If 10% of my income came from scams, I’d be thrown in prison…
Meta projected 10% of 2024 revenue came from scams
481–490 of 549 posts
Re: Meta projected 10% of 2024 revenue came from scams
#482Earlier 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…
> We need to start paying for ad-free services. Wake up. You make it sound like there are no people that pay for ad-free services they find valuable. Or that there are no free ad-free services (ex: WhatsApp). My feeling is that people know some "services" are not that "valuable" (ex: facebook, instagram, etc.), so they would not pay for them, but, like with drugs, they can't reduce their usage.
WhatsApp isn't free, you pay with your data. Facebook isn't running a charity.
Re: Meta projected 10% of 2024 revenue came from scams
#483Earlier 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…
This would create a two tiered social commons however. Someone like me, homeless and on disability, what could I afford? Where would my word be heard? It could also create "free" platforms, funded by billionaires, to control the speech on the platform. The answer is a communal, government owned social media platform, that mimics the rules of the town square. in the US, this includes the same 1st amendment rights. Thi…
Most people's words do not need to be heard.
Re: Meta projected 10% of 2024 revenue came from scams
#484Alongside 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?
I've very rarely encountered this with Firefox + uBlock Origin. The few sites that do are easily ignored.
Re: Meta projected 10% of 2024 revenue came from scams
#485I've gave up reporting scams on FB, they don't care. It always an automated response "we've reviewed the content and it doesn't break our community guidelines" or similar.
These are for obvious scams, account in different country to items they are trying to purchase/sell, haven't been used in a long time and suddenly active. When selling vehicles the account tries to make you go to malicious websites to pay for vehicle checks falsely insisting the seller is legally required to do so.
When 10% of their revenue is from scams, without government policy there's no incentive for FB to fix. Scams feels like a feature they silently tolerate while doing the bare minimum by providing a button and automated responses to look like they are trying to prevent it.
Re: Meta projected 10% of 2024 revenue came from scams
#486Earlier 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.
Buying YouTube premium is the single best online decision one can make.
I choose to not watch YouTube. I was born in the 80s, am a software engineer, and I’ve watched maybe 10 total hours of YouTube, all 100% of those hours were car-repair related.
Re: Meta projected 10% of 2024 revenue came from scams
#487Earlier quoted context omitted.
Remember broadcast TV, early in the morning or late at night? Infomercials for all kinds of scams from buying real estate with zero down, crap products that didn't work...
None of those scams were intermixed with popular legitimate content. If Facebook had a tab at the top called "Scams and Other Nonsense" and you clicked on that and it had a bunch of scammy content, that would be an equivalent to late night infomercials. But Meta doesn't do that. It mixes the scams in with all of its popular and non-scam content so you cannot easily tell it's scammy. Worse, it targets people vulnerabl…
They had popular non-scam content like music collections. Sounds of the 80's etc. Time life music and all that. Ron Popeils cooking gadgets.
Then you had guys like Kevin Trudeau and Don Lapre.
Re: Meta projected 10% of 2024 revenue came from scams
#488Earlier quoted context omitted.
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"
> "Never buy anything unless you're on amazon.com" Too late for that one. I have been scammed a few times from Amazon sellers.
Lucky you. I have been scammed by Amazon.
Re: Meta projected 10% of 2024 revenue came from scams
#489Earlier 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…
shutdown -- never. just limited to the $COUNTRY_NAME social network and $COUNTRY_NAME messenger
Re: Meta projected 10% of 2024 revenue came from scams
#490Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's exactly what they told you when you slapped a billion dollars down in front of them? Color me skeptical. I bet you haven't even talked to them.
Dude. They have a website. It lists what they do.
When someone comes to you with a unique custom request for something, your response is: “Nope. Not on my website, not going to do it”?
Must be nice to have the luxury of being able to do nothing. Ford doesn’t have that luxury, though. It has to answer to angry shareholders if it lets a lucrative customer slip through.
Call them. Talk to a real person.