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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

#381

Post by toddmorey »

cj wrote: post #42
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…

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"

The Apple App Store is full of scam apps. It’s all the disadvantages of a walled garden with none of the supposed advantages for users. In that way, the App Store itself is a scam.

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

#383

Post by blacksmith_tb »

nostrademons wrote: post #284
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 think the Internet will, sometime in the near future, just get shut down. That's been what actually happens in countries that are undergoing civil unrest or war like Russia, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Tanzania, Israel, Myanmar, etc. And it's fairly likely civil unrest or perhaps even war may spread to an increasing fraction of the developed world too. So my strategy here has been to start downloading anything that I thi…

Keeping an offline copy of the Wikipedia is fine, but if "the Internet just get[s] shut down" I would think we'll all be more worried more about not being able to use our bank accounts, have medical providers see our records, etc.

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

#384

Post by ChicagoDave »

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…

Ad blockers don’t block Facebook ads because they appear as legitimate posts.

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

#385

Post by SV_BubbleTime »

strogonoff wrote: post #198
SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When someone opens with “there oughta, be a law”… they’re almost always shouldn’t be. No. You’re not going to regulate out human behavior or scammers or MBA’s looking for every avenue to maximize profit. Make a better system.

This is not about regulating away illegal behaviour. Criminals will exist. It is about making [what we have reasons to consider] de facto scammy behaviour to be de jure illegal behaviour. Then it becomes a matter of enforcement.

>Then it becomes a matter of enforcement.

Really strong record there, especially internationally.

Make a better system.

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

#386

Post by SoftTalker »

da02 wrote: post #306
nxpnsv wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I'm def having more success using the Never buy anything from Amazon rule...

What have been your alternative(s) to Amazon?

Local stores, or manufactures' own retail sites, for me. Been burned too many times by Amazon for them to ever regain my trust.

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

#387

Post by wahnfrieden »

stusmall wrote: post #275
iammrpayments wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s zero to none manual review. The people who run these type of ads probably burn 100 facebook ad accounts per day

Oh definitely. I have zero expectation of high level of manual reviews. You can run limited runs of adds for next to a couple dollars. The math could never work out. I understand a lot with make it through the system, this was just so blatant. It should be so easy to catch with an automated system. It was nothing but red flags. The automated systems could reject outright or maybe escalate to manual review if it met e…

Meta wants to have big scammers. It's hugely profitable. That's why they codified internal policy that if the scam generates at least 0.15% of Meta's revenue, they must be protected and never moderated.

There was a big "bombshell" report on this yesterday (it didn't hit HN frontpage though).

Meta knowingly gets a lot of its funding from scams. They love it! They don't care about technical solutions for it: they've banned any solutions from being implemented because it would impact revenue.

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

#388

Post by terminalshort »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #86
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…

The answer isn't ad blocking, the answer is paying directly and in full (so no need to subsidize cost with ads) for the service. I cannot wrap my head around how generally intelligent people are completely blind to this. I guess 20 years of ad-block-is-the-norm has left people totally confused about internet monetization. I've never encoutered a problem that has such a clear answer, and that so many intelligent peopl…

But the truth is that people don't want that. We had that before and it lost in the open market to free but ad supported. There is a very small and vocal group of people (which is massively over represented on HN) that really hate the ad supported model, but the vast majority don't really care and prefer it to paying in cash.

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

#389

Post by keeda »

This is why, despite being a huge fan of their engineering, I'm leery of Facebook and Google and any advertising-based tech company in the long run. The incentives to block fraudulent, malicious and even simply ineffective ads are just not there.

Anybody remember this? https://consumerwatchdog.org/uncategorized/google-shells-out...

Google stopped that practice then... or it might not have! We'll never know since, apparently unlike silly little Meta, it has been much more careful about not having any kind of incriminating internal documents or correspondence being preserved for discovery.

And in any case, it could fall back to the much more lucrative business of anti-competitive manipulation of the ads market: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Google_LLC_(2...

I've had a hint that the ad industry was rotten for a decade+ when in a prior life I saw our regional head of marketing casually throw stats on the whiteboard showing something insane like 30 - 50% of ad clicks on all major platforms being fraudulent. She was cynical but also jaded to the fact that, despite being widely known and accepted in the industry, it wasn't clear if things would ever improve. Shocked, I followed the ad industry and such reports for a while, anticipating a crash. Glad I didn't bet on it, because the crash never came.

Unfortunately, there is so much money in this that it seems nothing will happen.

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

#390

Post by terminalshort »

vintermann wrote: post #95
Workaccount2 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The answer isn't ad blocking, the answer is paying directly and in full (so no need to subsidize cost with ads) for the service. I cannot wrap my head around how generally intelligent people are completely blind to this. I guess 20 years of ad-block-is-the-norm has left people totally confused about internet monetization. I've never encoutered a problem that has such a clear answer, and that so many intelligent peopl…

Facebook has made it very clear that they don't want you to do this: you can pay for ad-free (I believe it's because they're legally obliged to offer that as a result of some things they'be done and deals they've made), but the cost is easily 100 times what they can make directly on ads for me. The only conclusion can be that they place an immensely high indirect value on serving me ads.

They charge around $15 per month IIRC. It's more like 3x revenue per user.
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