The founder of Craigslist has given away half a billion dollars

https://www.independent.co.uk/us/money/craigslist-multimillionaire-craig-newmark-b2980681.html

by Tomte • 1 month ago

419 226 1 month ago

independent.co.uk

zuzululu2• 1 month ago

good for him!

but empty words to the american working class

it may be too late, now ppl hate the rich

Varelion3• 1 month 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• 1 month ago

Money boils down to a finite resource

Musk more amply demonstrated how wealth is created.

zuzululu2• 1 month 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.

laughing_man3• 1 month 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.

gnerd002• 1 month 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• 1 month 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• 1 month ago

He apparently bought this place in 2016:

https://streeteasy.com/blog/craigslist-property/

mattbettinson• 1 month ago

What an absolute dream

jmalicki• 1 month 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.

winstonp• 1 month ago

do we think he found it on craigslist

sudo_cowsay• 1 month ago

Looks cozy and nice. Pretty humble/modest for a guy like that.

senordevnyc• 1 month ago

That style of library is my dream

nickjj• 1 month ago

Makes me wonder what a property like that would go for today, 10 years later.

yubblegum3• 1 month 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• 1 month ago

That library is sick.

kennethallen• 1 month ago

Looks like Blue Prince interiors. :D

urbandw311er2• 1 month ago

I can't help but like his altitude.

dsatrainer• 1 month ago

No that's height, you're thinking of audacity

esafak• 1 month ago

Well, he is flying high.

el_benhameen• 1 month ago

Good interview with him here. Interesting dude.

https://conversationswithtyler.com/episodes/craig-newmark/

dlcarrier• 1 month ago

He has a point. Good water pressure us underrated.

gleenn• 1 month 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• 1 month ago

Like a Warren Buffet. Same house, same car, or Ray Kroc: Look after the customer, and the business will take care of itself.

giancarlostoro3• 1 month ago

Probably lives like craigslist looks in terms of simplicity. Love it.

AbstractH243• 1 month 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• 1 month 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• 1 month 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• 1 month 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• 1 month 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.

Zigurd3• 1 month 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• 1 month 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?

rayiner8• 1 month 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_dreamer6• 1 month 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")

tomComb• 1 month ago

Can we get better source for this story? I find that website to be unreadable.

layer83• 1 month ago

https://www.philanthropy.com/news/craigslist-founder-signs-g...

kaycebasques• 1 month 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• 1 month 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.

layer83• 1 month ago

This article has a few details: https://www.philanthropy.com/news/craigslist-founder-signs-g...

rayiner8• 1 month 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• 1 month 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• 1 month 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• 1 month 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• 1 month 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.

keeda3• 1 month 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.

rayiner8• 1 month 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.

fsckboy• 1 month 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_dreamer6• 1 month ago

didn't it start with Carnegie and Rockefeller?

apparent5• 1 month 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?

Jblx22• 1 month 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.

apparent5• 1 month 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.

layer83• 1 month ago

A few details are given here: https://fox4kc.com/business/press-releases/ein-presswire/799...

Revenue peaked in 2018 at $1 billion.

KennyBlanken4• 1 month 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.

simoncion3• 1 month 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• 1 month 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".

socalgal22• 1 month 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• 1 month ago

Airbnb has the same exact problem. Also doesn’t seem to give a crap when they’re reported.

nunez3• 1 month ago

Except AirBnB _does_ make money off of those scam listings.

jeffbee3• 1 month ago

Craigslist doesn't even charge for rental listings, do they? I thought they only charge for help wanted ads.

criddell• 1 month ago

They charge for rental listings in some markets.

floren• 1 month 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.

jedberg3• 1 month 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• 1 month 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.

jackconsidine• 1 month 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]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craig_Newmark

dstroot2• 1 month 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• 1 month ago

IIRC, he said the bulk of revenue comes from job listings.

bredren3• 1 month 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• 1 month ago

Anon.penet.fi is clear prior art - from 1993[1].

Anyone who thought they had invented something new here were kidding themselves.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penet_remailer

dfxm12• 1 month 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• 1 month 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• 1 month 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• 1 month ago

2026, where "We're scammy, but not as scammy as the rest of tech" is a genuine USP.

Quekid5• 1 month ago

Ask for more regulation.

ilamont• 1 month 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• 1 month 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_dreamer6• 1 month 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• 1 month 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.

AbstractH243• 1 month 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?

Jblx22• 1 month ago

I wonder what the infrastructure is like for craigslist.

jedberg3• 1 month 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• 1 month 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• 1 month 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.

jeffbee3• 1 month 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.

apparent5• 1 month 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• 1 month ago

ND?

DonHopkins• 1 month ago

CL is a killer app!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Markoff

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Beasley_(serial_killer...

lotsofpulp• 1 month 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• 1 month ago

Yes and you can see feedbacks. Makes things so much easier.

vvpan3• 1 month ago

I've been told that it is a regional thing.

g8oz• 1 month ago

I found Karrot to be a better experience than FB Marketplace.

PaulDavisThe1st2• 1 month ago

Karrot the food-sharing/organization-organizing app that just got an NLnet grant? Or something else?

memcg• 1 month 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• 1 month 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.

ryukoposting2• 1 month 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• 1 month 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• 1 month ago

How did he even make money? Was it from craigslist? If so, how!?

al_borland• 1 month ago

They charge for job postings. When I looked at my area just now it's $35/category the ad is posted in.

Zigurd3• 1 month ago

Meh. Haven't the "effective altruism" people proved that conventional philanthropy is less effective?

rozap• 1 month 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.

Zigurd3• 1 month 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."

nephihaha2• 1 month ago

They get tax breaks for philanthropy.

jfrbfbreudh• 1 month ago

So do you.

aidenn0• 1 month 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.

PaulDavisThe1st2• 1 month 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.

nephihaha2• 1 month ago

Actually no I don't. I don't live under US jurisdiction.

BrenBarn• 1 month 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• 1 month 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• 1 month 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• 1 month 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• 1 month 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• 1 month 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

Quarrelsome3• 1 month 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.

socalgal22• 1 month 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

nunez3• 1 month ago

Hoarding at scale, but with money instead of gnomes.

b40d-48b2-979e2• 1 month ago

As if casually having the ability to give away half a billion dollars is not absurd wealth?

rchaud2• 1 month 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_dreamer6• 1 month 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• 1 month ago

How effective is his giving?

maebert• 1 month ago

More effective than not giving, which apparently is a bar other billionaires are not clearing.

vvpan3• 1 month ago

One of the effects of giving is de-concetrating power and diminushing your political leverage.

an0malous• 1 month 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

https://bluestarfam.org/about/

LeoPanthera2• 1 month ago

Craigslist is the pinnacle of web sites. True brutalist web design.

1970-01-01• 1 month 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-48b2-979e2• 1 month 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.

driverdan2• 1 month 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.

LeoPanthera2• 1 month ago

It's a modern usage.

https://brutalist-web.design

mizzao• 1 month ago

McMaster-Carr has entered the chat...

vrinsd• 1 month 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• 1 month ago

Yeah totally agree! My pet peeve feature list is also better for society than donating $500M to charity!

tengbretson• 1 month 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?

KennyBlanken4• 1 month 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• 1 month 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• 1 month 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• 1 month 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• 1 month 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?

nunez3• 1 month 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• 1 month ago

Very on-the-spectrum (PS: and proudly so) IIRC. That has to mitigate the sociopathies that typically accompany great wealth.

vvpan3• 1 month 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.

KennyBlanken4• 1 month ago

Values that included making tens of millions of dollars a year off sexual exploitation of women and children?

conformist2• 1 month 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).

rchaud2• 1 month 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.

conformist2• 1 month 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• 1 month ago

Meanwhile, the fragile-ego loser Musk is hoarding wealth and trying to destroy the planet

scelerat• 1 month 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• 1 month 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.

A keen observer may notice my proposal mirrors the right-wing ecosystem built up over the last 50 years.

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• 1 month ago

Did he give it away, or did he set up a fund managed by relatives, like Patagonia guy?

throwitaway222• 1 month 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.

forgetfreeman2• 1 month 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• 1 month ago

Money is power and large power should be under democratic supervision. Billion dollars worth power is a large power.

deadeye• 1 month 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• 1 month 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• 1 month ago

Given back*

He SHALL serve a prison sentence, it MAY be reduced.

ETH_start• 1 month 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• 1 month 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• 1 month 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• 1 month 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).

The founder of Craigslist has given away half a billion dollars

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