CRAIGSLIST CEO LASHES OUT AT BACKPAGE…AGAIN!
May 23rd, 2009…and yet still has images of sex acts on his site.
On his official craigslist blog, Jim Buckmaster, the CEO of craigslist, continues to post links to adult ads on backpage. His latest post attacks backpage for containing salacious words and images, and goes on to suggest some kind of conspiracy between politicians and newspapers, hypothesizing that politicians have a “need for positive stories and campaign endorsements from those very same newspapers.” He also theorizes of a conspiracy inside the newsrooms of America:
“Is it possible that writing stories critical of craigslist’s (relatively tame) “adult service” section is more career-friendly than attacking their own employer (or journalistic media brethren) for operating a (far more graphic) “adult service” section of their own?”
His comments and attacks on backpage.com are quite surprising to us. Aside from the fact that Village Voice Media, our parent company, does not publish endorsements (and rarely writes anything positive about politicians), it recently published a story in many of our alternative papers generally supportive of craigslist and user generated content in general.
His latest blog entry included links to ads clearly violating our terms of use and have been removed. We would like to return the favor to Mr. Buckmaster with a list of postings on craigslist displaying images of sex acts and/or requesting sex acts for money. We are not condemning craigslist, but we are pointing out the hypocrisy of Jim Buckmaster attacking us. He clearly still has a problem of content violating his terms of use on a far larger scale.
Note: The links below are not safe for work:
Open 24 hours daily. 1oo 15min 14o 3omin 2oo h0ur….please mature
adults only. G.r.33k xtra4oWE HAVE 3 WE WANT THAT SEXY 4TH BE WILD!!
Afternoon Delight/Chill? Vers Btm Looking
For Women Only:Erotic Tantra Massage for Women(Will Travel
Buckmaster is fully aware of the challenges of user generated content. He should move his blog post regarding backpage to craigslist’s rant and raves category–it’s mean spirited and probably better off being an anonymous attack. They are the words of a snitch—someone who gets caught doing something, and before they are even charged with a crime, start pointing to all the other people that do the same thing. As a former CTO, he knows the complexity and shortcomings of filters and any other abuse mitigation technology. And, he also is well aware Backpage started charging for adult postings to filter out illegal postings four years earlier than craigslist. We certainly did not blog last year how unfair it was for Craig to have free adult postings and many of them clear TOU violations.
The tit-for-tat seems beneath both of us given the huge challenges faced by both our companies in other categories. Bad users can post from anywhere in the world. Banned terms can be easily bypassed. Staff and development resources are already heavily used–pursuing bad users as they morph or post in other categories. Backpage has created two dozen new jobs in three major US cities, most of these jobs are for managing abuse in all categories. If Buckmaster wants to continue to bash backpage with links to posts violating our terms of use, he should know that we welcome the links on his blog. Our abuse staff will remove the content if it is a TOU violation and we will continue to return the favor with links to craigslist ads violating his site’s terms of use for the purpose of pointing out Mr. Buckmaster’s hypocrisy.
Either way, we hope Mr. Buckmaster realizes that when you are attacked, and your constitutional rights are threatened, you don’t cave in and begin pointing fingers at your competitors. You fight.
