Should Craigslist Be Cleared of Housing Bias?
If you’re reading these words right now, chances are very high that you’re at least somewhat familiar with the online über-classifieds destination Craig’s List.
A while back we even did a couple of reviews of Craig’s list-related Real Estate Marketing Service and Teamwork Lead System.
What you may not know is that it can be fairly common for some of the housing advertisements on Craigslist to be notably discriminatory. Ads with statements like:
- “NO MINORITIES”
- “Requirements: Clean Godly Christian Male”
- “Only Muslims apply”
Those of us in the real estate business (investment or otherwise) know pretty commonly that, regardless of personal opinion or preference, advertisements like this are a big Fair Housing no-no, and should always be avoided.
But apparently more than a few have been testing the waters over at Craig’s. According to this article in yesterday’s San Francisco Chronicle, the Seventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago ruled last Friday that the site is not liable for the blatantly discriminatory ads.
The court cited a federal law that shields Internet service providers from lawsuits over the content of messages posted on their sites.
The ruling means essentially Craigslist is only an intermediary. In other words the soapbox is not liable for what the speaker has said.
Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster said in a statement that this is “a win for the general public’s ability to self-publish content (such as free classified ads) on the Internet.”
What do you think?
Chime in with your comments below…
Technorati: Craigs List, CraigsList.com, Fair Housing
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March 17th, 2008 at 8:04 pm
The good thing about Craigslist is that it’s regulated by its users. And the bad thing about Craigslist is that it’s regulated by its users. While I’m sure the flagging feature is used appropriately MOST of the time, the fact remains that posts that should be flagged aren’t, and posts that shouldn’t be flagged are. So the administrators of the site need to find a way to eliminate ads that clearly violate the law. There are other sites out there (Yahoo for example), that won’t let you post ads with certain keywords in them. I’m sure Craigslist could implement such a feature for it’s housing section.
March 18th, 2008 at 2:16 am
Im confused as to why they see Craigslist as different to say a newspaper? They both do the same thing in regards to classifieds…
Will the newspapers now follow suit and argue the same thing Craigslist did?
March 22nd, 2008 at 7:30 am
Wow the courts finally got one right. Let’s stop blaming third parties for the actions of others.
To Ed,
I suspect the difference between a newspaper and an internet positing is an employee of the paper is involved taking or entering the classified ad. On the interenet users can post their own adds without invtervention of the host.
Ned Carey