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.
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.
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.
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...
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...
Normal non-tech users (from watching youtube at friends houses or at my parents), mostly get ads for fabric softener and cat litter.
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.
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.
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?
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.
Samsung isn't refunding any of their $3k fridges that now have mandatory ads
It's your 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.
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. 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 entire value proposition over its entire lifetime.
Many people are willing to gamble, of course, especially for "disposable" things. They'll take the lower price and hope the ads never show up.
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.
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?
Nebula is youtube that works for you. But the conversion rate from youtube-ad-viewer to nebula-subscription-payer is <1%.
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 regular 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
cyanydeez•2h ago
lifestyleguru•2h ago