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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

#471

Post by array_key_first »

blacksmith_tb wrote: post #383
nostrademons wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There might be a locked-down subset of the internet available, like we saw with AOL. Maybe there's a subnet for medical, a subnet for banking, etc.

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

#472

Post by mikkupikku »

the_snooze wrote: post #48
strogonoff wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If everybody on social media was an actual paying customer of social platforms, like we pay mobile providers (I originally wrote “water providers”, which was in fact a somewhat unfit analogy), we could demand better service and switch away to a competitor who offers it. Unfortunately, we are robbed of our ability to pay with our wallets.

"If you're not paying for the product, you are the product." It's an outdated way of looking at tech. Many classes of paid products (e.g., cars, streaming services, IoT, operating systems) double-dip into tracking and advertisement. Why would a business actually want to do the hard work of serving user needs when they can hedge their bets with ad revenue? Line must go up.

"If you're not paying for the product, you are the product."

Technically, it doesn't logically follow that paying means you aren't the product.

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

#473

Post by rozab »

cjonas wrote: post #8

At least 50% of the YouTube promoted videos I get are crypto currency scams where some paid actor walks you though deploying an eth contract that empties your wallet. I report every one and nothing changes :(

The recent YouTube updates made me disabled my adblocker for a bit. Almost every ad I got was a scam. I reported one to YouTube, a deepfake investment scam. They actually got back to me and said they had removed the ad.

2 days later, I got the same ad again.

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

#474

Post by phillipcarter »

bensonn wrote: post #265

I wonder how much of Meta the corporation is a scam waiting to crumble. Hundreds of billions of dollars can make people do questionable things. -their revenue is 99% ads with more than 80% coming from FB and IG -they can only sell ads if they have a large and active user base -DAP (daily active people) is reported publicly but calculated internally -ad spending, views, and engagement are calculated by Meta's own plat…

> I wonder how much of Meta the corporation is a scam waiting to crumble.

I imagine almost none of it. Social networks solve connectivity problems that people want solved. Talk to some "casuals" who aren't in tech about how they find out about new restaurants, social trends, arts and crafts, places to go visit, etc. and the answer is Instagram or TikTok. And FB does the same but for older generations.

Ads are also a fundamental revenue pillar in this world. You can layer in relevance ads for a product to anyone, at any time, for any topic. If something exists and people pay attention to it, there's a way to make money advertising around it.

There's ... certainly deeper questions to be had about if this stuff is actually good for us, but in the mean time, it's very real and worth a lot of money.

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

#476

Post by ScamLifeguard »

mdhb wrote: post #438
ScamLifeguard wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We recently started a company to help with this exact situation! I would love to pick your brain about what features you would be most interested for helping protect your parents. If you'd be willing to chat can you email me at kevin at trylifeguard.com ?

I suspect this may not feel super helpful at first but I thought it worth mentioning, my first reaction to something like that was strongly negative and my guard went up immediately, it’s quite a weird dynamic that you’re stepping into of people who by the nature of their relationship have known each other their entire lives and you’re trying to talk to one on behalf of the other about a topic that requires a bunch o…

This is really useful feedback, thanks for sharing. And 100% agree it is an interesting dynamic and I think there are a lot of people who share the "I don't want to give you my data" mindset. The original idea we started with was focused on elearning - trying to make really simple, short, effective lessons to highlight basic patterns for users to identify fraud & scams online. We have generic lessons on various channels (txts, emails, paper mail, phone, etc) and then we have scam specific lessons (grandparent scam, forgotten password scam, etc). We got some early feedback from users that were more in the "can you just automatically handle/prevent the scams from getting to my inbox!" so we expanded there. What do you think about eLearning content? I kind of view it as "I'm the IT admin for my mom and I set her the goal to complete one of the trainings." And again, thanks for the feedback you provided already.

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

#477

Post by alexashka »

SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #385
strogonoff wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Don't keep us in suspense. What is this better system you speak of?

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

#478

Post by chipsrafferty »

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…

With so many sites refusing to serve you without an ad blocker, is there any solution?

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

#479

Post by pjc50 »

gtowey wrote: post #339
pjc50 wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Preventing fraudulent apps is not a probability problem Unfortunately it is. You've even provided examples of a false positive and a false negative. Every discrimination process is going to have those at some rate. It might become very expensive for developers to go through higher levels of verification.

No, it's already a solved problem. For instance newspapers moderate and approve all content that they print. While some bad actors may be able to sneak scams in through classifieds, the local community has a direct way to contact the moderators and provide feedback. The answer is that it just takes a lot of people. What if no content could appear on Facebook until it passed a human moderation process? As the above po…

> The answer is that it just takes a lot of people. What if no content could appear on Facebook until it passed a human moderation process?

A lot of people = a lot of cost. That would probably settle out lower than the old classified ads, but paying even a dollar per Facebook post would be a radically different use than the present situation.

And of course you'd end up with a ban of some sort on all smaller forums and BBS that couldn't maintain compliance requirements.

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

#480

Post by jasonlotito »

infecto wrote: post #233
jasonlotito wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I am not sure what you’re trying to tell us Gotcha. So you are ignorant of why people are commenting. The OP was talking about seeing 50% scam crypto ads. Our responses were to provide a comparison. Not to say that it doesn't happen, but that 50% scam crypto ads are not the norm for everyone. It's helpful to have that comparison when providing anecdotal information. No one is saying those ads don't happen, only tha…

Please don’t start drama where nothing exists. You were confused and I pointed out that 1) I believe we are talking about promoted, which is paid, videos not the recommendation engine. These of course are not purely ads but are paid for. And 2) that these chum style ads and promoted videos have a much higher prevalence with folks that block tracker where user profiles have not been built. It’s the chum ads of the vid…

> Please don’t start drama where nothing exists.

You were ignorant (fact) and unecessarily antagonistic (fact).

I corrected you.

> You were confused and I pointed out that

I wasn't, and claiming I was is a lie.

> I am simply asking what is the point of the response to my comment.

Yes, you were ignorant. You didn't know somehting. Ignorance isn't an insult. It's a lack of knowledge.

> instead of using inflammatory language

Take our own advice.

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