Study Calls Craigslist 'a Cesspool of Crime' 316
Bala4361 writes "Classifieds site Craigslist has been linked with 330 crimes, 12 murders and 105 robberies or assaults in the United States last year due to anonymous interactions on the site, says a new study. The report calls Craigslist 'a cesspool of crime,' citing murders, rapes, robberies, assault and rental rip-offs as some of the examples." Among the many Reefer Madness-style quotable stretchers from the originating consultancy: "The unfortunate fact is that Craigslist has become almost synonymous with crime." Update: 02/25 17:05 GMT by S : Craigslist has posted a response.
Just follow the links. (Score:5, Informative)
The study was published by "The AIM Group," of which there are two. One is a placement agency for the petro industry, the other is (can you guess yet?) "Consulting Services for Interactive Media and Classified Advertising"
Shorter version of TFA "Don't use the crime infested, but generally free Craigslist, pay our customers to place your classifieds safely, without the fear of VIOLENT RAPE!"
I just love screwing with marketing numbskulls who try to manipulate people into giving them free publicity. Where's your free publicity now, AIM Group?
Follow up, from their home page, they brag thusly: (Score:5, Informative)
The AIM Group has just completed a research project for Oodle, a Craigslist competitor, cataloging crimes that have been linked to Craigslist. And the results surprised even us.
Yeah. Screw you assholes and your manufactured FUD.
Re:Craigslist == classifieds from all newspapers (Score:4, Informative)
It is worse than that, the free nature of CL means the less than reputable sells can post ads over a wide area and run them for a long time waiting for someone to take the bait. Try searching for larger ticket items in the CL listings (things like RV's, camping trailers, generators, or even riding lawn mowers) and see for yourself what a large fraction of ads are obviously scams. It helps to use a helper CL search tool like searchtempest where you can scan all adds within XXX miles, once you find a suspicious ad for a deal that is too good to be true on an item, search for keywords out of that ad on a wider area, and see it listed with the same photo all over the place, but always with a local location..
Re:misunderstandings (Score:5, Informative)
This is redundant, posted far downthread, but it's important here for scrollers: it's all BS--
See http://blog.craigslist.org/2011/02/more-pay-to-play-research-from-aim/ [craigslist.org]