Libelous Posts in Craigslist Personals

The popular classifieds site Craigslist has gained attention once again for scandalous posts in its personals section. This is not a new issue and has been reported by the media for over two years. MATCHinform has previously posted a warning in the form of a press release for users regarding the Craigslist personals section. While we strongly discourage anyone from using Craiglsist to find an honest and meaningful relationship, the salacious posts are fun to read and popular.

While it appears that since Matchinform issued its press release, the number of postings offering illegal services have decreased drastically, according to recent reports from major news organizations, Craigslist is still the subject of investigations for operating a venue that allows such advertisements.

Beyond solicitation and other illegal activities, Craiglsist has also had an issue with its users posting libelous content about third parties. In the last six months Craigslist has added some new features in addition to its self-policing to cut down on these activities.

When one posts a message, there is now a delay of five to twenty minutes for that post to be published on the website. Craigslist appears to have improved their filters to catch proper names and other personal information. Also, one can no longer respond directly to a post. For example, if someone posts "My Boyfriend Loves Apple Pie," there is no longer a link that allows you to respond directly, which would automatically give your post the subject line "Re: My Boyfriend Loves Apple Pie."

By adding / deleting these features, Craigslist has made it more difficult for users to link posts together and thus, search for posts containing libelous content. Without ease and immediate gratification, we feel users are less likely to participate in such activity. While libelous content still gets through these blocks, over the course of the last eight months, we solute the management of Craigslist for making an effort to curtail improper activity on the site, and truly hope this is a continuing effort to make the forum safe, legal, and useful.