To me any product advertised on Instagram, or through YouTubers sponsorships, have become synonymous with overpromised bullshit if not outright scams. Every single time I see a sponsorship deal on a YouTube video I do some research just to validate it, and the vast majority of it are outright shitty products.
It's been working great as a signal of what products not to buy.
Probably 75% of products you see on instagram ads, you can go find on temu for their actual cost, usually at 80% discount.
But when you do buy it on Temu, is it even a legitimate product?
That probably depends on your definition of a scam but I'd argue we need to resynchronize that definition. They are scams, because the people behind them know what they're saying is plainly false, and they exploit the explosion of digital networks (like ads) to spread those lies. In the 20th century, the channels for scams were far narrower and easier to pinpoint.
I never understand why well-paid HN commentators refuse to pay for their entertainment.
On the web at large, sure use an ad blocker, there's no choice there. There is on youtube though.
But I pay happily for YouTube, because I use it daily, and my home country’s propaganda was annoying enough to make it worth.
People don't want to pay (help) people they don't like. YouTube ads do not feel fair, they feel manipulative and unethical. It's expected that most people wouldn't want to willingly engage with that kind of asshattery.
Contrast that with platforms like twitch. I'd say the average twitch viewer (that interacts with streams/chats) has a slightly negative view of Twitch. But many will still willingly donate dozens of subs to streamers they like. This removes ads for other people, not themselves.
People think YouTube is greedy and untrustworthy. Why would you willingly feed that machine?
YouTube premium lite has been a game changer. Otherwise I would have given up on watching on Apple TV
As soon as I disable my adblocker on my PC though I only get fake scam ads.
That being said, I am paying for Premium, so I wonder if you are, and if you are blocking ads.
Scam videos are the chum box ads of the video world. Usually the lowest cost ads and so if you block tracking or are viewing a video in a private session you will have the highest chance of hitting these ads.
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 that it's probably not normal.
Next time, instead of being unnecessarily antagonistic, admit to being ignorant and ask.
I am simply asking what is the point of the response to my comment. Ads of all degree exist but these scams do exist in a pretty large % of the ads shown but perhaps much lower dollar value since they get shown to profiles without a tangible viewer model.
Next time, instead of using inflammatory language please just slow down and reread or have a more thoughtful discussion. Thanks.
Ad and "promoted" videos are different in this context. And the OP was mentioning promoted videos, not ads.
> At least 50% of the YouTube promoted videos
I've never seen a "promoted video" (whatever that is specfically) that deals with crypto. Note: Premium users can still see promoted videos. I imagine these are more targetted to people who would want to watch these sorts of videos.
> Nothing to do with what it is recommending unless I am entirely conflating the root of this subject.
I was referring to recommended not in a strictly technical sense, but in a way any normal person would use the term. e.g. Recommended videos meaning: All the videos youtube shows me that it thinks I might want to watch. Whether these are officially "Recommended" or "Subscribed" or "Promoted" or whatever, I don't know.
What I do know is that I don't see any crypto scam videos or ads.
> If that is true, then of course you would never have seen these as a premium user.
Apparently, that's not the case.
tl;dr: We are talking about videos like normal people. You are wrong.
- video from screenshot[2]
- coe from video[3]
I'm guessing I get served these because I typically interact with them because I'm curious to read the code they link to see how obvious the scam is. It's also fun to reverse face search the actors and find them on fiverr.
[0](https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/141808?hl=en) [1](https://imgur.com/ckAxmuk) [2](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvsGCvw9AFM) [3](https://pastecode.io/s/pcp4ao4q)
Mostly, I'm getting things like German ads for my local German supermarket (that I would've gone to anyway without the ad) dubbed badly into English with an AI that can't tell how to pronounce the "." in a price, plus a Berlin-specific "pay less rent" company that I couldn't use even if I wanted to because I don't rent.
But when I get 30 seconds of ads a minute into a video that had 30 seconds of ads before I could start watching… I don't care what the rest of the video was going to be about, I don't want to waste my life with a 30:60:30:… pattern of adverts and "content" whose sole real purpose is now to keep me engaged with the adverts. (This is also half of why I don't bother going to Facebook, every third post is an ad, although those ads can't even tell if I'm a boy or a girl, which language I speak, nor what my nationality is, and the first-party suggested groups are just as bad but grosser as they recently suggested I join groups for granny dating, zit popping, and Elon Musk).
Infomercials for all kinds of scams from buying real estate with zero down, crap products that didn't work...
I've never seen anything like this and I see the reverse quite a bit.
Normalize paying for things instead of selling your attention to the highest bidder.
But you just admitted that you pay for YouTube and it shows you creator promotions. You are literally paying to see ads, then telling people not to do the same.
Unless there's some subtlety I'm missing here. I haven't been on YouTube in at least a decade. I see no difference between a blogger pushing a VPN and Google showing an ad for a VPN.
The big draw for cable TV was that you could watch TV without ads. Then ads started appearing on cable and people said it's OK, because the content is higher quality and not available elsewhere. Then that changed, and now there is no difference between broadcast, cable/satellite, and streaming services. Except that you don't have to pay for broadcast. (Yet. It's coming.)
Paying for YouTube premium lite (I think it’s new) has been the best thing in ages! The toxic ads are finally gone!
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?sjid=93860...
The laws need to be changed.
Let me take things back a step - it's nearly impossible to hold people who are lying accountable. Surely the platform bears less responsibility than the liars on it?
Normal non-tech users (from watching youtube at friends houses or at my parents), mostly get ads for fabric softener and cat litter.
Home Depot doesn’t want me to know about it, but I saw the ad!
I suppose the next move by advertisers will be corrupting all the other metrics of quality that I rely on. At that point, paywalled services like Consumer Reports (which has its own massive limitations) may be the only relatively authentic signals of quality left in the digital world.
A convergence to that equilibrium can be predicted based on it having already happened in the financial advice industry. The dictum that "if it's free, you're the product" is just as true of old-school in-person finance as it is of the digital world, except in finance the exploitative free system has been carefully carved out by decades of industry-honed regulation.
I don't have any kids, so asking because I don't know and am curious.
Repeal section 230
If you place these ads you should be held accountable. Meta has a duty to know who they're taking money from.
Banks can’t take money from drug cartels. Why can meta and google take money from crypto scams ripping people off
They say the people placing ads should be liable. This sounds reasonable but in practice they're anon overseas and can't be held accountable but Meta will still take their money!
§230 protects Meta from liability for user-generated content. Ads are not user-generated content. So repealing it would do absolutely nothing in this case.
No wonder scammers are still spamming his likeness all over Facebook paid ads even though it's technically trivial for them to algorithmically flag it
I also suggest turning on the Annoyances and Cookie Banner filters in the uBO settings. They get rid of many popups.
Blocking in-app ads is a whole other ballgame. I don't have any suggestions for that.
You can also use AdGuard+Tailscale to get DNS blocking of all ads on all devices. Tailscale will let you block in app ads, even on your phone even when on the cell network.
I combine both to block as much as possible.
- "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"
A lot of consumers have no idea they got a cheap imitation. Counterfeiters have gotten quite good, and in many cases the scam is "falls apart in a year instead of ten", not "it's completely non-functional".
Could I interest you in some very durable car fuses that don't actually trip? https://youtu.be/B90_SNNbcoU?si=5QUpXUHwSlZj4i4G
Or perhaps radioactive protection pendants are your thing? https://shungite-c60.com/quantum-pendant/
Could I interest you in some Amazon choice firecrackers? https://edition.cnn.com/2020/09/10/business/amazonbasics-ele...
Let's not even mention the health and nutrient products that make the FDA shudder.
Sure, you can ask for your money back, and flag the seller. But new sellers pop up selling the same crap all over again with a new name and company ID. This is all while real sellers of real (and safety certified products) get pressured by Amazon and dissuaded from taking their business off platform.
Avoid Amazon if at all possible. It's not good for consumers nor sellers, and it's keeping a leach on online retail.
Most countries have laws around liability of sold products. This is often set up to fall on the importer of said product. Amazon Europe (and perhaps USA) is doing something very funny with these laws; You, the consumer, is the importer. If your house burns out, then it's between you and a random chineese ghost companny that just disappeared into smoke. Amazon is "handling the import paperwork for you", and not taking liability for anything.
Technically, on Bol.com, a EU-platform, EU consumer protection is in place. So if a product breaks within guarantee terms, is dangerous, never gets delivered etc. the person re-selling is responsible. They are importing "illegal" goods and could even go to jail for it.
So, technically, that premium price brings me me the assurance that I am protected by EU consumer laws. That a TV I buy can be returned, is CE certified, won't explode and isn't a 12" TV pictured in a tiny living-room on the images on unpacking.
Except these products often don't meet EU criteria, aren't adhering to (food, safety, chidren protection) EU laws and money-back is often hard because the re-seller just dissapears. In the last case, Bol.com will step up and refund, because they have to. But for the rest, they plead innocence: It wasn't us that sold illegal goods, it was that reseller from which we skim a lot of fees.
The incentives are just wrong. And the solution simple: Make platforms by proxy legally responsible for their "users". Resellers in my case. Or advertisers in the case of TLA.
If some-guy sells a TV that explodes, and can't be found or held responsible, then make Bol.com responsible. Let their CEO go to jail in the very worst case. Let's see how fast they solve this.
That is bog-standard drop-shipping. Every open online market had a pile of that. It isn't that they've taken the images from AliExpress it is that both sets of sellers are drop-shipping product from the same source or collection of sources (or buying and reselling though that is much less common as it means managing stock) and the images come & other sales material come from there.
> So, technically, that premium price brings me me the assurance that I am protected by EU consumer laws.
When comparing Amazon (UK) or eBay to the sellers on, for example, Facebook, often there isn't a premium, Amazon (or AliExpress, or similar) are often cheaper than sellers on social media and/or advertising via adverts on YouTube and their ilk. Those sellers will often try to make the product out to be some unique high quality item with a price to match (which of course is heavily discounted if you buy in the next hour or two), and if you check your preferred general marketplace you'll find several people with the same thing, often with the same images, making no such pretence of it being unique or high-value, at a price noticeably cheaper than the seller from SM/etc. I assume this is the same with Amazon in other jurisdictions and other marketplaces like Boi.
My two most recent examples: a couple of rolls of 3D printer filament that looked nothing like as advertised (bad sales images there I think, rather than a comingled-with-a-cheap-scammy-alternative issue) which was taken back unquestioned for same-day full refund despite one of them being opened, and a couple of years ago a replacement drive for my media RAID array that, while the right drive and not, as far as I could tell, counterfeit, certainly wasn't new/unused which is what I ordered, which again was taken back with no quibble or cost (other than my time of course).
There are problems dealing with Amazon sellers, but those can mostly be avoided with care and a healthy dose of cynicism (to avoid ordering crap in the first place). I'd never buy some things from there though: safety equipment, for instance.
Though as mentioned, I find it very easy to believe this will vary by location and account for various reasons.
The most common one I've run into is third party sellers taking items that come in multiple to a pack from the manufacturer and splitting them up but then also listing the single item for the same price as the multi-pack's MSRP.
As an example, pouches of cat food treats that come 10 to a pack. Scam sellers will split the pack and sell each pouch for the same price as the full 10 pack and because Amazon has historically done nothing to guard against this, their scam listing appears fully comingled with the manufacturer's listing in a way where it is very hard to recognize the scam option even if you are aware of the possibility.
Amazon has made some noise about fixing these comingling issues this year, but their plans have been vague and for me the well is already poisoned after years of letting it go.
Its actually shocking that it took until this year for Amazon to really acknowledge this as an issue. Manufacturer/brands can't have been happy about this considering that for any item that can be scammed like this you'll find lots of bad reviews on Amazon where the review isn't really complaining about the product, but the scam.
Some example reviews that I just randomly and easily found on Amazon:
I'm actually somewhat less critical of Apple/Google/Facebook/etc. than probably most readers would be, on the grounds that it simply isn't possible to build a "walled garden" at the scale of the entire internet. It is not possible for Big Tech to exclude scammers. The scammers collectively are firing more brain power at the problem than even Big Tech can afford to, and the game theory analysis is not entirely unlike my efforts to keep my cat off my kitchen counter... it doesn't matter how diligent I am, the 5% of the time the cat gets up there and finds a tasty morsel of shredded cheese or licks some dribble of something tasty barely large enough for me to notice but constitutes a nice snack with a taste explosion for the much-smaller cat means I'm never going to win this fight. The cat has all day. I'm doing dozens of other things.
There's no way to build a safe space that retains the current size and structure of the current internet. The scammers will always be able to overpower what the walled garden can bring to bear because they're so many of them and they have at least an order of magnitude more resources... and I'm being very conservative, I think I could safely say 2 and I wouldn't be really all that surprised if the omniscient narrator could tell us it's already over 3.
[1]: https://9to5mac.com/2025/09/25/new-study-shows-massive-spike...
[2]: To forstall any AI debate, let me underline the word "lazy" in the footnote here. Most recently we received a shirt with a very large cobra on it, and the cobra has at least three pupils in each eye (depending on how you count) and some very eye-watering geometry for the sclera between it. Quite unpleasant to look at. What we're getting down the pipeline now is from some now very out-of-date models.
Okay, but if it matches the illustration on the storefront, can it really be called a scam?
We have also received a number of shirts where AI has been used to create unlicensed NFL shirts and other such actual frauds. And whatever your feeling about IP laws, it was definitely low quality stuff... looked good if you just glanced at it but when you went to look at any particular detail of the shirt it was AI garbage. (I say "AI garbage" precisely because not all stuff from AI is necessarily garbage... but this was.)
Sigh. I learned from my pre-boomer parents that if the product were any good it wouldn't need to be advertised.
> looked good if you just glanced at it but when you went to look at any particular detail of the shirt it was AI garbage.
To be fair, that was also all over the place before "AI" as currently understood. (And I don't think that previous iterations of machine learning techniques were involved.)
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 already working and used by many apps for random things.
And despite that, they let through clear and obvious scams like a "Lastpass" app not made by Lastpass. That's just unacceptable. Anything with a trademark should never be possible to get a scam through. There's no excuse.
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.
These are the effectively the same thing. Asking a business to harm its profits is like asking a person to self-harm.
Worse, your fake version will be convincingly begging on the call for God knows what while being horribly tortured. Audio versions of this are already a thing.
I have done this already and convinced a friend to do it after her father fell victim to a scam where he was convinced the sheriffs department wanted him to pay off a fine in gift cards.
I am also concerned that one might steal a trove of texts from someone and plug it into AI which could mimic the writing and tone of someone.
You’ll be suspicious and ask for the pass phrase. The attacker now knows the nature of the protection you setup between you and your mom.
And then the real attack on your mom, with you describing the system you’d agreed to, and claiming you can’t remember the word/phrase.
Better is the Terminator-style lie to see if it gets detected.
A passphrase is cheap. If you never need to use it, so what?
God help anyone not armed with AI in the future, that's why it cannot be locked up by corporations or government.
trends point to will be locked up by corporations for the near to medium term
So my strategy here has been to start downloading anything that I think I might need from the Internet and keeping a local copy. It's free and abundant now. It could become inaccessible within a matter of minutes if the right powerful person says so. There may be a low probability of that happening, but given the potential disruptions to our life of our always-on connectivity going away, it's worth being prepared.
do that sooner rather than later.
Voice mimicry is so much easier now, that you might not be able to tell from the phone. This is why a verbal password from family is important, esp. in unusual situations.
For this to work for the likes of Meta, it would mean elevating Meta’s services to some sort of country-wide public utility, which I’m sure would create probably an even stronger moat than network effects, hindering any competiton.
However, is there such a constraint in case of social media? There are mechanisms and open standards that could allow interoperability between providers who implement them. It seems that it should be possible to leave it up to market forces and competition, but for that we have to have competition and be able to vote with our wallets.
Samsung isn't refunding any of their $3k fridges that now have mandatory ads
Saying it's your (the consumers) fault because you didn't read the crystal ball for what was coming in the future.
The price a product is offered at is the price for the product at that time, you don't get to say well I sold it for $10 but it's worth $20 so I'll just sell your data until I recoup that $10 I "lost".
Exactly. The necessary hardware to enable the tracking was installed at the time of purchase. It is not like 10 years later someone dreamed up the idea and decided to stealthy in the night start bolting on new components to every vehicle they could find. It was a feature that was there at the time of purchase and the sale was priced accordingly.
I mean it's a viewpoint, it's a certifiably bonkers one but of all the viewpoints it definitely is one.
> “But look, you found the notice, didn’t you?”
>“Yes,” said Arthur, “yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard.”
But I know you will say that the legal system doesn't act in good faith, so... I guess you're screwed. Such is the pitfall of living under a dictatorship.
Which is why I'm not providing what you seek. Production goes to he who is paying, and in this case I am the one doing the paying. Thus, you know the content is written for me and me alone.
> What are we supposed to do about the fact that you are not arguing in good faith?
A rational actor acting in good faith would start talking terms to see the sale go through, but as you are also here in bad faith we can continue to write only for respective selves. Nobody was expecting anything else anyway. I don't imagine anyone has ever paid someone else to write a comment on HN and that isn't about to change today.
That's like the people who claim only idiots live in HOAs but neglect the fact that, in some markets, nearly all real estate worth living in is covered by an HOA of some sort so your alternative isn't "buy a different house" it's "live in an apartment forever"
The world is full of custom car builders. Buying a something like the F-150, but without the undesirable computing components, is quite practical and very possible.
It'll be expensive, which I expect is what you were really trying to say when you pretend there is no such thing for sale, but you're just returning us to the heart of discussion: The F-150 is cheap, comparatively, because it has already priced in the tracking subsidy. You're accepting of those undesirable terms because the lower price makes it compelling enough to do so.
This is like telling someone who doesn't like that they have to wait in traffic they should just take a helicopter to work everyday. Yes, it's technically an option for some people, but for the vast majority it's not.
Same goes for roads. You most definitely can build roads that don't have traffic, but only the rich will be able to afford to use them. Traffic is what enables those of lesser means to also participate.
It's a pretty good tradeoff for those who are poor. And the rich can buy whatever they want anyway.
If you purchase a product that doesn't have ads and then they introduce ads - that is a huge change in the value proposition of the product.
It is, but one that is already calculated at time of purchase. You'd pay a lot more if there were strict guarantees that it would never display ads.
The Belarus tractor company learned that lesson. Once upon a time they tried to infiltrate western agriculture with, under the backing of the USSR, heavily subsidized products offered on the cheap. But farmers saw through the thin veneer and realized that they wouldn't be able to get parts for the machines down the road. As such, the much cheaper price wasn't a winner. Farmers were willing to pay significantly more to American companies, knowing that they would provide not just on day one but also long into the future. The economic lesson learned was that the marketplace doesn't value just initial purchase price, but the full value proposition over its entire lifetime.
Many people are willing to gamble, of course, especially for "disposable" things.
It is unrealistic, of course, because it is a textbook case of information asymmetry (the enemy of the market)—only a vanishingly small number of people can adequately assess the pricing, having to know enough about hardware and all the various forces that could bring it down, like potential upcoming lineup changes or inventory overflow.
The right move is to fight information asymmetry. Many developed countries, including the US, already do it in countless cases. A mild way could be requiring to disclose things like this in addition to the ToS; a more thorough way could be simply banning this business model.
Who exactly was I supposed to ask that? The check out cashier at the store? The CTO of the company that manufactures it? Who even knows the answer to that question, and how are millions of consumers supposed to find that out and contact them directly, and why are they permitted to reveal proprietary plans if they even know?
Your arguments are delusionally detached from reality.
Normally F-150s, and fridges for that matter, are sold not by cashiers, but salesmen. I suppose there isn't any meaningful difference in the end — except, unlike a cashier, salesmen are named as such because there is greater expectation of them being intimately familiar with the product so that they can answer such questions.
If they can't, that's a pretty big red flag. Why would you conduct business with someone who has proven to be shady (or at least incompetent)?
Certainly not the appliance salesman, they don't know samsung's plans. And good luck calling samsung and asking for the "future plans" department. This is such a dishonest take.
If they aren't willing to stand buy what they are selling, why would you want to buy it from them in the first place? That's what we call a scam.
This makes the rest moot, but I will still list why I don’t think it’s like you say at least in case of social media.
If social media was paid only (like any actual product or service intended to benefit the customer) and users were choosing between paying different amounts rather than paying vs. not paying, it would kill the network effect outright; platforms would have to struggle to keep users, and to that end would start implementing features users want and need (rather than exploiting their emotional state and employing dark patterns[0] to boost ad impressions).
The interest of a service provider is aligned with the interest of the customer. The incentive to do bad unethical things to the user may exist either way, but it is when the user is not the customer that it becomes a natural course of things. It is still possible to “double-dip”[1], but the difference between users being customers and users not being customers is that in the former you can be an honest service provider and sustain yourself by doing things in the benefit of the user.
[0] For example, have you noticed how Instagram’s GUI is carefully designed to require you to tap two times, with a teeny tiny chevron as the only indicator, every time you open the app to switch to the timeline of people you actually follow, rather than whatever the algorithm suggests (and how carelessly swiping photo carousel left makes you exist that carousel, and lose the scroll position)?
[1] Additionally, note that the examples you named (cars, IoT, OS[2]) make a lot of money from a single purchase and/or are fairly inflexible to switch away from, compared to social media where interoperability is pretty much solved with open standards.
[2] What is a paid-only streaming service that “dips” into advertisement in some unethical way?
No. You’re not going to regulate out human behavior or scammers or MBA’s looking for every avenue to maximize profit.
Make a better system.
Nebula is youtube that works for you. But the conversion rate from youtube-ad-viewer to nebula-subscription-payer is <1%.
My issue is that in presence of one large player who does it for free competition is already impossible: $2 is twice as much more than $1, but $1 is infinity/NaN times more than $0. It’s one of the many problems with the fact that it is legally allowed.
Nebula is good in that it properly allows me to pay the people who's content and reporting and art I like and support them without giving the toxic sludge of Youtube a dime.
It also allows them to focus on doing their job: Making the good videos I want and that they want to make, rather than play some absurd algorithm games.
Floatplane is similarly better aligned with what artists and creators want to do. The guy from DankPods is much happier on that platform than something like Twitch which gave him constant problems.
The GunTubers and "Current military events but from former soldiers who act like they know what they are talking about in reference to geopolitics" have created their own platform and I hope that succeeds too. I do not agree with a lot of the politics from some of these people (and believe some others are liars) but diversity is good.
Armchair Historian also created their own platform. That might not have panned out though, they had financial troubles that led to them abandoning another project.
IMO, the best platform is Patreon linking to a bunch of MP4s on S3 (or whatever cheaper medium exists). Nebula started out just using a "Youtube copycat" whitelabling service.
I do not use much social media platforms, while I try to stay social, like posting one picture a month and sending a message here and there, watching a cat video sometimes, etc. I think social networks are much more similar to drugs - you can try to regulate to prevent people hurting themselves, but people will find a way if they can't refrain themselves.
Scams existed before social networks, and maybe is a bit easier using them, but I do not feel it is a fundamental shift. Along the ages people were taught/encouraged "to believe (without checking)" into a multitude of subjects (state, church, horoscope, etc.), now seems a bit hypocritical to be amazed that they do just that.
I don't think that's actually true for WhatsApp in a lot of countries - it's the default communication for many, to the point I'm not sure I could get parcel deliveries reliably here in Spain if I didn't have WhatsApp.
Ditto for communicating with the entire generations who moved onto Facebook after we all abandoned it. I could delete Facebook entirely, but then I'd spend every family gathering hearing the chorus "why aren't you on Facebook? Your cousins are all on Facebook. They all know the family drama" (instead I keep Facebook off the homescreen of my phone, and check it about once a month).
The paying relationship is not sufficient for these technologies that are required
Because the customer eventually decided it was worth paying for. Emphasis on eventually. It took over 30 years from the first car having optional door locks to locks becoming a standard feature.
> MSFT did nothing to stop spyware for at least a decade.
More like half a decade. The first real instance of spyware was recognized in 1999. Microsoft began working on their anti-spyware software in 2004.
In any sane world we'd regulate big tech far more rigorously than we do (we'd tax them more as well but that's a separate issue).
I mean, lets face it, no government that makes hard right turns and has intense corruption like the USA just goes back to being a proper liberal democracy. Most likely things will get a lot worse before they even get better and on a timescale thats unpredictable. We may be talking 20+ years before any sort of baby steps towards liberal reforms are even possible on the federal level. The right has the gerrymandering, scotus, the courts, the media machine, etc. Pro-working class regulations are just not going to happen like they did in the 60s and 70s for a very long time if history is any guide.
Its so odd to me people just have a "dont worry we'll got back to normal next election." To get back to what we had during those times of pro-worker regulation will take many, many, years if not decades of work now. At the very least until many in SCOTUS retire or pass away from old age. That just isnt happening anytime soon.
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 people get totally spun around the axle on.
We need to start paying for ad-free services. Wake up.
Where are all these ad-free services everyone keeps talking about? Social media companies don't even find it worth it to offer an ad-free plan last I checked...
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. This would allow equal access to everyone's voice.
IMHO, social media should not exists at all. It is too huge and too fast for our tiny brains.
You do realize that we are on a platform without ads where your word is heard, so it still is possible.
And before "social media" there were plenty of free forums (each with a certain main topic, but in which people were discussing occasionally more than that), so it was not that bad. And in fact that continues today (ex: this one), with more relevant discussions in my opinion than what I glimpse from my occasional social media incursions.
It's a place with bait for software engineers (lots of tech stories and discussion), and YC then gets lots of eyes on job postings for their companies. This is explicitly why it exists.
HN is not ad free, it is an ad.
This leaves ads as the only form of revenue and because ads don't care about the content, this creates a race to the bottom on generating slop.
Amazon Prime Video didn't have ads. Then one day it did.
Maybe you're right that _the masses_ need to start rejection ad-tiers, but so far we've seen that people will accept advertising to get more.
The services (FB etc.) don't want this model, and it's not like the users can force them to switch to a paid model.
Also, a large percentage of users don't care and believe that "free" is better.
Netflix started showing ads on their lower tiers: https://help.netflix.com/en/node/126831
If you pay for Sky/Virgin/insert Cable provider in your country, you still get copious amounts of ads. If you pay to go to the cinema, you have to sit through 15 minutes of adverts before the film starts.
I'm buying off Amazon, they're showing sponsored products (so... ads).
EA were looking at putting ads into games that you bought back in 2024: https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/ea-are-thinking-about-inser...
Hell, I pay for public transport, they have adverts on.
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.
I'm not entirely sure that's true. It's equivalent to asking a platform to moderate all "harmful content" off the site. "Scam" is fundamentally subjective, just as "harm" is.
The real solution is to reform the justice system such that a citizen feeling they've been defrauded has a quick and easy process to get satisfaction for themselves and other similarly harmed people. We need a streamlined, totally online court that excels at gathering and interpreting data, and a decision in days not years. The ad networks are themselves the natural allies of such a reform, but such a change can and should start small as a pilot program at the state level. If successful, it removes the considerable legal-cost moat protecting scammers, and so it no longer makes sense to even attempt such a business, and the world becomes a slightly better place.
Also 'just go to court' is such a naive take. As someone who has been in litigation before I can tell you those $350/hr billings add up quick. How many consumers can afford a 5 or even 6 digit legal bill for being scammed for a few hundred or thousands dollars on a FB ad? Of those who can, how many would see this pricetag as worth it? Sorry but small claims court isn't going to do discovery for you for some company hidden behind who knows how many storefronts and foreign proxies. You're going to have to do real litigation. Its absurd to expect every working class person to sue all scammers constantly. Instead ad providers should be policing their own ad networks and the working class should be using the government to implement proper regulations to protect ourselves.
Regulation always seems simple, but there are inevitable unintended consequences. Sadly, those who see regulation as the only or best tool to shape behavior are quick to suggest yet more regulation to fix those unintended consequences, either unaware of the positive feedback loop or certain there exists some set of regulation that will finally, perfectly fix the system. I find this way of thinking naive; it is almost always better to make adjustments to the system to shape behavior that way. And in this case, the obvious way to do that is to fix the courts, and make justice affordable again.
> Deregulation always seems simple, but there are inevitable unintended consequences. Sadly, those who see deregulation as the only or best tool to shape behavior are quick to suggest yet more deregulation to fix those unintended consequences ...
Which sounds more reasonable: "Deregulation always seems simple" or "Regulation always seems simple" ? Will let the reader decide, because in the end it is a subjective choice.
I personally don't think there is one optimum that we can reach. At certain points in time and for certain subjects deregulation should be applied at other points in time regulation should be applied. I don't see any point in talking "generally", this depends on topic, country, priorities, etc.
I agree with this, and the containing paragraph. Everything is trade-offs. It may very well be that Facebook is under-regulated (and it probably is the case). I suppose I'm thinking of ways to use the situation to fix the much bigger and arguably worse problem with the justice system in general. Non-rich people (I don't say "poor" because I include middle-class as well) are totally boxed out of the justice system in the USA. A pox of scammers is just one of the side-effects of the ossification and decay of the system. I'd like to solve a big chunk of problems all at once, including this one.
From the article:
> Meta projected 10% of 2024 revenue came from scams and banned goods, Reuters reports
I think we can agree that there's no "subjective" situation when a product is banned.
> The ad networks are themselves the natural allies of such a reform
The article (and the person you're replying to) point out that a significant portion of Meta's revenue comes from such scams. I'm really struggling to see how they're "natural allies" and not "antagonists" here. You're going to have to show me some research that backs up your claim because it flies in the face of the available information.
Ah, sorry. Perhaps I should have spelled it out. Meta desperately wants to avoid being regulated. One way they can avoid it is to help make the out-of-band justice system (much) more efficient such that they avoid messy moderation policies and don't need to be regulated anymore. Victims would be happier too, especially if they get remunerated for their pain, time, and trouble. The message to scammers everywhere (not just on Meta) becomes clear: go ahead and try it, you will get caught and put out of business, and likely sent to jail. Eventually the scammers will realize it's not worth it.
The unintended side-effect, sadly, is that legitimate business will be attacked as scams by profit-seeking or malicious individual malefactors.
In any event, I think reforming the US justice system is way overdue; it is far too expensive and time-consuming for most matters, and that means we live in a place with de facto lack of courts. And I don't like that.
I might have bought that but a delayed flight spent reading Careless People swiftly disabused me of any such notions.
> In any event, I think reforming the US justice system is way overdue; it is far too expensive and time-consuming for most matters, and that means we live in a place with de facto lack of courts. And I don't like that.
Most countries have regulators that come with teeth, such that the only times they need to go to court are to confirm they have the teeth they're using. After that, companies fall in line. From the outside, it seems the USA does not have this system and has no desire to develop such a system.
Making the platforms have some liability for facilitating fraud would be good, though. In the meantime I block ads.
The only reason to fight against the scams is because one cares a little about ones viewers (well, and I guess maybe a bit of brand safety). Which seems to not be the case for the vast majority.
Zero click malware would be most likely too sophisticated.
You click the ad contact people who will tell you where to wire money that’s the level we are talking about here.
Within the past few years there were quite many malicious ads floating around that would trigger a redirect on load on iOS Safari, sending the user to a scam page (phishing, "you've won!", or instant redirect to the App Store), no engagement necessary.
Some recent browser zero days/malicious ads situations, not necessarily "an ad loaded in my browser -> pwned", but reasonably applicable:
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/malicious-ads...
https://www.welivesecurity.com/en/eset-research/romcom-explo...
https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/chrome-zero-day-f...
It really lowers my perception of Youtube as a product as just any old site with content, but also scams / creepy stuff. Youtube don't care I suspect, it's money for them, and it re-enforces my desire to not give them money... so yeah they take money form who they can.
What percent of the global economy is scams? Sure, the investment manager charging 1% a year to put all of your retirement savings in ETFs that also charge 1-1.5% a year funneling money in to companies being raided by executives and employees isn't a scam scam, but it is a massive mis-allocation of resources and probably more damaging than some dumb item purchased from a Meta ad that never showed up. Same for recently legalized (in the US) sports betting.
The startling thing is AI is being applied at scale to make this crap more pervasive. 10% scams? Meta would like advertisers to use their generative AI tools to create image and video ads of non-existent products.
Best thing we can do is delete all phone apps and only access online media from behind firewalls that block all ads and tracking. Windows is dead. Apple is transitioning to an adtech company. Linux is the only option.
>Windows is dead.
I don't relate with this at all. I get ads for normal insurance companies, uber eats, air bnb, or gacha games to name a few. None of them are scams, so I can't understand understand why so many people on hacker news complain about scams.
Do you live in a region with barely any ad inventory?
It would make running scams unprofitable, or at the very least cut into profit a lot / disincentivize it.
edit: wow, some people REALLY don't like getting told they are knowingly contributing negatively to society.
You would never see the light again, after fighting countless battles with lawyers (rightly so!), ending up in prison.
But these guys just can exploit it, because that's what they do, and literally never be accountable for it.
I wonder if those who market illegal Israeli settlements counts as "legitimate advertisers": https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2025/3/31/meta-profits-as... I have a hunch that "legitimacy" is directly proportional to the dollar amount of the ad bid...
FB - nobody I know actively uses it anymore.
Insta - is being overrun with AI slop and given meta's stated goal of adding more AI interactions on their platforms I doubt they'll even try to get a grip on it let alone succeed
Whatsapp & FB messenger - some use but has zero moat over other messengers. It's a completely fungible service in a space that has fractured across many providers.
VR/meta/AI/etc - they keep trying. Maybe one day
...that leaves their adtech which only works due to their invasive tracking...that is directly dependent on their other properties succeeding: Their targeting edge comes directly from front row seats tracking users behaviour on their platforms. No users, no insights.
Agreed and in combination with FB messenger they've got most of the market...but what of it?
They're literally competing against a donation supported app. Pause for a second and think about what that says about how little direct money there is in the space.
Plus it's E2E encrypted & has significant user privacy expectations so significant limitations on how you can leverage it for their adtech biz
I'm not saying whatsapp is dead or a failure as a messenger. It's a great addition to round out an ecosystem but don't think it's any good as the primary load bearing pillar of a 1.5 trillion company in the same way search is for google
I hate Meta, but their ad business is still doing well and WhatsApp is the core of Indian society.
AOL, Yahoo, and Tumblr still operate. Meta won't be dead in our lifetimes.
As empty shells of what they once were.
I've no doubt there'll be something at Facebook.com in ten years. But if it looks like your three examples, that's not a success.
*Unless you steal from other wealthy folks.
And the answer would depend on where the externalities from all that heroin sale happened (e.g. if it was abroad), whether the government would be expected to carry the cost of them (e.g. by having a public healthcare system), and probably also on how actually democratic they are.
https://x.com/a16z/status/1986486508355002584
Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg on Curing All Disease
We sat down with Dr. Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg, co-founders of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, to discuss their ambitious plan to cure, prevent, and manage all disease by the end of the century.
I've reported them a few times, but surprisingly (or maybe not), Facebook responds back with "we didn't find anything that goes against our community standards".
These ads usually link to a website where you can download an application (a chat app, or some AI generation). Of course, they're not in the play store. It's frustrating when I think of the times I was flat out rejected for my legitimate ads related to programming, or a job board, or real estate, but they approve PORNOGRAPHY. What in the world do those posters of pornography know that I don't? How could they get that approved? There has to be some cleverness going on.
The power of persistence. I'm not being glib: these people probably get most of their ads/accounts blocked or banned, and have a dismal success rate baked into their business model, but they keep submitting until one goes through.
Misrepresentation is another key ingredient, but I hope you're not willing to buy a network of bot or havked accounts just so you can get an ad approved.
I and anyone I know only post stories on Instagram at best. My feed is JAM packed with ads and cringe people still trying to be influencers.
Threads is a rounding error.
X is blah
Meta is desperate to move to AI because they know this. They see the data and are not dumb. They want to squeeze every last dime out while they still can.
Since then, they invested heavily in providing free internet that failed (Free Basics), wasted a bunch of money on some sort of a global cryptocurrency that never even launched (Libra/Diem), tried to invent a whole new market with VR and it went nowhere, and now they're going all in on "AI" but the only thing they have to show for it are some sort of celebrity-impersonating Instagram bot accounts and some glasses whose selling point is that they're branded as Ray-Bans.
I wrote a blog about turning advertising against advertisers, and as I see more and more stuff like this, I wonder how the ad-based Internet survives this era of unfettered and unpunished scamming.
There you go U.K. OFCOM. Here's child endangerment propagated knowingly by Facebook. Don't worry, I know you won't do anything to Facebook because you "protecting" kids is pretext.
If you want to throw7 that all away over some media speculation be my guest. I'll tell the NHS to fund themselves for 11 minutes next year to make up the shortfall.
Anecdote (why I think it is a scam)- I had a FB account, I needed it for a previous job but didn't want it. I set up a random email address at a host I had never used, had a made-up FB name, and used a password generator for both the email address and FB accounts. My FB account had almost no activity besides viewing company posts. FB was only used from a single desktop computer. Passwords were stored in my (local only desktop) password manager.
After a couple years, FB emailed me and claimed my account was hacked. The "hacker" changed my profile picture (was a blank avatar icon) to an AI photo of a random guy. Facebook says it is hacked but they keep it visible, my two friends are still friends with the old account (they know it was hacked). FYI - I didn't care enough to send them a copy of my ID, nor did my ID match my user name, so I couldn't reclaim my account.
How would a hacker combine a random username, with a random email (has not been pwnd) only used for FB, guess a ~20 character random password, etc? And why, to steal an account with no followers and to do nothing with the account? That is a lot of work and criminal charges for nothing.
I am fine with FB saying the account was hacked and closing it. It has been years and the account is still live. Is it "active" and counted towards their users? They have a HUGE financial incentive to keep and count all accounts, and they have no oversite to verify accounts since it is all calculated internally with opaque algorithms.
Users of these platforms are being farmed like cattle.
Checked on it recently, so many comments of folks asking for shipping details / anything. Hundreds of thousands of dollars just scammed from folks. And they're still raising / stringing folks along.
It's wild.
cyanydeez•4h ago
lifestyleguru•4h ago
random9749832•49m ago
Someone recently even tried to attempt scamming me when buying a burger by telling me if I want certain toppings without telling me it will cost more. Apparently now have to play mind games when buying a burger.