On Craigslist, there are an enormous number of horrific abuses under the pets section, where well-meaning people post ads proclaiming 'Free Kittens'!, 'Free puppies to good home!', not knowing that a large percentage of the people these pets end up going to intend the animals no good.

Kittens and hamsters end up being fed as snake food by cheap or broke snake owners, big dog pups end up being raised as fighting dogs to rip each other apart for entertainment, cats end up being sold to laboratories for animal testing or used as fodder to train fighting dogs how to kill, and animals of all types end up being 'flipped', kept in horrible conditions to be sold at a higher price than they were obtained.

This is just the beginning, and it's very common, more than you think. Craigslist explains only some of the situation with the help of PETA. http://craigslist.org/about/PETA

So what can we do about it? Well, Craigslist provides a tiny link titled "information on free to good home ads" that is barely visible with no sense of danger or urgency. Many people such as myself email a large number of the posters of these dangerous ads informing them of the situation and suggesting they charge a $30 rehoming fee, and none of them have never even seen the link! Not only do they not click it, they don't see it! As a note, to make matters worse, a small but pronounced fraction of the people I email tell me they have already been approached by suspicious takers, and that's just the ones they notice.

We don't want the pets section shut down or free pet ads to be banned, because the majority of animals that end up in pounds, shelters, with the humane society etc, are simply killed. Craigslist needs to remain an option, but we can't ignore the dangers it presents, and it's time we addressed them.

We need a dedicated warning page that the user must click 'continue' to pass, otherwise they won't notice the warning. It should only show when certain keywords are found in an ad that indicate it's a free to good home ad, or a very low price. High priced pets are far, far less likely to end up in bad homes.

Will you join me in asking Craigslist to put up a warning page to be shown to people posting free to good home ads?