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The founder of Craigslist has given away half a billion dollars
- dayyan 4mo agoHow effective is his giving?
- maebert 4mo agoMore effective than not giving, which apparently is a bar other billionaires are not clearing.
- vvpan 4mo agoOne of the effects of giving is de-concetrating power and diminushing your political leverage.
- an0malous 4mo agoBlue Star Families Inc https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/800369895 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/ https://bluestarfam.org/about/
- zuzululu 4mo agogood for him! but empty words to the american working class it may be too late, now ppl hate the rich
- tennfown 4mo ago[flagged]
- Varelion 4mo agoAs 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 4mo ago> Money boils down to a finite resource Musk more amply demonstrated how wealth is created.
- Varelion 4mo agoYeah, start by having enough to buy more influence with the right people, so they don't realize your assets are nowhere near a correct valuation.
- WalterBright 4mo ago[dead]
- Varelion 4mo agoNo.
- laughing_man 4mo agoThe idea SpaceX is where it is because he bought influence with the right people is fanciful thinking on the part of Musk's detractors.
- zuzululu 4mo agoThe 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.
- WalterBright 4mo ago[flagged]
- zuzululu 4mo agoAmerica is the place for very few people to get wealthy relatively compared to the rest is more accurate. I don't know how long this asymmetric upside down pyramid structure will hold. Monopoly on violence requires participants to believe in its continuity, any fracture in perception no matter how small, will create an increasingly chaotic redistribution effect.
- gottorf 4mo ago"The rest" is still quite wealthy, even by today's developed economy standards. Median household disposable income is higher in Mississippi, a state widely panned for its poverty, than Germany, the richest major EU nation. In American discourse, there's a ton of talk about inequality from the haves against the have-mores, pushing policy that often times will lead to worse outcomes for the have-nots.
- zuzululu 4mo ago[dead]
- micro2588 4mo agomedian household income is not higher in missisippi vs germany, especially not true if you adjust for the value of healthcare, education, and social benefits including time off work.
- gottorf 4mo agoThere are, of course, many ways to measure this, some of which are slightly higher for Germany and some for Mississippi. Many are in the same ballpark, which is pretty crazy to think about. Many of these statistics take into account the taxpayer-funded programs you mentioned. Broadly speaking, the median Mississippian is about as rich as the median German, with the tradeoff being that the Mississippian has greater access to private goods (e.g. a fishing boat or a big car), whereas the German has greater access to public goods (e.g. socialized insurance or college). My point is that even "the poor" in America are really quite well off, and not just in historical terms.
- gnerd00 4mo agoPlanetwork 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 4mo agoI 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 4mo agoHe apparently bought this place in 2016: https://streeteasy.com/blog/craigslist-property/ https://streeteasy.com/blog/craigslist-property/
- mattbettinson 4mo agoWhat an absolute dream
- jmalicki 4mo agoIt is both absolutely gorgeous and luxurious, yet still at less than $6 million, pretty modest for someone capable of giving away half a billion.
- socalgal2 4mo ago[flagged]
- csbrooks 4mo agoIt's even easier to give away money when you don't have it.
- dyauspitr 4mo agoGiving away money is stupid. With that much money I would rather fund companies that push the frontier on something. If it fails no biggie, if it succeeds it will probably end up employing people and giving them a source of income for life while simultaneously contributing to human progress.
- ryandrake 4mo 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 4mo agoTruthfully, 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 4mo agoThis 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.
- Zigurd 4mo agoIt'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 4mo 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?
- rayiner 4mo ago
- tomComb 4mo agoCan we get better source for this story? I find that website to be unreadable.
- layer8 4mo agohttps://www.philanthropy.com/news/craigslist-founder-signs-giving-pledge-and-narrows-focus/ https://www.philanthropy.com/news/craigslist-founder-signs-g...
- kaycebasques 4mo agoI'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 4mo agoThe 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.
- layer8 4mo agoThis article has a few details: https://www.philanthropy.com/news/craigslist-founder-signs-giving-pledge-and-narrows-focus/ https://www.philanthropy.com/news/craigslist-founder-signs-g...
- rayiner 4mo agoWe 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 4mo agoSounds 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_Charade_of_Changing_the_World https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winners_Take_All:_The_Elite_Ch...
- skybrian 4mo agoThe 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 4mo agoI 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...
- apparent 4mo agoI'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?
- Jblx2 4mo agoI 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.
- apparent 4mo agoYeah, 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.
- layer8 4mo agoA few details are given here: https://fox4kc.com/business/press-releases/ein-presswire/799122396/craigslist-revenue-traffic-drops-again-one-third-of-2018-total/ https://fox4kc.com/business/press-releases/ein-presswire/799... Revenue peaked in 2018 at $1 billion.
- KennyBlanken 4mo agoHe 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.
- roksprok 4mo agoCraigslist 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".
- socalgal2 4mo agoIt's also one of the major things the destroyed newspapers. I'm not saying that's bad, just pointing out it happened.
- jeffbee 4mo ago[flagged]
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- Zigurd 4mo agoIndeed, conflating local news with local newspapers is a mistake. They were able to support news gathering by monopolizing print advertising. They were also overly dependent on the municipal government and police for access, and were therefore often timid on certain subjects.
- burpingtree 4mo agoI’m confused. Are you saying that local news is in a better place with the demise of local newspapers. What better has taken their place?
- Zigurd 4mo agoI very deliberately did not say that local news is now better, just back in the day when it was supported by an ad monopoly, it still had big problems. There was a lot of access journalism dependent on staying on the good side of the police, and on not annoying the car dealers running full page ads, for example. Citizen journalism has issues, too. Many of them are resource issues, so supporting things like a cap on fees and short deadlines on FOIA requests, would help a lot.
- Jblx2 4mo agoI wonder what the infrastructure is like for craigslist.
- jedberg 4mo agoMy 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 4mo agoCraigslist is one of the few sites with a UI even better than HN. Totally fits that Craig would have this type of character.
- jrmg 4mo agoIs 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.
- jeffbee 4mo agoI 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.
- apparent 4mo agoI 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 4mo agoND?
- apparent 4mo agoNextDoor
- learn_more 4mo agoNextdoor
- deleted 4mo ago
- kgwxd 4mo agoHow did he even make money? Was it from craigslist? If so, how!?
- al_borland 4mo agoThey charge for job postings. When I looked at my area just now it's $35/category the ad is posted in.
- Zigurd 4mo agoMeh. Haven't the "effective altruism" people proved that conventional philanthropy is less effective?
- rozap 4mo agoEa 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.
- Zigurd 4mo 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."
- nephihaha 4mo agoThey get tax breaks for philanthropy.
- jfrbfbreudh 4mo agoSo do you.
- aidenn0 4mo agoMaybe. 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.
- PaulDavisThe1st 4mo agoFor 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.
- nephihaha 4mo agoActually no I don't. I don't live under US jurisdiction.
- BrenBarn 4mo agoThe side takeaway from this is that most rich people won't voluntarily give away their wealth, so it will have to be taken.
- comrade1234 4mo agoIt'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 4mo agoIt'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 4mo agoThat 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 4mo agoYeah, 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 https://cityname.craigslist.org/feed link to get RSS updates if/when something actually gets posted? Good way to help "starting up" cities.
- foobarian 4mo agoI 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
- Quarrelsome 4mo agoit 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.
- socalgal2 4mo agoIf 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
- ikrenji 4mo agomusk's goal = grift himself into the four comma club
- Quarrelsome 4mo ago> Musk’s goal = Make humanity a multi-planet species I totally see how the acquisition of twitter and funding of probably the worst US government in recent decades is in keeping with that aim. OR perhaps he just wants people to think he's cool, so he invests in "cool" stuff. This is because he has some of those mental health issues lots of absurdly wealthy people do, that results in him feeling like he constantly has to prove himself.
- nunez 4mo agoHoarding at scale, but with money instead of gnomes.
- LeoPanthera 4mo agoCraigslist is the pinnacle of web sites. True brutalist web design.
- 1970-01-01 4mo agoPinnacle 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-48b2-979e 4mo agoCome 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.
- driverdan 4mo 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.
- LeoPanthera 4mo agoIt's a modern usage. https://brutalist-web.design https://brutalist-web.design
- mizzao 4mo agoMcMaster-Carr has entered the chat...
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- vrinsd 4mo agoSadly, 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 4mo agoYeah totally agree! My pet peeve feature list is also better for society than donating $500M to charity!
- tengbretson 4mo agoI 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 $500M of harm?
- master-lincoln 4mo agoThe harm was done by the people voluntarily moving to the ad platform.
- Zopieux 4mo agoThe world can't run on random philanthropy. You don't become a billionaire through hard work alone but through exploitation at scale. Tax the richs, or eat them.
- anothereng 4mo agoso if I make a piece of software and I sell it to 10 million people for 10$ and I'm the only employee who did I exploited?
- nunez 4mo 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 4mo agoVery on-the-spectrum (PS: and proudly so) IIRC. That has to mitigate the sociopathies that typically accompany great wealth.
- vvpan 4mo agoIt 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.
- KennyBlanken 4mo agoValues that included making tens of millions of dollars a year off sexual exploitation of women and children?
- conformist 4mo agoIt 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).
- rchaud 4mo agoIt 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.
- conformist 4mo agoYes 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 4mo agoMeanwhile, the fragile-ego loser Musk is hoarding wealth and trying to destroy the planet
- scelerat 4mo agoI 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 4mo agoI 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 4mo agoDid he give it away, or did he set up a fund managed by relatives, like Patagonia guy?
- throwitaway222 4mo agoUgh, 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.
- forgetfreeman 4mo agoHaving 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 4mo agoMoney is power and large power should be under democratic supervision. Billion dollars worth power is a large power.
- deadeye 4mo agoI 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 4mo agoI 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 4mo agoGiven back* He SHALL serve a prison sentence, it MAY be reduced.
- ETH_start 4mo agoI 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 4mo agoHere'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 4mo agoIf 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 4mo agoThiel is right, this fake boomer club just piles money onto liberal causes (left doesn't exist any more, progressive stack folded it into liberalism).