An Internet for the People : : The Politics and Promise of craigslist / / Jessa Lingel.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter EBOOK PACKAGE COMPLETE 2020 English
• VerfasserIn: Lingel, Jessa,
• Place / Publishing House: Princeton, NJ : : Princeton University Press, , [2020]; ©2020
• Year of Publication: 2020
• Language: English
• Series: Princeton Studies in Culture and Technology ; 26
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (208 p.) :; 6 b/w illus.

How craigslist champions openness, democracy, and other vanishing principles of the early webBegun by Craig Newmark as an e-mail to some friends about cool events happening around San Francisco, craigslist is now the leading classifieds service on the planet. It is also a throwback to the early internet. The website has barely seen an upgrade since it launched in 1996. There are no banner ads. The company doesn't profit off your data. An Internet for the People explores how people use craigslist to buy and sell, find work, and find love-and reveals why craigslist is becoming a lonely outpost in an increasingly corporatized web.Drawing on interviews with craigslist insiders and ordinary users, Jessa Lingel looks at the site's history and values, showing how it has mostly stayed the same while the web around it has become more commercial and far less open. She examines craigslist's legal history, describing the company's courtroom battles over issues of freedom of expression and data privacy, and explains the importance of locality in the social relationships fostered by the site. More than an online garage sale, job board, or dating site, craigslist hold vital lessons for the rest of the web. It is a website that values user privacy over profits, ease of use over slick design, and an ethos of the early web that might just hold the key to a more open, transparent, and democratic internet.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- CONTENTS -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction: The Politics and Promise of craigslist -- Part I -- 1. Becoming Craig's List: San Francisco Roots and Web 1.0 Ethics -- 2. The Death and Life of Classified Ads: A Media History of craigslist -- 3. From Sex Workers to Data Hacks: Craigslist's Courtroom Battles -- Part II -- 4. Craigslist, the Secondary Market, and Politics of Value -- 5. Craigslist Gigs, Class Politics, and a Gentrifying Internet -- 6. People Seeking People: Craigslist, Online Dating, and Social Stigma -- 7. Craigslist's People Problems: Politics and Failures of Trust -- Conclusion: The Case for Keeping the Internet Weird -- Methods Appendix -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index