Craigslist Reviews 5

Complate waste of time site. Every posting that I put on site gets flagged for removal. Time to shut this trap down

A site for Scammers conmen and fraudsters.
I am supposed to send a stranger a £2600 Bank Transfer for a pinball machine the seller wont let me see or take some more photos other than the one in the AD and even refuses to take a "zoom" video of the item. When I do a reverse picture search they are old photos from 2 years ago TOTAL SCAM!

I am not happy with this site Craigslist. I lost a lot of money with bogus loan credit reset providers who want fees paid up front, then you never hear from them again.
Mr Kevin Greene uk
Miss Katie Smith uk
Michael Mcleroy Usa
I still have all there details.
To craigslist: anyone who places an ad offering a service you should check them out prior with the FCA

Finding honest straightfoward work on Craigslist UK is difficult, and I don't understand why Craigslist allows posts soliciting sexual services, many which are posted as advertisements for wanted cleaning services. I'm starting to see Craigslist as a hotbed of possibly abusive people who are more than willing to take advantage of (vulnerable) people. This really is too bad, as those who just want to do some 'normal' work and earn a little cash are being left out.

(I’m reposting this again after it was removed by Trustpilot before. Originally I posted as 2 successive reviews and this seems to have triggered off the automated system.  I’ve now combined the two into one so hopefully it’ll be ok. If its gets removed again I’ll have to chase it up Trustpilot as I don’t want my efforts going to waste).

My anger at the abuse of flagging forms the backbone of this review but I’ll go into more detail about other shortcomings of this classifieds site as well. I should also mention that this review is solely concerned with Craigslist London / Craigslist UK only and it relates to the (former) Casuals and current Community, Services, Housing, and Jobs sections only. I’ve never used any other parts of the site so can’t comment on those.

So, let’s begin…

Craigslist is a classifieds site that started in San Francisco in 1996 but now covers over 70 countries and 700 cities worldwide. It gets a lot of traffic but this is hardly much use when you can’t even get your ad to stay up.

As things currently stand only 3 types of people can really truly benefit from Craigslist London these days:

1 – Homosexual White people
2 – Other homosexual people
3 – Other White people

There seems to be a clear hierarchy with White homosexuals at the top (and untouchable), followed by regular White males/females who can keep ads on if worded carefully, followed by ethnics who get flagged off no matter what.

That said, flagging will affect most people in varying degrees and for some it’s a minor miracle if you manage to keep your ad on more than a single day. Any advantages of using this site are completely nullified by the incessant and often malicious flagging that goes on. At times the flagging can be really dispiriting, especially if like me you sometimes spend hours getting an ad right.

Many like to repeat the mantra “you need to reach a maximum number of flags before ads are removed.” That’s true. But with the right software you can easily fool the system. Dedicated flaggers who use the site for no other purpose than to flag often use software to mass flag from a single IP (yes, such losers DO exist).

So who are the armies of ‘hobby flaggers?’ Well they usually fall into one of the following categories:

1. Feminists
2. Homosexuals
3. Racists
4. Jealous posters
5. Competitors

Here’s a little more detail about them:

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FEMINISTS:
Often spend all day scouring ads for apparent ‘sexist’ content but they don’t need to look very far to get ‘triggered.’ Even harmless sentences like ‘male seeks submissive female’ get them hot under the collar

HOMOSEXUALS:
These bstards are really annoying. Their own ads go untouched but they still target ‘m4w’ ads out of spite. If you dare to put ‘no trans or gay men’ in your ad it will disappear as soon as its posted

RACISTS:
The ’Neo-Nazis’ as I like to call them – this group despise anyone non-Caucasian. Just by putting your ethnicity in the title you’ll attract their interest. This lot that will whinge about ‘ebony girls seeking rewards’ but White knicker sellers are perfectly fine by them…

JEALOUS FLAGGERS:
‘Your fantasy is better than my fantasy’ – this lot flags any ads that are well-written, interesting, unique or witty… i.e. any ads that have half a chance of getting replies. These doofuses can’t get replies so they’ll make damn sure no one else does

COMPETITIORS:
Lastly the competitors - those worried about others ‘stealing’ replies. This type of flagging went on a lot in ‘Job Offered’ where different employers often vied for the attention of the same pool of jobseekers. Many on the receiving end started spam posting the same ad hoping at least one would get through
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As you can see, none of the above are legitimate reasons to flag, but that doesn’t matter. There’s no accountability in this regard and flaggers just get away with it and re-offend.

Near the bottom of the pile were those like me – ethnic, brown, straight, and male – and I attracted the ire of more than one group of hobby flagger. Thus my ads lasted no more than an hour or so before they disappeared.
Others – White and single (or better still – White and gay) fared much better, their ads surviving much longer.

This is still the case today. Take a look at Community and Services and you’ll see the site awash with gay ads no-one bothers flagging. I guess White homosexuals don’t pose much of a threat to anyone. Compare, for example, my quite innocuous requests on CL London that got instantly shot down…

* Full body naked moisturizing for hydration only (no sex)
* Sensual haircuts or head massage wanted (no sex)
* Pakistani Male Volunteer for F pilates trainees, yoga, masseuse (no sex)

…to the White and White Gay ads that manage to survive for weeks on end…

Sep 27: “Free M2M Massage” (survived 32 days and counting…)
Oct 4: “Plus size or busty White female wanted by sophisticated White gentleman” (25 days and counting)
Oct 13: “Bi Male visitor looking for Fit Lad Today”
Oct 25: “Straight White Male seeking BBW for long term”
Oct 26: “Seek Big Male Bum to Massage”

In fact the “Bi Male visitor” ad was spam posted 6 times and still got away with it. I’ve used Craigslist for more than 10 years but the problem of flagging has been there from the start. Unlike Gumtree, CL lets you renew ads every 3 days, but any benefit of this evaporates as each renewal just ends up attracting more flags. As a result many users don’t bother with renew but just double or triple post the same ad.

Currently my usage of CL has almost crawled to a stop, I hardly ever use it now. But the same problems still plague it and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. To avoid flagging some have begun posting in the late evening / early morning between 11pm – 7am when most people are asleep. This does help but the flip side is that no-one gets to read your ads which come morning will be flagged anyway.

During those rare moments when flagging decreased for whatever reason, my ads did in fact start to attract replies. An example of this was my ‘sensual head massages wanted’ ads where I believe I’d have eventually found someone had it not been for the cynical targeting of this ad (an ad which incidentally broke no rules). Instead, 5 long years later I was still searching for a female who could give me a head massage lasting a mere 30 minutes. The flaggers had succeeded in scuppering my chances, as they had done with all my other ads and indeed the ads of other people. Thus a very simple request on CL may end up taking years to get adequate responses to. Its ridiculous.

In theory flagging is a benevolent and democratic idea: turning Craigslist into a self-regulating Classifieds where the most important stakeholders – the users themselves - decide on what is suitable and what isn’t. But in reality it just throws the field open to bigots who end up targeting any individuals they just happen to take a dislike to.

The things that would’ve set CL apart from competitors – free posting of ads, ability to renew ads, an accessible job section, a high volume of traffic, a decluttered website that doesn’t contain any commercial ads – all these potential positives have been completely lost to flagging.

Finally, I’d like to add that, in creating this CL London page, I hope other users from London and the rest of the UK will be encouraged to share their experiences. Let’s make it clear to pathetic flaggers just how much their behaviour has ruined CL for us good users.

Thanks for reading!