Jim Buckmaster

Craigslist to charge for erotic services ads:

Yesterday I did an interview with Matthew B. Stannard of the San Francisco Chronicle about craigslist’s new security measures. Let’s get my media self-back patting out of the way first.

On the other end of the criticism spectrum was Trench Reynolds, a pseudonymous crime blogger who tracks Craigslist-linked crime at craigscrimelist.org.

“I still say the best way to crack down on that is to do away with the erotic services section altogether,” he said. “I think (the deal) will cut down on a lot of the erotic services ads, but I don’t think it will cut down enough to put me out of business.”

And I still stand by what I said.

Now let’s move on to a quote by craigslist’s CEO himself Jim Buckmaster…

“It raises the accountability for people posting to the category,” said Craigslist Chief Executive Officer Jim Buckmaster. “Our well-intentioned users don’t want to see illegal activity on the site, either.”

Buckmaster said the company is trying to strike a balance, keeping the erotic services section - in part to keep such ads from appearing elsewhere on Craigslist - but trying to do so responsibly, protecting free speech and preventing exploitation. Hopefully, he said, Craigslist can be a pioneer in this kind of cooperation as it has been on the Internet.

“In our humble opinion this is the way to go, and we would invite other online services to follow suit,” he said. “We all would be better off if we all voluntarily do what is necessary to curtail illegal activity on the Internet.”

I keep hearing this theory that if craigslist did away with erotic services that the ads would appear in other parts of the site. Well, if erotic services ads appear in other parts of the site won’t the users then be able to flag them? I mean that’s what Mr. Buckmaster was touting prior to the new measures. Has Mr. Buckmaster lost faith in his user base that he has so highly touted in the past? Or did he never have it to begin with and just wants the traffic that the erotic services section provides?

No sooner did I post my previous post about crauigslist big announcement did I see this post by Jim Buckmaster on craigslist’s official blog.

craigslist is taking huge steps to eliminating crime on its sites.

First off craigslist is suing 14 companies whose service and software are geared towards circumventing craigslist’s existing security measures such as needing a working phone number to place an erotic services ad.

Speaking of erotic services, those ads will now require not only credit card verification but also a small fee with 100% of that money donated to charity.

They have also entered into a new partnership with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children to help put a stop to the exploitation of children.

You can read the entire press release at the link I posted above.

Is this the end of crime on craigslist? Is this the end of craigscrimelist? Um…no.

While I applaud the efforts that craigslist is going to they still refuse to eliminate the erotic services section altogether.

While the measures they are putting in place are admirable but still can be circumvented. How many of the new ads will be placed with stolen credit cards?

This is a huge step to eliminating crime on craigslist but unfortunately it is still not enough.

N. Calif. Called Craigslist Crime ‘Hotspot’:

This was an interview I did with TV station KCRA in Sacramento, California about violent crimes and craigslist. Yes, I know they call me Trent Reynolds. That’s more TV friendly than Trench. It’s not like either of those are my real name anyway so there you have it.

I thought I would be going head to head with Jim Buckmaster himself but that turned out not to be. I would have loved to have had that opportunity.

First let me brag about my one and only quote in the article…

Crimes such as stolen items for sale, offers of prostitution and money fraud are much more common. A clearing house for these crimes is found on the Web site craigscrimelist.org — a site where victims can share their Craigslist horror stories.

“I see more crimes reported on the West Coast and in the Pacific Northwest. The big hotspots would be in Northern California,” site developer Trent Reynolds said.

The area is a Craigslist fan base: The site was born just down the road in San Francisco, and Northern California’s in turn use it more and are more likely to become victims.

It’s true. Violent crimes like armed robbery are more rare on craigslist than prostitution and fraud but that doesn’t make it any less of an issue. And Northern California is the epicenter of craigslist related crime since that’s where the site got it’s start and people have been using it longer there than anywhere else.

Now let’s hear from craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster…

According to Jim Buckmaster, CEO of Craigslist, the percentage of postings that end in significant crimes is low when compared with the legitimate use of the site.

Buckmaster claimed Craigslist is unable to track the number of crimes involving the site. He said the task would be daunting, pointing to the 50 million monthly users, 35 million listings and 12 billion monthly pageviews.

“The incidence is not zero. We’d like it be zero, but it’s not zero,” Buckmaster said.

It’s definitely not zero but like I said it’s a large enough number to cause concern yet Mr. Buckmaaster just washes his hands of it and refuses to do anything to protect his userbase.

User profiles, while not a perfect solution, would go a long way to discouraging a lot of crime on craigslist. So would eliminating the erotic services section. Two things that craigslist is not considering. So anonymous crime will continue unabated on craigslist. Eventually people will get so fed up with it they’ll move on to other sites and then the big wigs at craigslist will wonder what happened.

Again, how have they not hired me as a consultant. I’m not above selling out to the man. craigslist and its users see themselves as going against the grain but in reality they’re just another corporation hence they are ‘the man’.

Craigslist website bombarded by crooks, Vancouver expert says:

This is an article from the Canada.com about the amount of real estate scams on craigslist in Canada.

Our good friend Meg at Chicanery, Cons, and Scams is featured in the article and she claims that a good 20 to 40 percent of the rental ads on Vancouver’s craigslist are scams.

Yours truly is featured in the article even though they say I’m from New Jersey. I grew up in Jersey but it’s North Carolina now, but that’s ok.

The point I wanted to make was Jim Buckmaster’s response to Meg’s estimation.

Craigslist’s chief operational officer Jim Buckmaster wouldn’t agree to an interview.

He said in e-mails the percentages “aren’t accurate” but didn’t provide numbers.

“The incidence of illegal ads on Craigslist is actually quite low, especially when compared to the overwhelming volume of legitimate ads, of which there are more than 30 million each month,” he wrote.

He said it’s buyer beware, and noted safety tips are posted online.

Buckmaster said staff screen inappropriate erotic-services ads but won’t ban them as the smaller sites ChosenList.com and flugpo.com do.

He said Craigslist prides itself on co-operating with police.

He seems almost proud that they don’t ban the erotic services ads but that’s not the topic today.

Of course he’s not going to give out exact numbers. First off he probably doesn’t know and that’s because he doesn’t care. As long as the employment scam…I mean job listing money is rolling in he could not give a rat’s ass. He’s right about one thing though when he says ‘Buyer beware’. Buyers should beware and not use craigslist.

I got an e-mail yesterday from a reader by the name of Jon. He had developed a website that basically was the craigslist vigilante posse I’ve been wanting to organize. It’s goal was to flag the obvious illegal ads in the erotic services section of craigslist.

According to Jon the site was making good progress in at least one major city that has a problem with craigslist prostitution. A large number of ads for illegal services had been removed. This is exactly the kind of thing that Jim Buckmaster himself is supposedly happening on craigslist to curb illegal activity. What he doesn’t tell you is that flagging ads just leads to more criminal activity.

Somehow the denizens of the erotic services section were able to obtain Jon’s personal information and were able to use it into harassing Jon to take down his site.

Basically, they were calling and saying I needed to mind my own business and implied that things were just getting started. They also posted a bunch of CL ads with my phone number for free stuff at my house and used my email to sign me up for adult services online. I wasn’t too worried until they started calling my wife and using expletives and breathing heavy. I sent a complaint to CL, have not heard back from them. All the calls came in blocked, so I have no phone numbers or email for these people either. I’m sure CL could find out who posted the bogus ads, but I am not going to hold my breath that they will want to help me.

Of course not. That would cut into their revenue stream. craigslist says it makes no money off of it’s erotic services section but that’s just not true. The erotic services section brings in cubic assloads of traffic to the site and some of them are employers who use the site to post job ads which is where craigslist makes their money.

So I know that some craigslist employees read this site. How about helping Jon out with these creeps. If you contact me I’ll be more than happy to put you in touch with him and I’ll keep it confidential.

Like Jon, I’m not holding my breath either that they’ll get back to me.

Teen suicide spurs war on child prostitution:
This is an article about Atlanta’s war on child prostitution. It briefly mentions craigslist and it’s usual denial of facilitation…

Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin wrote to craigslist founder Craig Newmark and Chief Executive Jim Buckmaster in August, urging them to remove postings of women engaged in activity that broke Georgia law and called on other mayors to file similar protests.

Buckmaster said the company “shares Mayor Franklin’s concerns and are evaluating her suggestions.”

The site warns its users that it prohibits illegal activity but he added: “We do not monitor the content of more than 25 million free postings craigslist users self-publish each month.”

But I mostly wanted to point out the plight of Samantha Walker who committed suicide after testifying against one of the men who paid to have sex with her when she was 15.

This is why I believe that craigslist needs to eliminate it’s erotic services section. Please read the entire article.

There are no victimless crimes.

Oldest Profession Has Young Victims, New Methods: Ann Woolner:
This is a great article about Atlanta’s perceived problem with child prostitution and what police are doing to combat it. Of course craigslist is brought into the conversation because Mayor Shirley Franklin previously called craigslist on the carpet for facilitating child prostitution.

The author of the article, Ann Woolner, tried to contact craigslist about this and was met with the usual response.

I tried to contact craigslist Chief Executive Officer Jim Buckmaster to ask whether he had instituted any reforms since Franklin wrote him in August seeking closer monitoring, more stringent warnings and a tougher attitude toward those who advertise illegal services or otherwise break the Web site’s rules. Questions e-mailed to a press contact for Buckmaster weren’t answered.

How long will craigslist continue to stick its fingers in its ears and go “LALALALALALALALALALALALA I’M NOT LISTENING”?

Law Enforcement Targets Prostitution on Craigslist:
It’s nice to see the NY Times write a sizzling expose about craigslist prostitution. Never mind that I’ve been writing about it for the past year. However this article does have some merit as it has some great quotes.

First let’s hear from craigslist president Jim Buckmaster…

Law enforcement officials have accused Craigslist of enabling prostitution. But the company’s president, Jim Buckmaster, said its 24-member staff cannot patrol the multitude of constantly changing listings — some 20 million per month — and counts on viewers to flag objectionable ads, which are promptly removed.

“We do not want illegal activity on the site,” he said. Asked whether the company supported the police’s placing decoy ads on Craigslist, Mr. Buckmaster said: “We don’t comment on the specifics” of law enforcement.

Like I’ve said before the problem with users policing the ads are that people who use craigslist for normal items aren’t going to venture in to the erotic services section and people using the erotic services section sure as hell aren’t going to flag the ads.

Now let’s hear from a pro-prostitute advocate…

Tracy Quan, a member of the advocacy group Prostitutes of New York and author of the autobiographical novel “Diary of a Married Call Girl” (Harper Perennial, 2006), acknowledged that “the Internet became a virtual street for people in the sex industry,” but said that “the police are as inventive and as wily as sex workers are.” She said that the stings amounted to entrapment of consenting adults, and that “it seems like an enormous waste of time resources by authoritarian busybodies.”

Translation: I think I’m above the law so I’m going to complain about police doing they’re job.

And again from Mr. Buckmaster…

Law enforcement officials ask why Craigslist even includes Erotic Services among its 191 categories. Mr. Buckmaster, the company president, said the site created that category “at the request of our users” for legitimate massage, escorts and exotic dancers. In an e-mail interview, he said that the police had praised the company’s cooperation, though he did not give examples.

Letting the inmates run the asylum is never a good idea.

And for those of you who think that prostitution is no big deal I leave you with this quote…

The police say the focus on such misconduct is worthwhile because prostitution is often linked to other crimes involving drugs, weapons, physical abuse and exploitation of minors and immigrants.

But I guess you’re ok with all of that.