Should Craiglist Do More to Protect Its Users?

The one-bedroom apartment in Manhattan's East Village listed for $900 a month — well below average in a neighborhood that defines downtown chic. After Gomez responded to the ad, a woman named Dani McGhie replied to say that Gomez was a good candidate to sublet her apartment, but she was in London and couldn't make it back to the States to hand over the keys. "Obviously, we need a way to complete this deal," she wrote. She proposed that Gomez wire one month's rent as a security deposit, and she would send the keys via two-day shipping. Gomez thought the deal seemed "a little fishy." Before he could sniff around further, he heard back about two other apartments he'd applied for — and the replies were almost identical to the one from "Dani." The listings were not bargains — they were scams.

As almost everybody knows, Craigslist has blossomed since its founding, 13 years ago, into a utopian online community where anyone can arrange to buy or barter for anything from a pedicure to a Porsche. In the past two years alone, that community has exploded: Every month Craigslist attracts 30 million unique visitors, an audience the size of the entire population of Canada, making it one of the world's 10 most frequented English-language web sites. These users generate eight billion page views a month, and there's no shortage of new material for them to look at: The site posted 250 million listings last year, double the number from 2006.

All that expansion has come at a cost that's getting harder to ignore. Call it ad pollution. The bigger it grows, the more the site becomes a magnet for the sort of opportunist that people come to Craigslist to avoid. Looking to buy a bike? According to the Craigslist ideal, the site should help you make contact with a neighbor who has a Schwinn to sell. But increasingly, you're likely to find the bike listings swamped with what amount to plugs for businesses too cheap to pay for their own advertising — pitches you'd delete in a heartbeat if they showed up in your email inbox. There are plenty of less wholesome wares for sale too: Craigslist hosts an ever-growing subculture of cyber-lowlifes peddling drugs, guns and "erotic services," giving some parts of the site the seedy feel of pre-Disney Times Square.

By far the biggest stumbling block for the Craigslist revolution has been the proliferation of scams. Most longtime users know to be wary of online ne'er-do-wells, but Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster acknowledges a "rapid escalation" of fraud on the site in the past two years. Bait-and-switch stunts that try to sell phantom rentals or goods may be the most common, but there's no lack of variations on the confidence game. Indeed, sophisticated swindlers find the site an ideal venue for luring people into check-kiting scams and peddling counterfeit gift cards. The upshot of all this unwanted traffic: Fully 25% of Craigslist posts — about 65 million ads in 2007 — get removed because they violate the site's rules.

Of course, managing growth is a challenge for many boomtowns. What makes Craigslist unusual is that despite its metropolis-size multitudes, it maintains a police force more suited for Mayberry. Founder Craig Newmark's sunny belief in the decency of people shaped the site from the beginning. He encouraged users to abide by the Golden Rule and further fostered the communal vibe by initially opting not to charge for ads or even pursue a profit. "Somehow we built a culture of trust without consciously trying to do it," Newmark says. But the result is that a lot of untrustworthy people have a lot of room to operate. Craigslist has only a dozen staffers who respond to complaints about dicey ads — roughly one staffer for every 30 million postings. By comparison eBay (which owns a passive minority stake in Craigslist) assigns more than 2,000 employees to its "trust and safety" team, or one employee for every million listings. The difference is less a matter of resources than philosophy: Craigslist asks its users to police the site themselves by reporting problem ads. But in practice this means the site depends on people who are just looking for an apartment or a new couch to also serve as cops on the beat.

Gomez was willing to play Barney Fife for Craigslist. After he got wise to the London scam, he posted a warning on the site for other apartment shoppers. He soon received an email telling him that his post had been taken off the site at the request of other users. He reposted the warning, and it promptly got yanked again. Gomez's theory? The scammers had booted it off. After all, in the Craigslist democracy, even felons get to vote.