I was having a random conversation with a friend a few days ago. We were talking about my roomates and he asked me how I had found an apartment, so I obviously answered: "Craigslist, of course!". Before coming to New York, people would say it was the best website for housing but also for buying all kind of things like tickets, furniture...
But my friend had a surprising reaction: "Oh my God, you're brave!". I didn't understand why so I asked him for further explanation and he told me something that scared the hell out of me: "Craigslist is known for being dangerous, heard people got killed" he said.
After considering the possibility that I was currently living with serial killers, I stopped being paranoid but did some research out of curiosity. It turns out that Craigslist is actually in the news for suspecious activities.
It seems like the success of Craigslist partly depends on a controversial revenue called sex ads. Indeed, more and more people are posting ads on the website to promote prostitution. Users have to pay from $10 to $15 to publish an ad on Craigslist, and as there is no efficient regulation for sex ads, the website makes money by promoting horrible things such as child exploitation and human trafficking. This is completely scandalous.
Craigslist used to give all the money from the sex ads to charity, which is kind of gross when you think about it. Solving problems by making money out of another huge social issue is not helping. But the icing on the cake is that now the company stopped committing to give that money away! Basically it's almost like saying "We make money by promoting prostitution, so what?" to people's face.
The ads of Craigslist are likely to bring $36 billions to the company this year, which is three times the revenue of last year's projection. But can a company really grow and spread its influence while being involved in such unethical issues?
But my friend had a surprising reaction: "Oh my God, you're brave!". I didn't understand why so I asked him for further explanation and he told me something that scared the hell out of me: "Craigslist is known for being dangerous, heard people got killed" he said.
After considering the possibility that I was currently living with serial killers, I stopped being paranoid but did some research out of curiosity. It turns out that Craigslist is actually in the news for suspecious activities.
It seems like the success of Craigslist partly depends on a controversial revenue called sex ads. Indeed, more and more people are posting ads on the website to promote prostitution. Users have to pay from $10 to $15 to publish an ad on Craigslist, and as there is no efficient regulation for sex ads, the website makes money by promoting horrible things such as child exploitation and human trafficking. This is completely scandalous.
Craigslist used to give all the money from the sex ads to charity, which is kind of gross when you think about it. Solving problems by making money out of another huge social issue is not helping. But the icing on the cake is that now the company stopped committing to give that money away! Basically it's almost like saying "We make money by promoting prostitution, so what?" to people's face.
The ads of Craigslist are likely to bring $36 billions to the company this year, which is three times the revenue of last year's projection. But can a company really grow and spread its influence while being involved in such unethical issues?
Just because Craigslist provides online services doesn't mean it should be exempt from regulations. My point is, we should expect integrity from the Internet too, especially from Craigslist which is in the top ten most visited websites in the US. Can you imaging ads for prostitution on the New York Times or CNN? The digital media shouldn't be a no man's land in terms of rules.
No comments:
Post a Comment