Tell Craigslist to Stop Selling Illegal Ivory on its Site
The Issue
Support New York State Senator Brad Hoylman's efforts to stop the illegal sale of ivory on Craigslist!
According to a recent report titled Elephant Vs Mouse: An Investigation of the Ivory Trade on Craigslist by the International Fund for Animal Welfare and Wildlife Conservation Society’s 96 Elephants campaign, Craigslist users regularly post hundreds of advertisements for endangered animal parts including illegal elephant ivory.
Craigslist already has a policy against the sale of illegal wildlife parts, and ivory was recently added explicitly to the list of prohibited items. However, a casual online survey shows that ivory is apparently still available for sale on Craigslist. Clearly, more must be done. Otherwise, Craigslist owes the public an explanation why it won’t stop the black market sale of endangered animal parts on its platform.
We call on Craigslist to make the following changes to its user interface to crack down on the illegal trade of elephant ivory:
1) The list of prohibited items is buried on a difficult-to-find page with no direct link on the homepage. Someone must be actively looking to see the list of prohibited items in order to find it. We ask that Craigslist move the prohibited items list to a more visible location on the homepage.
2) The current enforcement mechanism for the sale of prohibited items is based on users flagging an inappropriate post, thus alerting staff and allowing them to remove the post. This system of relying on users to identify problem posts obfuscates Craigslist’s responsibility to monitor illegal activity on its site. Auction and commerce sites such as eBay and Etsy, competitors of Craigslist, have installed search filtering software that automatically alerts staff to an inappropriate post, and limits the ability of users to search by certain keywords (in this case, such as “ivory”). Craigslist should follow the best practices of its competitors and invest in this efficient and common sense search filtering software.
While neither of these requests offer a silver bullet to save a species in such a dire predicament as the elephant, they represent a commitment by Craigslist to crack down on the illegal ivory trade and help save the elephant from extinction.
The Issue
Support New York State Senator Brad Hoylman's efforts to stop the illegal sale of ivory on Craigslist!
According to a recent report titled Elephant Vs Mouse: An Investigation of the Ivory Trade on Craigslist by the International Fund for Animal Welfare and Wildlife Conservation Society’s 96 Elephants campaign, Craigslist users regularly post hundreds of advertisements for endangered animal parts including illegal elephant ivory.
Craigslist already has a policy against the sale of illegal wildlife parts, and ivory was recently added explicitly to the list of prohibited items. However, a casual online survey shows that ivory is apparently still available for sale on Craigslist. Clearly, more must be done. Otherwise, Craigslist owes the public an explanation why it won’t stop the black market sale of endangered animal parts on its platform.
We call on Craigslist to make the following changes to its user interface to crack down on the illegal trade of elephant ivory:
1) The list of prohibited items is buried on a difficult-to-find page with no direct link on the homepage. Someone must be actively looking to see the list of prohibited items in order to find it. We ask that Craigslist move the prohibited items list to a more visible location on the homepage.
2) The current enforcement mechanism for the sale of prohibited items is based on users flagging an inappropriate post, thus alerting staff and allowing them to remove the post. This system of relying on users to identify problem posts obfuscates Craigslist’s responsibility to monitor illegal activity on its site. Auction and commerce sites such as eBay and Etsy, competitors of Craigslist, have installed search filtering software that automatically alerts staff to an inappropriate post, and limits the ability of users to search by certain keywords (in this case, such as “ivory”). Craigslist should follow the best practices of its competitors and invest in this efficient and common sense search filtering software.
While neither of these requests offer a silver bullet to save a species in such a dire predicament as the elephant, they represent a commitment by Craigslist to crack down on the illegal ivory trade and help save the elephant from extinction.
The Decision Makers
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Petition created on August 12, 2015