Craig Newmark on Institutional Maintenance, Giving Away Control, and the Internet We Were Promised (Live at 92NY)

“In my ignorance, when I first put up the first Craigslist site, I just kept it simple knowing I have no design skills, except simplicity and speed is a design criterion, and people haven't gotten the message. I've seen designers do some very attractive work that no one has asked for, and I appreciate it. And since I relinquished any management control of Craigslist in 2000, Jim Buckmaster has kept the design clean.”

“Unfortunately, during those years at first, I became less prepared to deal with bad actors. And I learned the hard way that if you're basically honest, if you believe in the Ninth Commandment, you will never be able to confront successfully someone who lies for a living. And that was a painful lesson that took a couple of years to sink in.”

“The notion is that a normal, a very common technique of scammers is to rush you into something, to convince you of the scam by making it sound urgent. And if you wait a little while, stereotypically nine seconds, you can reconsider what they're doing and then you can evade certain kinds of scams.”

“My gut tells me with no evidence is that people aren't genuine, aren't real on dating apps. The only basis for this thought is about 25 years ago, before Craigslist had dating sections, I met several women who told me they used the roommate ads for dating. Because in a roommate ad, a guy would be relatively honest.”

“I wish I was as good at it as Jackson Lamb, who is one of my role models now, because of something he said in the latest book. He said that small talk is just bullshit leaving the body. And speaking as someone with very limited social skills, that's a way of life for me.”

“Like, I'm afraid I've lost my confidence in the Ivy League schools. Two substantial contributions to IVs were fairly ineffective. I should have made those contributions, instead of big checks, should have made them big checks, but given out multi-year based on milestones. So that's a lesson, a little painful, but the money wasn't wasted, it just wasn't used as well as I'd like.”

“Well, personally speaking, I've put all of my Craigslist ownership into a nonprofit foundation of 501C4. So all dividends, all sales of equity go in there. The way Craigslist runs is very unconventional. Jim's the boss. That act of putting all the equity into that 501C4, I called the Septuagenarian Fund because I turned 70 then, and that's where the money has gone.”

“I started realizing, for example, that a lot of my behavior, particularly in the IBM field, frequently I was a jerk, by which I mean asshole. I needed to listen people more and to be somewhat empathetic. It was needed for me to change. Doing customer service, you know, when I raged San Francisco and started doing Craigslist, doing that kind of customer service where you're directly interacting with people on a grassroots level, that can change your guy for the better, and that worked out for me.”

“It has to be a walk-in shower because of my previously mentioned decrepitude. I don't want to fall, and also not wanting to fall, I want a grab bar. I'm afraid having grab bars everywhere is now becoming a household design criteria for me, and I wish that was a joke.”

“I love birds, and I admire pigeons, and I guess I need a pet. I need a comfort animal, and hat bird or other hat bird aren't enough, but I hang out in front of the coffee shop, and then they'll see me, I'll wave around my bag of bird seed, the good stuff, and then they'll come and they'll rest on my arm, and then they'll eat right from there, and that makes me happy.”