Let me start with a disclosure: I hope to think that Craig Newmark is a friend. But I know him as a decent and genuine man who believes that he is bringing a service to millions of people, saving them billions of dollars that used to go to overpriced, monopolistic middlemen. When I last had coffee with Craig in San Francisco on the craigslist tab, I should disclose , he talked about the number of free ads craigslist has given people in terms of economic philanthropy , which is also what he said to my students at CUNY two years ago.
These days, Craig and the company he founded are being demonized in courts of political and media power as sex peddlers. The service — which Craig is quick to point out, he does not run; he means it when he says he is its customer-service representative — just took down its adult ads in the U.
The argument has been that craigslist ads are used to serve human sex trafficking. Except craigslist has been openly and consistently helping police in their efforts to arrest traffickers. The adult ads were paid and more trackable than free personals on craigslist or ads in many other places online and in print.
Now the trade, whatever its scale, is only more distributed. Gawker has a guide to post-craigslist paid sex and craigslist has pointed out that even eBay has sold party favors of another sort. So why are government and media going after craigslist? The same reason, I think, that media and government in, for example, Germany are demonizing Google even as the German people give Google its biggest market share anywhere in the world.
Since Google and the internet have existed, many more billions have left traditional media as Google offered their former ad customers a better deal. But I do see old power structures huddling together against the cold breath of technologists bringing change. He replied that he wished we were but cautioned that, as I wrote then, too much of our resource, people, government help and attention go to the big, old legacy companies rather than supporting innovation read: disruption.
