if someone on CL lacks knowledge, it means I'm
| getting a great deal that day rather than waiting for them to
| realize they're asking too much in a small market.
| malingo wrote:
| I think it's the certain markets that determine how useful CL
| is--I'm also in LA. I've mainly dealt in furniture &
| electronics, and CL in other cities, particularly
| Minneapolis, was a dream, so good in fact that I didn't know
| FB marketplace existed until I moved to LA and had to look
| elsewhere after seeing how bad the CL market for used stuff
| was.
| acchow wrote:
| Try to find a used computer or phone or really any other
| electronic. FB Marketplace has 5x the inventory.
| Maursault wrote:
| Facebook's interface is heavily burdened with ugly
| templates, is needlessly complex and clunky. Page crashes!
| Facebook is also draconian about logging in, can't see much
| if you're not logged in, thus FB is elitist. You're
| required to you hand over your identity and submit to
| forced content and advertising. I personally fully
| retreated from Facebook permanently by 2009. Good for you,
| if you don't mind giving up privacy and being a product,
| but it is not for me.
|
| Craigslist's interface isn't sexy, but it is impressively
| fast and stable. No page crashes, ever. No forced content.
| No login necessary to search, often no account necessary to
| contact sellers. If an account is required to contact a
| seller, it is anonymous and disposable. Craigslist works
| the way the Internet used to work before it was taken over
| by advertisers, tracking and javascript. I hope it never
| changes, and I wish more web developers would take their
| cues from its simplicity and potency, because the more
| complex and tricky a website gets, the worse it is,
| unilaterally.
| _dain_ wrote:
| >Craigslist is a desert, a void, an oasis of empty search
| results.
|
| it's a desert and an oasis at the same time?
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| yes.
|
| (Also, don't forget, a void :-)
| bombcar wrote:
| "Oasis of Empty"
| z9znz wrote:
| ... which would work if the stuff outside the oasis was
| cluttered with something. But the stuff outside the oasis
| is also approximately empty. So where does the desert of
| empty end and the oasis of empty begin?
| bombcar wrote:
| The desert has nothing; the oasis lacks even that.
| zuminator wrote:
| I get that you're saying the metaphor is strained, but in
| point of fact, oases are parts of deserts, no?
| _dain_ wrote:
| Yes but the whole point of them is that they are non-
| deserty bits inside of deserts
| wkjagt wrote:
| What I do like on Facebook Marketplace is that it seems to
| understand what I'm looking for. On Kijiji I have to do try all
| the different ways someone might have written something,
| including common spelling mistakes. And since I live in Quebec,
| I have to do this in two languages. On FB Marketplace it seems
| to find all variations in one search.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| Not to be "that guy," but Craigslist has changed a lot over the
| years. They've kept the same coat of paint on it (visual design)
| but the way it works evolves continuously.
|
| For one obvious example, search results come up in cards now by
| default and you can use hover arrows to go through the photos on
| each one. It is far more visual experience today than it was when
| search results were a compact list of text titles.
|
| And depending on what you search, there are tons of specific
| filters that show up in the left column. Search "sailboat" and
| you can filter on make/model, propulsion, length overall, year
| manufactured, price, miles from location, etc. It works a lot
| more like eBay or other modern e-commerce sites than the blue
| links and default fonts let on.
|
| Keeping the old fonts and colors seems sort of like the famous
| door-desks at Amazon. It looks like a functional decision, but
| really the main point is to represent a particular viewpoint of
| the job.
| spoils19 wrote:
| That sounds like a regression to me. A more visual experience
| isn't necessarily better - I and most people on this site
| probably prefer the compact list of text titles, since the
| information is easier to parse.
|
| Filtering also limits search, not enhances it, as you are
| prevented from generically finding things, and now have to sort
| by filter.
| iudqnolq wrote:
| One of the defining characteristics of filters is that,
| unlike categories, you can just not select any if you want to
| see everything. This is true on craigslist, ebay, and every
| other website I can think of that has filtered product
| listings.
| kepler1 wrote:
| What does the expression "not to be that guy" mean?
| gbudee wrote:
| It means someone is aware they are being pedantic.
| bombcar wrote:
| The guy who slides up and says, "achshually" and proceeds to
| explain how you think you're right but you're actually
| completely wrong.
| adolph wrote:
| In an alternative universe Yahoo! also kept a 1997 interface and
| the world was a bit nicer than it really turned out.
| chenster wrote:
| You really meant "Japanese Yahoo" https://www.yahoo.co.jp/
| welcome back to 1990
| behnamoh wrote:
| But then how could they justify hiring an inexperienced ex-
| google woman? (nothing wrong with being a woman, but she tried
| to make a celebrity out of herself, look at her cover magazine
| photoshoot).
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