I love Craig Newmark
Craigslist article
Why is Craigslist more like the idealized Townsquare than other platforms
Because it doesn’t have shareholders, they don’t have stocks that are sold to the public. It’s privately owned by Craig. It has Stocks but he keeps 100 of the stocks. eBay has 15 of those stocks.
Most forprofit companies that are publicly traded have sociopathic CEOs that are hired to maximize profit rather than create the best public service
Ideally, with the Internet and the early stages of the Internet you wanted something that would be like a public town Square and the Internet should be a public town Square free speech people trading people buying and selling looking for job listings all these services. Craigslist provided but not in an extra Extractive Way, It’s kind of your idealized version of capitalism.
So Craigslist owns it and he wanted to give back to the community. He didn’t see any point in being a Mark Zuckerberg type we have 50 billion or hundred billion dollars Craig thought 1 billion was enough money rather than 100 billion.
Craigslist still makes money it makes about like 300 million a year but not in a toxic and extract way
And the reason why this is
It’s one guy’s vision of a public service to give back to the community
Craigslist lost 23 of the market to Facebook and other platforms. I went public.
Out Of newspapers, revenue Craigslist consumers. What does that mean if you put an ad in the local newspaper, the globe basically the local charge whatever they want and that was how newspapers were so powerful before the Craigslist doesn’t charge a lot Craigslist like five dollars an hour if you wanted to sell a bicycle, it’s free for bicycles but if you wanted to hire someone to do a design a website or something, it cost five dollars.
I guess you can pay 50 for some honey trying to find a lawyer a doctor or something like that is insane. They used to charge headers to charge three months salary cause they had you know they had the list these middleman things they like the old models were attracted to hard to work with newspapers a real estate agent had a fulltime person who just dealt with the globe all she did was make make sure the globe didn’t fuck up their ass because the globe like that nobody else in town town It’s kind of the cable company to show up. Are you gonna do about it There’s no competition.
But now the gloves been humble Mike, Craigslist, and Now all these other zillions of platforms. The globe has the markets been so fractured now they have to compete so they have to lower their prices.
But they aren’t they aren’t taking all if there’s a monopoly monopolization of distribution, right
Newspapers Monopoly distribution newspapers are competing with Craigslist and Facebook and a couple other platforms are author up in Mercari and I guess what offer up in Mercari are good at they have a payment system and it’s all what’s up in the car competitors to Craigslist Craigslist Old you gotta fill out a form so that’s how they’ve lost their but it’s good that they’re four ways No For companies competing Craigslist Monopoly for a while later
Businesses I can’t keep up with everything
Craigslist or Craig himself was one man who decided that money wasn’t everything he said once you have 1 billion or a couple billion dollars all you gonna do is give it away to charity so what’s the point of the billion dollars unlike Many left us and progressive and the right has this idea that you should make as much money as possible and then give it away to charity but if you give it away to charity, you’d still keep the system that is toxic in the first place, the system that creates the poverty
The digital public town Square
By Craigslist giving a public form a public town Square that isn’t Toxic that doesn’t collect your data that doesn’t observe you now it may collect your data but it’s not selling the data for profit
So it’s not a nonprofit it’s still a forprofit business so they make 600 million a year and Craig just has 1 billion instead of 100 you can still make money and still run an ethical business without it being to Toxic
And it’s because he owns 95 of the stock or actually 85 eBay owns another 15 but this makes him 100 controller of it and so the stock is a publicly traded so it’s not it doesn’t have a Toxic CEO that’s trying to maximize profit
So it has this like middleman between between being a forprofit business, but being an ethical town Square
Ads on there can be like five dollars yes, they could charge way more but if you’re just selling like a bicycle or a skateboard or some old clothes, I mean, there’s no reason to have an overly priced thing and Craigslist’s worldwide
Facebook marketplace is trying to take some of that business and Facebook marketplace is very popular
So the purpose of the business as Craig sees it is to give back he’s been prosperous. He’s been successful and his ethics or what he says he learned in Sunday school is.
Do you want to others as you’d have done onto yourself
Treat people the way you yourself would want to be treated. He has has a number of charities that he supports in San Francisco.
Some of the many charities he supporting and he’s a proud feminist
Can I say it again he’s a man and he states publicly. He’s a proud feminist and he cares about women and their issues.
He works with the Gina Davis foundation that tries to make women more visible in film and have women’s stories being told
He works with a nonprofit that tries to protect reporters so reporters will get sued and they need insurance and what happens is and they also get harassed online a lot with female reporters get harassed a lot
Any empathizes with Women and he wants to have them treated the way he himself would want to be treated
So female, so reporters have insurance so that they don’t get sued if someone tries to sue them so cause you wanna be able to report the news without being sued and there’s an insurance but sometimes even if you win the lawsuit, you can lose your insurance because it cost a lot to fight a lawsuit so in a way they win either way just by the sheer cost of it so there’s a nonprofit that helps reporters and saves them from being sued so they can report on the news without losing their insurance
He had some interesting things to say about Women and Tech and initially he was seeing a lot and then it seems to plateau their advancement and at a certain point in tech and he is not 100 sure why
See these are just a little snippet I’ve gotten from listening to interviews with him
Another one of his causes that he is fighting for is for disinformation online which is one of the biggest challenges big tech. It has given us this concentration of information power I would call it capitalist propaganda but OK this information is a soft way of call yet, but he is also dedicating his money to try to fight that.
And he also cares about feminism and women in Tech he wants to see Women in Tech. I think Women and Tech is important. It’s important to have Women in Tech and so that’s something he’s passionate about.
The point of the story is, I’m trying to give an example a lot of time we spent catastrophize that the whole world is doom and gloom, and I do do that to a large extent, but it’s also important to ourselves. There are a lot of really good people out there who honestly they’re a heart of hearts are trying to do the right thing, and this includes people in Tech who are ethical and trying to do the right thing.
We could do a little story about the Craigslist killer so not sure what year I think the early 2000s he had the adult services on his website so and a lot of sexworkers were advertising through there and there was a Craigslist killer who went out killing sexworkers that he would meet on Craigslist so the government pressured him to take the adult services category off his website and he did but Craig and his CEO defend themselves saying that he was unfairly targeted
Because there are other websites that have the equivalent thing and newspapers, and lots of people had equivalent adult categories, and those websites and newspapers were not targeted and his was so he finds out unfair and even newspaper reporters that worked for newspapers that did have an adult category like the Boston Phoenix had an adult category they were not targeted
So this is my example my story of the good billionaire yes the Mark Zuckerberg‘s and the Jeff Bezos get a lot more media coverage and Craig from Craigslist. It’s just quietly in the background doing the right thing and he doesn’t get public recognition and public attention. the way, bad people get public attention because Hey is not scaring or terrorizing people in business. He’s of like an older generation so he has values in that are in the core as being so props to his mom props to his Sunday school props to whoever gave him his creative and motto do you want to others as you’d have done onto yourself so thanks, Craig for you doing you
So Walmart, Mark Zuckerberg is creating a escape tunnels for his Hawaiian mansion and this other mansions Craig is not creating escape tunnels because he has a pro Social consciousness
So if they ever pull out the guillotine and we kill the ruling class like in the French revolution, remember to spare Craig because he tried to do the right thing and he believes in doing to others as you’d have done yourself