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Catfishing on an Industrial Scale

wired.com

21–27 of 27 posts

Re: Catfishing on an Industrial Scale

#21
post #20

> “Customer service” staff don’t play a single character on the sites. Instead, they sit in a chat queue to be cycled between virtuals they occupy for two minutes at a time Wow. I would not have thought that could work. What happens when the person they are chatting with brings up something from a previous conversation and the person occupying the virtual has no idea how to respond?

chat history?

Re: Catfishing on an Industrial Scale

#22
So what's the end goal with all the personal info they seem to collect? Does it lead to other types of scams higher up in the organization? I can see how some of it is useful to the people running the virtuals so they can keep up with the conversation more easily, and I get the point about making the virtuals seem more realistic for the area they're targeting, but it seems like they collect a whole lot more than that. I've gotta believe there's something bigger at play here. And usually when there's one type of organized crime going on at an organization, there's more, right?

Re: Catfishing on an Industrial Scale

#23
post #20

> “Customer service” staff don’t play a single character on the sites. Instead, they sit in a chat queue to be cycled between virtuals they occupy for two minutes at a time Wow. I would not have thought that could work. What happens when the person they are chatting with brings up something from a previous conversation and the person occupying the virtual has no idea how to respond?

The article touches on this: the people working the accounts are required to take detailed notes into the system about the victim, notes that are made available to future responding workers.

Re: Catfishing on an Industrial Scale

#24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The porn industry hides coercion, rampant drug abuse, STIs, rape, and an abhorrent human cost paid by its actors.

Ah the studios, they are largely irrelevant. They are not where the money is, at all.

"Studios" don't have a monopoly on porn created through rape and coercion. "Independent" video producers often are aspirational, making nearly nothing for a very large mental toll. Many of them are forced into it by their "lovers", and/or do it to fund a drug habit. I would hardly call myself a heavy consumer of pornography but I've seen an awful lot of almost-hidden needle marks and crackpipes carelessly in the background.

And that's not even to comment on the fact that many/most OnlyFans and similar "boutique" sites are operating under a similar model to this scam. There's often a real face who provides the "Content" as a lure, but the premium "Chatting" services are run by call-centers.

Re: Catfishing on an Industrial Scale

#25

You always think, who falls for this stuff? Well, two years ago, a random service tech came out to my work site and, completely unprompted by me, turned a conversation about scheduling a follow visit into the story of his current predicament. He wouldn't be able to come out next week because: he was selling his house to fly across the US to meet his girlfriend, whom he had never met IRL. This man was trapped deep in…

Thank you for being a truly decent human being and going out of your way to try to help a stranger like that. I read articles like this and I want to cry because it seems like the world is just fucked up, but if we can all just show a little humanity like this then perhaps there is still some hope.

Re: Catfishing on an Industrial Scale

#26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah the studios, they are largely irrelevant. They are not where the money is, at all.

"Studios" don't have a monopoly on porn created through rape and coercion. "Independent" video producers often are aspirational, making nearly nothing for a very large mental toll. Many of them are forced into it by their "lovers", and/or do it to fund a drug habit. I would hardly call myself a heavy consumer of pornography but I've seen an awful lot of almost-hidden needle marks and crackpipes carelessly in the back…

My point was that content doesn't really matter that much. It is the job of getting quality traffic and monetising it the fullest where the money is. Content providers like studios, are just suppliers for them. When people say "porn business" they don't mean "those who actually film people fucking" because this is just tip of the iceberg and not where the money is made.

Of course chatting on webcams is always run by separate people, it is the case even with individual models i know. They just don't have time for this. It's a natural division of labor. I built engines for several webcam sites and there is always that thing.

Re: Catfishing on an Industrial Scale

#27

After fair amount of years wasted on Bumble, Badoo, Tinder, even some explicitly prostitution related platforms. Achieved a miserable "success rate" of maybe just below a dozen of real life encounters. Easily hundreds of EUR spent on various premiums and subscriptions, I feel this happened to me at least few times. It looks it's constructed to be perfectly un-compassionate, sociopathic. Now the other way round... how…

I noticed this as well in Germany, lots of asian girl profiles that pretend to be from a rich background and that have some sort of investment advisory team working for them and claiming they will give you some tips for forex trading you just need to register on this website and transfer money. or similar stories.

I once made a remark to a profile like that, that I might as well be talking to a hairy fat philipino. I got a barrage of Japanese text back, that when put into an online translator roughly translated to something like: "I am a proud japanese you idiot European, your farts smell like shit, go fuck yourself". So it seems I got under someone's skin there. Since then I'm wondering where this operation is based. the profiles are so similar in style that it must be organized somehow. I wonder how and where.

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