The Good NET Guide

Posts Tagged ‘reviewed-before’

After coming under increasing scrutiny from various state attorney generals for the open prostitution listings in its “erotic services” category, Craigslist is now folding in the face of criminal charges. It will replace the erotic services category with a new “Adult services” category where each ad will be individually reviewed before posting.

Existing ads in the erotic services category will remain for seven days, but already new ads are not being accepted in that category. People trying to place an ad in the adult category are reminded: “Ads suggesting or implying an exchange of sexual favors for money are strictly prohibited” and “Ads including pornographic images, or images suggestive of an offer of sexual favors are strictly prohibited.”

A quick glance at the erotic services section for New York City shows a lot of flesh with ads promising “IT’S NOTHING LIKE THE FIRST TIME!!” and “ASIAN HOTTIE . . . TO FULFUILL YOUR DREAM . . . WILLING AND READY.” Meanwhile, the adult services section for NYC is slightly less explicit. It has a lot more listings for “massages” and “sensual bodyrubs.” The first screenshot below is from an adult services ad, the second is the erotic services page. So much for truth in marketing.

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

Surprise, surprise. Last night Twitter abruptly decided to disable an option in the way @replies worked. The feature, while not widely used, was very popular among so-called ‘power users’ because it helped expose them to new users and conversations. Users have been up in arms since the change, venting their complaints in the highly trending channel #fixreplies. It’s been a disaster.

At the time of the change co-founder Biz Stone wrote an oddly condescending blog post, stating that the feature was an “undesirable and confusing option” which was exactly why they took it away. This didn’t make much sense given the fact that the option was nestled in the settings menu and wasn’t the default. Most people didn’t even know it was there.

This morning in a new blog post titled Whoa Feedback, Stone has revealed the true reason behind the change: it’s an engineering problem. Stone writes “The engineering team reminded me that there were serious technical reasons why that setting had to go or be entirely rebuilt—it wouldn’t have lasted long even if we thought it was the best thing ever.”

This is a total PR failure on Twitter’s part. The company lied about their motivation for killing the option, and now they’re forced to fess up because they’d have a tough time re-enabling it. Granted, most people don’t use the feature, and it is confusing. But those are merely supporting arguments - the company could have easily tucked the feature away in a set of advanced options for power users.

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.