I flipped on the news today (yes, my actual television, not sure why) and the big story was Craigslist gone wrong. Someone placed an ad on Craigslist saying that anything at a home in Jacksonville, Oregon was up for grabs. People responded, and carted away most of the belongings of resident Robert Salisbury. He arrived home to thirty people picking over the last of his stuff. Even the man’s horse was taken.
It’s common for people to offer stuff for free on Craigslist, as long as you come and pick it up. It’s a bit of a stretch to imagine that people would think that an entire home’s worth of belongings would be given away on the site, but that’s a post for a different day. It’s worth pointing out, though, that this isn’t the first time something like this has happened.
I spoke to a couple of attorneys this afternoon about the potential liability of Craigslist for stuff like this. The victim has little recourse, other than insurance (I’m betting he has none) and a possible civil case against the person who posted the listing should he or she be caught. Could a litigiously minded individual find a winning argument to get Craigslist to pay for the damages? Perhaps, said the attorneys. And there are certainly plenty to lawyers who’d consider taking the case on contingency, hoping for a quick settlement/shake down to keep PR exposure over this to a minimum.
But what I really think is that Craigslist is just a mirror, and we have to take the good with the bad. Countless connections and transactions are made on the site, and the vast majority are of benefit to everyone involved.
Sure, mainstream press feasts on the occasional accident scene, making it seem like the site is a den of predators waiting to strike at anyone who drops by. Craigslist has it all – Sex, drugs, humiliation and more.
But for the most part Craigslist is just a really good place to find a job, or a boyfriend, or buy cheap furniture for your dorm room. The situation today is simply an exception that proves what an important place Craigslist has taken in our culture. I feel bad for Mr. Salisbury and I hope he gets all his stuff back (especially his horse). But pointing the finger of accusation at Craigslist for what happened is not what should happen next.
Too many lawyers.
“But for the most part Craigslist is just a really good place to find a job, or a boyfriend”
Freudian slip perhaps?
j/k — We all know Julia Allison and the other video-bloggar-gals* has a special place in your heart.
*bloggar-gal = not to be confused with a beggar on the street in SF actually doing something useful for the scenery.
Either this is really old or this isn’t the first time this has happened… i read of a Looting that was perpetrated by CraigsList before.
At the end of the day, CraigsList will have to address it’s shortcomings. What a cute experiment in digital promotion… but real world implications will come home to roost. Craig must be none to happy to see his service abused to victimize people… I also think the anonymity of CraigsList is it’s achilles heel. Whoever posted that listing ought to have his balls cut off and not-so-gently placed down his throat. (yes, it’s easy and correct to assume it was a Male who did this.)
At the end of the day, craigslist is just a broadcast medium and people who post the information should be held liable for their actions… not the website.
Agree with ineedhits. You post you should be liable.
I knew this would happen someday. I am always on craigslist, and every time I see one of those posts for a free boat or trailer in the driveway that says to take it if the owner isn’t home, I ask myself how anyone could actually go through with such an act without verifying the owner of the boat did, in fact, post the ad. I mean what idiot would go loot a house when the owner was not even present. Anyhow, obviously any outcome is possible involving litigation if the judge doesn’t throw out the case and if the lawyer can argue well enough, but I don’t think the complainant would win going this route. Would a local newspaper be liable given the same circumstances – not likely.
I don’t understand one thing. And I’m surprised nobody has this question too. How all thouse people got into the house ? I assume it was closed if owner was away. In this case all those people robbed his house.
I was wondering the same thing. Was the door open? How did these people get into the house? If they broke in, it’s obviously robbery….
Facebook’s Marketplace was supposed to kill Craigslist. Notice nobody talks about that failed monetization effort these days? How much money is SocialAds making, anyway?
Not withstanding the issue of who is responsible in this case – it wouldn’t be that hard for CL to require validation via SMS for anyone putting up a classified posting. It requires the poster to own a mobile – which is not an undue burden for anyone making a posting and would take just a minute or so for the process to complete.
CL already allows frequent posters to use their CL accounts and those accounts would need to be validated just once.
Currently CL only requires email address validation for free postings.
Throw-away email accounts are much more easily obtained and less traceable than throw-away SIM cards – in case abuse needs to be investigated.
Craiglist is very useful, but I found it frustrating to spend the time to respond to each post separately. That’s why I wrote the http://www.crai...toresponder.com … which makes it easy to automatically respond to posts you’re interested in.
Using craigslist and the autoresponder, I have found my current apartment, furnished my entire room for free, bought and sold mobile homes, and even gone on some great dates with wonderful ladies
.
Bahahhahahhahhahhahahhahahha
-pause-
BAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHA
I hope the owner doesn’t see this, but i found the linked article too funny to keep a straight face. Oh man, i hope his insurance covers it and the perpetrator who posted it gets caught!
Damn, what a dirty trick. Well I guess it’s more effective than sand in the gas tank or a burning bag of dogshit on the doorstep.
I must say, you can only take the good with the bad if the bad is not TERRIBLE… There’s nothing stopping some asshole from posting an ad that his ex-girlfriend fantasizes about men breaking in and brutally forcing sex on her.
Yep, totally nuts… but not inconceivable.
CL has to create some sort of safety net. An IP address is not a good enough trail, if you ask me.
I also agree with ineedhits and Victor. I am guessing if you tried to moderate internally or pre-moderate a place like CL, you would be out of business. You have to build the trust and self-regulation into the system as they try to do and when and if there is a breach, as in this case, the medium should not be held responsible.
I have been in 3 court cases related to this in my career in the calssifieds industry in a number of countries and, each time, the paper, platform or was not held responsible.
They can screen an auction quickly whether it is legitimate or not before approving to be listed, otherwise it can occur again, someone can set up a bogus account and do the same. A similar incident occurred at Craigslist last year, not sure they caught the culprit at that time.
Craigslist needs to do a lot more to prevent abuse of their site.
Last year I spent months looking for a San Francisco – craigslist is the dominant place to find listings, so everyone goes there. Because it is such a seller-dominated market with ridiculous competition to find a place, there is so much abuse that goes on. Creepy people who victimize roommates and , perverts who post fake ads to get girls to come to their apartments, Craigslist can be a very dangerous place. When abuse is discovered, the abuser can go on posting and posting without any consequences, with little that others can do to stop it.
@7: The Register’s comments thread suggests that this happened in a rural area where people don’t feel the need to lock their house.
Stuff like this proves that the veneer of decency in such areas is pretty thin, though. Even when he told them it was his house, they just waved printouts of the ad in his face and continued looting. That proves beyond doubt that there were no decent intentions on the part of the people who turned up (apart from, of course, the woman who came for the horse, got suspicious at its good health and called the owner). It wasn’t “I’m doing the owner a favour”, it was “I’m able to get away with this”.
maybe pointing the finger at craigslist _is_ what should happen next.
power centers have the ability to destroy people’s lives. in this case, the guy _only_ lost a lot of property, and his horse. gd – sick bastards.
but it’s not hard to imagine much more offensive postings – which i think i remember reading have already occurred.
for instance, would it be ok for someone to post a message claiming that they were an 11 yo girl at some address and they were home alone and wanted a friend to come visit? what if some evil mom/daughter combo – like the myspace mother – posted a message like that about the girl down the block they were trying to kill? and if this 11 yo girl, who was home alone, was harmed in any way, should we _still_ automatically abdicate craigslist of any responsibility in the matter?
craigslist has to be accountable.
To show the true power of the community, the people should either return the stuff, or Craigslist should have a DONATE button on their home page for a week to raise some funds for Mr. Salisbury. Do something for cryin’ out loud!
Endgame Craigslist will have to tighten up authentication, its clear that cheat behaviour in this social community is getting too risky.
i feel sorry for the guy…
most social networking sites that use user content depend on the character of persons who sign up and post on the site..
can craiglist be held responsible? maybe not
can craiglist be held responsible if they have no facility to help locate the perpertrators who would have done this? who knows..
new laws are made when things like this happens and it affects the right person
A simple way around this would be to require a credit/debit card to create an account with a token fee.
Did this guy not lock his house? I wonder if he did then some broke in.
craigslist should absolutely be held liable , I hope they get sued to the last penny , they’re site is a ghetto anything useful about it can be done in other ecosystems in a better more accountable way.
MA is clearly smoking too much cash these days, luckily craigslist probably paid him for such a biased post, or maybe he is just hooked on his local casual encounters list.
The article says his ‘barn’ and ‘porch’…not his House, specifically.
so I’m assuming his barn was unlocked??
and his house was locked, unless the ‘looters’ broke-in?
sob, CL Should track down that poster’s ip
I’ve never been a fan of Craigslist site. I remember putting my email add in the site when I posted a simple add and the next thing I knew, my inbox was filled with scam letters and all sorts of SPAM emails. That email was newly created and it was intended for Craigslist.
The greatest tragedy, after this Craigslist brouhaha, is when everyone will be posting about free stuff at the expense of others’ tears.
Maybe Mr. Salisbury could recoup the financial loss through TV/newspaper interviews etc. Doesn’t bring back poor horsey though. Although with the story being widespread, surely some of the people would realise they effectively stole his stuff and would feel obliged to bring it back to him.
That really sucks for the guy, he should have left his house locked up.
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We don’t need more laws. Enforce what we’ve got.
The IP will lead to an ISP will lead to the poster. This person is guilty of theft. So are the people who took the stuff. They fell for the “too good to be true.” They’re probably sending their life savings to Nigerian princes as I type.
Enforce laws, and accountability comes about, and we can’t accept “sorry, we’re too busy confiscating drug dealers’ cars and writing speed tickets” from our police.
@11 Faramarz:
He was probably a rashti — they saw they could take his wife without a peep so they tried it with his belongings…
ha!
@26
It’s one thing to have the URL linked to your name, but there’s no need for a retarded signature line on your posts….really…
What about the ad in the Salem section where someone was offering to sell their baby for meth? Just saw it on CNN and obviously this goes above sex and humiliation. They are not sure if it’s a joke or not but it’s sick. Craigslist can only go on for so long before they must be forced to take responsibility. To say they can’t automatically screen posts or verify accounts is taking the easy way out.
Honestly, I hope the site dies off and heads towards the Deadpool.
This is horrible for the guy who owned the house but I just don’t agree that CL should be liable. It’s just a medium, and all mediums are abused by someone. If you think CL should be liable, then the entire internet should be liable, and shut down, because it’s obviously such a horrible place that allows things like this to happen.
I think the people at the house had some mob-mentality going on by the time there were 30 of them. Some dude shows up and asks them what the hell they’re doing, they don’t care, they’re a mob now. “Look, here’s my printout from the internet, it must be legit, so fuck off mate.”
The people looting should be more liable than the person who posted the ad. Anyone who sees an ad like that and just busts down a house to get some free crap with no sort of verification… well, that’s just a dumb ass person.
Especially the personals part, the first post is *always* flagged. Seems fishy to me. But I’ve decided to make that work for me, so I created:
SoftOrNot [dot] com
and am posting like crazy. I hope I can get some of those pervs go to my site.
“Craigslist will have to tighten authentication”. “they will have to do this” and “have to do that”…..well, Craigslist is not the problem here.
What’s stopping me from pinning up posters all over the city listing my neighbor’s house up for grabs?
Craigslist is, simply, a medium. And like any other medium, it’s use/abuse will continue based on our level of morality.
In Utopia, people would come back and return all the stuff (including the horse) once they found out what really happened.
The guy should have used physical violence against the truck he stopped. There is no “talking” when you’re dealing with people that ignorant… you curl up those fists and start throwing them into faces and stomachs… then of course you call it self defense… they have a truck full of YOUR property, who do you think the police are going to sympathize with?
Too bad for this guy the law will have it’s hands tied… he really should have resorted to violence… if any of you ever come to my house and try to take something I am promising a thorough ass kicking is all you will leave with.
On second thought, it would actually be a fun trap to set for stupid people, put up an ad like that one and BE at the location with your whoop stick at the ready and bash some heads… i might just do that… and i’m a twisted fucker so watch your ass next time you respond to that “free stuff” craigslist ad. (You guys do realize that this is the only way to prevent this type of thing from becoming a trend, you have to set up the “what if” scenario that makes people think twice before going to pick up that free horse… “what if it’s one of those pranksters and I get hospitalized?” … it just might be, and you will.)
@Gorboonet
I like the retarded signature line–without that I might have clicked on his link.
But pointing the finger of accusation at Craigslist for what happened is not what should happen next.
Unless of course you are Mr. Salisbury.
Craig should pony up some cash for the chap. It would be the nice thing to do.
must have some great neighbors…
I don’t think this is CLs fault. They are just a medium + they already won that lawsuit that they are not responsible for people breaking the law who post on their site(the fair housing thing).
And honestly I don’t think its the fault of the person who posted this as a joke. You have to be some kind of moron to think you get free stuff. The people at fault are the ones who looted.
Let’s talk about YOUR ethics, Michael. Ho hum. Take the bad with the good? Hello? Ever hear of a newspaper allowing an ad like this? Possible, I guess, but unlikely. So, you don’t approve, I take it. But you don’t think there’s any limit to free speech. Am I hearing you right? You been talkin’ to lawyers too much. Most of them, at least there in the Valley, can come up with a workaround for anything. Call somebody else first next time.
I think that we’re seeing a manifest example of the ethics of the Web 2.0 world. This is the morality of file sharing taking to it’s illogical extreme, and, as usual, we’re all ganging up to blame the victim, who just doesn’t “get it”.
A similar thing occurred in Brisbane, Australia about eight years ago, using a newspaper classified ad. It was far worse in that case, though, since the ad said the house was due to be demolished and people should just take whatever they could. Doors, walls, windows etc were literally taken. The newspaper (same one that held the ad) showed the damage the next day: the house was practically demolished, all in a matter of hours.
Ouch, this can get really nasty.
Given recent court cases, I’m sure Craigslist would be found to not be found responsible for any of their ads if this were taken to court. That said, if they’re going to continue to herald themselves as this great ethical service to the community, they’ve got to start taking a proactive stance against these kinds of postings.
Echoing Trevor Plantagenet, it’s sad that we continue to absolve Craigslist ethically in these kind of situations while they hide behind the law. As Arrington surely knows, law != ethics.
What attorneys did you talk to that said there was a case? Such a clear Section 230 CDA case, that if I were craigslist I would file a Rule 11 motion against the attorney in question. California even has an anti-SLAPP law to handle attorneys that live just for a shakedown, knowing there is no case.
Publish these attorney’s names.
And who are these thieves that took the stuff? They could have reasonably known that the post was false. If the poster used Tor or similar, then he, sadly, may never get caught. Let’s hope he is as much an imbecile we think him to be and that they see a long time in jail.
true.. but Craigslist could employ more tools that let the community identify bogus or dangerous posts. maybe kinda like % thumps up % thumbs down
It is the people that came in to pick up the stuff thats at fault here. Just because someone said the stuff in that house is free, you let yourself in and pick stuff up? I mean where is the common sense. Wouldnt it be obvious that the stuff is being used and not being given away for free. These looters should be caught and punished.
The next thing you know they are jumping off the golden gate bridge because there is treasure at the bottom of the ocean — according to someone in craigslist.
One word: Morons.
Are you a lawyer, Steven? I did ask one and there’s enough leeway that a case wouldn’t immediately be dismissed depending on the judge and the quality of the lawyers involved. Craigslist would certainly use Section 230 CDA as *part* of it’s defense, but would be foolhardy to use it as the sole reason why it wasn’t liable, and it will certainly have to be prepared to invest in defending itself, because there very well could be case, especially since CL warns users against other forms of fraud, indicating that it is aware and monitors the various types of illegal activities that take place on it’s service.
The guy/gal who posted the information should not be the one at fault. The one at fault is craigslist who provided the medium for the information to be distributed to the mass. If the medium is not provided, the information itself is not as far reaching. People lie all the time. In print, in email, in writing, in conversation, etc. We shouldn’t punish people for free speech. The fact that craigslist gets pay on their website for attracting an audience to view classified ads show there’s a financial gain for anonymous posting. This financial gain has consequences because craigslist never put a disclaimer when someone clicks “Free” to inform users that some posting may be fake and users should be cautious about it. Remember this has happened before and craigslist has not done anything to inform users posting may be faked because craigslist has an incentive to not do it. By posting that some ads may be fake, craigslist will disenfranchise most users who depend on the information to be TRUSTED, this in turn will cause craigslist to lose a lot of its million usersbase.
Craigslist is a business. Trust is the foundation for good business. Craigslist has every incentive to NOT inform users some posting may be fake because that’ll make people NOT trust craigslist and go somewhere else that’s more trusted like fiji or sfgate.com.
Freedom of speech permit the person who posted the right to post said information. He could’ve posted the information on any forum or any website.
can someone get Robert Salisbury to signup here so all the charitable TC’ers can help him out:
https://www.mod...g/registration/