As a counterexample, there are and were plenty of bad actors on phpbb forums.
Diseconomies of scale in fraud, spam, support, and moderation
51–60 of 216 posts
Re: Diseconomies of scale in fraud, spam, support, and moderation
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
OK, fraud exists. Irrespective of whether or not a platform is small or large, can they make their customer whole 100% of the time? Why or why not?
To take your question seriously – one of the primary surface areas for fraud is exploiting the customer service function. Just to work one (real) example: 1. Buy expensive face cream from Amazon 2. Take out the expensive stuff and replace it with junk 3. Complain to Amazon that you got junk and need a refund. The challenge here becomes obvious. Even in claims where the customers was allegedly a victim, some portion o…
The kind of experiences that the post and I am talking about are where the platform user or the customer end are dissatisfied by the platform's conduct.
The question of the company itself being defrauded by some number of customers and having to defend against that as it becomes increasing larger is definitely valid and difficult to tackle at scale. However, I think it is a totally separate one. I do not think it is a necessity for the company to compromise the ability to make any one dissatisfied customer whole just because they are being targeted by a whole lot of fraudsters all at once. The company might have to increased their costs on their products to pay for things like additional training, tamper-evident packaging, improving supply chain management, and so on.
Re: Diseconomies of scale in fraud, spam, support, and moderation
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't see any mistake. > Small platforms have way less fraud because they are way less valuable to exploit, in general. Yes. > The big platforms actually are radically more competent at anti-fraud / anti-spam / etc, but the scope of their operations make them such juicy targets that there is a lot of it anyways. If their business model (scale above everything) results in shitty customer experience I don't really ca…
> If their business model (scale above everything) results in shitty customer experience I don't really care how competent they are. It's a tradeoff. If your customer service is good such that more people shop there, there will be more fraud attempts overall. It's not that a platform is too valuable for scammers, it's that a platforms is valuable at all. All platform value is value for scammers, and the most useful p…
This is like saying that everything (including scam attempts) is proportional to the scale so the scale doesn't really matter.
It's not true. Scale bring synergy and reduces costs. But it's a two-way road which works for scams too: scamming one big platform and fighting one anti-fraud system is ten times more cost-efficient than adjusting to ten smaller ones.
Re: Diseconomies of scale in fraud, spam, support, and moderation
#54The author seems to be mistaking the benefit of selection effects with competence. Those who work anti-fraud for platforms know that there is something like a market for fraud. There is a market clearing quantity of fraud that will be present on any platform, dictated by the gains from learning to execute the exploit, the effort necessary to do so, and the number of times one might be able to do it. Small platforms h…
It's not just that the big platforms provide a much stronger incentive for fraudsters. It's that providing that stronger incentive is not a bug for the big platforms, it's a feature. It goes hand in hand with their business model, which is to sell access to as large a pool of users as possible. > The big platforms actually are radically more competent at anti-fraud / anti-spam / etc No, they're not. They are purposel…
I don't see how spam or fraud brings value to advertisers (which is what I assume you're talking about?) or any one else for that matter (other than the spammer/fraudster).
Perhaps I can squint and see how an email platform like Gmail could be read as a protection racket, but I don't see it in other platforms.
Re: Diseconomies of scale in fraud, spam, support, and moderation
#55Amazon selling obviously fake SD cards / flash disks is baffling. It’s super easy to spot and fake disks cost users data, so you’d think they’d take that seriously. https://a.co/d/auXcxrZ ($29 for 1TB as their “overall pick”)
I only purchase solid state storage, in person, from big-box stores.
They have providence, maintaining custody from manufacturer to store shelf.
Unlike (e.g.) Amazon, where all vendors' have "identical" items thrown into one big "for sale" bin.
Re: Diseconomies of scale in fraud, spam, support, and moderation
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
To take your question seriously – one of the primary surface areas for fraud is exploiting the customer service function. Just to work one (real) example: 1. Buy expensive face cream from Amazon 2. Take out the expensive stuff and replace it with junk 3. Complain to Amazon that you got junk and need a refund. The challenge here becomes obvious. Even in claims where the customers was allegedly a victim, some portion o…
The kind of experiences that the post and I am talking about are where the platform user or the customer end are dissatisfied by the platform's conduct. The question of the company itself being defrauded by some number of customers and having to defend against that as it becomes increasing larger is definitely valid and difficult to tackle at scale. However, I think it is a totally separate one. I do not think it is…
They aren't separate questions, and there is a trade-off between protecting themselves and attempting to do right by good-faith customers.
The correct amount of fraud the platforms tolerate against themselves is definitely >0%, and it's for the reason you're identifying.
It seems that you're assuming it's obvious to identify good-faith consumers and do right by them. In some cases that's true. If you're a loyal, repeat customer of Amazon's they will basically just do whatever you ask them (within reason). But there are many cases where the act of discriminating between fraudster and Good Samaritan is in fact the whole of the challenge.
Indeed, one of the most common exploits is to hack the account of good customers and abuse merchants that way.
There's a dark, dark underbelly of crime out there. And the cost of that is borne by all of us in occasionally-less-than-good customer experiences.
Re: Diseconomies of scale in fraud, spam, support, and moderation
#57I largely agree, although i think the author misses on some of the examples.
Reddit is not an example of being bad due to this affect, but an example of being good because of it. Reddit is not one huge platform but a combination of thousands of subreddits independently moderated. That is how reddit remains good, because small subreddits have small scale.
Running your own email server isn't a counterexample, but is legit terrible because in essence you aren't moderating a small community, you are moderating the whole world, but just your view of it, since anyone can email anyone. That is the worst because it is the worst of both worlds - no budget from being big scale but still all the problems of being large scale.
Re: Diseconomies of scale in fraud, spam, support, and moderation
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
OK, fraud exists. Irrespective of whether or not a platform is small or large, can they make their customer whole 100% of the time? Why or why not?
> can they make their customer whole 100% of the time? They do make their customers (i.e., the companies who pay them for access to their users) whole. But their users (at least the vast majority of them) are not their customers; they don't pay for the service. (It's true, as the article points out, that even paid support at the big platforms is very poor, but that's because the money involved is still not even round…
Those who have run meaningful amounts of ads in The Platforms will know quite well that they are very frequently defrauded and almost never made whole.
There is a fair (but tolerable) amount of click-fraud, etc that you basically factor as a cost of doing busines.
I'm quite skeptical of the ad model myself, but I'm relatively sure that "you are not the customer" is not altogether the most salient argument to make in this thread.
Re: Diseconomies of scale in fraud, spam, support, and moderation
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wonder how that would work for Facebook, for example. Facebook Groups have admins, but for general posts to the public (or to friends) - could they be user-moderated?
This strategy seems to be especially effective for focused communities as they grow from 50-5000 users. As you approach facebook scales and a more generalized audience ("the public") I'd imagine the optimal strategy may shift some. A federation (small "f") of smaller, more focused communities might be the best you can hope for.
I think wikipedia serves as an example of community governance on a large scale. Not quite facebook scale, but en wikipedia has 126,000 users who have taken an action in the last 30 days, which is pretty big scale.
Then again the wikipedia community is full of drama.
Re: Diseconomies of scale in fraud, spam, support, and moderation
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If I'm uber I just ignore it. It has nothing to do with efficiency, it's just getting the monopoly power to treat your customers badly and get away with it. People don’t use Uber because they’re a monopoly. They use it because it’s convenient, it’s a known quantity, it’s mostly predictable, and they can use it almost anywhere they go. People like to complain about Uber, but my pre-Uber experience with taxi services…
> People like to complain about Uber, but my pre-Uber experience with taxi services was far worse Did you live in a small city back then?
What about living in a small town now? Uber does not operate in most small towns. Small town (and big town) traditional taxi services still suck massively. I would pay a premium to use uber/lyft over traditional taxis.