Discussion

Main Board| Accommodation Wanted| Accommodation Offered
Start a new discussion on this board

Let your next career move come to you.

YouTube, Facebook and scammers

For my sins, I manage the Facebook page for a community group.

At least three times a week, I'm getting a supposed "Meta Support" or similar warning, telling me my page is about to be deleted for various violations and telling me I need to click a link.

These were less frequent until the last few weeks, when Facebook removed that ability to report scammers with a simple click.  They were probably getting too many reports, so rather than fixing the problem, they just buried it.   Now the scams have noticeably amped up the tempo.

And then today I found my quiet enjoyment of a few - um - "special interest" videos on youtube* interrupted by supposed CNN and other mainstream news reports of Elon Musk and Gina Rinehart and their secret investment tricks to make millions.  They were deep fakes.

With all the money and expertise Google and Facebook have, how the fook are they not just allowing these scams, but collecting money from criminals to display them?

Makes me fooking angry.  Yeah there's a lot of nasty stuff on the internet and it's not Google's fault.  But when you're collecting money from criminals to promote their scams, you've gotta own it.  And when Facebook removes the ability to report scammers because it's too much work to block them, you've got to question their priorities.

 

* yep a 15 minute gopro helmet cam video of a long descent in the French Alps.

15 minutes?  I watched a 43 minute video yesterday of a guy driving around dying towns in south Texas...

I once watched a 9 hour walking tour of New York

Over Christmas I binge watched 2 years worth of videos of a guy rebuilding a Chateau in France and he didn't post last night so I'm annoyed...

the £14 a month I pay for premium is well worth it.

Meta & Google are very aware of the scammers but they want to make a few quid before actually dealing with the issue.  Further, as soon as they block the scammer, they're back.  They come out of professional scam businesses who are really really skilled at what they do.

The scammers are clever.  But to convince the richest and most sophisticated internet companies in the world to run fake ads promoting scams the even I can spot right away?

WTF is going on?

I mean, you have to be foolish to fall for this stuff.  But plenty of decent (but not bright), naive, elderly, early-stage dementia, all that shit...

These guys are despicable scumbags.  If the scammers can generate fakes that look real, why aren't the richest companies on earth able to generate filters to stop their customers becoming the victims of fraud?

Makes me so fooking angry.

Make me so angry.  Being elderly, naive, suffering dementia or even simply a bit dim is not a crime.  

How the fook is there so much blatant criminality and these incredibly sophisticated companies are not just pretending they can't stop it, but they're actually profiting from it?

well, when Google dropped their "Don't be evil" motto a few years ago, they were signaling to the world their intent to ... be evil.  

They get so many ad requests, they don't actually vet them (or at least not until after they've made their slice).

I can understand it take time to vet an ad.

Yeah, 15 seconds to watch and 2 minutes to consider.  From someone who's probably paid $10/hr.  Who can process 15 ads an hour, with tea breaks.

FFS it's not like we're asking them to get Stephen Hawking to sign off on a video about theoretical physics.

I manage the Facebook page for my wife's business (which has an amazing name that I coined but won't share here because it's super outy), and in the last few days we've had a sudden influx of scam attempts. I think what happens is scammers find a new way of doing things and these tech companies just let it happen while they work out how to deal with it easily. Then they deal with it. The scammers think of something new. 

 

Join the discussion

Login Register