An Internet for the People - (Princeton Studies in Culture and Technology) by Jessa Lingel (Paperback)

About the Book

"This book argues that craigslist issues a quiet challenge to the corporate norms that have become dominant in the twenty-first century web. More than a window to the world's ephemera, craigslist is an increasingly lonely outpost in a hyper-corporate web. It is the internet un-gentrified, representing an older ideological orientation of online politics, one that stresses technological simplicity, collectivism, and locality. Flawed and ever on the brink of obsolescence, it provides a model of how democracy can work - most of the time for most people - online. The first part of the book provides historical context for understanding craigslist, describing craigslist's transformation from an email list to a massively popular online marketplace and examining the development of classified and personal ads through the arrival of the digital age. Lingel also examines craigslist's legal history, looking at the company's battles over issues of freedom of expression and data privacy, and exploring what the company's defenses in the courtroom reveal about the platform's politics. The second part of the book explores how people use craigslist in everyday life, and the publics and politics that emerge from their daily online interactions. One chapter draws on interviews with craigslist users to examine the relationships between people and things in craigslist's secondary marketplace. Another looks at how jobs are advertised and filled on craigslist, and the shifting norms and associated class biases that result from craigslist job-seeking practices. Lastly, Lingel examines the problems that are created and solved as people buy and sell, find jobs and gigs, connect to, exploit, and protect each other on craigslist, showing how the community negotiates, establishes, and polices rules and norms. By looking at the politics and promises of craigslist, Lingel concludes, we can also reflect on how the web has evolved, how it has stayed the same, what we might want to protect and what we should think about changing when it comes to everyday life online"--

Book Synopsis

How craigslist champions openness, democracy, and other vanishing principles of the early web

Begun by Craig Newmark as an e-mail to some friends about cool events happening around San Francisco, craigslist is now the leading classifieds service on the planet. It is also a throwback to the early internet. The website has barely seen an upgrade since it launched in 1996. There are no banner ads. The company doesn't profit off your data. An Internet for the People explores how people use craigslist to buy and sell, find work, and find love--and reveals why craigslist is becoming a lonely outpost in an increasingly corporatized web.

Drawing on interviews with craigslist insiders and ordinary users, Jessa Lingel looks at the site's history and values, showing how it has mostly stayed the same while the web around it has become more commercial and far less open. She examines craigslist's legal history, describing the company's courtroom battles over issues of freedom of expression and data privacy, and explains the importance of locality in the social relationships fostered by the site. More than an online garage sale, job board, or dating site, craigslist holds vital lessons for the rest of the web. It is a website that values user privacy over profits, ease of use over slick design, and an ethos of the early web that might just hold the key to a more open, transparent, and democratic internet.

Review Quotes

Lingel astutely reveals the visions and values at the heart of an influential yet understudied platform that has pursued a different path than the data-aggregating, advertising-oriented giants that get almost all the attention these days. The book will change how we think about internet platforms in general.--Thomas Streeter, author of The Net Effect: Romanticism, Capitalism, and the Internet

Lingel fills a gap in current scholarship by providing both a historical and ethnographic account of craigslist, a site that has attained almost mythological status in the popular history of the web. This comprehensive, interdisciplinary, and lucid book is a model for how internet research should be done.--Siva Vaidhyanathan, author of Antisocial Media: How Facebook Disconnects Us and Undermines Democracy

To understand contemporary fears, anxieties, and fantasies about the internet, people need to understand craigslist, a site that embodies a set of 1990s values about the internet that seem alien today. In An Internet for the People, Jessa Lingel offers a rich examination of craigslist, including both its strengths and flaws. This insightful book connects the past to the present in order to inform those who care about the future.--danah boyd, author of It's Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens

About the Author

Jessa Lingel is assistant professor of communication at the University of Pennsylvania. She is the author of Digital Countercultures and the Struggle for Community. She lives in Philadelphia.