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Meta projected 10% of 2024 revenue came from scams

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Re: Meta projected 10% of 2024 revenue came from scams

#11
As my children become old enough to have more unfettered internet access, I plan to tell them the lessons of my experience: that all online ads are for products that range from disappointing to fraudulent, so do your best to completely ignore them. I would hope that every parent does the same and we end up with a generation that dries up the revenue for this sick racket.

I suppose the next move by advertisers will be corrupting all the other metrics of quality that I rely on. At that point, paywalled services like Consumer Reports (which has its own massive limitations) may be the only relatively authentic signals of quality left in the digital world.

A convergence to that equilibrium can be predicted based on it having already happened in the financial advice industry. The dictum that "if it's free, you're the product" is just as true of old-school in-person finance as it is of the digital world, except in finance the exploitative free system has been carefully carved out by decades of industry-honed regulation.

Re: Meta projected 10% of 2024 revenue came from scams

#14
Certainly puts the £3m lawsuit settlement with Martin Lewis (UK consumer financial advice guru who sued because he's the go-to fake endorsement of any scam product targeting Britons using Facebook ads) into perspective.

No wonder scammers are still spamming his likeness all over Facebook paid ads even though it's technically trivial for them to algorithmically flag it

Re: Meta projected 10% of 2024 revenue came from scams

#16
Alongside a password manager and keeping things up to date, using an ad blocker is truly a foundational security practice these days. The big advertising players simply have all of the wrong incentives to control this problem. They could massively reduce the volume of scams advertised on their networks, but it’d be worse for them on two fronts: they’d have to pay for more moderation, and they’d lose billions in revenue in the process. Shoulder surfing while a non-savvy user browses Facebook or YouTube without an ad blocker and engages with obviously fraudulent ads is painful.

Re: Meta projected 10% of 2024 revenue came from scams

#18
post #8

At least 50% of the YouTube promoted videos I get are crypto currency scams where some paid actor walks you though deploying an eth contract that empties your wallet. I report every one and nothing changes :(

Same for me, and the worst thing is that they always take 3 days to review my report and delete the scam.

Re: Meta projected 10% of 2024 revenue came from scams

#19
Imagine going in the streets as a normal human being and advertising these companies (the scammers, I mean).

You would never see the light again, after fighting countless battles with lawyers (rightly so!), ending up in prison.

But these guys just can exploit it, because that's what they do, and literally never be accountable for it.

Re: Meta projected 10% of 2024 revenue came from scams

#20
post #8

At least 50% of the YouTube promoted videos I get are crypto currency scams where some paid actor walks you though deploying an eth contract that empties your wallet. I report every one and nothing changes :(

For what it's worth, I see no crypto videos. YouTube recommends stuff I find enjoyable (lots of sketch comedy, TTRPG videos, interesting documentary style stuff, BTS on video game development, etc). I really have to wonder if your tastes align with crypto currency scams. That being said, I am paying for Premium, so I wonder if you are, and if you are blocking ads.

We are talking about ads and promoted videos. Nothing to do with what it is recommending unless I am entirely conflating the root of this subject. If that is true, then of course you would never have seen these as a premium user.

Scam videos are the chum box ads of the video world. Usually the lowest cost ads and so if you block tracking or are viewing a video in a private session you will have the highest chance of hitting these ads.

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