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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

#341

Post by infecto »

jasonlotito wrote: post #142
infecto wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> We are talking about ads and promoted videos. Ad and "promoted" videos are different in this context. And the OP was mentioning promoted videos, not ads. > At least 50% of the YouTube promoted videos I've never seen a "promoted video" (whatever that is specfically) that deals with crypto. Note: Premium users can still see promoted videos. I imagine these are more targetted to people who would want to watch these so…

As I originally stated I am happy to be corrected but I don’t think you understand it either. Promoted videos are ads. Premium removes in-stream ads, not in-feed ones. They’re paid placements, not recommendations.

And again as a premium user you won’t see chum style feed or promoted videos because premium removed the feed style and promoted will be more tailored to your preferences.

Which coming full circle leads us back to my original statement. If they don’t have a good user profile for you, you will get lower cost ads (promoted videos) which generally are going to be the chum box of ads, crypto, magic formula powders, get rich quick.

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

#342

Post by saulpw »

thegrimmest wrote: post #290
mrguyorama wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is not possible for Big Tech to exclude scammers It's 100% possible . It might not be profitable An app store doesn't have the "The optimum amount of fraud is not zero" problem. Preventing fraudulent apps is not a probability problem, you can actually continuously improve your capability without also blocking "good" apps accidentally. Meanwhile, apple regularly stymies developers trying to release updates to alr…

> It's 100% possible. It might not be profitable These are the effectively the same thing. Asking a business to harm its profits is like asking a person to self-harm.

No, sorry. It's eminently reasonable to ask or demand that a business to reduce its (fantastic) margins/profits in order to remain a prosocial citizen in the marketplace. In fact we do this all the time with things like "regulations".

It may be unreasonable to demand that a small business tackle a global problem at the expense of its survival. But we are not talking about small or unprofitable business. We are talking about Meta, Alphabet, Apple, Amazon. Companies with more money than they know what to do with. These global companies need to funnel some % of their massive profits into tackling the global problems that their products have to some degree created.

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

#343

Post by bradlys »

1970-01-01 wrote: post #116
samlinnfer wrote: post #57

A new car built by my company leaves somewhere travelling at 60 mph. The rear differential locks up. The car crashes and burns with everyone trapped inside. Now, should we initiate a recall? Take the number of vehicles in the field, A, multiply by the probable rate of failure, B, multiply by the average out-of-court settlement, C. A times B times C equals X. If X is less than the cost of a recall, we don't do one.

I don't think the analogy applies the same way. Meta simply choose to be evil not because it costs less overall but because they're unable to provide/filter actually useful ads to consumers. The rear diff is instead a filthy window but consumers don't sue for better quality because everything else works good enough and those that do crash could have cleaned the windows themselves.

I think there needs to be some moderation here because Meta clearly does offer useful ads to consumers, otherwise it wouldn’t have so much insane revenue from ads. If people don’t find the ads useful then they won’t click on them or give the company money.

I think the average user on HN (who blocks ads constantly, uses things like AdNauseam, pihole, etc.) is not going to be your typical purchaser. If you look at your typical American, they buy a lot of shit through those ads and a lot of people actually like the ads.

My only complaint with the ads has been the targeting has always been crap. If you allow personalization, they do get more relevant. But, that complaint of mine is my own personal one. I’m like a typical HN user, ads don’t typically read me well due to my blocking on all kinds of platforms.

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

#344

Post by macintux »

reaperducer wrote: post #307
colechristensen wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I pay for YouTube so all I get is paid creator promotions for VPNs and Squarespace unless it's someone being sent a free thing in exchange for a review Normalize paying for things instead of selling your attention to the highest bidder.

Normalize paying for things instead of selling your attention to the highest bidder. But you just admitted that you pay for YouTube and it shows you creator promotions. You are literally paying to see ads, then telling people not to do the same. Unless there's some subtlety I'm missing here. I haven't been on YouTube in at least a decade. I see no difference between a blogger pushing a VPN and Google showing an ad fo…

> But you just admitted that you pay for YouTube and it shows you creator promotions.

It's easy to skip creator promotions. You can also choose not to engage with creators that conduct ads.

I'm fine paying YouTube not to force me to watch their ads. I can deal with product placement on my own.

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

#345

Post by WorldMaker »

9rx wrote: post #131
gosub100 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then why do they have locks on the doors? They know there are these things called criminals. MSFT did nothing to stop spyware for at least a decade.

> Then why do they have locks on the doors? Because the customer eventually decided it was worth paying for. Emphasis on eventually. It took over 30 years from the first car having optional door locks to locks becoming a standard feature. > MSFT did nothing to stop spyware for at least a decade. More like half a decade. The first real instance of spyware was recognized in 1999. Microsoft began working on their anti-s…

Microsoft bought GeCAD RAV in 2003 with the intent of using that antivirus engine in Windows.

It's also worth pointing out that the 1998 antitrust case against Microsoft is most known as a Browser fight, but it included a heavy hand from Adobe and all of the major Anti-Virus tools of the time. It was seen by many at the time, including Microsoft, that the delivered court decision forbade Microsoft from including PDF software, anti-virus tools, firewalls, and other such software in Windows (and arguably against building some of them at all).

It's somewhat easy to understand why that decision almost made sense in 1998, but real easy to see why it aged very quickly like spoiled milk (including the wide spread of spyware and malware that soon followed).

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

#346

Post by pigeons »

vadoff wrote: post #285
macNchz wrote: 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…

What if you were required to put down a % of ad spend as a security deposit. Then if you were ever caught running a scam, you’d lose the deposit. It would make running scams unprofitable, or at the very least cut into profit a lot / disincentivize it.

Wouldn't that still not address the two problems mentioned, moderation costs and loss of scam ad revenue?

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

#348

Post by robrtsql »

jtokoph wrote: post #311
fouronnes3 wrote: post #28

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…

I half joke that the term “parental controls” will change meaning from restrictions set by parents on children to the opposite: restrictions now set up by children to protect their parents.

That's me! I use parental controls to try and protect my elderly father on other platforms (he's always quick to fall for ads and download Android apps he doesn't need). Unfortunately Facebook doesn't allow you to enable parental controls on an adult, and they also pretty severely limit your ability to update your birthday! Which is unfortunate because Facebook is such a hostile platform.

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

#349

Post by tgsovlerkhgsel »

macNchz wrote: 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…

I don't understand how more countries don't hold the publisher responsible, especially after they are notified. I'm sure that in a classic newspaper, the publisher would be held responsible for obvious scam ads. But by intentionally automating and outsourcing everything, suddenly that responsibility goes away?

Hold the publisher responsible, let them deal with the ad platform. Suddenly, it becomes very attractive to have an ad platform that doesn't allow scams.

If the publisher and the ad platform are the same, even better.

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