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
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!
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.
Facebool marketplace did a number on Craigslist. Also you need to pay five dollars to post a car ad now which sucks.
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.
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
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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I posted several large wood working machines for sale there in the past year and every one was bought within 24 hours.
Everyone here uses Kijiji or Facebook Markeplace. Craigslist isn’t on anyone’s radar because it has a reputation for being sketchy.
Long since dead here. Nothing but scams and data harvesting.
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.
You have to pay to sell things on there now as well. Might as well use ebay or letgo or something like that.
When did that happen? I sold several pieces of woodshop equipment there in the past year and didn’t pay anything.
Might just be for cars and farm equipment? Went to sell a lawn mower and it asked me for money.
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.
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Facebook marketplace is killing it for classifieds
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.
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
Why you gotta be so critical about that mass? So negative.
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
Because all the normies are on there
Craigslist in my area is at least 90% spam, FB Marketplace is also not super active. OfferUp is pretty popular though.
As weird as it sounds, Facebook Marketplace is actually really good last I checked for a lot of the buying and selling aspect that Craigslist used to be good for
I think it still exists within a happy medium wherein the site owners are paying enough attention that most of the blatant scammers can get chased away, but not so much attention that they start trying to make money off it and ruin it
Craigslist has been spam for quite a while at this point. Even for me in my thirties, I don’t know anyone who has used it legitimately for at least a decade.
