How to Flag a Posting on Craigslist – ItStillWorks
In the Craigslist online community, all users are permitted to flag any ads that violate the website’s Terms of Use or posting guidelines. This self-moderating system works to single out inappropriate postings by determining how many flags an ad receives. According to the Craigslist Help page, “free classified ads receiving a sufficient number of qualified negative flags are subject to automated removal. ” Other postings, like forum postings and paid ads that receive enough flags are subject to further review. Step 1Navigate your Web browser to Step 2Locate the posting you want to flag. Click on the link to the posting to view the posting in full. Step 3Locate the flag options box in the upper-right corner of the Web page. The box is situated under the “Email This Posting to a Friend” link. Step 4Click the “Miscategorized” flag link if the post is in the wrong category or site, or if it discusses another posting. Step 5Click the “Prohibited” flag link if the posting breaches “Terms of Use” or other site guidelines, such as content that is “unlawful, harmful, threatening, abusive, harassing, defamatory, libelous, invasive of another’s privacy, or is harmful to minors in any way, ” or content that violates federal or state laws. Step 6Click the “Spam/Overpost” flag link if the posting appears too frequently on Craigslist, appears in multiple cities and/or categories or if the posting is too commercial. References Writer Bio KR Knowlin has worked extensively in the theatre in numerous capacities. Past credits include: “Stop Kiss” (Director, Center Stage Productions), “Phaedra’s Love”(Director, Chapel Theatre), “Quills” (Sound Engineer, Spoleto Festival USA: Piccolo Spoleto ’09), “Mind’s I” (Sound Designer, Spoleto Festival USA: Piccolo Spoleto ’09), “Paternal Eternal” (Playwright, Spoleto Festival USA: Piccolo Spoleto ’08) to name a few.
How to Flag Ads Immediately on Craigslist – Small Business …
As the world’s largest classified advertising site, many small businesses rely on Craigslist to find talent. And as long as those companies have ads with acceptable content, there’s no problem. If any ad violates the online bulletin board’s terms of use or posting guidelines, then users can flag it immediately for removal. Subject to removal are ads that include illegal, malicious, offensive, false or fraudulent content, as well as content that offers, promotes, advertises or provides links to unsolicited services. Click the link of the posting you want to flag. Select one of the flagging links in the options box. “Miscategorized” means the ad is in the wrong category/site, discusses another ad or is otherwise misplaced. “Prohibited” means the ad violates the terms of use or other posted guidelines. “Spam/overpost” means the ad is posted too frequently, is in multiple cities/categories or is too commercial. Click “best of craigslist” in the flag options box for funny or memorable postings. In contrast to the other negative categories, this category is for ads that you want to be positively flagged. References Warnings According to the terms of use, users cannot employ any autoflagging software to remove a Craigslist posting. Writer Bio Brian Hooper has more than 10 years of editorial experience. Hooper has provided editorial services for New York publishing houses and currently writes for Fortune 500 companies in Silicon Valley. He holds a Bachelor of Science in business administration.
How to Flag ads on Craigslist and get it removed – Posting Bros
Flagging a post on craigslist is simple.
Open the ad you want to flag. Click on “Prohibited” on the upper left side as you can see in the screenshot.
But craigslist do not remove ad by just sending one flag.
Guess what?
Keep flagging it again and again? NO!
How many flags does it take to remove a post?
There is no clear answer to this question. But as a general rule of thumb is, the more people flagging the post from unique IP addresses, the higher the chances are that the ad will be removed. So you have to keep flagging until it gets removed from the site.
We studied and tested craigslist algorithm in term of flagging and removal of ads and wrote a detailed article on how craigslist flagging works.
Let’s get straight to the point.
There are few options you can use to successfully remove un-solicited/spammy ads from Craigslist.
1) Doing it yourself with the help of proxies.
2) Using your Friends and Family
Lets deep dive into each option one by one.
1) Doing it Yourself
If you are living in a small populated area and there are fewer people posting on craigslist, you can flag an ad 2, 3 times to get it removed.
Open the ad click on Prohibited. Open the link on another device if you have like phone or laptop and flag the ad. If you are in the low populated area, it might go with just a few flags. But these areas are quite a few, by in large, you need multiple flags to get ad removed.
However, there are few tactics that can help to flag these ads yourself and take a solo flight!
Tactic #1
You laptop/computer has one unique IP address. Despite how many flags you sent to a single ad, it is counted as just one flag because they are coming from single IP address.
To avoid this, you can use proxies. It is like having pool of different IP addresses that you can access from your device.
Step-1 > Buy proxies from mazgalici. They usually cost just 1$ per proxy. Make sure you get proxies for your country.
Step-2 > Download this FireFox Plugin or Chrome Plugin so you can use these proxies.
Step-3 > Open craigslist ad, flag it and change your proxy. Repeat the same process until it gets removed! You can change your proxy with a simple click using the above mentioned browser plugins. It’s easy.
Key Takeaway:- it is quite rare to get an ad renewed by sending just one flag. ( Unless you go through proxy route) Majority of ads need multiple flags so look for other options.
Tactic #2
There are a bunch of different Facebook groups that people use to share spammy ads to flag. You just need to post the link and other members will be able to flag that for you.
You can use your friends and family circle to flag spam ads on craigslist.
If you can get a dozen people ready to flag ads from unique IP address, you can quite successfully remove a medium type of ads.
Create WhatsApp, Email or Text Messaging group and whenever you find the ad, send it to your friends and family and ask them to flag. if your circle manage to send few flags right after the ad gets posted, you can get it removed.
Pro Tip: You can hire someone to help you with this.
Prons and Cons:- This method is quite unreliable because everyone might not be free to flag ads so you have to send a lot of emails back and forth to get a single ad removed which sometimes doesn’t worth the effort.
But if you want to flag just a couple of ads occasionally, this method might work really well
Conclusion
Flagging other posts on craigslist is quite easy. You just need to be consistent and use proper tools and resources to be successful. Do not use any automated software to flag ads since it is against Craigslist Term of Use. And make sure you only flag ads that fit on criteria which is marked as prohibited by craigslist moderation team.
