User-generated 'free' content - ok, I kind of get it. The volume is insane, the product is not viable with everything reviewed.
Paid advertising though? How is it I get Facebook adverts for drugs, with pictures of the drugs, or fake money, from BLUE TICK advertisers? Obviously zero review, LLM or human.
How is it that with paid advertising they can't have one human or even a savvy LLM in the loop spend one single CENT's worth of time reviewing the adverts?
Cuz the primary goal is hitting revenue targets and showing "growth" in those metrics every quarter. All else is secondary. You can see what their priorities are when they talk to Wall St every quarter - https://investor.atmeta.com/investor-news/press-release-deta...
I've reported so many scam ads that someone has made to look like a link to a real news site. Like, in some field they fill in "wsj.com", and that's then prominently displayed on the ad the same place as you normally use to verify where a link takes you, but clicking it takes you somewhere else entirely. Every report have been denied, saying it didn't violate their standards.
They're just happy they get money, don't care if it screws their users. The users aren't their customers...
This will not improve until the platform shares proper liability. The US isn't going to do that, but the EU might be able to.
There's a reasonable argument that user generated content platforms can't survive being held liable for the crimes of their user. However, the advertising is a much smaller volume of content and they're making money directly from it.
I get IG story ads for cocaine, with pictures of cocaine. They go to telegram accounts run by Russians and I know people who have bought from them and they actually deliver cocaine. I also get ads for illegal poker rooms.
I feel like they aren't even trying. The number of times I've reported obvious stolen accounts running scams or spamming only to recieve the "we investigated and found no rules broken" has made me stop trying. Every concert listing is full of scam bots posting the exact same wording to scam people.
Given the ability to shadowban from public posting and a few hours I'm pretty sure I could write a single function to block 95% of the scams. It would be one thing if they were dealing with complex scammers but the fact is they haven't even tried to stop the very low hanging fruit that you could solve with a few regexes.
haven’t they claimed that their “AI” catches 99% of spam before it gets seen or something? seems like there’s even lower hanging fruit or they’re just lying.
I am not shocked. I recently had a completely legitimate experience with Facebook, no fraud or anything.
My wife opened a restaurant a few months back. We're paying for Facebook ads. The early months of operating a food business is burning massive cash, so we had a ~10 dollar payment get rejected on FB ads.
Something about this rejected payment enabled all prior ad campaigns we had disabled. We are still trying to figure it out - noticed it just today. We're in for ~85 dollars in ad campaigns for just 2 days.
Every stupid bug or dark pattern which makes a big tech company money does not get fixed. It will take getting hauled in front of congress to fix it.
I tried to report a FB page of obvious car (campervan) thieves: no address, name, telephone numbers only visible on the photo (so it's more difficult to scrap/automatically detect). A lot of made up testimonials with hidden comments. The company was supposedly registered in my country but there is no way to check if it exists (we have national public registry of all companies) as no relevant data is provided. I came across the website when someone from another country not speaking my language asked me about the page and if it's legit.
FB doesn't care. There is no way to tell them what the report is about (only that it somehow violates "community standards") and they don't care to check if the company even exists.
The only thing they are battling is negative PR as they don't care to take even baby steps to prevent literal thieves advertising on their service.
I don't think users really care either, as they keep using the platform. We're long past the point where I thought people would get out of the obvious cesspool they were swimming in, but it hasn't happened.
After reporting 1 or 2 scams, I wondered "Why am I doing Zuck's work for him? I should just let the scammers be, so everyone can see what festers on his rotten creation."
Heh, not that he gives a shit, the stinking pile bought him a $900K watch, amongst other things.
I think “battle” is a little generous given the actions Meta is actually taking. Battle implies constant action. Not allowing 32 strikes on fraudulent accounts before taking them down.
> The report estimated organized scamming operations—often called “pig butchering” groups—comprise hundreds of thousands of people, many trafficked after falling for fraudulent social-media employment ads. Kept in prisonlike compounds, the workers are forced to work under threat of “extreme forms of torture and abuse.”
> West said the growth of this nightmarish industry stems directly from the inaction of Meta and, to a lesser extent, its social-media peers.
> “If there’s anybody who could make a huge dent here, it’s Meta,” she said. “But there’s no hammer over their head.”
This is just f'ing evil in my opinion. Meta could do something that would make a real dent in this problem, but they don't because money.
Meta is basically like a giant leaded gas or CFC factory - they just rake in money while they spew this toxic crap that society has to deal with. If Meta disappeared tomorrow I think the world would be a much better place, and despite some issues I may have with other companies, I really can't say that about any of the other Big Techs.
After reading "Careless People" when a statement comes out from Meta asserting "efforts" regarding any problem I can only think of one and only one thing: it's a lie and they don't give a s*it about it.
I overheard someone's tiktok person berating their followers for giving money to people on the internet.
Apparently these same scammers are creating fake profiles of other people on tiktok as well and then friending and convincing people they should send money for this reason or that..
And similar to the article mentioning the half price ad guy getting irate customers, people were coming to this tiktok person' profile and asking for money back and then being shocked it was not the same person.
If this continues, people may actually stop sending money to people on the internet completely and not trust anything digital.
"send money to people" - WTF is even that? It doesn't sound like shopping for products or services, rather just emotional donations.
Maybe I am too old at this point but I have yet to meet a single 'influencer' (lol, what an idiotic term to be polite but maybe its insulting on purpose to all involved) worth a dime or my time. Quality of life and happiness lie elsewhere, ie actually doing and experiencing things rather than watching others do it.
An elderly friend of my partner's family had her Facebook account hacked some time ago. Every so often, I get a friend request from an account using her avatar with the same name, but with some characters appended or some slight different spelling.
When this happens, I submit a report to Facebook and a few days later I get a message from Facebook telling me they have reviewed my report and that they've ruled that the account is not in breach of their rules.
Any lawsuit or quagmire they get embroiled in has very little sympathy from me.
I report a lot of ads some that have direct links to bank phishing sites and they seldomly get removed most of the time I get a canned we found nothing wrong with the ad response.
Is Meta still has puritain as in the past ? Do they still strike down any content that shows a hint of female skin ?
Is so, it's even more baffling that they can't strike down content with drugs.
But as the other comment say, it's hard to assume good faith from Meta - given that the scammers are paying them to display the ads.
At some point, a prosecutor will start to consider them part of a drug dealing scheme. Zuck escorted by DEA agents would make for one hell of a photo op.
Practically all ads I get on Facebook are crypto scams that use AI-generated videos of politicians from my country to convince you. For ads where the page information section is available, all of them are published from the third world. I have no idea why someone from “Bangladesh” is allowed to create an ad that targets Germany and Germany only.
This is also maybe why a lot of people cant open a FB account without getting immediately banned and demanding you either send id or take a selfie video to prove you are human.
I'm skeptical. I don't think they are really battling scams at Meta. There have been scams all over their platforms for a decade or more. This story is about trying to create the sense that they are working hard on the problem while they deliberately under invest and fail to solve it.
I see this tactic over and over. Overstate the problem your industry faces while you divert money away from solving it. Because propagandizing, buying political support, and so on, is cheaper than being a good actor in your business.
When you've got a scammer at the very top of the of the country, is this not to be expected? Do as they do! Everyone with the same kind of arrogant buffoon personality as Trump will be emboldened, along with the conmen who can smell rube-opportunity from the other side of the street.
This is why responsible people, or those that can maintain at least a veneer of being able to handle adult responsibilities, are required at the top of the chain for any country (and organisation that actually wants to be somewhat sustainably run). THey're meant to set a standard.
Meta can absolutely block most of the scams. Evidence: They block so many things that aren't scams. And they have a report button for scams. Nobody can convince me they don't have enough human-power to review all the things.
They apparently choose not to, because it improves engagement, or something. Periodically, they have to release this PR pretending it's not their choice, to keep the heat off the question of why they choose the way they do.
Remember the time they enabled a genocide to happen, pretended they had no idea what was going on, but internal documents were leaked showing they knew what was going on, and intentionally chose to allow it?
plantain|9 months ago
Paid advertising though? How is it I get Facebook adverts for drugs, with pictures of the drugs, or fake money, from BLUE TICK advertisers? Obviously zero review, LLM or human.
How is it that with paid advertising they can't have one human or even a savvy LLM in the loop spend one single CENT's worth of time reviewing the adverts?
lwo32k|9 months ago
matsemann|9 months ago
They're just happy they get money, don't care if it screws their users. The users aren't their customers...
pjc50|9 months ago
There's a reasonable argument that user generated content platforms can't survive being held liable for the crimes of their user. However, the advertising is a much smaller volume of content and they're making money directly from it.
quitit|9 months ago
1. reporting such advertising doesn't do anything,
2. nor the reporting of accounts that are directly soliciting such in messages,
3. nor policing of instagram accounts whose entire profile is just photos of drugs with instructions on how to buy them
It's farcical. It's also standard for these accounts to have tens of duplicate accounts which only differ by an incremental number after their handle.
55555|9 months ago
unknown|9 months ago
[deleted]
sanswork|9 months ago
Given the ability to shadowban from public posting and a few hours I'm pretty sure I could write a single function to block 95% of the scams. It would be one thing if they were dealing with complex scammers but the fact is they haven't even tried to stop the very low hanging fruit that you could solve with a few regexes.
650REDHAIR|9 months ago
Reporting illegal firearms sales.
The post and report in question were ~6mo old at the time of review and I believe had already been deleted by either the OP or a sub mod.
I got a similar warning (but no ban) reporting similar sales on FB.
They don’t care to fix it
laweijfmvo|9 months ago
RajT88|9 months ago
My wife opened a restaurant a few months back. We're paying for Facebook ads. The early months of operating a food business is burning massive cash, so we had a ~10 dollar payment get rejected on FB ads.
Something about this rejected payment enabled all prior ad campaigns we had disabled. We are still trying to figure it out - noticed it just today. We're in for ~85 dollars in ad campaigns for just 2 days.
Every stupid bug or dark pattern which makes a big tech company money does not get fixed. It will take getting hauled in front of congress to fix it.
kyleee|9 months ago
owebmaster|9 months ago
bluecalm|9 months ago
FB doesn't care. There is no way to tell them what the report is about (only that it somehow violates "community standards") and they don't care to check if the company even exists.
The only thing they are battling is negative PR as they don't care to take even baby steps to prevent literal thieves advertising on their service.
SoftTalker|9 months ago
netsharc|9 months ago
Heh, not that he gives a shit, the stinking pile bought him a $900K watch, amongst other things.
ggm|9 months ago
This wasn't some minor court case either: the person(s) have fuck you money to go the distance in the US legal system.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/article/2024/jun/19/m...
blacksmith_tb|9 months ago
janalsncm|9 months ago
edarchis|9 months ago
We all reported an obvious scam and been told "sorry, this doesn't break our standards of community, we know you're not happy but don't give a damn".
hn_throwaway_99|9 months ago
> West said the growth of this nightmarish industry stems directly from the inaction of Meta and, to a lesser extent, its social-media peers.
> “If there’s anybody who could make a huge dent here, it’s Meta,” she said. “But there’s no hammer over their head.”
This is just f'ing evil in my opinion. Meta could do something that would make a real dent in this problem, but they don't because money.
Meta is basically like a giant leaded gas or CFC factory - they just rake in money while they spew this toxic crap that society has to deal with. If Meta disappeared tomorrow I think the world would be a much better place, and despite some issues I may have with other companies, I really can't say that about any of the other Big Techs.
Henchman21|9 months ago
liendolucas|9 months ago
stevenicr|9 months ago
If this continues, people may actually stop sending money to people on the internet completely and not trust anything digital.
jajko|9 months ago
Maybe I am too old at this point but I have yet to meet a single 'influencer' (lol, what an idiotic term to be polite but maybe its insulting on purpose to all involved) worth a dime or my time. Quality of life and happiness lie elsewhere, ie actually doing and experiencing things rather than watching others do it.
jazzcomputer|9 months ago
When this happens, I submit a report to Facebook and a few days later I get a message from Facebook telling me they have reviewed my report and that they've ruled that the account is not in breach of their rules.
Any lawsuit or quagmire they get embroiled in has very little sympathy from me.
BoredPositron|9 months ago
conartist6|9 months ago
phtrivier|9 months ago
Is so, it's even more baffling that they can't strike down content with drugs.
But as the other comment say, it's hard to assume good faith from Meta - given that the scammers are paying them to display the ads.
At some point, a prosecutor will start to consider them part of a drug dealing scheme. Zuck escorted by DEA agents would make for one hell of a photo op.
conartist6|9 months ago
unknown|9 months ago
[deleted]
jaoane|9 months ago
raverbashing|9 months ago
Same reason why FB is getting flooded with pages and pages of AI slop
cynicalsecurity|9 months ago
The first thing I was presented with was an AI image of some random group. I've never realised Facebook has become that bad.
gagabity|9 months ago
smolder|9 months ago
smolder|9 months ago
BLKNSLVR|9 months ago
This is why responsible people, or those that can maintain at least a veneer of being able to handle adult responsibilities, are required at the top of the chain for any country (and organisation that actually wants to be somewhat sustainably run). THey're meant to set a standard.
Been a long time since...
immibis|9 months ago
They apparently choose not to, because it improves engagement, or something. Periodically, they have to release this PR pretending it's not their choice, to keep the heat off the question of why they choose the way they do.
Remember the time they enabled a genocide to happen, pretended they had no idea what was going on, but internal documents were leaked showing they knew what was going on, and intentionally chose to allow it?