Consider that Meta’s Marketplace is the largest competitor. Immediately after they launched, they quickly capitalized on their Identity Verification natural monopoly on online social networking. This was ‘pivoted’ into “Identity Verification Assurance” for your average Playstore and iPhone users.
Marketplace wasn’t even easier to use than Craigslist, 99% of the arguments for using it were “it’s safer because it’s less scams”.
I wouldn’t put it beneath Zuck and his bootlickers to pay a few bitcoins to maintain an artifically inflated number of scams on Craigslist.
It reinforces the mistaken belief that scams are driven by anonymity (instead of the truth that you can have all their data and the justice department will look the other way… that’s why they keep doing it until they scam Grant Hudson of McLean, VA).
Anyway, the faster CL dies the sooner Meta consolidates a monopoly on electronic flea marketing or whatever it’s called.
I never stopped buying things on Craigslist. When I still had a Facebook account I used marketplace too, but I’ve always used Craigslist as a resource as well. I purchased 3 pieces of furniture and some eurorack modules in the last 4 months all on Craigslist.
So while I wouldn’t say it is alive and well because it definitely isn’t what it was in its heyday, people still use Craigslist. 3 of the 4 sellers I talked to said they sold on Craigslist because they hate Facebook, the 4th just didn’t really seem interested in conversing with me and just wanted to sell the table.
I’ve found FB to be Harder to use than CL, because they don’t give a shit where or what category you’re looking for, whereas on CL, those are the two primary filters. Because they matter the most.
If I’m looking for end tables in florida, I really don’t give a fuck about cars in hawaii. FB does not understand this.
Never thought about scams being paid for, but that makes perfect sense. Or just bots of their own to post them and not even really follow through. I wish more people still used CL, it’s so much fucking better
The guy that runs Craigslist is a real one. He could be charging for the whole site, but he isn’t. He could put ads on it, but he isn’t. He makes enough money for himself and his employees to live comfortably and keeps the website the same on principle. It really pisses me off that people abandoned it in favor the evil that is Facebook. Support the good ones, like Craigslist and Arizona ice tea, reject the evil ones. It’s simple.
If anyone is interested in learning more:
I swear there’s a fat electrician video for every single one of these companies that are mysteriously not evil.
It really pisses me off that people abandoned it in favor the evil that is Facebook. Support the good ones
(… then proceeds with a Youtube, a Google’s platform, link)
I mean, please don’t get me wrong, I definitely agree with everything you said. It’s just… we should also be doing a similar thing (supporting the good ones) when it comes to video platforms.
PeerTube, for example, is part of the Fediverse we’re currently on. It really pisses me off whenever I see a Youtube link being shared through the Fediverse (and especially in a Lemmy community whose name is Privacy), given we do have alternatives.
It’s been a little more than two years since I stopped using Youtube altogether (I don’t even use the alternative front-ends). My boycott against Youtube isn’t enough, because Youtube links keep popping up in Lemmy threads oftentimes. And because Lemmy would go a step further and try to embed the Youtube player in place of the hyperlink (therefore phoning Google automatically) when it’s a thread (not your case, yours appears as a hyperlink because it’s a comment), I had to manually add youtube.com and youtu.be iframe domains to my uBO network filtering.
Goes without saying, I don’t have a Facebook, either.
So sorry I’m new still, I’ll keep the links of YouTube off Lemmy from now on. Same guy posts to pepperbox under fat electrician, I can update the link later when I get on my computer. You’re totally right, YouTube is part of the axis of evil and I shouldn’t be using it. I’ll check peertube out. It would suck to stop following my favorite creators but it’s worth it if there are decent alternatives.
So sorry I’m new still, I’ll keep the links of YouTube off Lemmy from now on.
Oh… I’m the one who must beg pardon, upon re-reading our exchange I noticed I sounded harsh, I truly didn’t mean to. It was intended as an advice, not just to you but to everyone reading as well. Please take the time you need, migration across platforms is never easy, and like I’m going to say in the following paragraphs, it’s definitely not a 1:1 migration.
It would suck to stop following my favorite creators but it’s worth it if there are decent alternatives
Yeah… that’s unfortunately a problem 🙁
I used to watch hundreds of channels, including but not limited to ElectroBoom, Veritassium, Technology Connections, Practical Engineering, and similar STEM channels. I also used to produce some content myself (mostly technical experiments with steganography and novel ciphers, but also some esoteric content), even though my channel was very small and with the content often using Creative Commons licensing.
As I was faced by increasing enshittification from Youtube, including but not limited to stumbling upon advertisement pitches verging the dangerous (malware, scam/bets, etc), I took this decision that was far from easy, especially due to how I used to enjoy the aforementioned channels.
But then, it’s partly on those science communicators to keep themselves and their audiences captive of a monopolistic platform. If people migrated to something else en masse, similarly to how it happened regarding Twitter (people mostly migrated to Bluesky; not the perfect choice, considering there’s Mastodon right at the corner of the street, but at least people went from a monopoly on microblogging, to something “less monopolistic”).
I, the one viewer less in their daily numbers, am mere dust in the wind, but if other people started doing the same, then it’d be a phenomenon that couldn’t be ignored; content creators often are where the audience is, and when (if) the audience makes this hard decision of going somewhere less monopolistic, either they follow their audience to the new place, or they’d be left with the “audience” from Google Gemini. Hence my active campaign to advise people to start boycotting Youtube, even though most of the valuable content is still kept hostage within Youtube hosting; content creators would likely follow if this exodus happened in a significant number.
I’ve never had a Facebook account, and decided never to have one after FarmVille and the rest of the social networking game trend made Zynga and a handful of other companies very very rich at by making people very addicted.
Zuckerberg is a merciless evil bastard even as billionaires go.
I suspect the closure of Craigslist Personals had nothing to do with “stopping human trafficking” and a lot more to do with increasing the marketshare of the online-dating-as-a-data-harvest format.
Craiglist’s sin is that it demonstrates how simple and good the internet could be.
The scammers don’t need corporate money, they are everywhere, including on facebook. All dating websites are overrun with pig butcherers run from slave compounds in South Asia, all the way to your local romance scammer.
FB is overrun with other scammers primarily though, truth scammers, influence operations, but that’s another story. They are the worst of them truly though.
We should want to keep CL. I quit FB, but have the account on hold just so I can use marketplace if need be.
We should want to keep CL. I quit FB, but have the account on hold just so I can use marketplace if need be.
I hadn’t touched Facebook in yeeeears until the band I joined insisted I need to share the posts for gigs and shit and immediately I started getting all kinds of weird messages and friend requests. Fuck Facebook.
There is still ebay and XMRBazaar
XMRBazaar? Could you point me in the right direction of more info on this? I’m wholly intrigued.
Ebay is similarly unethical as FB. https://apnews.com/article/ebay-settlement-d0886f1036e198f77669707db9fe1f2b
That’s only one example of the shit they’ve pulled. For several years now, they pretty much give buyers free rein to scam sellers.
You’re lucky. In my country, it’s only marketplace
IDK about eBay, but anybody from anywhere is allowed to use XMRBazaar.
Sure, but nobody does here :(
I used Craigslist for years to buy furniture, bikes, lawn equipment, tools, etc. until I was catfished 3 times in a row when trying to buy something.
I gave up on it and opened a Facebook account for the first time just to get access to Marketplace. I’ve never had that problem since.
Sorry, but Craigslist’s inability to manage its users killed Craigslist.
I don’t know, but it wouldn’t surprise me.
Craigslist is a pita.
A guy was offloading a box of woodworking magazines. Read: full woodworking plans, multiple per mag. $10. Great.
The contact info is an email. Ridiculous, but ok, I’ll try it.
I use the junk proton mail and the guy responds like he’s on Facebook: yes it’s still available, when would you like to pick it up? Not what I asked, I gave 3 different t days I could be there in the afternoon already and never asked if it was available. He could’ve just said that works or doesn’t. More email. Fantastic.
I repeat what I said and add two more days a week later if he’s keen on waiting. He says tomorrow afternoon would be great, and names a time. But not a place. Great. More email.
I’m not going to futz with email on a tiny phone screen. I ask where while I’m at my PC. I get nothing. Next day rolls around. I try again. Nothing. The time comes and goes. Late evening I check on a lark. I get an oh sorry and he gives the address in an email time stamped hours after agreed upon pickup time.
This is Craigslist. It needs a texting platform to deal with people like this.
I’ve had similar email loops that go nowhere regarding chickens and then an armoire. Woodworking guy was that last. All trapped in email hell.
Craigslist is only under attack from itself. It needs a fast, easy way to text between users or it’s going to remain in the mud. It has the name recognition, and yet.
Conversely, most of my encounters of CL were short and to the point and resolved one way or the other in usually an hour. If the people you’re dealing with are familiar with how it works, it’s two emails, one each way, and maybe a clarification/announcement text.
It’s like, where/when? Maybe another question. Here/time, text number, answer or not.
If it’s more drawn out than that, they’re usually a fucking idiot and it’s not worth pursuing, as they’ll have already sold it to some guy that walked past the sign in the yard by the time they remember how to send an email
Set up Delta Chat to use an unencrypted classic email address (which requires a little set up as they really want you to use an encrypted chatmail server, but once you do set that up) you can use it as a chat app for any emails and your contacts will be none the wiser. There you go, emails are chats now and you can rest easy.
I read this whole thing and I get that you have some kind of negative emotional association with email, but beyond that I cannot for the life of me see how email is the problem here.
Yeah. I would expect email to be the form of communication provided. Or a phone number, but who wants to give those out these days?
Personally, I’d give out a proxy address.
I hate email as well but I don’t blame Craigslist for that, just humanity in general LOL. They have their own chat app now if that’s something you really need.
Fair. I work with people such that email plays a very small role. But I never engage with it on a tiny phone screen, only when I’m sitting down with a PC or work computer.
But you do use some kind of proprietary, surveilled walled garden to communicate on your phone? you ever think of just changing your font size? or just getting rid of your phone?
Get the same shit on Facebook. Worse, even. Get yourself a mobile client.
I haven’t used CL in years but you brought back all the PTSD I had when using that platform.
FB Marketplace isn’t much better but at least you don’t have to deal with the whole slew of different communication platforms.
What’s killer is CL has what’s needed to usurp marketplace, if it would only get serious about integrating a messaging app.
