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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

#451
post #248

"...scammers obtain sexual images of a user, often a teenager, under false pretenses and then blackmail them – ... was becoming commonplace on Meta’s platforms" There you go U.K. OFCOM. Here's child endangerment propagated knowingly by Facebook. Don't worry, I know you won't do anything to Facebook because you "protecting" kids is pretext.

Listen throw7, Meta paid almost £30 million in tax in 2023, an effective tax rate of 12%. I'm unsure why numbers for 2024 aren't available but you'll need to speak to legal about that. If you want to throw7 that all away over some media speculation be my guest. I'll tell the NHS to fund themselves for 11 minutes next year to make up the shortfall.

[dead]

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

#452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Google doesn't know what ad to show me, why not show no ad, instead of a scam? Does trillion-dollar Google desperately need the 3½¢ of revenue the scam ad generates?

It's not that Google doesn't know what to show you, it's that no advertiser outbids the scam ad for your 30 seconds of attention. To put it another way, you have next to no value, and it's only by the goodwill of Google that they even let you on the platform.

Goodwill doesn't explain why Google Ads will show scam ads on other people's web sites.

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

#453
Google should have to make this disclosure as well. I'd guess >50% of their AdX revenue is from click-trick, fake button, scam ads. Across the board I'd expect Google's ad revenue to be at least 10% from scams, if not more.

Source: a decade of running a website monetized with adx and having to hire people to manually monitor and block scam display ads multiple times a day.

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

#454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you think there is no revenue impact? I would assume there is. Companies should have a good idea how much. That is also why companies should care about scams - if ads on meta lose value they lose.

The comment I was replying to implied that targeted advertising is a scam that finds people who were going to buy anyway and then advertises to them. If that were true, there would be no revenue increase because all the customers would have bought anyway.

oh. That makes sense. so long as other people see the ads that shows up in the stastics. Though companies should be pushing back on google doing that. (Though it may be they were going to buy but the ad influenced where which is worth the price)

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

#455

Once I got an Instagram ad for buying ketamine that just linked to a telegram channel. They didn't even bother being coy or using mispelling or slang. A simple keyword search to flag for more review would have caught it. I can't even wrap my head around what internal controls exist when something like that makes it out to users.

The bad actor serves a benign ad to the ad review system, and only serves the scam to real users. It's called "cloaking" - an interesting (but a bit depressing) topic to explore.

That's called a broken system and implies either incompetence or malicious intent by the ad platform.

The fact the ad platforms are multi-billion dollar companies leans my opinion towards malicious intent.

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

#456
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 switched back to Firefox after Chrome watered down uBlock Origin's capabilities

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

#457
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"

The walled gardens belong to the Big Tech billionaires creating the scams. You're actually safer out on the web than in Facebook, for example.

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

#458
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…

Facebook is one of the few pages my ad-blocker can't handle. In part I think this is because they do it differently by country, but mostly it's because Facebook makes a ton of effort to make it hard to recognize what's an ad from the page code.

Get uBlock Origin, it works, even on Facebook.

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

#459
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.

You can use uBlock Origin's element blocker to kill cards that deliver ads (or any other standardized blocks)

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

#460
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?

uBlock Origin with Firefox. Nothing blocks as well, or from as trustworthy a provider.
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