Craigslist: Why Millennials Still Choose Authenticity Over Algorithms [2025]

The Internet Got Too Fancy, and We All Noticed

There's a strange moment happening right now where people are walking away from sleek, algorithm-powered apps to scroll through a website that looks like it was designed in 1999. And they're doing it on purpose.

Craigslist exists in a peculiar pocket of the internet where the rules of modern platforms don't apply. No AI learns your behavior. No algorithm predicts what you want to see next. No profile tracks your rating or reputation. Instead, you get a blank text box, a category dropdown, and the chance to connect with actual humans without an intermediary software layer deciding whether you're "compatible."

This matters now more than ever, because virtually every other corner of the internet has been optimized, gamified, and monetized. Instagram's algorithm decides what you see. TikTok's AI trains itself on your every pause and scroll. LinkedIn serves you "recommended connections" based on data profiles. Even Wikipedia and Reddit, the scrappy underdogs that survived the web's early era, have started bolting AI tools onto their platforms.

But Craigslist stayed put. It didn't pivot. It didn't get acquired by a larger company and immediately redesigned. It just kept doing the thing it's done since 1995: connecting strangers through classified listings, with minimal intervention and maximum human agency.

The surprising part? It's working. Craigslist pulls over 105 million monthly visitors, making it the 40th most popular website in the United States. That's not because of a brilliant marketing campaign or a viral moment. It's because the site still does something most of the internet refuses to do anymore: it trusts users to figure things out themselves.

This is a story about what happens when a platform refuses to optimize you. It's about why people in their thirties and forties still use Craigslist to find apartments, jobs, relationships, and even to cast HBO shows. It's about what we've collectively lost by letting algorithms decide what's worth our attention.

And it's about whether authenticity can actually compete in an internet increasingly built on artificial intelligence.

TL; DR

• Craigslist has 105 million monthly users without using algorithms, AI, or user tracking—proving that optimization isn't essential for scale
• Algorithm-free platforms reduce performative behavior, letting people post genuine items, write honest job postings, and seek real connections instead of chasing engagement
• The platform's resistance to monetization has kept it profitable while protecting user privacy in ways competitors like Facebook Marketplace and Etsy cannot
• AI adoption by Wikipedia, Reddit, and others accelerates internet "gentrification," making Craigslist's analog approach increasingly rare
• Younger generations are discovering Craigslist after burning out on algorithm-driven platforms, signaling a potential return to decentralized, user-controlled internet spaces

Craigslist is preferred for authenticity but lacks in algorithmic filtering and safety features compared to modern platforms. (Estimated data)

What Craigslist Actually Is (And Why It Still Exists)

Craigslist began as Craig Newmark's email list in 1995. Newmark was an engineer in San Francisco who wanted to share local events, tech job postings, and apartment listings with a couple hundred neighbors. The concept was so simple it barely qualifies as a business idea: make a place where people can post things, and let them find what they need.

Twenty-nine years later, that premise hasn't changed. You log onto Craigslist, click a category, write something, and hit post. Other people search or browse. Sometimes they email you. Transactions happen offline, mostly in person, in parking lots and coffee shops and apartments. Craigslist collects a small fee for certain listings (gigs, services, housing in some cities) and then gets out of the way.

The company is privately held by founder Craig Newmark and remains profitable despite supposedly declining revenue over the past decade. It doesn't need venture capital backing or acquisition by a tech giant because it requires almost no overhead. There's no complex algorithm infrastructure to maintain. No machine learning teams training neural networks. No product managers A/B testing button colors. The site runs lean because it was built lean and nobody felt compelled to fix something that wasn't broken.

This radical simplicity is the entire appeal.

When you post something on Craigslist, it doesn't disappear after three days due to algorithmic decay. It doesn't get shadow-boosted or shadow-suppressed based on engagement metrics. It exists in a database with thousands of other listings, ranked by recency and category, viewable to anyone with eyes and an internet connection. There's no hidden ranking system determining which apartments you see, which jobs appear first, or which people's "missed connections" posts are deemed worthy of visibility.

Compare this to Facebook Marketplace, where Meta's algorithm decides which listings show up in your feed. Or Etsy, which uses recommendation engines to prioritize certain sellers. Or Zillow, where sponsored listings push down unsponsored rentals. Each of these platforms has built sophisticated systems to maximize engagement, time on platform, and advertising revenue. In doing so, they've made their platforms objectively "better" in narrow technical ways while making them less useful for their original purpose.

Craigslist users often describe the experience as "ungentrified," a term popularized by communication researcher Jessa Lingel. The site feels unpolished because it is unpolished. Listings have typos. Photos are blurry. Descriptions are rambling. People seem like actual humans instead of carefully curated personas.

This aesthetic is a feature, not a bug.

Algorithms prioritize content that maximizes engagement, often amplifying controversial, extreme, aspirational, and conspiratorial content. (Estimated data)

The Algorithm Problem Nobody Admits They Have

Here's what's happened to the internet: every platform discovered that optimizing for engagement is more profitable than optimizing for usefulness. And engagement optimization requires algorithms. Lots of them. Constantly learning. Constantly adjusting. Constantly showing you slightly different content to measure which version keeps you scrolling longest.

Algorithms are incredibly useful for certain things. They're great at ranking medical information by relevance. They're great at filtering spam. They're great at detecting fraud. But algorithms are also phenomenal at amplifying whatever produces the highest engagement, regardless of whether that's truthful, helpful, or good for society.

Social media algorithms learned that controversy drives engagement, so controversial content gets amplified. TikTok's algorithm learned that extreme content holds attention better than moderate content, so the feed increasingly shows extreme videos. Instagram's algorithm learned that comparison and aspirational content drives engagement, so feeds become increasingly polished and fake. YouTube's algorithm learned that conspiratorial content often causes people to click more videos, so it became a conspiracy amplifier.

None of these were intentional design choices. They just emerged as natural consequences of optimizing for engagement and attention.

The second problem with algorithms is personalization. Every platform wants to show you "what you'll like," which means the algorithm learns your preferences and shows you more of the same. This creates filter bubbles. Your Twitter feed becomes politically uniform. Your YouTube recommendations become increasingly extreme. Your Instagram feed becomes a mirror of your own interests, reinforcing what you already think.

Third, algorithms enable surveillance. To recommend what you'll like, platforms need to know who you are. What you search. What you click. How long you hover. What you don't click. This data has value, so it gets sold to advertisers and data brokers. Your behavior on one platform becomes trackable across the entire internet through data sharing and ad networks.

Craigslist has zero of these problems because it has zero algorithms. Want to find a one-bedroom apartment? Click "housing," sort by date, and read listings. The platform doesn't know your income, your credit score, your browsing history, or your political views. It can't predict what you want because it's not trying to. It just shows you what exists.

This creates a genuinely different user experience. On Craigslist, when someone posts a job, they're not trying to game an algorithm to make it appear higher in results. They're just posting the job description. Employers can't pay to promote listings (in most cases), so they have to write actual job descriptions that appeal to actual humans. The result: Craigslist job postings often feel more honest than LinkedIn job postings, which are written to appeal to keyword-scanning algorithms.

Same with personal ads. When someone posted a "missed connections" ad on Craigslist, they weren't optimizing for virality or likes. They were writing something that one specific person might recognize. This forced honesty and specificity that disappeared from other platforms once engagement metrics became currency.

Why Smart People Are Moving Backward

Writer and comedian Megan Koester used Craigslist to find her first writing job (reviewing internet pornography), her rent-controlled apartment, and a parcel of land in the Mojave Desert where she built a dwelling. She furnished it entirely with free Craigslist finds, including the laminate flooring from a production company.

This isn't an unusual story anymore. Craigslist aficionados in their thirties and forties describe it as an essential part of their lives. They use it for housing, employment, romance, purchasing used goods, and casting creative projects. HBO's experimental series "The Rehearsal" was partially cast through Craigslist. Amazon Freevee's "Jury Duty" used the platform to find participants.

What's notable is that these are successful, tech-savvy people with access to every modern alternative. Koester could use Zillow, Redfin, Facebook Marketplace, Instagram, dating apps, LinkedIn, or any other contemporary platform. Instead, she goes back to Craigslist. This suggests something important: once you've experienced the simplicity of an algorithm-free platform, the optimized alternatives start feeling exhausting.

Comedian and actor Kat Toledo has used Craigslist since the 2000s to find housing, romance, jobs, and cohosts for her stand-up show "Besitos." She's now worked full-time for nearly two years at a job she found through Craigslist, defying the platform's reputation as a source of sketchy one-off gigs. When interviewing cohosts for her show, she gets "people who almost have nothing to lose, but in a good way, and everything to gain." She's had born-again Christians perform religious reenactments, poets who insisted on doing her makeup, and commercial actors who broke down on the phone.

The "random factor" Toledo describes is actually the absence of algorithmic curation. Craigslist doesn't filter respondents based on predicted compatibility. It doesn't rank them by engagement potential. It just shows them all, in rough reverse-chronological order. This creates an interesting serendipity: you encounter people you wouldn't have been matched with by an algorithm, which paradoxically makes the platform better for genuine discovery.

This is the secret algorithm designers never figured out: the most interesting recommendations are the ones nobody expected.

Craigslist is perceived to have a higher reputation issue score compared to other platforms, despite similar problems. Estimated data based on narrative context.

The Reputation Problem (And Why It Might Be Undeserved)

Craigslist's reputation is genuinely dark. The site became a punchline in crime documentaries after a Boston medical student used it to find victims for serial killing. Countless scams originated through the platform. The phrase "Craigslist murderer" became a media staple. Congress eventually passed legislation forcing Craigslist to shut down its "casual encounters" section in 2018 due to sex trafficking concerns.

But here's what's weird: other platforms have similar problems, often worse, but they don't carry the same stigma. Facebook's marketplace features countless scams. Instagram's DMs are filled with catfishing and robbery schemes. Dating apps are used for fraud at massive scale. Yet Craigslist carries a unique reputation as a sketchy, dangerous platform.

Part of this is media narrative. When something bad happens on Craigslist, it gets reported as "Craigslist crime." When something bad happens on Facebook, it gets reported as "social media crime" or just "crime." The platform name becomes synonymous with the danger.

But part of it is genuine: Craigslist's anonymity and lack of verification systems do make it easier for bad actors. You can't see someone's history, reputation, or profile before meeting them. You can't read reviews. There's no rating system. You're meeting a complete stranger with zero data about them.

This is simultaneously the platform's greatest weakness and greatest strength.

The weakness is obvious: bad people can hide. The strength is less obvious: good people can hide too. You can use Craigslist without building a personal brand, without accumulating digital reputation, without having past decisions haunt you. You can be completely anonymous. This appeals to vulnerable people seeking jobs, housing, and relationships without judgment.

Other platforms used to offer anonymity, but they discovered that real-name policies and reputation systems increased engagement and therefore profit. So they eliminated anonymity. Craigslist kept it because keeping it didn't require building expensive verification infrastructure, and eliminating it would cost effort and money for no immediate financial gain.

Toledo jokes with her Craigslist employer about the reputation: "If I'm not doing a good job, just remember you found me on Craigslist." The fact that she has a stable, legitimate, professional job from a Craigslist connection challenges the platform's sketchy narrative. She's one of countless people who've found genuine opportunity through the site.

How Every Other Platform Sold Out

Wikipedia started as a crowd-sourced encyclopedia with zero commercial intent. Reddit began as a forum with minimal moderation and maximum user control. Both were built on the principle that communities could self-organize without heavy-handed algorithmic intervention.

Both have now incorporated AI tools.

Wikipedia launched an AI-powered tool to help detect vandalism and bias. It's useful. But it represents a shift: the community can no longer be trusted to police itself; algorithms must now watch the watchers.

Reddit integrated its own AI tools into moderation, recommendation, and search. Again, useful improvements. But each integration represents a tiny loss of human agency and a tiny increase in algorithmic control.

Meanwhile, Facebook Marketplace, Etsy, eBay, Poshmark, and Mercari all deployed sophisticated recommendation algorithms to increase average order value and time on platform. They all want you to buy more, stay longer, and keep coming back. So they show you products they think you'll like, rather than letting you browse exhaustively.

LinkedIn uses algorithms to rank job listings and "suggested connections," prioritizing engagement over relevance. Dating apps use algorithms to optimize for "stickiness" rather than successful matches.

Every platform discovered the same thing: optimizing for engagement is more profitable than optimizing for user outcomes. And you can't optimize for engagement without algorithms. So every platform built them. And now every platform is basically optimizing to keep you scrolling, regardless of whether scrolling is actually serving your interests.

Craigslist never faced this pressure. The company is profitable from modest listing fees and doesn't need to maximize engagement. So it never built the algorithm. And now that choice looks prescient.

Craigslist operates with minimal costs and a simple revenue model, unlike Facebook Marketplace and Etsy, which have higher operational costs and complex revenue models. Estimated data.

The Economics of Not Optimizing

Craigslist generates revenue through a model so boring it barely deserves analysis: it charges money to post certain listings. The fees are modest. A job posting might cost a few dollars. A rental listing in some cities might cost around $5. Most categories are free. There's no advertising. No premium subscriptions. No data sales.

This model generates enough profit that the company remains valuable and self-sustaining, despite supposedly declining revenue. How? Because operating costs are negligible. The site requires minimal infrastructure. The code is old and stable. The staff is small. There's no massive data center. No team of machine learning engineers. No product managers. No marketing department.

Contrast this to Facebook Marketplace, which loses money in many regions because it requires maintaining Facebook's entire platform infrastructure—servers, data centers, AI systems, trust and safety teams, moderation—just to support a marketplace feature. Or Etsy, which is profitable but requires building recommendation algorithms, marketing campaigns, and seller support systems that Craigslist never built.

Craigslist proves something heretical in the tech industry: you can run a profitable, valuable service by not optimizing it. By not tracking users. By not building algorithms. By not spending money on acquiring and retaining customers.

Researcher Jessa Lingel started studying Craigslist because she noticed something odd: tech companies insist the only way to succeed is by monetizing user data and building surveillance infrastructure. Yet here's a massive platform generating real revenue without either.

"It's not a perfect platform by any means," Lingel observes, "but it does show that you can make a lot of money through an online endeavor that just treats users like they have some autonomy and grants everybody a degree of privacy."

This is genuinely radical in an internet where every major platform has chosen the opposite approach.

The Role of Anonymity in an Oversharing Era

One fundamental difference between Craigslist and modern platforms is anonymity. On Craigslist, you don't have a profile. You don't build a reputation. Nobody can see your history or your connections. Each post is essentially ephemeral—a listing that exists, serves its purpose, and fades.

On Twitter, you accumulate tweets. People can scroll through your entire posting history. You're building a permanent record of your positions, opinions, and changes of mind. This creates incentive to be careful, performative, and consistent.

On Instagram, you accumulate photos. Your profile becomes your personal brand. You want your highlight reel to be impressive and aspirational. This creates incentive to curate, filter, and present an idealized version of yourself.

On LinkedIn, you accumulate professional credentials. Endorsements. Recommendations. Network connections. You're constantly building social capital in ways that are visible to everyone. This creates incentive to optimize, network, and self-promote.

Craigslist has none of this. You post. People respond. You transact. You move on. There's no persistent identity. No accumulated reputation. No permanent record. Next week, you can post something completely different and nobody will connect it to your last post.

This anonymity is liberating in ways modern platforms can't replicate. It allows people to try things without worrying about how it affects their personal brand. It allows job seekers to apply without worrying about what a potential employer might find on their profile. It allows people to negotiate without revealing years of transaction history. It allows new identities and fresh starts.

In an age where everything is permanent and searchable, Craigslist feels like a relief valve. The Internet Archive might theoretically have cached copies of old listings, but in practical terms, they vanish. And that's the point.

Estimated data shows high AI integration in platforms like Wikipedia, Reddit, Facebook, and Twitter, while Craigslist remains largely AI-free.

Why Younger People Are Joining

For years, it seemed like Craigslist was aging out along with its user base. The site looked outdated. Mobile experience was terrible. Competitors had better design. Younger people seemed to prefer polished apps with clear interfaces.

But something shifted. Gen Z users started discovering Craigslist, often out of frustration with algorithm-driven platforms. After years of Instagram feeding them images of unattainable lifestyles. After TikTok algorithms pushing increasingly extreme content. After dating apps gamifying romance. After LinkedIn making job searching feel like a personal branding exercise.

They found Craigslist, posted things, and were surprised when other actual humans responded without an algorithm mediating the interaction.

Zoomer users describe Craigslist as feeling "real" in comparison to other platforms. There's something honest about text without pictures. About descriptions without algorithm-optimized hashtags. About connecting with someone based on what they actually wrote, not what an AI decided you'd like.

This mirrors a broader trend: Gen Z is increasingly skeptical of polished, optimized content. TikTok dominance hasn't meant social media victory; it's meant a shift toward what feels more authentic and unproduced, even if it's carefully crafted to appear unproduced. BeReal, the app that pushes notifications asking people to post unfiltered photos, became popular with Gen Z because it promises to strip away curation.

Craigslist doesn't promise this. It doesn't need to. Curation simply isn't possible on the platform. You can't filter your appearance. You can't use hashtags to reach wider audiences. You can't chase engagement. So everyone posts unvarnished versions of what they're selling or seeking. And that unvarnished approach suddenly feels more honest than the carefully curated authenticity of other platforms.

Research on internet usage patterns is limited because Craigslist doesn't share data, but anecdotal evidence suggests the platform is experiencing renewed interest from younger demographics who are tired of algorithm-driven social media.

The Casting Director Phenomenon

One unexpected use case for Craigslist has emerged in the entertainment industry. Casting directors and producers use the platform to find "real people" for realistic projects because the algorithm-free nature produces genuine candidates who aren't constantly trying to build their personal brands.

HBO's "The Rehearsal" was partially cast through Craigslist. Participants for Amazon's "Jury Duty" were recruited through the platform. Independent filmmakers and TV producers post in the "gigs" section seeking extras, background actors, and interesting personalities.

Why? Because Craigslist respondents aren't trying to pitch a personal brand. They're not looking to boost followers or create content for their Instagram. They're responding to a specific opportunity because it sounds interesting. This produces more genuine, less polished, more interesting people than you'd get from casting calls that ask people to submit headshots and reels.

The lack of algorithmic ranking means that unusual or offbeat gigs don't get suppressed in favor of mainstream opportunities. A casting call for experimental art projects doesn't get deprioritized because it won't generate massive engagement. It just sits in the feed with all other gigs, waiting for someone who happens to be interested.

This is exactly backwards from how other platforms work. On Facebook, an unusual gig would be shadow-ranked lower because it doesn't generate engagement. On Instagram, you'd never see it unless you followed the account that posted it. On Reddit, it would compete with thousands of other posts and might get buried.

But on Craigslist, it's just there. Equal visibility. Waiting for the right person who happens to care about that specific opportunity.

Craigslist's simplicity contrasts with typical tech platforms, showing higher ethical focus despite lower feature complexity. Estimated data.

What the Internet Gave Up to Build Algorithms

When social media platforms shifted from reverse-chronological feeds to algorithmic feeds, something fundamental changed. You were no longer seeing what your friends and followers posted. You were seeing what an algorithm thought you'd engage with. This seems like a small change. It was enormous.

It meant that posting something no longer guaranteed visibility to your audience. It meant that engagement metrics suddenly mattered because they determined algorithmic ranking. It meant that posts optimized for engagement would outperform posts optimized for honesty.

It meant that platforms could now optimize for time-on-platform and engagement rather than user outcomes. And since time-on-platform is directly correlated with how upset, angry, or intrigued someone is, algorithms naturally optimized for those emotions.

This wasn't malicious. It was just a natural consequence of the business model: engagement drives ad revenue, so optimize for engagement. The algorithm simply learned to do this efficiently.

Craigslist never built this system. So it never had to wrestle with the moral and practical consequences of optimizing for engagement. It just showed listings in chronological order. Boring. Effective. Honest.

Because of this, Craigslist's ecosystem evolved differently. Sellers learned that honesty works better than hype. Job postings learned that clear descriptions work better than marketing speak. People seeking personal connections learned that being genuine works better than being optimized.

This is more than just a UI difference. It's a fundamental difference in how platforms shape user behavior. When an algorithm rewards engagement, users optimize for engagement, which corrupts the original purpose. When a platform has no algorithmic ranking, users can't optimize for ranking, so they optimize for actually finding what they want.

The Gentrification of the Internet

Communication researcher Jessa Lingel calls Craigslist the "ungentrified internet." It's a useful term. Gentrification happens when an area becomes more valuable, gets cleaner, more optimized, more expensive, and less accessible to original residents.

The internet has undergone exactly this process. The early internet was messy, unoptimized, and relatively ad-free. GeoCities neighborhoods. Angelfire personal sites. Usenet forums. AIM away messages. Nobody was trying to monetize your attention because the business model didn't exist yet.

Then monetization became central to internet business. Advertising became the primary revenue model. And that meant platforms needed to optimize for attention. Algorithms became the tool for this optimization. And now every major platform has algorithmic ranking, recommendation systems, and engagement metrics.

The effect is gentrification: the internet became cleaner, more optimized, more valuable to businesses, and less valuable to users who actually just wanted to connect with each other without corporate intermediation.

Craigslist was never gentrified because it never needed to be. It was profitable from simple fees and didn't need to maximize engagement to extract value from users. So it stayed scruffy. Stayed unsophisticated. Stayed fundamentally a classified ads section from 1999, just now on the web.

This is why people keep coming back. Not because Craigslist is better at any particular task—Zillow is probably better at apartment hunting, LinkedIn is probably better at job hunting, dating apps are probably better at finding romance. But Craigslist doesn't require you to have a profile, show your face, build a brand, or participate in a system optimized to extract maximum value from your attention.

It just lets you post something and see what happens.

In an increasingly gentrified internet, this feels revolutionary. It feels radical. It feels authentic. It feels free.

The AI Acceleration and What It Means

The moment when Wikipedia and Reddit both incorporated AI tools represented a threshold moment for internet gentrification. These platforms were supposed to be different. Community-driven. User-controlled. Resistant to centralized authority and corporate optimization.

But even they decided that AI-powered features were worth the trade-off in autonomy. Wikipedia's AI moderation tools. Reddit's AI recommendations. Both seem innocuous. Both probably improve certain outcomes. But both represent a shift in the same direction: away from human control, toward algorithmic control.

Meanwhile, the AI boom is accelerating this process across the entire internet. Every platform is racing to incorporate AI. Not necessarily because it makes the platform better, but because investors expect it and because AI can extract more value from user data.

AI recommendation systems are increasingly sophisticated. They're getting better at predicting what you'll engage with. They're getting scarier at manipulating engagement through optimized personalization. They're getting more efficient at turning attention into profit.

Craigslist has no AI. No recommendation system. No predictive features. The company isn't even racing to add them. Craig Newmark owns the company and seems genuinely indifferent to growth and optimization.

This is probably why Craigslist is becoming valuable again. Not because it's good, but because it's different. It's the one place on the internet where an AI isn't trying to figure out what you want to see next.

Whether this can last is unclear. If Craigslist were ever sold to a larger company, the new owner would immediately see opportunities to optimize it. To add recommendations. To personalize the feed. To build user profiles. To extract more value. Within months, it would be just like every other platform.

But Newmark still owns it. And he seems genuinely uninterested in maximizing its potential. And that disinterest might be the most valuable feature on the entire internet right now.

Why This Matters Beyond Nostalgia

There's a temptation to dismiss Craigslist resurgence as pure nostalgia. People pining for a simpler internet. Gen X and elder millennials waxing poetic about the good old days when everything wasn't sponsored and optimized.

But this misses something important: the return to Craigslist isn't about nostalgia. It's about genuine user preference. People choose Craigslist even when better alternatives exist because the experience is fundamentally different.

This has broader implications. It suggests that "better UI" and "more features" and "smarter algorithms" aren't actually what users want in many contexts. What users want is control. Authenticity. Privacy. The ability to post something and not have it ranked by an algorithm. The ability to hide a little bit.

It suggests that the race to optimize every platform, to add algorithms everywhere, to track everything and monetize everything—that race might not be serving actual user needs.

It suggests that there's value in simplicity. In leaving things alone. In trusting users to figure things out rather than having an algorithm decide for them.

None of this is to say Craigslist is perfect. The platform has real problems. It's genuinely unsafe compared to platforms with verification systems. It's genuinely limited compared to platforms with better UX. It genuinely lacks features that would make certain tasks easier.

But it proves that those problems are acceptable trade-offs if you get to keep autonomy, privacy, and freedom from algorithmic manipulation. And that's a lesson every platform should learn.

The Future of Unoptimized Spaces

Craigslist won't become the dominant platform on the internet. Algorithm-driven platforms are too good at capturing attention and monetizing it. They'll keep winning by traditional metrics of growth and engagement.

But Craigslist might represent the future of alternative internet spaces. Not the mainstream. Not venture-backed. Not trying to achieve "network effects" or "user growth." Just platforms that do one thing simply and let users do what they want.

There's no VC funding for this model. No exit strategy. No path to a billion-dollar valuation. So you won't see investors pouring money into "Craigslist killers." You'll just see more platforms slowly drifting toward optimization and algorithm-dependence, leaving Craigslist as increasingly unique simply through inaction.

Meanwhile, people keep using it. For housing. For jobs. For romance. For creative casting. For buying used furniture. For finding community. For connecting with strangers. For all the things the algorithm-optimized internet is increasingly bad at.

The question isn't whether Craigslist will scale to become the dominant platform. It won't. The question is whether enough users will stay, and enough new users will arrive, to keep the platform relevant and valuable. And early evidence suggests the answer is yes.

The internet probably needs both. It needs Facebook with its powerful algorithms and recommendation systems for discovery at scale. It needs TikTok for viral content and entertainment. But it also needs spaces that don't try to optimize you. Spaces that let you be anonymous. Spaces that don't track you. Spaces where an algorithm isn't constantly trying to figure out how to keep you engaged.

Craigslist fills that niche. And as the rest of the internet gets increasingly optimized, that niche is becoming more valuable, not less.

FAQ

What exactly is Craigslist and how does it work?

Craigslist is a classified ads website founded in 1995 by Craig Newmark that allows users to post listings in categories like housing, jobs, services, and personal ads. Users create postings for free (with small fees for certain job and housing listings), and other users search or browse listings organized by category and sorted by recency. Transactions occur between users outside the platform, typically through email or in-person meetings.

How does Craigslist differ from algorithm-based platforms like Facebook Marketplace and Etsy?

Craigslist displays listings in reverse-chronological order without algorithmic ranking or personalization, meaning every user sees the same listings in the same order. Platforms like Facebook Marketplace and Etsy use machine learning algorithms to recommend listings based on user behavior, engagement metrics, and predicted preferences. This means Craigslist can't track user behavior, build profiles, or optimize for engagement—which is by design, not limitation.

Why are younger people now using Craigslist if there are more modern alternatives?

Gen Z and millennial users report that Craigslist feels more authentic because it lacks the algorithmic filtering, engagement metrics, and personal branding requirements of modern social platforms. The absence of profile systems, rating scores, and curated feeds means users encounter genuine, unoptimized content and people. This appeals to younger users who've experienced algorithm fatigue on Instagram, TikTok, and other engagement-optimized platforms.

Is Craigslist safe to use given its reputation for crime and scams?

Craigslist's lack of verification systems and anonymity does make some transactions riskier compared to platforms with user profiles and ratings, but all peer-to-peer marketplaces have fraud risk. Modern safety practices like meeting in public places, using video calls before meeting, and trusting your instincts apply universally. Craigslist's reputation for danger is partly overstated due to media narrative focusing on worst-case scenarios while other platforms experience similar crimes with less coverage.

How does Craigslist remain profitable without advertising or user data monetization?

Craigslist generates revenue through modest listing fees for certain categories (typically a few dollars per job posting or apartment listing in some cities), while keeping most categories free. The company maintains minimal operating costs through lean infrastructure, small staff size, and the absence of expensive algorithmic systems, recommendation engines, or marketing teams. This low-cost model enables profitability without the need to maximize engagement or monetize user data.

What does it mean that Craigslist is the "ungentrified internet"?

Internet "gentrification" refers to the process where platforms become increasingly optimized, commercialized, and professionally managed over time, becoming more valuable for businesses but less accessible and authentic for regular users. Craigslist avoided gentrification because its private ownership and modest revenue model meant the company never felt pressure to maximize engagement, add algorithms, or optimize for advertiser value. The platform remained intentionally simple and user-controlled rather than business-optimized.

Can Craigslist maintain its current approach if it's ever sold or goes public?

If Craigslist were acquired by a larger company or sold to investors seeking growth, the new ownership would likely immediately add algorithmic features, recommendation systems, targeted advertising, and user tracking to extract greater value. This would transform Craigslist into a more conventional platform. However, founder Craig Newmark still owns the company and appears genuinely committed to its original model, making such a sale unlikely in the foreseeable future.

Why haven't larger tech companies successfully created "Craigslist killers" despite the platform's limitations?

There's no viable venture capital or venture investment model for creating a non-optimized, algorithm-free marketplace platform because investors expect exponential growth and eventual monetization through engagement metrics and data sales. Since Craigslist's value proposition is precisely the absence of those profit-maximizing features, it can't be replicated by VC-backed companies without removing the qualities that make it valuable. The platform survives because of its independence, not despite it.

The Purity of Constraints

Megan Koester describes Craigslist as having "a purity to it." That's the most accurate phrase anyone's used. The purity comes from constraints. From intentional limitations. From refusing to optimize.

Every other platform in tech is defined by the opposite impulse: the drive to optimize, to improve, to add features, to grow. Silicon Valley celebrates founders who identify inefficiencies and build systems to eliminate them. The ideology is that optimization is always good. That growth is always better. That more technology is always the answer.

Craigslist proves this wrong. It proves you can build something genuinely useful by doing less, not more. By trusting users instead of controlling them. By keeping things simple instead of complex. By refusing to monetize data or maximize engagement.

This lesson extends beyond Craigslist. It applies to every platform deciding whether to add algorithmic features. Every company choosing whether to optimize for engagement. Every builder deciding whether users should be tracked, profiled, and personalized.

The most ethical, human-centered approach might not be to build better algorithms. It might be to build fewer algorithms. To constrain ourselves. To leave things simple. To trust users. To protect privacy by design.

Craigslist isn't the future of the internet. The internet is too valuable for major platforms to resist optimization. But Craigslist might represent the future of internet ethics. Not through being perfect, but through being honest about its limitations and refusing to overcome them through surveillance and algorithmic manipulation.

And in an increasingly algorithm-dependent internet, that refusal is starting to look like the rarest feature of all.

Key Takeaways

• Craigslist proves that optimization isn't essential for scale—the platform generates 105 million monthly users without algorithms, tracking, or advertising
• Algorithm-free platforms reduce performative behavior and create genuine connections because users can't game rankings or build personal brands
• Internet 'gentrification' through algorithmic optimization accelerates as platforms add AI, making Craigslist's resistance increasingly rare and valuable
• Younger users are returning to Craigslist after algorithm fatigue, suggesting market demand for unoptimized, authentic internet spaces
• The choice to remain simple and user-autonomous allows Craigslist to stay profitable while protecting privacy in ways competitors sacrificed for growth

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