One my friend wanted to post a rental listing last week on craigslist. In it, there is a description like this: "One of the rooms is rented to a 4th-year male student, and we look for a respectful tenant to rent the other room."<p>however, the system doesn't allow the posting to be published, citing the reason that the keyword "male" is used. It's an automatic block. No human review or flagging.<p>It seems craigslist blocks rental posting with gender keyword regardless of the intention of the word's usage.<p>Why does Craigslist does that? Is it to comply with some law? or is it because of some potential legal liability as the host of classified advertisements? Is it a technical reason?
The Fair Housing Act: Title VIII of the Civil Rights Act of 1968 (Fair Housing Act), as amended, prohibits discrimination in the sale, rental, and financing of dwellings, and in other housing-related transactions, based on race, color, national origin, religion, sex, familial status (including children under the age of 18 living with parents or legal custodians, pregnant women, and people securing custody of children under the age of 18), and handicap (disability) [<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Fair_Housing_and_Equal_Opportunity#Fair_Housing_Laws" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Fair_Housing_and_Equ...</a>]
CL follows US Fair Housing law for US listings. They may treat roommate vs. full-rental listings differently, see:<p><i>Shared Housing Exemption -- If you are advertising a shared housing unit, in which tenants will be sharing a bathroom, kitchen, or other common area, you may express a preference based upon sex only.</i><p><a href="https://www.craigslist.org/about/FHA#roommates" rel="nofollow">https://www.craigslist.org/about/FHA#roommates</a><p>It may help to post to <i>rooms and shares</i> specifically.<p>You may get more appropriate feedback through CL's own support forums (moniored by staff:<p><a href="https://forums.craigslist.org/?areaID=11&forumID=9" rel="nofollow">https://forums.craigslist.org/?areaID=11&forumID=9</a><p>Community housing discussion (user-discussion):<p><a href="https://forums.craigslist.org/?areaID=11&forumID=6" rel="nofollow">https://forums.craigslist.org/?areaID=11&forumID=6</a>
Yeh we noticed the same thing, facebook and offerup do not have this issue. It maybe that craigslist has turned incredible woke and dismissed the idea of gender lol. I suggest you use a site like <a href="https://allcraigslistsearch.com" rel="nofollow">https://allcraigslistsearch.com</a> to find an ad that is live and has a catchy title that you can copy.
In my opinion it keeps listings looking more professional. Should gender matter here?<p>Use of gender probably also invites bad actors that leads to a disproportionate amount of support work.