Craigslist's dark side: 'flagging'

[Barry]

Article published - May 5, 2008
Craigslist's dark side: 'flagging'
Company alleges competitor banished its postings using procedure on Web classified site


By MARK MELNICOE
SACRAMENTO BEE


Doug Kelley was perplexed when Craigslist ads for his Sacramento carpet-cleaning business started disappearing from the popular Web site. Every time he re-posted one of his classified ads, it would vanish -- often within minutes.

After competitors' ads started showing up, some of them openly denigrating his company, West Coast Carpet Care, Kelley knew he had a problem.

Since then, Kelley estimates he has spent $11,000 in attorney's and court fees fighting his online business adversaries.

"You'd think (Craigslist) would want to get rid of the tweakers and keep good-quality, licensed business people who are productive members of society," he said.

Like other small businesses worldwide using the free classified Web site, Kelley stumbled last year onto a little-known dark side of Craigslist.

Some critics say it's a situation where anything goes, including slanderous attacks and competitors ejecting each other's ads in a process called "flagging."

Using conventional software to circumvent Craigslist rules, some individuals have figured out how to quash competition by removing ads of their rivals, whether they're house-cleaning services or real estate sellers.

Craigslist employs an automatic tool that yanks offensive or false ads if enough different users flag them. The problem: Single users can cheat the system with software that makes the flagging appear to be from multiple users.

It's a different form of Internet advertising sabotage, similar to "click fraud" where individuals repeatedly click on a rival's paid Web advertisement on Google or other search engines, to run up their rivals' costs.

They're also slamming each other with accusations of false advertising, bad business practices and even criminal activities.

"They're cyber-trashing each other, whether bumping each other's ads off or defaming each other's products," said Parry Aftab, executive director of WiredSafety, a volunteer network dedicated to Internet security issues.

She said it's much more likely to occur on a more freewheeling site such as Craigslist.

"They can't do that if they're trying to buy an ad in your paper. They can't do it on eBay because . . . you'll get in a lot of trouble with eBay. There is less moderating and less oversight of what users are doing on Craigslist."

In an e-mail, Craigslist's chief executive officer, Jim Buckmaster, said, "We are continually updating our systems to combat 'black hat' software of every kind."

He also said "remedial measures, including account suspension, are routinely taken against those violating site guidelines."

That's of little comfort to Kelley and other Sacramento-area business owners who rely on the free advertising offered by Craigslist. They say they've spent scores of hours fighting the flagging practice.

Last May, after tracing the person he believed was killing his ads, Kelley filed a lawsuit in Sacramento Superior Court against James D. Smith, owner of Mother Nature's Clean Green housecleaning service.

Smith could not be reached for comment.

Kelley said he filed the lawsuit after Craigslist officials would not respond to his repeated complaints about unfair flagging. He sued for libel, defamation and unfair competition charges, his attorney said.

"We subpoenaed Craigslist last October," said David Barrett, Kelley's Sacramento attorney. "We gave them specific ads that were flagged and this guy's posts and wanted his IP (Internet address) information. We wanted to make the connection. . . . They never responded."

A Craigslist official said in an e-mail the company can't comment on a pending lawsuit.

When Smith failed to appear, Kelley won a default. A trial is set for June, but he is unsure whether he'll pursue the case.
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[arthousefilms]

Actually, it's called GHOSTING and here's an article I found about it in a blog. It has happened to me for legitimate ads and it is almost impossible to post ads that contain certain words. Major drag!! Here's the article:

_______________________

Craigslist used to be a Happy Land for small business owner and online marketers! By posting on it, you can drive huge traffic to your website and make big BUCK from it! Of course it is still a Gold Mine but it is getting harder and harder for most marketors to enjoy posting on it!

Lots of people comment it is a Frustration Land with full of disappointment and sadness. And there are many many marketers decided to quit posting, why??

They are facing a huge problem which you may be facing now too. - Ghosting! What is Ghosting? A phenomenon after you post and publish your ads, your ads will not show on main section and only be seen by you is called Ghosting! Why will craigslist ghost your ads and how does this system work?

It is very simple. Craigslist is trying their best to avoid marketers to “spam” on its site and it wants to make sure all ads are unique and from genuine different people to create a fair community with “democracy”. They can ghost ads by using Spam Filter which is automatic software or feature built in web 2.0 system to verify the uniqueness of Four Major Elements:
1. IP – It is the most important thing for Ghosting: Each computer supposes having one Unique IP so according to Craigslist’s Terms and Policy, the ads posted by this particular IP will only be allowed to post once in one section one city! If they detect this IP again within certain amount of the time, this ad will be ghosted!
2. Email or account – This is the essential element to post. Same to the IP! Same email will only allow to use limited times in posting within 48 hours! If it is used again too soon, the post will be ghosted!
3. Title and Content – This is essence of the ad. Craigslist has software to automatically cross match the contents to make sure they all unique! If they find out something wrong with it, either it will generate a Posted Already error code or be ghosted!
4. Common Sense – There are some small factors which Craigslist will look at to make sure these ads are unique and worthwhile to show on main section. This will include Location, Image, and Keywords in Content, Compensation and many more. What common sense will apply here? For example, the difference between a local small business owner and a national marketer or spammer to post is different. The local small business owners will very likely fill up the LOCATION filed to attract local people to his business and leave a local phone number in there but the national marketer will not write anything in the LOCATION filed and it will leave a website link there! Craigslist uses human psychology to identify whether this post is from a local business owner or a spammer!

How will you know your ads having been ghosted or not?
I am going to teach you a secret here! After you successfully publish the ads, please DON”T wait 15 minutes to see if your ads will show or not! Just simply click VIEW and SOURCE in your IE menu bar and open it! You will be able to see the HTML scripts of your ad! If you see there is a paragraph called “ …… , it means your ads will show up on main section no matter what but if this sentence is not there, please don’t even bother to wait! Just delete this ads because it is trash now!

How to make your ads unghosted?
The answer is very simple! Make the post as Unique as possible!

Sometimes the things you should change are not the IP, Email or Content but the way you are thinking!! Marketer has his own characteristics and its way to thinking! If craigslist can use this psychological approach to catch posters’ thoughts then program these to their software, your ads will be blocked for ever! And you can’t solve it by yourself! You should look for professional to help – a third party view point.

Are your ads flagged? How to solve it?
Flagging is another frustrated thing for lots of advertisers! People flag each other’s ads to maintain their ads position on craigslist. Many of them even use software to flag other people’s ads! Even some software can completely block one person to post! This will further frustrate people to post on craigslist! As frequent posters and loyal audience, many people lost confidence to post on craigslist because they are facing hard time from both Craigslist auto spam filters and competitors’ flagging machines! How flagging system works? It relates two elements:
1. Your IP address
2. Key words in your content

How to solve it? It is very easy and simple – Make Your Ads More Unique!
I know you will say this is B.S but indeed it is the truth! As professional Craigslist Ghosting and Flagging Trouble Shooting Expert, this is the best solution I use to solve many many cases!

Are you looking for Craigslists Auto Posters? Which you should choose?
Lots of people will ask which software is better. Basically they are all the same things! Some have better feature and some don’t but they just make the tedious work more easy! The key here is Flexibility. The software will have to be made according to user’s need! As one of the Craigslits Software makers, I would like to suggest you to consult a professional before you purchase any kind of software because it may just waste your money! And sometimes an idea software may only cost you less then 100$ but it will bring the result you want and some software costing you 200 dollars will not make your ads show after publishing!

[decterlove]

Thank god somebody is fighting back! Cl has become a gd pain in the ass to post anything these days! I've been wondering why some of my ads weren't online for 8 hours...a few that I needed to be up that same day!

CL is about as user friendly at this point as the DMV was 20 years ago. And there is no one to ask so you're left wondering and in my case eventually just giving up on posting a very legitamate ad or wading thru their cybernazi forums where you will inevitably get insulted 8 different ways before you get a wisp of an answer! grrrrrrrrrrrrrrr! Just try to ask a simple question on their pc forum! Makes me determined to get a Mac!

I posted a simple ad up for a walking partner for about 4 months and it was finally flagged! Reason? Apparently because I mentioned being mildly interested in LOA and the Secret at the time. This put me in the trying to sell something category apparently!!!!

The other dark side of CL is that although they get almost 7 percent of the web traffic of the top 20 sites in the U.S.A. about 80 percent or more is sex ad traffic. And two or three other major categories account for about another 19 percent of the traffic.

https://blog.compete.com/2007/04/05/...ar-categories/

Grrrrrr, again. I just hope that sites like Wacco can continue to grow and ultimately reach some middle ground between being effective ways to connect people and still having some way of reaching a person in charge. Maybe they will ultimately wake up and realize how much they are pissing off their best users like Whole Foods now seems to be doing regarding their prices. (Whole Paycheck now seems to be consistently offering good deals on staples and they even had a discount rack in their store in Sonoma yesterday..)

Nuff said.....I guess this would definitely go in the R&R category of CL....here is a sprinkling of other links about Cl both pro and con I found with some difficulty in an effort to try to figure out for myself why the site can be so disappointing...

https://www.mslater.com/2007/1/26/th...gslist-anomaly

https://frugalist.instantcreditcard....and-tutorials/

https://marketingop.us/2006/07/22/lo...h-advertising/

https://www.smallbusinessessentials....on-craigslist/

[ithinkiknowitall]

Yep, flagging is like click fraud in a way, however craigslist is not paid advertising. If people post too many ads on craigslist, they deserve to have their ads pulled. People that don't post alot won't be flagged because the competition will post lots of ads to simply water down the results. Why can a person go hire craigs hitmen at craigshitmen.com to take out the mass posters and call it a day?

[denny]

Suits may only work for bigger companies and most of them do not use CL much. Also many of these companies have nothing to sue for. In addition many are just kids playing.

I own a company too, with branches all over the US, and my competitors are flagging my ads everywhere the ad has no charge. I guess that if you pay they have a harder time of removing your ad, because they would have to prove that you are doing something in violation of their rules, or give the money back. All we are doing is advertising for sales people, and the only thing that I might be doing wrong is not answering all replies, when their resume doesn't look good, which might make them mad. I'm sure that they would be madder if I sent rthem an email that they didn't qualify.

Anyway, I just thought of a good idea for getting craigslist's attention to what competition or some times just kids are doing. Take your cellphone and drive around hooking up with various wifi signals, and flag as many ads as you can. If they see that too many ads are getting flagged, they will be forced to come up with a better method.

One other thing that I should mention is that Ebay and Craigslist are still suing each other, and the only advantage that craigslist has is public opinion. If they keep allowing these kinds of activities they are going to remove any advantage that they still have. Also keep in mind that Ebay is a company with no morals at all. They constantly are removing ads and closing people's accounts, with no reason at all. If they even think that you are doing something wrong they shut down the ad. So fighting a company like that is not going to be easy. Ebay has already had thousands of suits against it, but Ebay always wins. They also bought part of carigslist, learned how they do it, and then started their own service. Ebay is too big and if craingslist stands any chance of winning they need to fix this. And personally I feel that Ebay will win, regardless of who is right or wrong. Money is power, and if you have money and are ruthless you will always win, unless it gets too much media attention

["Mad" Miles]

Isn't Meg Whitman the former CEO of EBay?

Isn't that where she got her fortune?

Aside from not registering to vote for decades, could this track record help defeat her?

Not that I'm too concerned, I think after eight years of Der Groepenfuhrer Californians may not want another Repub running the show for a while.

At least I hope so...

(And yes, the Dems aren't any better, for the most part. That's why I stubbornly remain registered Green, in spite of my party's own problems. Some self-inflicted, some resulting from structural flaws in our electoral system.)