> The documents further note that users who click on scam ads are likely to see more of them because of Meta's ad-personalization system, which tries to deliver ads based on a user's interests.

I see you're interested in scams, let me send more to you.

What does "Bombshell" even mean? That we're supposed be outraged at standard business practice amongst scammers? Meta is a scam operation, the "outrage" can start and end right there, and it begs the question, since we all know what they are, why do we even give them our business?

Facebook is a massive, ongoing criminal conspiracy.

Glad to read it wasn't just my ad reports that got a "we saw nothing wrong, we took no action" review. Pigs.

They even had the courage to ask me for a feedback opinion about my having control over what I see. I responded quite sincerely of course. Suines.

Color me not-surprised.

The longer this goes on the happier I am that I never opened a Farcebook (spelling deliberate) account. We use WhatsApp to communicate with family in Peru, but we had those accounts long before the company was bought out.

This summary doesn't explain that although there are ongoing government efforts to penalize deceptive third-party ad delivery, there have been no penalties levied against any content/ad delivery platform. The DCA shield provision is a big factor is shifting the blame for scam ads entirely away from the delivery platform and towards the ad creators. So, the supposed $1 billion fine is just a fanciful idea so far.

The current government efforts center around violations of the FTC Act surrounding unfair or deceptive acts or practices in commerce. But this is a murky area that would have to create new case history in terms of prosecution. Perhaps the greatest obstacle to all this is the reality that many of the ads across all mediums and delivery companies are scams to some extent. Some are scams that try to steal money directly, but many are scams for products or services that don't work. It's arguably obvious to many that a lot of the TV ads, especially for less popular shows, are for products and services that don't work or that are extremely overpriced. These are scams to some extent, and the TV stations should know this, but they need that revenue to survive. I'm not arguing in support of these ads and stations, but just saying that this is very widespread and has many nuances.

only thing

Scamming is a hard problem to solve entirely, but the scale of it on Facebook makes it completely unsurprising to hear that Facebook did the math and decided to optimize for free cash flow. Facebook's real customers are the scammers, to whom Facebook sells its end-users.

There's been a never-ending stream of advertisements for random $500-$5000 products, ostensibly priced at just $39.99. For example, there have been dozens of "companies" (probably all the same scammer) pretending to sell kinetic sculptures by Anthony Howe. They started a few years ago and I last saw one about a month ago... [1]https://www.facebook.com/antho... [facebook.com]

Last summer there was a batch of advertisements for aftermarket car-stuff brands (Summit Racing, BluePrint Engines, a couple others) whose multi-thousand-dollar products were being "cleared out" for half price. The scammers took artwork from the real sites and created clones that looked completely believable, other than the prices. I assume this happens in other niches too, that's just the niche that Facebook served up to me.

Then there are the scammers to that create buy-and-sell groups on Facebook... They attract some legit usage as camouflage, then post scams, and delete/ban the users who points out the scamming. I'm not in any of those groups, but the pattern is so pervasive that people are always complaining about it in the groups that I am in.

[1] https://www.facebook.com/anthonyhoweart/posts/amazon-is-hosting-the-scammers-offering-copies-of-my-sculpture-octo-using-my-vid/370322211218224/

Of course any revenue, including the shadiest one would be used to fund the expenses, but why not say that it paid dividends or bonuses for the execs or whatever lobby they're doing (I assume there's a fund for that (I mean a publicly known one).

So much so we elected a guy who partakes in them against his own populace.

Typed on my Trump phone (which hasn't shipped), time confirmed on my Trump watch (which is a Chinese watch marked up like 1500%) all while I bought Trump and Melania meme coins via World Liberty Financial which I decided to buy after increasing my brain capacity with the pills Joe Rogan and Ben Shapiro said were great.

Large scale abuse is guaranteed to happen, sooner or later, on large scale for-profit platforms. Feeling glad for successfully avoiding all FB ads for last 15 years.

> The idea is to dissuade suspect advertisers from placing ads.

no, the idea is to not interrupt the flow of money into the pockets of mr. buckerberg

> The documents note that Meta plans to try to cut the share of Facebook and Instagram revenue derived from scam ads.

the word plans should be enclosed in quotes

fraud: it's what's for dinner

and for facebook:

you'll come for the cats, you'll stay for the scams

Clearly, Meta is wasting its time investing in AI. It would get a far better return on investment if it redirected all that cash into finding better ways to scam. After all, scamming has been proven profitable.

> Meta's safety staff resolved to do better. In the future, the company hoped to dismiss no more than 75% of valid scam reports

they may aspire to do better. but how can they do so when

> safety staffers were ordered to restrict their use of Meta's computing resources. They were instructed merely to "keep the lights on...."

kafkaesque...

Is this supposed to be newsworthy? Surprising in some way?

There's still substantial room for improvement to maximally appeal to scammers as target customers but it's a great start.

I particularly liked the way sub-95%-confidence scammers were identified as those who would pay more and leveraged - most creative:-)

Correction: We've got our A.I. on you!