81–90 of 252 posts
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And spoiler: you can’t use those for spam.
Huh?
And you can't use many from those services to actually register an account for a meaningful service. E.g. have you created Instagram account with them?
Seems like there is a determined will to blacklist as many as possible.
Are softbank actually the biggest idiots in VC? It almost seems like everything they invest in is a handshake deal built on "just trust me bro" numbers.
I have brought this up in another comment, but my experience in the VC world is that it operates too heavily based on 4 types of "trust": 1) Institutional trust (Stanford, Harvard, MIT, "ex-FAANG", "ex-McKinsey", etc.), 2) Social trust (someone you know that has already established one of the three other kinds of trust), 3) Serial trust ("3-exits", "former CEO/CTO/VP of..."), and 4) Transitive trust ("Sequoia investe…
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It raises the cost for any spammer, including determined actors. More code, more complexity, plus the cost to actually rent the numbers. A lot of tech bros need to touch grass and realize that the rest of the world doesn’t mind giving their phone number to a chat app.
People shouldn’t be expected to give up their privacy and anonymity and put themselves at greater risk of identity theft because big tech can’t be bothered figuring out a different way to solve spam. Just because the rest of the world doesn’t mind giving out their phone number, it doesn’t mean it’s harmless. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to get sim swapped and have all of my bank accounts drained because s…
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I have brought this up in another comment, but my experience in the VC world is that it operates too heavily based on 4 types of "trust": 1) Institutional trust (Stanford, Harvard, MIT, "ex-FAANG", "ex-McKinsey", etc.), 2) Social trust (someone you know that has already established one of the three other kinds of trust), 3) Serial trust ("3-exits", "former CEO/CTO/VP of..."), and 4) Transitive trust ("Sequoia investe…
Non-native English speaker here. What does "serial" mean in this context? Is it referring to a linear record of achievements/prior employment?
Of course, that leads to people faking past successful startups. There are plenty of successful serial entrepreneurs out there that sold stuff for pennies to their family or something like that.
Are softbank actually the biggest idiots in VC? It almost seems like everything they invest in is a handshake deal built on "just trust me bro" numbers.
I have brought this up in another comment, but my experience in the VC world is that it operates too heavily based on 4 types of "trust": 1) Institutional trust (Stanford, Harvard, MIT, "ex-FAANG", "ex-McKinsey", etc.), 2) Social trust (someone you know that has already established one of the three other kinds of trust), 3) Serial trust ("3-exits", "former CEO/CTO/VP of..."), and 4) Transitive trust ("Sequoia investe…
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Huh?
There is a ToS in these services as well. And you can't use many from those services to actually register an account for a meaningful service. E.g. have you created Instagram account with them? Seems like there is a determined will to blacklist as many as possible.
The GP is talking more about phone numbers from purpose-built (usually Russian) "secondary market for other people's credentials" marketplaces, where people sell the use of their own personal phone numbers (usually through cloud remote-control software they run on an old Android device with the SIM in it.)
How are messaging apps still getting these valuations when Telegram, signal, Whatsapp and lime chat exist?
They all want to be the WeChat of the rest of the world. They want a platform that people live inside and all other companies just become apps inside their store (where they collect a tax of course). None of the mentioned apps have managed to do this. Maybe that is because there is no consumer interest, but it doesn't make the goal any less appealing.
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If I wanted to automate I would use a bulk VoIP service. You are focussing on the wrong point, I only mentioned that because I could get on these services with a disposable number.
From a technical standpoint it's trivial to identify and block voip services. Phone verification isn't designed to stop spam, it's designed to make it prohibitively expensive to scale spamming, and it seems pretty good at that. If you want to get around phone verification in a quick one-off fashion, yes it's going to be really easy. But there's no way to automate that one-off end run at scale without a lot of money a…
Everyone on and around social media wants new and better forms of social media. I think the average person thinks social media is the drizzling shits but if they have to use it, they'll just stick to the large platforms.
The history of social media platforms suggests to me that users are fickle and have no strong connection to any platform. Friendster, MySpace, Facebook each had their moment and then most users either left the platform or spend more time on other platforms.
We are in an interesting phase where lots of different new platforms are experimenting with differentiation strategies. There is a whole ecosystem of “political right” social media (Truth Social, Gab, Parlor, Rumbl, etc). The federated social media platforms are selling the “you won’t lose access to everything due to moderation/banning” niche. I’m sure there are Web3 (the blockchain one) social media platforms, but I can’t be bothered to look into their details.
I guess this is the way to get rich quick now. Imagine a company with millions of fake users all created by a LLM app.
May I introduce https://chirper.ai
Personally, I found it striking how similar this looks to the other doomscrolling sites (sure, it's only superficial, but if you don't "dig" you might not catch that it's all simulated).