Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Meta projected 10% of 2024 revenue came from scams

sherwood.news

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

531–540 of 549 posts

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

#531

Post by lesuorac »

unglaublich wrote: post #207
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.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Pinto#Fuel_system_fires,_...

Scroll down on that page.

The pinto wasn't any worse that other cars from that time period. It should come as no shock that older products are worse than newer products.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Pinto#Retrospective_safet...

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

#532

Post by throwaway94275 »

array_key_first wrote: post #471
blacksmith_tb wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The Internet is transforming from an open global network into 4 things:

- a substrate for business VPN tunnels (like the leased lines of old),

- regulated, approved, monitored e-commerce walled gardens,

- regulated, approved, monitored streaming walled gardens (like the cable TV of old),

- regulated, approved, monitored social media walled-gardens including chat focused ones like Discord and video focused ones like YouTube (replacing most for-print media, forums, and websites)

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

#533

Post by 2OEH8eoCRo0 »

lesuorac wrote: post #530
vkou wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a simple way to do that. Legislate a requirement for ID, the users will provide it to the platform, the platform will provide it to law enforcement when requested. Kind of like how South Korea (where you need a national ID to access digital services) is doing, or the UK is trying to do with their ID push. (And then who wants this could go have a fight with the people who don't want this.)

Why does the platform need your id? The post was submitted by an asset (IP Address). Just send the bill to the registered owner of that asset. We do the same thing for speeding tickets. This isn't difficult.

VPNs and international law?

Do you mean the VPN provider ought to be liable? I think that's an interesting solution. Take money from bad actor anons then the bill is yours.

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

#534

Post by lesuorac »

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #533
lesuorac wrote: post #530

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does the platform need your id? The post was submitted by an asset (IP Address). Just send the bill to the registered owner of that asset. We do the same thing for speeding tickets. This isn't difficult.

VPNs and international law? Do you mean the VPN provider ought to be liable? I think that's an interesting solution. Take money from bad actor anons then the bill is yours.

Speeding in a rental car doesn't absolve you of the ticket.

But I mean yeah, you could theoretically rent a car in the UK and kill somebody then flee to the US and hide. But don't let perfect be the enemy of good.

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

#535

Post by nxpnsv »

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?

I'm in Austria. There are price aggregator sites likes Geizhals and Idealo that helps you find deals across many stores. More often I just go to a store I know and like. It happens I pay a little more, but not having 15 cheap options with one off brand names is actually more a pro than a con..

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

#536

Post by immibis »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #80
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.

We weren't robbed, we voluntarily gave it up. Nebula is youtube that works for you. But the conversion rate from youtube-ad-viewer to nebula-subscription-payer is <1%.

Nebula is missing discovery, also comments, also the network effect of course. I can open YouTube at any time, and probably see something interesting within a few scrolls of the homepage.

Nebula would be as good if I consistently wanted to watch a particular creator - say, if I consistently listened to LegalEagle on my train ride to work - but I don't. And the channels that are good enough to consistently watch do not upload regularly enough to be spotted on a chronological feed and I'm sure that's no accident. Nor, I suspect, do they upload regularly enough to be eligible for a partnership with Nebula.

I have a subscription to Nebula because I want to support them and the idea and their future competitors other than YouTube, but I don't actually use it.

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

#537

Post by armchairhacker »

pjc50 wrote: post #289
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…

> 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.

You’re right that there will always be some false positives and negatives. At the same time, I do think that if Apple really spent money and effort they could prevent most of the “obvious” scams (e.g. fake LastPass), which make up the majority, without passing the cost onto developers and while minimally affecting their profits.

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

#538

Post by immibis »

CuriouslyC wrote: post #330
cj wrote: post #42

Earlier 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"

That would be one possible dystopia, but I think we actually are going to dodge it. Smart, on device agents that are aligned with a user's interests will be able to act as the "walled garden" the user needs. In fact, this future is anti-dysopian, because the agent will not care about existing walled gardens and digital fiefdoms, and to the extent that it's using them it's going to deprive them of ad revenue, and they…

Why do you think an on-device agent would be aligned with a user's interests, when all other on-device software is not?

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

#539

Post by piva00 »

r0fl wrote: post #508
piva00 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

YouTube Premium Lite used to exist years ago, then they discontinued it in 2024 (I know because I used to be a very happy subscriber), now they brought it back but only in a few selected markets[0]. Google products' bullshit as usual, I never needed/wanted YouTube Music and the other bloat they wanted to force me to pay for, I was happily paying to not have ads... [0] https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/6307365…

I currently have YouTube premium lite in Canada

Well, Canada is on the list I posted.

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

#540

Post by ChicagoDave »

sentrysapper wrote: post #411
ChicagoDave wrote: post #382

I actually got suckered by the 3d printer scam. My bank helped while PayPal figured it out (2 months). Facebook is still showing the fake Bambu labs ads. There’s no FBI to enforce online fraud so why would they care?

There is. It's known as the Internet Crimes Complaint Center (IC3).

Sure, but I meant "is anyone answering the phone?"
Post reply on HN