Black-listing Craig's List

Speaking of transparency, it has taken a bit of prodding from the public for one 'social media' site in particular to come clean. Perhaps Craig's List is not typically classified as "social media."  But what else is a site that fosters social exchange?  There are thousands of interactions catalyzed by the site every day, and some of them have recently rustled the feathers of some well-intentioned activists.

While most users could use common sense to figure out what 'erotic services' are, the site's vagueness irked more than a few.  Nondescript copy and lack of straightforwardness almost always lead to suspicion, especially with the anonymity - which has the potential for great harm - the online world offers.  Craig's List, many complained, was deceiving its users and doing so in order to support a questionable-at-best industry.  The issue in many cases was surprisingly not the morality of the industry in question, though some activists did protest from that angle, but that Craig's List was not providing users with easily accessible information about their services.

Privacy is a huge issue in the social media community, and has riled up the majority of Facebook users on a number of occasions, so it is ironic that users would request near total disclosure from their businesses.  On the other hand, business who seem like they are withholding information and who are not easily contacted are also not easily trusted - they themselves might not be legit.  And it today's socially aware, justice-conscious society where activists are a dime a dozen, it is important to run an upfront business.

One 'provider' of Craig's List erotic services dissents.  In true American fashion, she lobbies for freedom of expression, the right to choose and the right to make business however business can be make.  Struggling to make it as an artist and writer, she writes confessionally about her experiences on the giving end of Craig's List services and how it was truly a stereotype-breaking, question-answering time for her.

But is that really the right way to employ social media?  Moreover, is Craig's list really fostering the type of communities, interactions and relationships the impetus to create social media in the first place longs for?  Beyond its controversial behavior, Craig's List seems to be host to a lot of spammers and scammers, especially in the 'job' postings section, and many of the ads for 'free' or cheap items are misleading or genuinely not true.  More and more, it seems that posts are "flagged for removal."  Some sites have typos and grammatical mistakes severe enough to impede comprehension.  The majority of postings are without clear contact information.

All of this adds up to the feeling of anarchy.  Is anyone - any real human being - behind Craig's List?  What of regulation and the service of protecting innocent and weary job hunters against potentially nasty scams?  Social media may help connect people who would otherwise never find one another, but it, at least in Craig's List case, can also foster a free-for-all atmosphere where every user must fend for him or herself, and that just seems against the grain of what social media is all about.

Photo Credit: Philebrity