Chairman Tierney, Congressman Shays, ladies and gentlemen, good morning.
My name is Jim Buckmaster and I'm the CEO of craigslist.
I'd like to thank the Subcommittee for inviting me to participate in today's hearing, and I look forward to working together with each of the organizations represented here to solve the problems identified in the GAO report.
Founded in 1995, craigslist operates local community web sites for 450 cities, featuring self-service classified ad services used by over 25 million Americans each month to find jobs, housing, for sale items, services, friendship, romance, and community information. Virtually all craigslist services are offered free of charge, without banner ads, textads, or other commercial impediments. 100% of our revenue comes from fees for job listings in 10 metropolitan areas, and a fee for brokered apartment listings in New York City.
I would like to congratulate and thank the authors of the GAO report for their excellent work, but with all due respect I do feel some corrections and amplifications are in order regarding craigslist, and will mention 3 of these here:
First of all, describing craigslist as "a global marketplace with international reach" is very misleading. Craigslist is a collection of separate, strictly local marketplaces. The "for sale" section of each local craigslist site is used nearly exclusively to facilitate in person, face-to-face transactions. Sales involving shipping are rare, and are strongly discouraged by craigslist, and international sales are extremely rare. I should hasten to add that although craigslist is not even close to being a go-to site for international trade in military items, we do not accept any misuse of craigslist, and are determined to do our very best to eliminate it.
Contrary to what the GAO report implies, craigslist has more people actively engaged in its anti-fraud efforts than any web site on earth. In addition to our in-house anti-fraud team numbering a dozen or more staff members, and the automated blocking and screening routines we have developed, craigslist benefits from tens of millions of passionate users diligently reviewing every ad on the site, with each user having the power to delete inappropriate ads, which power they exercise to the tune of several million ads removed each month. To their credit, the GAO investigators did notice that questionable ads were actually being removed from craigslist as they searched the site, an observation they did not make about any other site in their report.
I was surprised that the GAO did not highlight the fact that, unlike every other party cited in their report, craigslist, uniquely, earns absolutely nothing from the sale of military items. Military personnel, shop keepers, online storefronts, websites large and small -- they all are earning money from each sale of sensitive military equipment, with the largest players undoubtedly reaping millions of dollars per year in commissions on illicit sales. It should be noted that, with the exception of craigslist, each of these parties has a strong financial incentive for failing or at least delaying putting an end to this trade.
Craigslist has no such incentive, and we are eager to solve this problem. My humble request to those assembled here is for clear and concise guidelines as to which items are allowed to be sold and which are not. With clear and concise guidelines available, very few of our users will violate them, and those few who do will quickly find themselves blocked, screened, and flagged off of our site. Without clear and concise guidelines however, I fear that even the most conscientious efforts to eliminate this trade will struggle, as well-intentioned craigslist users will continue to be confused about what they can and cannot sell. With clear and concise guidelines in place, we can educate our users, our staff, and our blocking and screening software, and I am extremely confident we can quickly reduce the volume of such ads on craigslist by more than 90%.
By the way, I do have an idea for removing all financial disincentives that might delay a solution to this problem. I would like to challenge each party cited in the GAO report to make a commitment to donate 100% of any revenue they may have earned in connection with the sale of sensitive and/or stolen military items to charity, preferably a charity that provides aid to our military veterans. Although craigslist has collected no revenue from such sales, as a show of good faith, if each of the other parties is willing to commit to donating all such revenue, past present and future, to a charity serving our veterans, craigslist would be proud to make a very sizeable donation as well.
I think my 5 minutes are up. Thank you again Mr. Chairman, and members of the Subcommittee for inviting me to speak.