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
- jet ( @jet@hackertalks.com ) English56•4 months ago
Facebook marketplace is killing it for classifieds
- AmbiguousProps ( @AmbiguousProps@lemmy.today ) English28•4 months ago
I wish this wasn’t the case. There’s no way I’ll ever create a FB account even for classifieds alone.
- Steve ( @Steve@startrek.website ) 9•4 months ago
But how? It fuckin sucks!
- jet ( @jet@hackertalks.com ) English14•4 months ago
Critical mass
- Juno ( @Juno@beehaw.org ) 1•4 months ago
Why you gotta be so critical about that mass? So negative.
- jet ( @jet@hackertalks.com ) English1•4 months ago
Critical mass is an expression in social network saying you have a sufficient population that the network is now self-sustaining. And you don’t have to grow it externally. It’s an expression borrowed from nuclear where critical mass of reactive material could self-sustain a reaction without any external stimulation
- krolden ( @krolden@lemmy.ml ) 3•4 months ago
Because all the normies are on there
- datavoid ( @datavoid@lemmy.ml ) English20•4 months ago
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.
- Roopappy ( @Roopappy@lemmy.ml ) English19•4 months ago
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.
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- 🇦🇺𝕄𝕦𝕟𝕥𝕖𝕕𝕔𝕣𝕠𝕔𝕕𝕚𝕝𝕖 ( @muntedcrocodile@lemm.ee ) English16•4 months ago
Marketplace killed it. Thanks zucc
- /home/pineapplelover ( @pineapplelover@lemm.ee ) 13•4 months ago
Nah I like to go through Craigslist. I live in the Orange County area and lots of people use it.
- Snot Flickerman ( @SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone ) English12•4 months ago
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.
Craigslist was one of the examples of the potential of the early internet, where we could have nice things because all the users valued it. Its falling victim to enshittification even with no ads and no connection to big tech.
- Snot Flickerman ( @SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone ) English14•4 months ago
The story of how we went from couchsurfing.com to airbnb.com
Couchsurfing became a for-profit company in 2011, after having been a volunteer-outfit since 1999.
- ArxCyberwolf ( @Snowpix@lemmy.ca ) 11•4 months ago
Everyone here uses Kijiji or Facebook Markeplace. Craigslist isn’t on anyone’s radar because it has a reputation for being sketchy.
- krolden ( @krolden@lemmy.ml ) 9•4 months ago
Facebool marketplace did a number on Craigslist. Also you need to pay five dollars to post a car ad now which sucks.
- makeasnek ( @makeasnek@lemmy.ml ) English8•4 months ago
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.
- arefx ( @arefx@lemmy.ml ) 8•4 months ago
In my experience yes. The Facebook marketplace killed it. Which sucks because I refuse to use facebook.
- ShepherdPie ( @ShepherdPie@midwest.social ) 7•4 months ago
Craigslist died in my area the minute Marketplace opened up. It’s a shame too because Marketplace is hot garbage for browsing cars. You can select what color you want but not engine or drivetrain for example.
- xia ( @xia@lemmy.sdf.org ) English6•4 months ago
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.
- Otherbarry ( @otherbarry@lemmy.zip ) English6•4 months ago
Seems mostly dead for apt rentals / roommate wanted type stuff. I used to use it years ago but nowadays it’s mostly scam posts and no one I know would use Craigslist for finding roommates / looking for rooms. The site itself has a reputation for having shady posters so people tend to avoid it.
- Bartsbigbugbag ( @Bartsbigbugbag@lemmy.ml ) 6•4 months ago
Long since dead here. Nothing but scams and data harvesting.