

Fake Craigslist ads a big headache - edw519
http://redtape.msnbc.com/2008/04/fake-craigslist.html#posts

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mynameishere
It's maybe time for Craigslist to grow up and start charging fees, at least
for big-ticket items. Their anti-profit approach to business is annoying
because it only moves the profits from where it could go (craigslist) to
another place (all the people selling things). If you think greed is evil,
shifting it around in a zero-sum way isn't doing any good.

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ews
Charging is not the holy grail of spam detection. There are services that
should remain always free. CL can't (or shouldn't) charge for posting in
categories where the user is not going to perform any economic activity.
Charging an amount (no matter how small) in categories such as Personals or
Missed Connections (besides not making sense at all) will decrease the amount
of legit postings, ruining the quantity and quality of the service. By turning
into a pay-per-post site CL could become something like ebay (a pure
commercial "I sell you my collection of Russian dolls") + job postings site.
That is, trust me, out of question.

Those non-commercial categories are the ones which are receiving far more fake
postings, so the problem on the commercial categories could be considered
closed. In non-commercial world, there are several measures being taken care
of, such backend data analysis (the most obvious choice) and phone
authentication for posting on a small set of categories (such Erotic
Services).

