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Meta projected 10% of 2024 revenue came from scams

sherwood.news

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

#61
post #38

Scam ads and the sale of banned goods. They don't do anything about it because they aren't liable. Repeal section 230 If you place these ads you should be held accountable. Meta has a duty to know who they're taking money from.

Not sure why you got downvoted so hard! Banks can’t take money from drug cartels. Why can meta and google take money from crypto scams ripping people off

Repealing section 230 scares the users here but a lot of these problems stem from a lack of liability.

They say the people placing ads should be liable. This sounds reasonable but in practice they're anon overseas and can't be held accountable but Meta will still take their money!

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

#62
post #22
post #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 reven…

Is there a top recommended ad blocker that has strong security Bona fides you recommend for android?

You can actively poison your ad profile by using AdNauseum, which clicks on all the ads and then throws away the response. The actual ads are still hidden using UBO under the hood.

You can also use AdGuard+Tailscale to get DNS blocking of all ads on all devices. Tailscale will let you block in app ads, even on your phone even when on the cell network.

I combine both to block as much as possible.

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

#63
post #53
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My guess is the already-existing trend towards walled gardens will simply continue. When a public space is dangerous, people retreat into "safe" enclosed spaces. - "Never download anything unless it's from the Apple App Store" - "Never buy anything unless you're on amazon.com" - "Dont use the internet outside of ChatGPT"

A little ironic when Amazon is filled to the brim with scams.

Where the consumer ends up out of pocket? I realise scamming ligament sellers and brands is endemic; but it is still a safe place to buy as far as I can tell?

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

#64
post #52

Meta is cooked. It's not just scam portion - their entire strategy is in trouble FB - nobody I know actively uses it anymore. Insta - is being overrun with AI slop and given meta's stated goal of adding more AI interactions on their platforms I doubt they'll even try to get a grip on it let alone succeed Whatsapp & FB messenger - some use but has zero moat over other messengers. It's a completely fungible service in…

I hear this on almost every bad post about Meta. No they are not cooked. They still generate tons of profit and their user base is one of the biggest in the world. They're not going anywhere any time soon.

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

#65
post #29
post #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 reven…

This isn't a situation we accept out of other industries. You water provider doesn't get to pipe you sewage every now and again because its too expensive to moderate. We shouldn't accept it for big tech either. And we certainly shouldn't make it the responsibility of the end use to protect themselves

Social media is hardly a public utility. Regulation could be part of the picture, but at some point the nanny state is the greater of evils.

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

#67
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see how the yearly tech support I do with my parents at Christmas will not one day converge to an outright ban of the internet. I am now demoing the level of sofistication of AI powered scams, telling them that it is now entirely possible they will get a VIDEO CALL from me that's not actually me asking for God knows what in a very convincing way using my face and voice. I am scared and this close to setting u…

My guess is the already-existing trend towards walled gardens will simply continue. When a public space is dangerous, people retreat into "safe" enclosed spaces. - "Never download anything unless it's from the Apple App Store" - "Never buy anything unless you're on amazon.com" - "Dont use the internet outside of ChatGPT"

Yes, but observe how that for all three of the things that immediately came to your mind, you have respectively 1. a thing that still has a lot of scams in it (though it may be the best of the three) [1] 2. A thing so full of scams and fake products that using it is already a minefield (one my mother-in-law is already incapable of navigating successfully, based on the number of shirts my family has gotten with lazy-AI-generated art [2]) and 3. a thing well known for generating false statements and incorrect conclusions.

I'm actually somewhat less critical of Apple/Google/Facebook/etc. than probably most readers would be, on the grounds that it simply isn't possible to build a "walled garden" at the scale of the entire internet. It is not possible for Big Tech to exclude scammers. The scammers collectively are firing more brain power at the problem than even Big Tech can afford to, and the game theory analysis is not entirely unlike my efforts to keep my cat off my kitchen counter... it doesn't matter how diligent I am, the 5% of the time the cat gets up there and finds a tasty morsel of shredded cheese or licks some dribble of something tasty barely large enough for me to notice but constitutes a nice snack with a taste explosion for the much-smaller cat means I'm never going to win this fight. The cat has all day. I'm doing dozens of other things.

There's no way to build a safe space that retains the current size and structure of the current internet. The scammers will always be able to overpower what the walled garden can bring to bear because they're so many of them and they have at least an order of magnitude more resources... and I'm being very conservative, I think I could safely say 2 and I wouldn't be really all that surprised if the omniscient narrator could tell us it's already over 3.

[1]: https://9to5mac.com/2025/09/25/new-study-shows-massive-spike...

[2]: To forstall any AI debate, let me underline the word "lazy" in the footnote here. Most recently we received a shirt with a very large cobra on it, and the cobra has at least three pupils in each eye (depending on how you count) and some very eye-watering geometry for the sclera between it. Quite unpleasant to look at. What we're getting down the pipeline now is from some now very out-of-date models.

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

#68
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same. About half of Youtube ads that I get on my AppleTV (no adblock there sadly) are now AI generated scam products.

It’s crazy how bad it has gotten and some channels have like 10 ads if it’s a long enough video YouTube premium lite has been a game changer. Otherwise I would have given up on watching on Apple TV

Signs of collapse

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

#69
post #52

Meta is cooked. It's not just scam portion - their entire strategy is in trouble FB - nobody I know actively uses it anymore. Insta - is being overrun with AI slop and given meta's stated goal of adding more AI interactions on their platforms I doubt they'll even try to get a grip on it let alone succeed Whatsapp & FB messenger - some use but has zero moat over other messengers. It's a completely fungible service in…

Disagree on WhatsApp, it’s the de facto standard messaging app outside the US.

Yeah, Whatsapp is probably the largest moat in the world atm.

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

#70
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't a situation we accept out of other industries. You water provider doesn't get to pipe you sewage every now and again because its too expensive to moderate. We shouldn't accept it for big tech either. And we certainly shouldn't make it the responsibility of the end use to protect themselves

I had a similar thought regarding OS'. Especially in they heydey of malware in the early 2000s when 3rd party apps were the only way to remove it. You don't buy a truck and accept that its wheel falls off every time you hit a bump. Therefore Microsoft should have been civilally liable for all the costs of software removal and loss of enjoyment of computers that ran Windows (along with OEMs that sold them).

GM is not liable when your wheels fall off because a criminal removed the nuts.
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