Craig Newmark is the creator of the most prevalent online classified-advertisement site in North America: Craigslist. Two things can be said about ol’ Craig:
1) He is not very creative
2) He folds like a cheap lawn chair in awkward interview situations citing the lack of action by his company to tackle the use of his product as a “the Walmart for sex trafficking” for exploiting women and children, as accused by victims’ advocacy groups across the United States.
In May 2009, Craigslist announced that they would manually screen ads to protect women and children being exploited by predators on the website.
"I am Amber Lyon, hear me ROAR...in defeat as my nerdly mouth-breathing prey runs away."
To test this, CNN reporter Amber Lyon created an advertisement offering sexual favours for the price of $200 per hour, and included a phone number. Before being deleted after two days of public viewing, the cell phone number was “ringing off the hook” allegedly. We can clearly draw a clear conclusion from this: Craigslist is doing dick-all to stop the posting of sex trade advertisements. In fact, of the hundreds of thousands of posted ads in the adult services section, officials can only find records of approximately 100 reports from Craigslist.
However, this month the site decided to remove its adult services section completely, and cover it with a black “censored” bar. Amber Lyon took the results of her foray into Craigslist’s dirty back-alley sex trade, and confronted Craig Newmark outside a conference he was speaking at. The street-interview is a complete disaster. Newmark practically has a brain meltdown and runs away from the camera on questions like these:
- “What are you doing to protect these girls?”
- “Who’s responsibility is it to report these ads?”
In his defense, Newmark seems like a pretty normal computer nerd, with the social skills to match and maybe a sweet case of Aspergers to boot. Amber Lyon, however, has a smile like a lion and an even more carnivorous attitude in the interview. Here’s the link to the full CNN article, and here’s the link to Newmark’s response letter on The Huffington Post. Thank God Interestingly, Canada’s Adult Services section remains accessible, and between you and me…its weird in there.
What do you think? How should Craigslist and other online classified ad sites be held accountable for the activity on their domain?
STANDARD DOSE 