> A key advantage is trust; users' Facebook profiles make transactions feel safer than on anonymous platforms like Craigslist, according to Seock.

Early on, I suspect that Craigslist attracted a lot of sketchiness with all the free stuff, anonymous sexual hookups personals ads, and prostitution.

I wonder whether they could've survived as just a non-sketchy classified ads place for household items and roommates/apartments. Which, at the time (at least in Boston) managed to coexist with the sketchy side of the site.

Lately, selling household items and computer gear onto Craigslist seems to come down to the rare random event that anyone is looking at it.

I live in the city, within walking distance of multiple universities, but, if an item is worth shipping, it'll now sell on eBay, but sit unsold for months on Craigslist.

I also now put on the curb things that in the past I would've been able to sell easily on Craigslist.

I suspect that the local used item sales have moved to Facebook Marketplace, plus students just buying new things delivered from an app (Amazon? Target?), when in the past they would've shopped new more.

I've managed to be free of Facebook all these years, and I don't want to start now.