Hacker News

points by jhloa2 2 days ago | 0 comments

The amount of times I’ve reported obvious scam ads on instagram just to receive a “we found this to not be in violation of our terms” is so disheartening.

[–] gwerbin 2 days ago

Upwards of half the ads I see on YouTube are obvious scams. There's no way nobody at Alphabet is aware.

[–] sneak 2 days ago

Search for 4TB or 8TB USB sticks on amazon.com. You’ll find dozens or hundreds of $20-30 16GB or 32GB sticks with hacked firmware to report a multi-terabyte drive size, and dozens of one star reviews talking about how it lost their data. Those sizes, if real, would be $400+.

Of course they know. They have no civil or criminal consequences for engaging in a conspiracy to commit large scale wire fraud, so of course they just let it happen, because who wants to speak up and cause the metrics to go down?

[–] left-struck 2 days ago

In some countries where the consumer law is protective enough you can basically get those USB sticks for free. You buy them and then use a linux tool[0] to prove that they are fake. It also allows you to fix the flash drive to report its size correctly. Using the evidence you claim a refund. In my experience the seller doesn’t usually bother with a return which will be at their cost. So then you’re left with the USB and your money.

This also incidentally has the effect of making their business less profitable, so arguably it’s your moral duty if you can do this at no cost to yourself.

It really depends on the platform and your country’s consumer laws. Some platforms force a return which makes this whole exercise not worth it.

[0] https://github.com/AltraMayor/f3

[–] Groxx 2 days ago

Forcing a return does generally cost them even more though (costs of restocking, inspecting it, etc), so those platforms tend to penalize return-heavy vendors more.

So it still works, in some ways :)

[–] my-huge-pony 2 days ago

I thought my country is protective, but last time I've tried that I was supposed to return the scammy pendrive to some random address in China, at my expense. And the process was, only when seller confirms they received the package I get my refund. Needles to say, I didn't bother (though if I argued enough, I could probably get those few euro back).

[–] maerF0x0 2 days ago

Lots of them were using Jordan Peterson's voice for a while

[–] BoredomIsFun 2 days ago

I wonder why - Peterson's voice is not an exactly pleasant one...

[–] telchior 2 days ago

Sounds like a perfect choice to me, he had a cult leader-esque appeal with a subset of the same audience that would easily fall for scams.

[–] snek_case 1 day ago

I've reported creepy sexualization of minors (or content that was clearly intentionally designed to look like such), and got the same shrug response from them.

[–] erentz 2 days ago

In theory doesn't this open them up to legal action?

Prior to being notified they could claim they were unaware it was fraud. But after being notified of it, they have confirmed back that they reviewed it. Yet they continue to show it, making them aware and participating in the distribution.

[–] 8ytecoder 2 days ago

I bought a “smart” bike headlight from an Instagram ad. They sent me a regular old led headlight with a tracking number and everything. Instagram refused to take down the ad even after submitting proof.

I see obviously scummy ads on Apple News and now I see ads on Apple Maps as well. Ads are a bane on society - even accounting for free/cheap access to information we get in return.

[–] z3t4 2 days ago

The companies serving the ads are basically shooting themselves in the feet, because as more and more people learn not to trust the ads, their ad revenue will go down.

[–] tclancy 2 days ago

Hey pal I really can turn your garden hose into a pressure washer better than anything on the market.

Need a flashlight for jacking deer? Just got to click now.

[–] alex1138 1 day ago

The typical talking point about Instagram is Zuckerberg bought it when it was barely a company so it wasn't a bad acquisition and he's grown it and blah blah (and it's not antitrust. despite him saying in emails it can hurt us)

All I know is I refuse to make an IG account to get around their NEVER ENDING 'log in to view anything' popups. And the fact people loved IG and now hate it as Zuck makes more and more of the decisions

He's a bad person, full stop. He doesn't deserve to belong in the conversation of genuine internet pioneers