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The fake Facebook profile industry

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Re: The fake Facebook profile industry

#21

Post by SomeStupidPoint »

monk_e_boy wrote: post #16
djsumdog wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. It was pretty annoying. So are the new top/bottom footers on Medium. I sometimes open up the inspector and delete those two divs just to read the page, but most of the time I don't bother, give up on the article, and just close the tab. Content should just be content. You shouldn't need Javascript to simply view a page. Even if this was all just CSS tricks, it's still pretty annoying. I mean it's a neat idea…

> I sometimes open up the inspector and delete those two divs just to read the page It's crazy how often I need to do this as well. I remember back in the old days hitting esc would stop all the animations on a page, now you need to inspect + delete those elements. There needs to be some crowd sourced way of doing this, so if you delete an element and I visit the site, the element is gone.

> There needs to be some crowd sourced way of doing this, so if you delete an element and I visit the site, the element is gone.

This is how adblockers work (sort of).

We could probably leverage the same tech used for adblockers to make UI blockers, which maintain lists of "bad" UI and remove their tags and scripts.

Of course, I find it easier to just not use those websites.

Re: The fake Facebook profile industry

#22

Post by mpeg »

SomeStupidPoint wrote: post #21
monk_e_boy wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I sometimes open up the inspector and delete those two divs just to read the page It's crazy how often I need to do this as well. I remember back in the old days hitting esc would stop all the animations on a page, now you need to inspect + delete those elements. There needs to be some crowd sourced way of doing this, so if you delete an element and I visit the site, the element is gone.

> There needs to be some crowd sourced way of doing this, so if you delete an element and I visit the site, the element is gone. This is how adblockers work (sort of). We could probably leverage the same tech used for adblockers to make UI blockers, which maintain lists of "bad" UI and remove their tags and scripts. Of course, I find it easier to just not use those websites.

In fact you can just right click an element and block it with most desktop ad-blockers.

Re: The fake Facebook profile industry

#23

Post by SirFatty »

mseo wrote: post #20
djsumdog wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. It was pretty annoying. So are the new top/bottom footers on Medium. I sometimes open up the inspector and delete those two divs just to read the page, but most of the time I don't bother, give up on the article, and just close the tab. Content should just be content. You shouldn't need Javascript to simply view a page. Even if this was all just CSS tricks, it's still pretty annoying. I mean it's a neat idea…

I really like outline.com (they also have a chrome extension), which shows a stripped down version of the article. It works pretty reliable with medium and most other common sources. Just have a look at https://outline.com/vznfxw

Thanks for that! It's unfortunate that sites like that (and this: http://deslide.clusterfake.net) are needed... but that's the world we live in.

Re: The fake Facebook profile industry

#24

Post by feikname »

gjem97 wrote: post #13
gumby wrote: post #6

Ugh, there is no way to just read the text, you have to scroll from short paragraph to short paragraph, like a fancy tweet storm. Do they even want people to read that thing?

Can someone with a longer attention span than me provide a summary? I didn't get far enough to glean what the "scam" is.

tl;dr: The author discovered the identity of two guys (which were not explicitly disclosed) running a big network of bots that targetted man attracted to young, sometimes underage, women.

Those bots would point to video chat services, encouraging the man to masturbate himself while viewing pre-recorded videos of a girl masturbating. Then, the person would be threated to give a ransom or else have the video leaked, with the additional threat that he was masturbating to underage woman sometimes.

Fraudulent porn websites stealing credit cards were also shared by the bots network.

Re: The fake Facebook profile industry

#26

Post by eurticket »

gjem97 wrote: post #13
gumby wrote: post #6

Ugh, there is no way to just read the text, you have to scroll from short paragraph to short paragraph, like a fancy tweet storm. Do they even want people to read that thing?

Can someone with a longer attention span than me provide a summary? I didn't get far enough to glean what the "scam" is.

from above: https://outline.com/vznfxw

Re: The fake Facebook profile industry

#27

Post by ensiferum »

Hah, how stupid do you need to be to fall into this obvious trap. Let's see... a random cute girl approaches you online and wants to initiate a sexy chat. The chances of this happening for real and not being a scam are about the same as you being a distant cousin to a Nigerian prince who just passed away and left you millions of dollars of inheritance.

Re: The fake Facebook profile industry

#28

Post by jonwachob91 »

qaq wrote: post #5
dannyw wrote: post #3

I find it unbelievable that Facebook doesn't have the fake profile situation under control. Facebook builds an incredibly detailed social graph of every user (and non-user) with a big trail of activity, on and off Facebook. Surely there are signs; surely there are common characteristics, and if this journalist can write such a detailed exposé with only public data, Facebook can do much better.

Doesn't deleting a ton of fake profiles have implications for FB valuation and revenue?

I doubt it. User growth is used as a metric to measure future ad revenue. Fake profiles aren't going to generate a lot of revenue from those ads. Facebook would simply need to make a statement about deleting a bunch of fake profiles, but they don't expect revenue to dip.

However, that is not the case for a pre-revenue or pre-profitable business. Those startups are dependent on VC funding, they might lie about users and usage to get more funding (see Silicon Valley Season 3). *This is 100% inappropriate and should not be done. You will burn credibility with investors, for your current venture and any future ventures. It's better to shut down a venture and move on, than to lie about your metrics.

Re: The fake Facebook profile industry

#29

Post by djsumdog »

I think the saddest part of this is that they prey on people. Many of the peeps here on HN can look at a profile and say "spam," so it's hard to imagine the people who can't. The 1% return from SPAM that click on those links, or put in their credit card details.

There was a ReplyAll podcast episode where one of the reporters actually tracks down a shop in India; even goes there and talks to people who've worked at a "tech support" places which charges $400 to remove fake viruses they've implanted.

I think this is even more insidious because they're preying on people who may be extremely lonely or desperate. When you really think about that, it's really sad. It's either psychopathic or they justify it to themselves in some horrible way like, "These people are losers anyway," or "If we say the girls are underage, then we're only going after sexual predators." .. The same crazy logic used by the Ashley Madison leakers.

Re: The fake Facebook profile industry

#30

Post by djsumdog »

monk_e_boy wrote: post #16
djsumdog wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. It was pretty annoying. So are the new top/bottom footers on Medium. I sometimes open up the inspector and delete those two divs just to read the page, but most of the time I don't bother, give up on the article, and just close the tab. Content should just be content. You shouldn't need Javascript to simply view a page. Even if this was all just CSS tricks, it's still pretty annoying. I mean it's a neat idea…

> I sometimes open up the inspector and delete those two divs just to read the page It's crazy how often I need to do this as well. I remember back in the old days hitting esc would stop all the animations on a page, now you need to inspect + delete those elements. There needs to be some crowd sourced way of doing this, so if you delete an element and I visit the site, the element is gone.

Greasemonkey / Tampermonkey? I'm just too lazy to install them and write the little scripts.
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