Consider that Meta’s Marketplace is the largest competitor. Immediately after they launched, they quickly capitalized on their Identity Verification natural monopoly on online social networking. This was ‘pivoted’ into “Identity Verification Assurance” for your average Playstore and iPhone users.
Marketplace wasn’t even easier to use than Craigslist, 99% of the arguments for using it were “it’s safer because it’s less scams”.
I wouldn’t put it beneath Zuck and his bootlickers to pay a few bitcoins to maintain an artifically inflated number of scams on Craigslist.
It reinforces the mistaken belief that scams are driven by anonymity (instead of the truth that you can have all their data and the justice department will look the other way… that’s why they keep doing it until they scam Grant Hudson of McLean, VA).
Anyway, the faster CL dies the sooner Meta consolidates a monopoly on electronic flea marketing or whatever it’s called.
I read this whole thing and I get that you have some kind of negative emotional association with email, but beyond that I cannot for the life of me see how email is the problem here.
Yeah. I would expect email to be the form of communication provided. Or a phone number, but who wants to give those out these days?
I hate email as well but I don’t blame Craigslist for that, just humanity in general LOL. They have their own chat app now if that’s something you really need.
Fair. I work with people such that email plays a very small role. But I never engage with it on a tiny phone screen, only when I’m sitting down with a PC or work computer.