The founder of Craigslist has given away half a billion dollars
https://www.independent.co.uk/us/money/craigslist-multimillionaire-craig-newmark-b2980681.html
Tomte · 20 days ago
40 comments
https://www.independent.co.uk/us/money/craigslist-multimillionaire-craig-newmark-b2980681.html
Tomte · 20 days ago
40 comments
zuzululu · 20 days ago
good for him!
but empty words to the american working class
it may be too late, now ppl hate the rich
Varelion · 20 days ago
As they should. Money boils down to a finite resource, and a class of people have been flaunting their theft of the working class since the famous balcony champagne image taken during Occupy Wallstreet.
That singular image should be the poster of this Epstein era.
WalterBright · 20 days ago
> Money boils down to a finite resource
Musk more amply demonstrated how wealth is created.
Varelion · 20 days ago
Yeah, start by having enough to buy more influence with the right people, so they don't realize your assets are nowhere near a correct valuation.
laughing_man · 20 days ago
The idea SpaceX is where it is because he bought influence with the right people is fanciful thinking on the part of Musk's detractors.
zuzululu · 20 days ago
The reason there is cynicism around philanthropy by America's elite class is perhaps the obliviousness to the methods and means it is created and supported.
"Here is a few billion dollar to a non profit company I control but you better not write that in the article" or "I didn't care for social consequences, I was just another player, it was ultimately for you" vibes
it just doesn't have the impact it used to, ironically because then inflation was low and integrity/morality was rewarded as society.
I think Ray Dalio has done a fantastic job of mapping out the trajectory we are on. We've already started seen glimpse of it and I don't think its going to cool down. America and the West in general has growing fatigue with various elements and perhaps the biggest one is that of wealth gap disparity.
Perhaps a snapshot of where we are: The richer you get the more you need access and proximity to those that monopolized violence and pay protection money too. It's not unlike Italy in the 1800s, you need money to purchase and distribute violence to acquire more resources and eventually the gap gets too big, people can't afford bread, and they get bold.
Varelion · 20 days ago
You do not become a Billionaire without abusing and taking advantage of others. It would be foolish to think that anyone with that pattern of behavior would or could be philanthropic.
The one exception I had for this was Bill Gates.
Then I looked into the past behavior of Microsoft, and what he was going with Jeffery Epstein.
I no longer hold him as an exception.
laughing_man · 20 days ago
Theft? I don't see any indication of widespread theft. The fact that you don't make as much as you wish you were making doesn't make you a victim of theft.
gnerd00 · 20 days ago
Planetwork org (serious,respected,boutique) interviewed with these people and got a sort of snotty frat guy to answer to.. He wanted to know if I had been to any weddings in France recently, as part of the interview. no checks were written
helterskelter · 20 days ago
I don't know much about this guy, but I remember reading an interview with him maybe 15 years ago where he was asked if his lifestyle had changed since he came into money and if he bought a new house or anything, and his answer was basically something like: "Not really, and I've already got good water pressure where I'm at, what else do I need?" I can't help but like his attitude.
bluedino · 20 days ago
He apparently bought this place in 2016:
mattbettinson · 20 days ago
What an absolute dream
jmalicki · 20 days ago
It is both absolutely gorgeous and luxurious, yet still at less than $6 million, pretty modest for someone capable of giving away half a billion.
browningstreet · 20 days ago
I respect someone with a good, proper library. So many luxury properties seem to miss that one.
winstonp · 20 days ago
do we think he found it on craigslist
sudo_cowsay · 20 days ago
Looks cozy and nice. Pretty humble/modest for a guy like that.
xandrius · 20 days ago
6 million house is not "modest", cmon.
SXX · 20 days ago
Have you checked real estate prices in Manhattan? Today for these prices you can likely buy an appartment.
Its just area itself is expensive. Not like owns mansion with a zoo and 100 servants.
giancarlostoro · 20 days ago
I mean he owns craigslist I am sure he can summon many people to do his bidding.
mattkrause · 20 days ago
True—-but half of them forget to actually show up and many of the ones that do try to renegotiate the deal.
giancarlostoro · 20 days ago
If you meme it well enough, you could get people to show up for free and still do it.
wahnfrieden · 20 days ago
The 6 million was a decade ago so can’t be compared with today’s prices
bigstrat2003 · 19 days ago
That just means that there does not exist any "modest" property in Manhattan. It doesn't make a $6m purchase modest. There is no frame of reference whatsoever which can justify calling $6m "modest".
wjnc · 18 days ago
He bought a house with < 1% of his net worth, which he made himself. Then proceeds to give away 100x that. Aristotle would call that modest and of a balancend demeanor. An absence of excess indeed. I would be living in a cardboard box with these figures. I can get some irritation with the worlds billionaire class. But I do think modesty is somewhat based on circumstance.
downrightmike · 19 days ago
That's because half of the apartments aren't being rented to force up prices
permalac · 20 days ago
What percentage of his earnings does represent?
parl_match · 20 days ago
It's still not modest. There's no way in which a $6 million dollar house is "modest".
Don't try to launder it through lying with percentages. It's not modest.
timr · 20 days ago
A small 1 bedroom apartment in Manhattan, today, costs a bit under $1 million, on average.
parl_match · 20 days ago
I would argue that a $1mil manhattan 1br isn't modest. You know, you can start to split hairs what modest means. Is that a modest living space? Sure. Is the privilege of living in manhattan immodest? I also think so.
But at least that's within the realm of "modesty". At least there's at least one element of modesty to it. It's not a multi story 6 million dollar home with a floor to ceiling double floor library.
russelldjimmy · 19 days ago
Ironically you’re the one splitting hairs here. It seems clear that your definition of “modest” differs from a few others’. That’s about it, there’s no deeper meaning here. It seems like you’re trying to find disagreement where there is none, and trying to convince others to use the word the way you are familiar with.
yubblegum · 20 days ago
You need to prove to us that modesty is an absolute quality. Reasonable people would agree that that is a bit extreme ("immodest") and that modesty is relative. (Try cheap instead of modest to see how this works.)
> There's no way in which a $6 million dollar house is "modest".
Relative to his wealth bracket he is being modest but not cheap.
kelnos · 20 days ago
> Relative to his wealth bracket he is being modest but not cheap.
That's moving the goalposts. No one said anything about "relative to his wealth bracket".
And I don't think I have ever heard anyone using a term like "modest house" in proportion to someone's wealth. House-modesty is something people generally use to mean "when compared with other houses in the region".
Redoubts · 19 days ago
> No one said anything about "relative to his wealth bracket".
Original post was "modest for a guy like that"
bigstrat2003 · 19 days ago
No reasonable person would call a $6m purchase "modest".
yubblegum · 19 days ago
I'm reasonable and I say it is. You are looking at a number, I'm looking at possessions. For example, he could have bought the entire building but he is sharing it with two other owners. A modest man.
JumpCrisscross · 18 days ago
Modesty has to be relative, otherwise anything beyond the lowest cost to feed a starving person on the planet is beyond modesty.
xandrius · 18 days ago
Bezos' wedding in Venice was modest* too then.
jryan49 · 20 days ago
I mean is your place modest compared to the average place in a third world country?
john_strinlai · 20 days ago
modest is a relative term. its modest compared to most people of his wealth level.
slashdev · 19 days ago
> Pretty humble/modest for a guy like that.
Modest was qualified. The statement is accurate. Your objection doesn’t make sense.
parl_match · 15 days ago
He is not being modest. Sorry.
> Modest describes someone who is unassuming about their abilities, or something that is limited in size, amount, or reach
Buying a 6 million dollar house is not unassuming.
slashdev · 15 days ago
It is when you have a billion dollars.
It’s all relative.
senordevnyc · 20 days ago
That style of library is my dream
nickjj · 20 days ago
Makes me wonder what a property like that would go for today, 10 years later.
yubblegum · 20 days ago
That or Tribeca have to be my favorite areas of the city to live in if I had silly money which I don't so I don't and likely ever won't unless my venture petfood.ai strikes it big in which case I'll buy the entire building but won't put my name on it with large gold san serif letters. I may be poor but I have class.
bmitc · 20 days ago
That library is sick.
kennethallen · 19 days ago
Looks like Blue Prince interiors. :D
urbandw311er · 20 days ago
I can't help but like his altitude.
dsatrainer · 20 days ago
No that's height, you're thinking of audacity
urbandw311er · 20 days ago
I’m sorry - it was an attempt at a joke based around water pressure.
shmeeed · 19 days ago
So, wooosh?
AbstractH24 · 19 days ago
FTW
esafak · 20 days ago
Well, he is flying high.
el_benhameen · 20 days ago
Good interview with him here. Interesting dude.
dlcarrier · 20 days ago
He has a point. Good water pressure us underrated.
gleenn · 20 days ago
I had the privilege of working and sleeping in the original Craigslist office/house in San Francisco. It was just another typical, ageing house they had rearranged a little to have a ton of deskspace in the main area. A lot of start ups (including Zappos IIRC) had also been there over the years. They had a mattress in the loft/attic you could crash on if you were up late too.
_the_inflator · 20 days ago
Like a Warren Buffet. Same house, same car, or Ray Kroc: Look after the customer, and the business will take care of itself.
giancarlostoro · 20 days ago
Probably lives like craigslist looks in terms of simplicity. Love it.
AbstractH24 · 19 days ago
At heart he seems like one of the good guys in the history of tech.
Although he may have inadvertently destroyed local news by squeezing it of revenue from classified ads (but has since done a lot to fund journalism)
guyomes · 19 days ago
This reminds me an interview of the author Patrick Modiano, just after he won the literature Nobel price. The presenter asked him if the money would help. His answer was something like: "well, I don't see how the money will help the next time I will be in front of a white page".
ryandrake · 20 days ago
> “They told me that I should treat people like I want to be treated,” he said. “I should know when enough is enough. And they told me I should be my brother's keeper or my sister's keeper. And that made sense to me.”
Refreshing to see a multimillionaire+ who actually knows the meaning of the word "enough." The world seems to be run by people who don't even know of the word.
Kiln6125 · 20 days ago
Truthfully, it doesn't shock me that the founder of Craigslist in particular, a site that found a good, workable setup and then left it as is, would know this. Its more disappointing that no one else really seems to know when enough is enough.
RankingMember · 20 days ago
This is a great reminder even for those of us who aren't multi-millionaires. It's easy to get wrapped up pursuing ostentation and even notoriety as elements of our culture hold it up as as goal to strive for, and I think it's important to see it for the hollow goal it is regardless of your income.
Zigurd · 20 days ago
It's almost as if you can make $1 billion without intrusive, exploitative, sneaky data gathering and products that are a witches brew of dark patterns.
mrguyorama · 20 days ago
>The world seems to be run by people who don't even know of the word.
That is the explicit design of Capitalism yes.
It's literally a system built around "Those who can amass the most capital are explicitly in charge of distributing it."
It cannot go any other way. Without some external forcing, it will always lift up sociopaths who can squeeze more blood from the stone.
It's like getting upset that Apple's reviews aren't impartial and reliably screw over people trying to compete with Apple. Like, what did you expect? What are you going to do to prevent the obvious outcome?
rayiner · 20 days ago
> Refreshing to see a multimillionaire+ who actually knows the meaning of the word "enough." The world seems to be run by people who don't even know of the word.
What makes you think rich people keep working to make more money, instead of doing it because they want to build things and want to have the capital to do it? We don't exactly live in the era of inherited wealth anymore.
insane_dreamer · 20 days ago
maybe because we don't see many of said rich people (unless by "build things" you mean "start another company that they can sell and make them even more money")
rayiner · 20 days ago
People don’t build new companies after a successful exit to “make even more money.” You’re projecting.
insane_dreamer · 20 days ago
> People don’t build new companies after a successful exit to “make even more money.”
They absolutely do. I interact with people who do just that.
> You're projecting.
LOL. The last thing I want to do is start a company or try to make $100's of millions.
rayiner · 20 days ago
Leave money aside—why wouldn’t you want to start a company and build something yourself?
insane_dreamer · 19 days ago
While I do love the idea of building something new and useful, starting a new tech company these days isn't really about building, it's mostly about your ability to sell your story to investors, or your product if you can get that far. And I really really don't like doing sales. I've seen the fundraising process close up and it is most definitely not for me. Half (or more) of what people fundraising for their company say is BS, and I really hate BS.
rayiner · 19 days ago
So you “hate” the work that actually goes into building a successful company: pitching investors, doing sales, etc. Do you think that’s why you can’t imagine why other people would want to build companies except to make more money?
tomComb · 20 days ago
Can we get better source for this story? I find that website to be unreadable.
layer8 · 20 days ago
https://www.philanthropy.com/news/craigslist-founder-signs-g...
kaycebasques · 20 days ago
I'm curious about the logistical details of Newmark's donations. Skimmed the article but didn't see an answer. This is just a pledge to donate at this point, right? Newmark has not yet actually transferred any money? Presumably his trust would handle the transfer after his death or something. But then what exactly are they donating? Shares in a private company?
duncan-donuts · 20 days ago
The article does say that he’s already given away this amount of money since the founding of Craigslist 30 years ago. From the sound of things he’s always actively doing philanthropic work, but I could be reading into it too much.
layer8 · 20 days ago
This article has a few details: https://www.philanthropy.com/news/craigslist-founder-signs-g...
rayiner · 20 days ago
We are almost two decades into the age of billionaire philanthropy and what’s results has it produced? Can you point to any area where it’s really changed the world?
I think a fundamental problem is that the non-profit/NGO sector doesn’t have the same caliber of people as the private sector. There’s no Jeff Bezos equivalent working on inner city education. Bill Gates is really the only one who has tackled this, by investing his own time into public health, which I understand has produced real results.
raybb · 20 days ago
Sounds like you may have read it but the book Winner Takes All is about this topic and pretty enjoyable.
I think there's a case to be made that philanthropy produced the Internet Archive but maybe that's a little different from usual philanthropy since Brewster is very hands on for so long.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winners_Take_All:_The_Elite_Ch...
skybrian · 20 days ago
The Gates Foundation also put a lot of money into education in the US, but my understanding is that it’s had mixed results. Public health seems to be easier.
hermitShell · 20 days ago
I understand Gates has also helped in reviving Nuclear power, from reading news on this site and others. Smaller, updated designs that don't face quite the same level of pressure from regulators.
If we assume you are right about billionaire philanthropy being basically ineffectual (I personally agree) there is a line of reasoning that I find explains why adequately. When systems don't have their incentives structured properly, then quite often the unexpected outcomes are stronger than the predicted outcome. Because the input to the system did not properly account for, or change the incentives which drive the dynamics of the system.
Examples about in healthcare, social programs, education... large SWE companies...
There's so little real pressure for results when you're backed by some billionaire's fortune, the existence of the organization is not threatened by non-performance... there's no free market to survive in, the goal is to lose money... the things you are trying to measure are slow signals or mostly qualitative...
cossatot · 20 days ago
We're a century into it at least, even in nominal dollar terms, starting with Rockefeller as the first billionaire.
I don't know whether John Arnold is spread too thin or not, but he's certainly top caliber and does a lot to measure progress before/during investment in various causes (including education). He also seems to be more agnostic on what the most appropriate solution may be at the beginning of the process.
keeda · 20 days ago
This is a common refrain of many people, but I believe it is rooted in a fundamental misunderstanding of philanthropy and charities in general. They don't really exist to "fix" problems, they are mostly a band-aid over the structural issues that lead to social problems. The long-term solutions to most of these problems involve policy changes rather than "spot fixes"
Like, funding a homeless shelter or the Trevor Project won't fix the problems causing homelessness or LGBTQ teen suicides. But there are enough people with immediate problems who we do want to support them somehow until policy changes happen, if ever.
You're right that the Gates Foundation is one of the few that has achieved some lasting changes, but I would say that is because their MO is quite different from what many NGO's do. This is based on second-hand knowledge from somebody who works there, so I'm not sure if they do this exclusively, but they strongly prefer to partner with the local governments to introduce highly targeted interventions.
This simultaneously makes it extremely slow and frustrating to operate (especially in countries with dysfunctional governments, which is where help is most needed) and ironically reduces the leverage of money (which is a problem when you have a mandate to spend X% of your money annually!) but also means that whenever any change happens it is generally structural and long-lasting.
There are many other organizations that operate with similar long-lasting principles, but it seems to me most focus on immediate, short-term support, which may be a function of the limited funding and skills of the people available to them.
rayiner · 20 days ago
> They don't really exist to "fix" problems, they are mostly a band-aid over the structural issues that lead to social problems. The long-term solutions to most of these problems involve policy changes rather than "spot fixes"
Non-profits are 12% of GDP, over $3.5 trillion. Excluding hospitals, universities, and churches, leaves over $2 trillion in non-profit expenditures. Of that, about $300 billion comes from the government. That is more than enough money to solve structural issues.
My dad spent his career in non-profits working on public health in third world countries. These NGOs were able to work with highly dysfunctional foreign governments to achieve real and measurable improvements in some of the poorest countries in the world. Which is why it blows my mind that non-profits spending vastly more money domestically can’t work with e.g. the government of Baltimore to deliver meaningful improvements to the abysmal literacy rates in that city, or work in infant morality in inner cities.
The key difference it seems to me is the lack of accountability in domestic non-profits. The U.S., EU, Japan, etc., care how their foreign aid dollars are used. Every project is evaluated for effectiveness in quantitative terms. That culture of measured accountability seems entirely absent in domestic non-profits.
gnerd00 · 20 days ago
depends on your lawyers.. the reporting requirements in the USA are real. What the report says, who is named.. a much broader topic.
keeda · 20 days ago
> That is more than enough money to solve structural issues.
But that's the thing, the money is not helpful when it comes to policy issues. As the Gates Foundation MO and your dad's experience probably shows, lasting change comes down to political will. I can only surmise that the reason more US non-profits don't achieve lasting change is because they are not able to or they are not trying to.
This is not to say they are deliberately being ineffective, e.g. consider that inner city infant mortality rates have socioeconomic and racial factors, so solving that would require "solving" poverty and racism. Offhand, I really can't see how non-profits would be able to address these with even billions of dollars.
Of note, a sibling comment mentions the book "Winner Takes All" and links its wikipedia page which has this quote:
> The Aspen Consensus, in a nutshell, is this: the winners of our age must be challenged to do more good. But never, ever tell them to do less harm. The Aspen Consensus holds that capitalism's rough edges must be sanded and its surplus fruit shared, but the underlying system must never be questioned. The Aspen Consensus says, "Give back," which is of course a compassionate and noble thing. But, amid the $20 million second homes and $4,000 parkas of Aspen, it is gauche to observe that giving back is also a Band-Aid that winners stick onto the system that has privileged them, in the conscious or subconscious hope that it will forestall major surgery to that system – surgery that might threaten their privileges. The Aspen Consensus, I believe, tries to market the idea of generosity as a substitute for the idea of justice."
Not saying I agree entirely, but that is the kind of thing that could lead to billions in spending without achieving lasting structural changes.
rayiner · 20 days ago
> As the Gates Foundation MO and your dad's experience probably shows, lasting change comes down to political will
Lasting change comes down to data-driven programs that work and the money to implement them. As long as you’re not asking for money and meet the community you’re working with where they are,[1] politics is mostly a red herring. My dad worked on projects that achieved incredible results in Bangladesh, for example, even though the government of the country was a complete clusterfuck the entire time.
> socioeconomic and racial factors, so solving that would require "solving" poverty and racism.
The way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time. There may be overarching “factors” that contribute to a result, but there’s usually an immediate cause of a problem that you can tackle directly with an effective program.
Mississippi, for example, is now #3 in the country for NAEP 4th grade reading and math scores for black students. It’s #1 for reading and #2 for math for Hispanic students: https://mdek12.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/59/2025/01/NAEPR.... Mississippi didn’t “solve poverty and racism.” It implemented a program that identified the immediate cause of certain problems and fixed them.
[1] Effective programs avoid creating political problems. When my dad was designing maternal health programs for Bangladeshi villagers, he met them where they were instead of where he thought they should be. For example, it turns out rural women wouldn’t use newly built clinics for giving birth because they didn’t trust “big city doctors.” So the program developed relationships with local midwives and traditional healers, who the women already trusted, and had them get training from the doctors and refer high risk pregnancies to the clinics while handling routine deliveries in the traditional way.
keeda · 18 days ago
> Mississippi didn’t “solve poverty and racism.”
It didn't solve maternal mortality rates either, where it ranks dead last amongst the states: https://www.marchofdimes.org/peristats/reports/mississippi/r...
> Lasting change comes down to data-driven programs that work and the money to implement them. As long as you’re not asking for money and meet the community you’re working with where they are,[1] politics is mostly a red herring.
Kind of, but my point is it's not just a function of throwing money at the problem, because "meeting where the community is" typically a) is just the first step towards overcoming structural issues; b) requires properly skilled staff; and c) involves politics in some form. Like I would bet most of the things your dad had to do often had to be supported by the local power structures (e.g. being blessed by the village headman.) They may not even have had official policies to be changed, but for sure certain ways of doing things were institutionalized.
I know someone posted in a poor, rural corner of India whose primary "KPI" is improving the maternal mortality rate in their region, and meeting the community is only the first step in solving problems that include -- in addition to the problems you mention -- chronic malnutrition, unawareness of potential pregnancy complications, lack of appropriate medical facilities, lack of infrastructure to access any that exist, and, most insidiously, age-old biases about how "things should be" where women are at the bottom of the social totem pole. Each of them is a separate structural issue and most of them cannot be changed by working with the community alone.
laughing_man · 20 days ago
It doesn't surprise men to find we spend trillions on nonprofits and get little in return. There is an enormous amount of corruption. More than forty years ago I knew a woman who was cold calling people to raise money for research into a canine disease.
If you donated a dollar, she got fifty cents. Her boss got twenty five cents, the company got their cut, the university took a little, so did the department and the professor. By the time it came down to some poor grad student looking at slides there was only a penny or two going to pay him/her. This kind of thing combines the worst of both government and private business.
rayiner · 19 days ago
Yes, and it’s not just what you’d call outright corruption. A lot of the people who work at non-profits are family members of wealthy people. If you’re a Fortune 500 CEO and your kid isn’t qualified to become a “captain of industry,” you can donate to some non-profit and get them a job there. It’s a socially acceptable way of dealing with “excess elites.” But the consequence of that is that these non-profits aren’t run in a results-driven way. These CEOs aren’t scrutinizing the numbers of the non-profit their nephew works at versus the non-profit some other CEO’s nephew works at, to see who is helping more people more cost effectively. The result is a kind of soft corruption of organizations that get lots of donor funding through social networks but which don’t use that money very effectively. Not because it is being diverted as such, but because nobody is trying very hard.
fsckboy · 20 days ago
>We are almost two decades into the age of billionaire philanthropy
10 decades, Rockefeller was the first billionaire 100 yrs ago, and also a philanthropist.
insane_dreamer · 20 days ago
didn't it start with Carnegie and Rockefeller?
apparent · 20 days ago
I'd be curious to know how the economics of craigslist works, such that he's made so many hundreds of millions of dollars. It only charges a modest fee for a small fraction of transactions, but presumably the denominator is big enough that this adds up (and of course he would have subsequently invested the proceeds).
I had assumed that the fee portion of the site was substantial enough to cover all costs, and generate perhaps tens of millions of profit (he's well known for having given away money to media, so obviously there's some profit). But I didn't realize that it made hundreds of millions of dollars.
Are there any articles that break down how this pencils out?
Jblx2 · 20 days ago
I suppose some of it is due to craigslist being around for 30+ years. At $25-$30 million a year, it adds up over time. And then if he invests most of it, 30 years of compounding interest does the rest.
apparent · 20 days ago
Yeah, and investing during the last 30 years would yield incredible results even if you are lousy at picking stocks. And of course, if you'd put even a tiny bit into BTC, you'd have even more.
layer8 · 20 days ago
A few details are given here: https://fox4kc.com/business/press-releases/ein-presswire/799...
Revenue peaked in 2018 at $1 billion.
KennyBlanken · 20 days ago
He and James made hundreds of millions of dollars off ads for prostitution. Knowingly.
Throwing money at military veterans doesn't erase the stain of having a hand in the explosion of human trafficking and sexual exploitation Craigslist (and Backpages) enabled.
The FBI arrested Gambino family members for child prostitution, and one of their top ways of soliciting Johns was via paid ads in Craigslist. One state AG counted 200,000 ads a year and estimated the revenue to be almost $2M, in their state alone.
simoncion · 20 days ago
I know that this can be a controversial opinion, but I and other folks who enjoy fucking should be permitted to sell use of our asses -and/or other body parts, as negotiated- to folks who are looking for people to fuck. It turns out that -even if it's not legal- fuck-enjoyers still do exactly that. Wild, right?
Some folks might not be aware, but human trafficking and slavery are both illegal. Making prostitution and other sex work legal and subject to the same worker protection laws as any other job is the most effective single thing that can be done to remove the foundation from the sex-industry wing of that rotten house. We can't control the priorities of the police, but we can give folks in the industry somewhere to go and safely complain if their workplace is unsafe.
roksprok · 20 days ago
Craigslist is often held up as an example of a company "doing it right", but what is never mentioned in these posts is that a large portion of their revenue comes from facilitating scams. Around 25% of rooms/apartments I contact are scams, and Craigslist has so far done nothing to prevent these. A common scam is to take pictures from a real estate site of a house that recently sold and advertise it as for rent, but they don't even let you say "I live at this house and do not want to rent it, don't let anyone post it".
socalgal2 · 20 days ago
It's also one of the major things the destroyed newspapers. I'm not saying that's bad, just pointing out it happened.
a2tech · 20 days ago
Airbnb has the same exact problem. Also doesn’t seem to give a crap when they’re reported.
nunez · 20 days ago
Except AirBnB _does_ make money off of those scam listings.
jeffbee · 20 days ago
Craigslist doesn't even charge for rental listings, do they? I thought they only charge for help wanted ads.
criddell · 20 days ago
They charge for rental listings in some markets.
jeffbee · 20 days ago
Interesting. I wonder why they feel it is not necessary or not profitable to do it in the Bay Area.
floren · 20 days ago
They now charge to list your car, even as a private party. I'm not sure it was the right choice because it drove so much traffic to Facebook Marketplace, which is an absolute disaster.
jedberg · 20 days ago
Craigslist doesn't make any money from those scams because they don't charge for rental listings. It sucks that it's there, but for them to hire staff to deal with it, they'd have to charge for the rental listings.
Right now they rely on volunteers to combat that problem, in the form of legit landlords reporting the scams.
wyre · 20 days ago
So why not charge for rental listings? i'm sure the number of scams would go down, while posting would still be of good value for someone looking to rent out a $3000/mo apartment.
jubilanti · 20 days ago
They do in some markets like NYC specifically because of scams.
everforward · 19 days ago
It’s not what they do, and it’s a crowded market where they don’t really have an edge. If you want well-vetted products, don’t go to Craigslist. They’re just digital classifieds, the tradition is basically “anyone can list them, no one checks them, caveat emptor”.
It’s weird to me they even carry real estate listings, because I’m surprised anyone would trust them with that kind of money on a good you can’t easily self-validate. I wouldn’t spend more than $100 on something from Craigslist if I wasn’t confident that I can judge the quality of it myself.
jedberg · 19 days ago
The people who get scammed are the ones that rent sight-unseen. But most people visit the apartment they are going to rent, and the smart ones don't pay any money until they've done so. If you're really paranoid, you verify that that the person you are talking to is actually the owner, or a valid representative of the owner.
ryukoposting · 19 days ago
I've bought most of the cars I've ever owned from CraigsList. A tool chest, that was $400 or so. An oscilloscope, various cameras, loads of furniture. I wouldn't be surprised if I've spent nearly $10,000 on Craigslist stuff excluding the cars.
Have I gotten a bad deal a few times? Yeah. Would I have gotten a better deal elsewhere? Unlikely.
Consider the thesis of the "craigslist is sketchy" argument the next time you look something up on Amazon and the first 3 results are from WODBEP, QXJEFN, and PLUDJ.
IMO the thing that actually spooks people about CraigsList is interacting with strangers, but Facebook isn't better. If you're stalking someone's FB because you want to buy their old TV, well guess what, you're the creep, not them.
jackconsidine · 20 days ago
From Craig's Wikipedia article [0]. He sure cares about fighting scams. Craigslist != Craig I know, but may these are intractable problems, not that there's necessarily negligence
> In 2022, Newmark committed $50 million to the Cyber Civil Defense initiative.[39] As of April 2022, approximately $30 million of this commitment had been awarded.[40]
> In 2023, Craig Newmark Philanthropies announced it would double its donations from $50 million to $100 million for fighting cyber threats.[41]
> In 2026, Newmark founded a public service campaign, "Take9", encouraging users to pause and think before responding to a text or email to help avoid being scammed.[42][43] A video for the campaign featured Newmark teaming up with Count von Count from Sesame Street.[42][43]
dstroot · 20 days ago
I once wanted to build an alternative to Craig’s list. There were SO MANY things I had ideas to improve. Then I realized I had literally no idea how Craig’s list makes money. None. They did not charge for ads and they didn’t have advertising. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
BeetleB · 20 days ago
IIRC, he said the bulk of revenue comes from job listings.
dstroot · 20 days ago
Thanks!
KennyBlanken · 20 days ago
You misspelled "ads for prostitution." Which they eventually stopped doing, only after considerable public pressure and state AGs threatening criminal prosecution.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/craigslist-drops-adult-ser...
Everyone need stop making out Craig and James out to be super moralistic dudes. They both profited, enormously, off sexual exploitation and human trafficking around the world by (knowingly) serving as a directory for pimps.
SXX · 20 days ago
Its not a private business fault that US did not create a legal framework protecting sex workers and instead continue facilitate exploitation and traffiking by keeping it illegal.
US have legal porn industry and its strictly regulated and mostly safe for those wofking in it. Imagine how it would look like if it was illegal too.
forgetfreeman · 20 days ago
Are you proposing that forming an S-corp somehow eliminates an individuals moral or ethical obligations?
SXX · 20 days ago
It does not since morals and ethics are relative.
Having legal framework and regulation solves problems with exploitation and traffiking though.
If sex work is illegal there will be pimps, illegal ads, criminal organizations facilitate it and abuse.
driverdan · 20 days ago
> They both profited, enormously, off sexual exploitation and human trafficking around the world by (knowingly) serving as a directory for pimps.
From what I read back when this happened you have it backwards. The classifieds on CL and other sites for sex were were largely individuals choosing to do it. They were not being trafficked or pimped. By closing those listings down it would end up pushing sex workers to find other sources of clients, like pimps.
simoncion · 20 days ago
> The classifieds on CL and other sites for sex were were largely individuals choosing to do it. They were not being trafficked or pimped.
Yep. Just like with marijuana and other such "vices", the thing that takes most of the violence and exploitation out of the industries that produce, market, and sell a "vice" [0] is to make it legal to produce, advertise, and sell.
There's also a side angle here where some folks absolutely disbelieve that an attractive human who really enjoys fucking would rather make their own hours getting paid to fuck than get abused by a shitty boss at an entry-level job.
Are there people coerced into sex work? _Absolutely_. But, there are people coerced into nearly every sort of job out there, so that's not saying much.
[0] Well, actually this applies to any industry. No matter what it is, if you have to do illegal shit to create, distribute, and sell it, and if there's notable amount of money to be made in selling it, then there's inevitably gonna be violent folks involved in the process.
gregw2 · 19 days ago
Legalization reduces the risk of violence to sellers and buyers and external parties. This in turn reduces the risk premium and quick score potential of the "business".
The problem with the legalization strategy to reduce violence is that it has its limits.
It turns a high-risk game into a high-volume high-scale game.
It validates the creation of a corporate ecosystem who then are incented to create demand for the "vice" while simultaneously concealing what they know (or come to learn) about the vice's side effects.
simoncion · 17 days ago
> ...who then are incented to create demand for the "vice" while simultaneously concealing what they know (or come to learn) about the vice's side effects.
Indeed. Organized Crime is [0] known for being entirely up-front about the side-effects of the things they break the law to sell, as well as being extraordinarily circumspect about both whom they take on as customers and how their products and business practices affect the long-term well-being of those customers.
Anyway. I agree that dealing in the public eye and ensuring a merchant's customers can air their grievances in the courts absolutely isn't a magic cure-all. I think we both know that for "vices", it's nearly always better than the black market.
[0] ...not...
bredren · 20 days ago
Yes.
Even if you take out revenue from scams, it does not change the question of what Craigslist could or should have done regarding governance.
Craigslist adhered to basic features and community volunteers partly to avoid responsibility.
The org had no problem enforcing its moat around UGC (posts) with lawsuits but only at after extraordinary foot dragging did they implement basic advancements in the best interests of their own community.
This has resulted in untold numbers of scam victims, yes but also it allowed bad landlords, (and tenants) to carry on with no repercussions. This continues, actually.
Craigslist was a benevolent dictator. It squandered an opportunity to be a low profit leader of p2p, instead yielding it to Facebook and a variety of venture backed products.
I have first hand knowledge of Craigslist response to market competition because my cofounder on Gliph and I are the creators of the product that Craigslist privacy relay email service is based on.
This point of who actually created the concept and tech is actually being litigated right now between Apple and a patent troll over the Hide My Email feature of iCloud in Rally vs. Apple Inc.
rsync · 20 days ago
Anon.penet.fi is clear prior art - from 1993[1].
Anyone who thought they had invented something new here were kidding themselves.
bredren · 20 days ago
Wow, I wasn’t aware of this and it definitely predates our work.
I’d have presumed this would have come up in the evidence for that case but afaik it has not.
IANAL, but perhaps Craigslist’s response to our product, which included blocking its usage on the site after they implanted their version, served as a stronger example of the commercialization of the product still well ahead of the Rally Patent.
ahazred8ta · 20 days ago
[wasn’t aware of this] That's odd. Anyone familiar with the history of anonymous email services and remailers would know about the penet, cotse, and cypherpunk communities in the 1990s. It was a fertile field. Odd that you haven't bumped into anyone from that space.
https://codamail.com/aboutus.html -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixminion -- https://www.spamgourmet.com/index.pl?printpage=faq.html
bredren · 20 days ago
I suppose from some perspectives it is.
When I designed our take on it, I was solving a problem I experienced on Craigslist. I had not seen this prior art.
I built a simple refresh for a new email address interface that people really loved to mash, and it is nearly identical to the Use Different Address link behavior on Hide My Email.
To get to my original point, if Craigslist was aware of all of these examples, they did not seem to serve as impetus to provide it, despite it being in the best interest of their users.
I would highlight again that the system described by the Rally patent, if realizable in the example services means these groups also left potentially valuable IP on the table.
As the lawsuit over Hide My Email, afaik, is serious stuff.
I appreciate folks sharing links to prior art. I have more to say, that might explain my initial comment a bit more, but have to wait on that.
dfxm12 · 20 days ago
Of course I've found some too good to be true auto listings on cl (so I stayed away), but this is a weird thing to fixate on when there are scams on Amazon, fb marketplace, newspaper classifieds, etc.
As an aside, I think getting involved in making people prove they live at an address to cl is not the right way to do anything, especially in the context of cl, where many listings may have many different people who live together at that same address.
hamdingers · 20 days ago
> Craigslist has so far done nothing to prevent these
You could make your point without this lie. Craigslist moderators are both very active and quick to respond. Their moderation system is explained on the website. Try flagging scams when you see them.
ForHackernews · 20 days ago
If only 25% of one section of CL is scams, that puts it well ahead of the cryptocurrency industry, the social media industry, the adtech industry and the AI industry.
TheOtherHobbes · 20 days ago
2026, where "We're scammy, but not as scammy as the rest of tech" is a genuine USP.
Quekid5 · 20 days ago
Ask for more regulation.
ilamont · 20 days ago
Craigslist also undermined the entire newspaper classifieds business, which paid for local news reporting in communities of all sizes.
Yes, someone else would have addressed this niche eventually, or newspapers would have gotten their acts together on the digital front. The fact that Newmark started so early and was almost completely non-commercial in Craigslist operations and attitude allowed it to proliferate quickly, quickly gutting the revenues of local newspapers.
bag_boy · 20 days ago
Additionally, they are one of the few for-profit companies that uses “.org” with a straight face.
Even if it was not the original intent, it’s somewhat deceptive to keep it.
insane_dreamer · 20 days ago
> a large portion of their revenue comes from facilitating scams. Around 25% of rooms/apartments I contact are scams
they don't charge for rental posts in most cities, so your conclusion is false
burpingtree · 20 days ago
Even beyond scams they are one of the biggest factors leading to the collapse of the local news industry that was funded by local classified ads. So it’s hard at a macro level to view them as doing it right in a global sense, but they did make Craig rich.
AbstractH24 · 19 days ago
Its the ultimate libertarian paradox.
How can you both preserve peoples rights and also intervene to stop when you subjecivley think something should be regulated?
Jblx2 · 20 days ago
I wonder what the infrastructure is like for craigslist.
jedberg · 20 days ago
My experience is a few decades old but it was pretty simple. Some servers for the text and some for the images. The data is super cacheable, the hot set is really hot (current listings), and storing text and some image pointers is pretty simple for even a moderate database (which can be split by metro).
I was on the security team for eBay/PayPal at the time they took a minority stake in Craigslist, and one of the jobs we got was securing their infrastructure (they didn't have a security team).
I wonder if they still have that arrangement with eBay...
xnx · 20 days ago
Craigslist is one of the few sites with a UI even better than HN. Totally fits that Craig would have this type of character.
jrmg · 20 days ago
Is Craigslist still the go-to classifieds site in some places?
Around here it’s (very sadly IMO) been almost completely replaced by Facebook Marketplace, to the extent that people make Facebook accounts just to use Marketplace.
jeffbee · 20 days ago
I use both in the Bay Area and have never succeeded in selling anything on FB. Craigslist usually connects me with some buyer and if not I go to eBay.
apparent · 20 days ago
I use ND first, then CL. I've used FB a few times, but mostly it's been scammers (though I have friends who swear by it).
83 · 20 days ago
ND?
apparent · 20 days ago
NextDoor
tasuki · 20 days ago
That was not apparent.
apparent · 20 days ago
Nor was your pun, at first!
But it's more likely to be apparent to someone who is a parent (the alternate meaning of my handle).
learn_more · 20 days ago
Nextdoor
DonHopkins · 20 days ago
CL is a killer app!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Markoff
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Beasley_(serial_killer...
lotsofpulp · 20 days ago
I only sell on Facebook marketplace because being able to see someone’s profile means a lot less time spent selling the item.
cryptoegorophy · 20 days ago
Yes and you can see feedbacks. Makes things so much easier.
vvpan · 20 days ago
I've been told that it is a regional thing.
g8oz · 20 days ago
I found Karrot to be a better experience than FB Marketplace.
PaulDavisThe1st · 20 days ago
Karrot the food-sharing/organization-organizing app that just got an NLnet grant? Or something else?
memcg · 20 days ago
I sell on CL and FB Marketplace. Some items that I listed for months on CL sold in days on FB, but I prefer CL. FB search results are inferior often because FB posters created misleading ads and don't delete ads for events that have already occurred. Never tried Nextdoor because they required I give them my cell phone number. My landline number was not enough.
ornornor · 19 days ago
> FB search results are inferior
That’s quite the understatement. FB marketplace search results are pretty close to useless. Search for something, it will show you maybe a couple of that something and then ads that look like listings, and things that are supposedly related (they aren’t), hours away from your search area. No way to filter or anything. I go out of my way to not use FB marketplace, that’s how bad it is to me.
ryukoposting · 19 days ago
In Wisconsin and Illinois, I had far better luck both buying and selling on CL. I moved to CA fairly recently but the story seems to be the same here.
As a seller, FB marketplace is just a neverending stream of "Is this still available?" "Yes" and then radio silence.
I also found it far less common for CL sellers to share a different price in DMs than they list in the ad. CL users are also better about taking their ad down when the item is sold.
Going to a separate website and (gasp!) sending an actual email or calling someone, those are strong filters for intent that FB Marketplace lacks.
everybodyknows · 16 days ago
> Going to a separate website and (gasp!) sending an actual email or calling someone, those are strong filters for intent that FB Marketplace lacks.
Thanks -- that explains why anonymized email as an ad reply option has (silently) disappeared.
kgwxd · 20 days ago
How did he even make money? Was it from craigslist? If so, how!?
al_borland · 20 days ago
They charge for job postings. When I looked at my area just now it's $35/category the ad is posted in.
Zigurd · 20 days ago
Meh. Haven't the "effective altruism" people proved that conventional philanthropy is less effective?
rozap · 20 days ago
Ea appears to primarily be a post hoc rationalization for someone's unhinged drive for money and power. A way for people who see themselves as good, but act according to a different set of principles, to launder their consciousness through a compelling sounding framework. Now, this isn't to say that all EA practicioners are like this, or that it's bad (I think doing some good is better than doing none, if we can quantify good...), or even that there's a better alternative in the system that we live in. But the whole thing just feels inauthentic and handwaves externalities in a way that always felt uncomfortable. So I'd hardly say EA has "proved" anything.
Zigurd · 20 days ago
> Ea appears to primarily be a post hoc rationalization for someone's unhinged drive for money and power.
I know. I just have to figure out how to pass off my snark as "effective ambiguity."
nephihaha · 20 days ago
They get tax breaks for philanthropy.
jfrbfbreudh · 20 days ago
So do you.
aidenn0 · 20 days ago
Maybe.
For a few years I certainly didn't, despite donating more than 10% of my income to charities, since the standard deduction was increased and the SALT cap was very low.
PaulDavisThe1st · 20 days ago
For most folks these days, only on up to $300 of donations. Otherwise, they have to have total deductions in excess of the standard (somewhere in the $12-13k ballpark last time I looked carefully). If you have a large enough house/mortgage, you may be able to hit that from the interest payments, and then donations are the cherry on top. For everybody else ... nope.
nephihaha · 20 days ago
Actually no I don't. I don't live under US jurisdiction.
BrenBarn · 20 days ago
The side takeaway from this is that most rich people won't voluntarily give away their wealth, so it will have to be taken.
comrade1234 · 20 days ago
It's too bad the pimps and prostitutes ruined casual encounters. Craigslist had to remove it because some people were using it for prostitution. It was a safe place to arrange experiences that you would never have had otherwise.
standardUser · 20 days ago
It's also too bad our society shares in the collective delusion that sex work can be prevented. It not only makes sex work far more dangerous, but it tramples on these exact kinds of novel spaces for sex/intimacy.
ElijahLynn · 20 days ago
That is beautiful! I hope to be able to be well off enough some day to give to causes I believe in (to start I would fund a ton of open-source engineers on projects that I use).
Love news like this, happy tears!
adrianwaj · 19 days ago
Yeah, if there's a commercial site running on FOSS, it seems a disservice not to give back to support those efforts if the option comes up. Closes the loop. Every web page should really have a crypto address attached to it, or at least the ones that are open to receiving something back.
Maybe a DNS-like system for crypto addresses would be a good thing for Craig to setup? One probably already exists. Maybe something like [existing domain].coin - and people can claim their .coin domain by verifying their [existing domain] first.
What happens if 100 billionaires start wanting to offload cash? How can that be efficiently and effectively managed?
Speaking or CL - lots of dormant cities. Shouldn't there be a https://cityname.craigslist.org/feed link to get RSS updates if/when something actually gets posted? Good way to help "starting up" cities.
foobarian · 20 days ago
I think he has given away a whole lot more than half a billion dollars when you think of the opportunity squandered to grow CL the way other unicorney companies grew
Quarrelsome · 20 days ago
it was an intentional choice to not go big. I can seriously respect that. I feel like all these "big tech leaders" like Zuck or Musk have some pretty blatant mental health issues, its a path with significant drawbacks because that level of absurd wealth causes issues.
socalgal2 · 20 days ago
If your goals require trillions then millions are not enough. Craig’s goal = have a modest comfortable life. Musk’s goal = Make humanity a multi-planet species
Yes, now there will be arguments about if that’s really Musk’s goal. that’s beside the point. The point is some goals require money than others
ikrenji · 20 days ago
musk's goal = grift himself into the four comma club
Quarrelsome · 20 days ago
> Musk’s goal = Make humanity a multi-planet species
I totally see how the acquisition of twitter and funding of probably the worst US government in recent decades is in keeping with that aim. OR perhaps he just wants people to think he's cool, so he invests in "cool" stuff. This is because he has some of those mental health issues lots of absurdly wealthy people do, that results in him feeling like he constantly has to prove himself.
nunez · 20 days ago
Hoarding at scale, but with money instead of gnomes.
ndsipa_pomu · 19 days ago
Also, hoarding that actively hurts other people and makes them poorer
b40d-48b2-979e · 20 days ago
As if casually having the ability to give away half a billion dollars is not absurd wealth?
Quarrelsome · 20 days ago
the cure for hoardcurse is to give it away, yes.
rchaud · 20 days ago
> to grow CL the way other unicorney companies grew
By hiring McKinsey to tell them they need to start selling and and acquire their competitors? That is the only way the unicorns established their position.
insane_dreamer · 20 days ago
> opportunity squandered to grow CL the way other unicorney companies grew
squandered?
how about: decided not to become an asshole billionaire like many of the other unicorn asshole billionaires, and help other people instead
dayyan · 20 days ago
How effective is his giving?
maebert · 20 days ago
More effective than not giving, which apparently is a bar other billionaires are not clearing.
vvpan · 20 days ago
One of the effects of giving is de-concetrating power and diminushing your political leverage.
an0malous · 20 days ago
Blue Star Families Inc
https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/800...
They spent $23M in 2024, 10.7% went to executives and 24.4% went to other workers.
From the 2025 Impact Highlights of their website:
- 300,000+ military and family veteran families supported
- 12,290 families were helped by Nourish the Service
- 726 virtual, 1567 in person events
- 10,000+ military voices shared through surveys etc.
- 200,000+ new families joined
LeoPanthera · 20 days ago
Craigslist is the pinnacle of web sites. True brutalist web design.
1970-01-01 · 20 days ago
Pinnacle because it was a simple, functional website back when it started in '95. Back when UI design didn't cost millions of dollars with MBs of crap JS clogging things up.
b40d-48b2-979e · 20 days ago
Come off it. Adding a few lines of CSS to give things reasonable contrast and spacing is not "millions of dollars". 2005 called, they want their jQuery back.
driverdan · 20 days ago
> True brutalist web design.
Concrete web design? What does that mean?
I guess you mean the site is simple but that's not what brutalism is.
LeoPanthera · 20 days ago
It's a modern usage.
mizzao · 19 days ago
McMaster-Carr has entered the chat...
vrinsd · 20 days ago
Sadly, I think Craig might have done MORE for society by simply improving Craig's List and removing/reducing the amount of spam and junk posts it allows.
I can't claim the changes would be easy to implement, but if they made a FEW small changes the result would be 1000x better.
For example if you want to sell something on Craig's List they do some "you can't make this post because it looks too similar to a previous posting" kind of thing AND you might need a mobile number but somehow someone can stuff 1000 random keywords into a for-sale posting that's not at all about the item? So if you're looking for a "Miata" you'll end up getting listing for a bunch of other cars since someone is gaming the system?
Or it's an option to "reject duplicates" -- why do duplicates or clone postings even show up if they have their "this is too similar to another posting" capability?
Or, Craig's List lets AutoTrader and other "commercial" sites post items but if you want to actually message someone now on AutoTrader you need to upload your DRIVERS LICENSE just to send them a message? So Craig's List is OK with a reciprocal arrangement with a vendor who does not honor the same "equality" rules Craig's List was built on?
Sadly, many years ago I would send feedback to Craig's List and Craig himself would reply. I don't know if he's completely checked out of his site now, but if you're out there Craig a few simple changes could restore the utility of the service which you created. People like me would even PAY to see these improvements.
scosman · 20 days ago
Yeah totally agree! My pet peeve feature list is also better for society than donating $500M to charity!
tengbretson · 20 days ago
I suspect this is sarcasm but seriously. Craigslist has floundered and now Meta/Facebook Marketplace is dominating the private buying/selling space. Is that not at least $500M of harm?
master-lincoln · 19 days ago
The harm was done by the people voluntarily moving to the ad platform.
KennyBlanken · 20 days ago
If you're going to talk about societal impact then you need to also look at how much they enabled sexual exploitation and human trafficking, worldwide, by serving as an ad site for pimps.
Craig and James knew damn well where most of their revenue was coming from, and pimps were able to get increasingly bold with their slang, moving from "model" to "escort" to just outright saying "prostitute" because Craigslist didn't care.
They only did something about it in 2010 when public outrage grew and prosecutors - around the world - started investigating.
Craig and James belong in jail cells, not having their di...er, egos, stroked for giving away their money to organizations that help veterans - the most lazy, non-controversial target for a non-profit.
ChoGGi · 20 days ago
That's more something to blame on prostitution being illegal with no safeguards or legal help for those being trafficked.
Edit: how many times are you going to post that? You have something against sex workers? Or just Craigslist?
abunner · 20 days ago
This is right. The good he was doing society was the product Craigslist.org. It touched hundreds of millions of lives for the better and, sometimes, worse. He had no great lever. I'm skeptical the non-profits/charities had any where near the societal benefit. The article seems light on what he actually accomplished by giving away $500M
Zopieux · 20 days ago
The world can't run on random philanthropy. You don't become a billionaire through hard work alone but through exploitation at scale.
Tax the richs, or eat them.
anothereng · 19 days ago
so if I make a piece of software and I sell it to 10 million people for 10$ and I'm the only employee who did I exploited?
nunez · 20 days ago
> He doesn’t own a car and takes public transportation in New York City.
Mr. Newmark gets it! I hope he's as nice in person as he comes off in this article.
bluebarbet · 20 days ago
Very on-the-spectrum (PS: and proudly so) IIRC. That has to mitigate the sociopathies that typically accompany great wealth.
vvpan · 20 days ago
It is all about the system of values. The system of values that the stereotypical high powered CEO billionaires have is unfathomable to me. Do they have time to breathe? Do they have friends? Their lives sound boring and unfulfilling.
KennyBlanken · 20 days ago
Values that included making tens of millions of dollars a year off sexual exploitation of women and children?
conformist · 20 days ago
It is great that he’s doing this and it’s making the world a better place.
It’s a bit disappointing that in articles like this there’s relatively little discussion around what organisations receive the money and what impact it has. We should ultimately judge people by that, not abstractly by “charity == good”? If a billionaire donates millions to the Against Malaria Foundation I would judge that differently than a donation to an art museum in a developed country - and I think people should, and it matters morally.
The difference between for profit and non-profit isn’t really important either compared to “what concretely did they spend money on and what does that plausibly achieve”.
(Tbc some cause areas he donates to are explained, and they seem reasonable and close to his life, but unfortunately not in any depth).
rchaud · 20 days ago
It says right there in the article that he donates to military veterans' charities and animal rescue charities. I don't see him as a big arts benefactor considering that the main motive the ultra-rich have for making lavish donations to fancy museums is to get invited to the right parties, Met Gala and the like.
He seems like a private person doesn't flaunt his wealth and has mostly avoided inserting himself into public discourse, unlike many of his tech-rich peers.
conformist · 19 days ago
Yes it does sound like his approach is quite smart and altruistic, but it’s a shame that that aspect just isn’t covered in more detail.
oulipo2 · 20 days ago
Meanwhile, the fragile-ego loser Musk is hoarding wealth and trying to destroy the planet
scelerat · 20 days ago
I have a lot of fun memories about when I moved to SF in 2006. Among them was meeting Craig and interacting with him casually a handful of times. He was a regular at Reverie in Cole Valley, where a good friend and mentor of mine was also a regular. The two of them were friends and times I'd meet with my friend, i'd sometimes talk to Craig. He always seemed kind and had a sharp wit. I remember the first time I met him, my friend introduced me and said I had just moved to town. I blurted out, "know a good way to find an apartment?" Craig gave me a good-natured eye roll.
I asked him one time what he was doing. Answering emails, he said. Customer support emails. I think he really enjoyed that part of the business.
specialist · 20 days ago
I appreciate any and all support for (independent) journalism. Craig Newmark Philanthropies has been very generous in that regard.
Were I king, I'd (also):
- Create endowments for journalistic orgs. Sufficient that they can maintain financial, and therefore editorial, independence.
- Award lots of grants to independent journalists, to simply do their thing, no strings attached. This ensures plenty of content for those independent orgs.
Currently, investments by non-right-wing donors to non-right-wing orgs are contingent. Metrics, strategy, ideology, blah blah blah. Whereas the right-wing ecosystem doesn't get bogged down by the money chase, endless self-justification, navel gazing, consensus building, etc.
blks · 20 days ago
Did he give it away, or did he set up a fund managed by relatives, like Patagonia guy?
throwitaway222 · 20 days ago
Ugh, the only thing giving money out has done has made a few millionaires. If he had $500M he would create much more for the public by creating companies. Seriously, wealth generated by companies far far far exceeds philanthropy, which enriches very few.
forgetfreeman · 20 days ago
Having single-handedly done more to destroy American journalism than any other five people put together it is somehow even more deeply frustrating to find out that he didn't even really care about the money while he was doing it.
scotty79 · 20 days ago
Money is power and large power should be under democratic supervision. Billion dollars worth power is a large power.
deadeye · 20 days ago
I don't have much love for this guy. He donated millions to the EFF to the point where CL owned the EFF.
When CL bullied people who lightly scraped their site with CFAA threats, the EFF would not help. Ultimately, they ended up on the wrong side of history.
While Musk has created hundreds of thousands of jobs and God knows how many millionaires, Newmark complains about him while having only created around 50 jobs. 50.
Instead of building something else and employing more people he watches TV and feeds pigeons.
Bravo. He's basically a beatnik who won the lottery.
fortran77 · 20 days ago
I remember in the early days of Craigslist, I interviewed for a job with someone who advertised there. After the third interview, they offered me a job--with no money. They wanted to pay in shares of this tiny startup. I had explicitly asked them--I took good notes--in interview #1 if they had an actual opening for an actual job.
I filed a lawsuit in Santa Clara county for "Fraudulent Misrepresentation" and they settled with me for $5,000. (California law is very good on this. They broke two laws with no cash wages and a non-compliant job posting.) But I also told Craig Newmark, because they had their job listing on Craigslist. He pulled their job listings, and sent me an email assuring me that nobody associated with the company would ever be able to advertise on Craigslist again. I was very impressed.
casey2 · 20 days ago
Given back*
He SHALL serve a prison sentence, it MAY be reduced.
ETH_start · 20 days ago
I strongly disagree with this framing that moving away from formal philanthropy has resulted in a move "toward hard-edged individualism and ostentatious displays of wealth".
It's easy to forget now with the massive market valuations what Tesla and SpaceX were like in the early days. Both were considered to have a very small chance of success and were in a large sense seen as philanthropic enterprises, intended more to move humanity forward then make a lot of money.
Much of the early investment in these companies and even some of the investment in these companies today is driven by altruistic motives, not personal profit seeking.
While the typical business venture like a new ad network or a social media platform might have some subtle economic benefits that economists can tease out through studying their second and third order effects, I think it's hard to to argue against the notion that the latest mega companies including the AI companies, but especially Tesla and SpaceX, are doing much more good for humanity and have the potential to do much more good for humanity than companies traditionally have. There are already literally hundreds of thousands of people who now have internet connectivity that did not before, thanks to Starlink, for example. Tesla, for its part, has contributed to significantly lower pollutant emissions, especially through its impact on other auto companies, in spurring them to commercialize battery electric vehicles.
And the wealthiest man today, Elon Musk, whatever you may think of him, is not into "ostentatious displays of wealth". The man lives in a tiny fabricated home most of the time, and seems far more concerned with his social causes than personal consumption.
xhkkffbf · 19 days ago
Here's another thought: why not charge less? If he's giving away all of this money, the firm is definitely profitable. Charging less for job ads means more job ads. Making it easier to advertise can mean more employed people. (Obviously someone will abuse this good will but the basic economic link is straight-forward.)
kazinator · 19 days ago
If he gave away $500 and worked with Craigslist to bring back the feature of searches being avaialble as RSS, he would be a saint.
AIcanbiteme · 19 days ago
Thiel is right, this fake boomer club just piles money onto liberal causes (left doesn't exist any more, progressive stack folded it into liberalism).