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Study Calls Craigslist 'a Cesspool of Crime'
Bala4361 writes "Classifieds site Craigslist has been linked with 330 crimes, 12 murders and 105 robberies or assaults in the United States last year due to anonymous interactions on the site, says a new study. The report calls Craigslist 'a cesspool of crime,' citing murders, rapes, robberies, assault and rental rip-offs as some of the examples." Among the many Reefer Madness-style quotable stretchers from the originating consultancy: "The unfortunate fact is that Craigslist has become almost synonymous with crime." Update: 02/25 17:05 GMT by S : Craigslist has posted a response.
Is this another idiotic moment where people don't realize that it's easier for police to find crime when you know it's on craigslist? Or is this another AG grandstanding moment?
A lot of crime happens on the streets. What conclusion does that draw?
The same thing could be said about public places. "Since we have built this new park three years ago, there have been 83 people mugged, 8 murders, 125 cases of lewd conduct, 20 cases of prostitution.... etc. etc.". Really, craigslist is just a public forum for commerce and other needs, although it exists on the web.
That brings me to an interesting point, / . is just "the ramblings of socially-inept, technology-literate news-mongers".
No worse than a normal day in Chicago.
If you're going to meet someone for a deal, agree to meet at a public place with lots of people like a Starbucks or something.
Out of how many millions of ads?
This is why many of us lament the death of math and science in this country. No sense of proportions or priorities.
500 postings linked to crime out of how many? This just in: paper is also used to write ransom notes, stationery stores to be outlawed
When all of your wishes have been granted, many of your dreams will be destroyed - Marilyn Manson
Looking for someone that can:
1. Hold their hand like they're pulling a carrot from the ground.
2. Not ask questions.
Tiger Blooded Bi-Winning Machine
"The unfortunate fact is that Craigslist has become almost synonymous with really great deals."
"The unfortunate fact is that Craigslist has become almost synonymous with bargains that don't get taxed."
"The unfortunate fact is that Craigslist has become almost synonymous with purchases that don't get tracked by advertisers."
Those are the first things that leap to MY mind.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
So, what's the ratio of criminals to honest ads? Craigslist claims 80 million classifieds are placed each month, that means that the odds of any one ad being linked to a crime is an amazing 1:2900000. Won't someone close down this cesspool of crime!? Granted, there's plenty of illegal stuff going on in craigslist ads; prostitution, drug selling, etc. I would imagine that is the odds of accidentally becoming the victim crime rather than participating in it.
If craigslist really was synonymous for crime, this statement would make me not want to move somewhere: The area has a high rate of craigslist.
Neither the summary nor the article linked to actually tell you who paid for the study. Luckily if you go to www.aimgroup.com the second paragraph of the story about the study says
The AIM Group has just completed a research project for Oodle, a Craigslist competitor, cataloging crimes that have been linked to Craigslist. And the results surprised even us.
Yes, but how many "Missed Connections" has it resolved?
Adidas To Bring Back Sneakernet
100's of million can access it, and there has been less then 400 crimes.
Yeah, thats a regular hive of scum and villainy ~
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
We are the world’s premiere research and consulting firm for the classifieds industry. We’re widely quoted in the press, including Forbes, Fortune, Financial Times, Bloomberg, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and elsewhere.
We are experts in developing successful revenue strategies around automotive, real estate, recruitment and merchandise advertising, encompassing print, online, mobile, video and social media.
Which I'll bet includes all types of classifieds and advertising EXCEPT Craigslist.
and on their computers! ^_^
How much crime has resulted from newspaper classifies, from all papers in all cities? Craigslists' goal is to replace all of them, and it's not unreasonable to expect the bad to scale along with the good.
A "cesspool of crime"? Seriously? How many thousands or tens-of-thousands of successful interactions have their been? TFA doesn't say. Are the crimes linked to Craigslist unusual in that they are committed more frequently per capita (or however they measure crime statistics) than they would be without?
Anecdotal, yes, but I have used Craigslist easily in excess of twenty times over the past few years to sell and buy various items. Of course, you have to be smart about it and use common sense. Even then, there's the outside chance you may get robbed. You may also get robbed walking down the street. I have taken what I thought were reasonable precautions and always met in open, public areas with many people around. Others may choose not to take those precautions, or choose to put themselves in an inherently dangerous environment (going to someone's house, etc) because greed overcomes common sense. YMMV.
TL:DR - Bad things happen all the time, stack the deck in your favor but they may happen regardless. Don't be greedy.
Someone at this publication needs to have someone review what the word synonomous means. Out of all the crimes committed in the U.S. last year only 330 are linked to Craigslist. 330 crimes out of over 10 million are linked to Craigslist and somehow Criagslist is this "cesspool of crime"? Get real.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
AIM Group doesn't do reports for free, for the public benefit, or for nobody. Some corporation or organization is either paying for this report, or targeted by AIM marketing to buy such research (or just the hypercritical reports). Yet they are as anonymous as the buyers and sellers AIM's report finds to be the root of all Craigslist evil.
I suppose since such anonymous attack marketing is old-fashioned that it's "OK" in some way that Craigslist is not.
--
make install -not war
The study was published by "The AIM Group," of which there are two. One is a placement agency for the petro industry, the other is (can you guess yet?) "Consulting Services for Interactive Media and Classified Advertising"
Shorter version of TFA "Don't use the crime infested, but generally free Craigslist, pay our customers to place your classifieds safely, without the fear of VIOLENT RAPE!"
I just love screwing with marketing numbskulls who try to manipulate people into giving them free publicity. Where's your free publicity now, AIM Group?
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Things I have gotten off Craigslist:
Coffee table
Head-board for my bed
6' tall cat tower
Dining room table + chairs
My job
Things I haven't gotten off Craigslist:
Raped
Murdered
Robbed
"The unfortunate fact is that Craigslist has become almost synonymous with crime."
So in the eventual remake of Repo Man, Debbi will say, "Duke, let's go do some craigslists."
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
-30-
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
The AIM Group has just completed a research project for Oodle, a Craigslist competitor, cataloging crimes that have been linked to Craigslist. And the results surprised even us.
Yeah. Screw you assholes and your manufactured FUD.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
...since they removed the jobs/hired goons section. It's a shame too, as the local one had excellent goons.
What has *science* done?!? -- Dr. Weird (ATHF)
...if there's any justice in the world.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
Luke: You know, I think that R2 unit we bought may have been stolen.
Uncle Owen: What makes you think that?
Luke: Well, I stumbled across a recording while I was cleaning him. He says that he belongs to someone named Obi-Wan Kenobi. I thought he might have meant old Ben. Do you know what he's talking about?
Uncle Owen: Just a fucking Craigslist thing, you know how it is.
Luke: I wonder if he's related to Ben.
Uncle Owen: That wizard is just a crazy old internet pervert. Now, tomorrow I want you to take that R2 unit to Anchorhead and have it's memory erased. That'll be the end of it. It belongs to us now.
This study has been proudly presented to you by eBay.
Attention... all grammer nazi"s! Is they're anything; wrong with: my post,
http://www.theonion.com/articles/and-to-think-no-one-believed-a-website-that-puts-p,19193/
"Yeah. Screw you assholes and your manufactured FUD."
You missed this little nugget...
"On Oodle's Marketplace, people who post or respond use their real identity on Facebook, introducing appropriate social norms back into the conversation.""
It is quite easy to make a Facebook account with a false identity--in short, there is NO real difference between the two, except you are required to be a Facebook user to participate Oodle's Marketplace. That rules me out.
This is nothing more then a move to get even more people to use FaceFuck.
The point is that the internet is crime and must be controlled. It's not just communication, freedom of expression. It's mostly crime. Copyright abuse, financial fraud, child porn, pedophilia, terrorism, prostitution, drugs, that's what the internet is about. The solution is to identify everyone that connects each time with an ID, and log all activity all the time. Then we'll have no crime. If you argue about freedom, you are told to not confuse your freedom with taking liberty with other people's safety and well being. The proper response, I think is not fall into the trap of choosing between crime or monitoring the public. It's best to say fine, full transparency, full monitoring, let's get rid of crime. Let's monitor what everyone does, all the time. Biometric readers on every doorway, every intersection, every car, phone, and computer. Full publishing of all that data. Of course, the public first needs to trust the people controlling those records, so we need to monitor them. The public needs to monitor everyone in government, all the time, even when they are not on the job, because they could commit crime anywhere, abuse public data. Let's get rid of crime, monitoring all the US spy groups, the police, everyone in DC. Then, when we trust govenment is not full of criminals, we'll move on to monitor the public, too. Otherwise, we'll have government criminals monitoring innocent public. And that sounds terribly dangerous.
Build your own energy sources from scratch. http://otherpower.com/
behind your keyboard? It is only your stupidity that placed you in the hands of criminals.
A friend of mine was wanting to get rid of something today and knows very little about the internet... I asked for the details and he had wayyyy too many people calling him in under an hour. He called me back and said "MAN!! TAKE THAT AD DOWN!!! I'M TIRED OF THE REDNECKS CALLING ME!!!"
that is out of how many millions of interactions?
Don't bars have far worse statistics?
wake up and hold your nose
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
Report was done by a company called "AIM Group". Go ahead and click through to the site. Check the sponsors box on the right. Notice anything? (In case you didn't click through or have ad-blocking software, I'm referring to the eBay and Kijiji ads.)
Not to mention that they say right in the study that it was commissioned by a Craigslist competitor, Oodle. So they're being paid both directly and indirectly by competitors to Craigslist. Is any of this mentioned in the coverage of the study? Not a chance.
It's a smear paper in its finest and nothing else, especially not a "study".
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
And I don't see anyone rushing to close down *that* cesspool of crime...
I'm really getting tired of that when something happens "on the internet" it's somehow 1000 times worse than real-life.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
Who pays people to write this stuff? Oh ya, people that want to sell you new stuff.
wait till they find out public roads are a Cesspool of Crime! I bet you cannot even commit a crime without having to use a public road. Think of the children!
I don't see what all the fuss is about.
Deleted
Sometimes you need a competitor to find public faults with its competition.
And sometimes a competitor hires a third party to find exactly what they want found. How many crimes have been committed against Oodle users, per capita? How about traditional Classified users? This study is not a real scientific study, it says exactly and only what Oodle wants it to say.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
The amazing thing is most will just read the headline and write Craigslist off as crap. Its the best damn thing since slices bread, and utilitarian as well as equalizing for those without massive advertising budgets. Is it full of crap, yes of course. However that would then require someone to actually think and have a clue about life and scams. If you want to filter that out, and be sold a load of BS from marketing hype and droids go and spend money on the machine that AIM offers (surely they don't guarantee against any such anyway, so you get scammed anyway).
I notice there is no equivalent news story for the millions and millions of transactions that didn't end in a crime being committed. Without telling how many transactions they looked at in total, telling us how many crimes happened is a pretty worthless statistic.
"But this one goes to 11!"
I call it, "Home! Sweet Home!
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Craigslist does not serve alcohol.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
A cesspool of spammers looking to harvest email addresses? Sure.
A cesspool of the flakiest people from your community, who will seemingly fall off the face of the earth entirely when they are supposed to be coming to look at your trinket? Absolutely.
A cesspool of marginally literate people who will email you to ask you questions that you plainly addressed in your ad? You bet.
A cesspool of people who feel that SMS speak is a valid way to drive all communications throughout the known world, who will write almost completely un-decipherable emails to you in that manner? Check that as well.
A cesspool of crime, though? Not necessarily. Sure you'll find plenty of people who don't seem to worry too much about the law, but it isn't really a place where everyone is looking to intentionally break the law.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
So 330 crimes on a site used by 50 million people? If craigslist were a city it would be the safest on earth.
Internet users will never let craigslist die. Your just reading ebay fud.
If ebay ever outlaws craigslist, we'll just make untraceable p2p networks for online classified, and that'll be worse for both ebay and police.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
You know what words aren't mentioned when a competitor looks for faults with it's competition and goes immediately public? The most true words are never spoken:
Neutral Third Party.
I've almost never seen what you are referring to ever happen in a legitimate way. This is like a MS funded study being pro MS. Really?
My iPhone was stolen and guess the first place everyone tells me to look for it...
I've been seeing Kijiji tv ads for the last two weeks locally. Hmm study comes out when Ebay starts running about free classifieds on Kijiji.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
Streets named after Martin Luther King are a cesspool of crime, too! We should rename them to Infinite Loop because this is where the least amount of violent crime happens!
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
I've been a daily reader of Slashdot for many years, but I don't recall seeing IBTimes cited as the source of posted stories until very recently, in the last few months. Was I just not paying attention, or is there something deliberate going on here? I'm suspicious that there are one or more IBTimes shills using Slashdot as a promotional medium for their employer.
You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy.
http://www.cesspoolofcrime.com/
The only crime is forcing their broken phone verification system on everyone in seemingly every category. I haven't been able to post CL ad's for months and emails to their support address are never returned. I have tried 3 different phone numbers as well so I am pretty sure it is there system.
Anyways the point is they do these stupid things to prevent crime and it just makes the site less usable! Crime will always occur. People need to take responsibility and stop dumbing down services to the point where they are horribly broken in order to try and prevent the unpreventable, on a system wide scale.
As a potential lottery winner, I totally support tax cuts for the wealthy
A lot of crime happens on the streets. What conclusion does that draw?
The street is a fscking stupid place to conduct your business?
All crime is committed by the living.
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
* May or may not have actually been Craig who wrote their blog post...
Best parts:
and
http://blog.craigslist.org/2011/02/more-pay-to-play-research-from-aim/
$ echo "ceci n'est pas une pipe" | sed -Ee 's/(eci n|pas )//g'
Ok, thats a lot of crime, but how long has craigslist been around? How many millions of posts? One could make the same argument of facebook or any other site that allows posting. Also NYC has more crime then that every year. Are we supposed to shut NYC down?
Its just all media sensationalization. More hype to get more clicks to sell more ads. Bah. You don't not leave your has cause people have been hit by lighting and killed do you? Of course a modicum of caution is best applied in any internet meeting.
--- Always remember. 99.36% of all statistics are inaccurate.
Yes but they make up for it in suicides.
If you mod me down the terrorists will have won
Criags list has millions upon millions of users. 500 crimes is statistically insignificant in fact, looks UNDER reported. IF that is the crime rate, it's very low. Take any given group with large enough numbers a certain % will always be bad apples. remember Criags list is a community forum, it's not a company like Amazon
447 crimes divided by 960,000,000 classified ads per year is 0.000047%. If only one out of every thousand classified ads results got a response, that's still only 0.047% annually, which is lower than the crime rate pretty much everywhere in the world - and the success rate for classified ads is way better than 1 in 1,000.
The only thing you can really conclude from this 'study' is that Craigslist transaction are safer than walking to the store.
This sentence no verb.
Craigslist spaceport: You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. We must be cautious.
Awaiting the updated version of the study.
A writer in SFGate had a pretty good commentary. The stats show that this makes Craigslist 11,000 times safer than Oakland.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/techchron/detail?entry_id=83684
~~~~~~~
"You are not remembered for doing what is expected of you." - Atul Chitnis
How many ads were placed? I'm guessing this isn't barely even a tiny percentage of the adds placed. 330 crimines? Big whoop. millions of people use this service. I can't imagine there not being even a little crime.
A quick glance at the Craigslist main page shows about 350 US cities listed.
From the article: " ... And we understand thousands or even tens of thousands of transactions happen safely between Craigslist aficionados. ..."
Thousands? That's as little as three transactions A YEAR per city. Tens of thousands? That's one transaction every few days per city.
Twelve murders? A year? Twelve too many, I know, but since these are almost certainly some kind of robbery-related murders ... well, call me crazy, but there are places where a dozen robberies resulting in murder would be considered a massive drop in crime ... people in local government in plenty of places would be running for re-election on those numbers, and winning in a landslide to boot.
Sounds like Craigslist is a paragon of virtue. There's probably more than three 'crimes' committed every day at the average flea market.
Esp. if it's Wall Street!
...the future crusty old bastards are already drinking the Kool-Aid.
This is nothing more then a move to get even more people to use FaceFuck.
Hey, I know you are trying to be snarky here buddy..... but I actually like FaceFuck.com. Don't insult it by comparing it to FaceBOOK.com. They actually provide a valuable service!
Hmm, how many times in recent history has progress been so misunderstood, feared, and vitrified??
Just read and acticle on this a day or so ago...
Jazz, Bikinis, Dungeons and Dragons, Video Games.
How will be possibly survive with technology purveying so much depravity?!?
I would think if it wasn't obvious enough before, that the "Craigslist Killer" would make that reason enough to come to the conclusion that it's a dangerous place. That being said, there is quite a lot of success with people buying and selling. Just don't have any protections in place like something like eBay.
"If ebay ever [buys federal legislation that effectively] outlaws craigslist, ..."
If I spoke lefty, I'd maybe pontificate about "regulatory capture", but I prefer cynic or plain english.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
If you have a Facebook account you can use Facebook Marketplace, why use Ooodle?
I've been saying this in conversations for about a year now, what does /. think?
Craigslist is responsible for a significant amount of reuse and recycling. This is an incredible amount of energy not required to create new "stuff". Tons of pollution not emitted as that "stuff" no longer needs to be shipped across the ocean to me. Craigslist also reduces the friction on employment searches and makes possible a local small-jobs employment market as a means of supporting employment.
On top of all this, Newmark refuses to run ads on the site, minimizes listing fees, and has repeatedly refused to be bought out. His actions speak volumes, and his site is a great service to humanity.
Craig Newmark for Nobel Peace Prize.
I put up my iphone1 for sale and was offered an AK47, hell yes I trade for that! Well ended up at this gangbangers trailer where on the floor next to the toddler watching Dora on a 50" plasma TV was a shotgun and bong. Anyway, turned out it was a SKS all beat up with the packing grease still on. I ended up trading for an OTV vest and the SKS. yeah, there is crime on Craigslist if that's what you're looking for. Not that I broke any laws, but this guys first words out of his mouth was " are you a cop?"
They come in the dark, only in the darkest.
linked with 330 crimes, 12 murders and 105 robberies or assaults
Gosh, that sounds like a lot!
Now how many legitimate transactions took place during the same year-long period?
Twelve murders would be the average amount for a city of 240,000. St. Petersburg Fl, Jersey Ciy NJ and Chandler AZ are all around that size. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_by_population. I haven't found the actual crime figures for these places, but I think that the residents would only be upset if the number was far above twelve per year.
There are a lot more Craigslist users then in any of those places, even though they don't "live" there.
Not a problem.
Why is Snark Required?
I'm pretty sure Craigslist is not the problem.
"Craigslist has become almost synonymous with crime." Yes, it is a crime to be able to find a place to live without the usual crap. Please bring back the apartment gu
It's a crime that this kind of false defamation, paid for by a competitor, no less, is getting endorsed by Slashdot. The editors have a responsibility to post a correction noting that this is "research" is bought and paid for by CL competitor Oogle.
Comparing the US crime stats to CL; CL is definitely safer.
...so I feel safer on CL than on the street.
The 1 year FBI crime stats (for 2009) show 429.4 violent crimes per 100,000 people and 3,036.1 property crimes per 100,000 people. That yields about 0.34655 (3,465.5 crimes/100,000)
Source: http://www2.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2009/
CL serves 50,000,000 people in the US, and the total crimes (330 crimes, 12 murders and 105 robberies or assaults) for one year (according to the study) is 447. That yields about 0.00000894 (447 crimes/50,000,000)
Sources: http://www.craigslist.org/about/factsheet
http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/115849/20110224/craigslist-anonymous-classifieds-facebook-crime-society-social-network.htm#ixzz1EuesJdzH
http://aimgroup.com/about-3/what-were-reading/
Astroturfing by someone who can't compete any other way.
-- Terry
is the study funded by the newspaper industry?
Okay, so hundreds of millions of safe transactions versus 300 crimes or so. That means you have a greater chance of being struck by lightning while being beaten to death by a clown than to be contacted by a murderer looking for a victim through Craigslist.
What bugs me about this is that there are those of us who use Craigslist a lot for actually buying and selling legitimate things. When I moved to Grand Rapids, I managed to furnish my home with stuff from Craigslist at a fraction of the price it would have cost to buy stuff elsewhere. Unfortunately, when you shut down a service like that, you make it that much harder for the rest of us to connect in order to business with each other. Instead, we end up having to rely on crappy newspaper services where we have no idea what an item looks like because it costs so much more to put a picture with an ad, whereas with Craigslist it's an expectation that you see a picture of the table you're hoping to buy. Granted, there was a lot of adult stuff on Craigslist that makes it difficult to use a lot of their other services (like trying to start dating, or something like that), but that kind of stuff can easily be ignored. Also, the job ads are quite often scams, which is unfortunate, but fortunately at least parts of Craigslist are legitimate and useful (as long as you remain careful, especially when selling something because you have to avoid the scammers who are attempting to steal your items instead of buy them).
Sarbonn's blog: http://www.sarbonn.com/blog
Craigslist is simply a cross-section or representation of the human element which makes it up. Just like the rest of the world. In other news, the world is a cesspool of crime. Details at 11. Craigslist holds more positives for society than negatives.
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
What about print classifieds? They're a "cesspool of crime" as well, the only difference is that more people use Craigslist. I'm sure that if you take a sample of 80 million print ads you'll probably get similar statistics then those from 80 million Craigslist ads.
~Syberz
According to who, is the CG list become linked to crime...I want the exact link that says, Obama says CG list is now about crime, or the police commisioner says, or the janitor at the high school right around the corner says.....give me an actual name of who said this, instead of
>The unfortunate fact is that Craigslist has become almost synonymous with crime
I know one company created a report, and we are supposed to take their word as the bible...but all in all, I tend to think it would require many different reports on the subject before you go and make a claim like this public....
I think Microsoft is linked to many crimes, with it you can hack many things, and steal people's money from their bank accounts, I think sadly Microsoft is now a criminal tool....I mean come on seriously? These dolts want their 15 minutes of fame....sad they need to ruin CG list name for it though....
I have noticed that only people with skin commit crimes. I have found no case of any crime ever being committed by any person totally devoid of skin. Those criminals who post on Craig's have skin every time.
My conclusions are at least as rational as the conclusions of the group that did this idiotic study of Craigslist.
AIM Group = classified ad consultancy. Wonder who their customers are and if they might, just maybe, be competitors to CL?
We need Paul Harvey to tell us "the rest of the story". This survey tells us a fact which manages to sound scary even though it is not being compared to any other facts, specifically the ones concerning crimes linked to classified ads.
This tactic reminds me of this Dilbert cartoon.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
Its a medium.
That's like saying X crimes were committed using email, email is at fault. Y crimes were committed over the internet, the internet is at fault. Z crimes were commited over cell phones, clearly cell phones are at fault.
Stupid.
I think eBay's stake in Craigslist is defensive at best; they do after all own a direct competitor.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs