I mean, look, while patterns are easily recognizable, I doubt many give a close attention to those.
Similar to this site's issue lately. A lot have been asking (which is fine) and are mad (which is unreasonable) about their 'stories' being 404'd without warning.
Turns out, they agreed to this site's T&C, which clearly stated their stories and accounts can get terminated without warning or prior notice.
The purpose of this is when newbies would come and ask about these users. Once they see the names in this thread, at least, they have assurance that they are dealing with suspicious people.
Don't underestimate the loss of focus excitement can bring once newbie authors are placated by these people.
I don't disagree with you
morally, but we wouldn't even be creating a searchable database with usernames, it'd just be the same few spam messages over and over again. Sure, it can burst a new author's bubble, but I'd argue that if you're the kind of person to find a random thread on a forum concerning potential scams, you're not in the pool of people that are
likely to be scammed in the first place. If every author shared these messages, you'd just have a thread of a thousand screenshots with no way to search them, and the more systemic you get with it, the more akin to overstepping and inching towards behavior in the direction of doxxing.
Like I said, I agree with you
morally, but almost all the safety laws in the world are made to protect the most vulnerable of us. It will never be more realistic to explain to everyone
why they're being gullible, which is the crux of every scam, over the largest available entity setting protections. Your bank could tell you not to leave your card lying around, but that basic advice only helps people that would listen to it semi-religiously in the first place. Instead, you bank puts a pin on your card, has two-factor authentication, and a fraud hotline. If adults keep getting hit by cars, when we already tell
children to look both ways before they cross the street, is it more realistic to:
A) Tell adults that have clearly been living in LaLaLand the same thing,
B) Start a volunteer database of license plates involved in hitting people with their cars, or
C) Have the government implement new safety laws, guardrails, and regulations?
You can say all of the above, and you wouldn't be wrong, but in terms of effectiveness and what protects the most people, C is the clear answer. Scams are an unignorable part of life, and if you're not aware of and defensive against them, you're just a certain classification of victim to the would-be scammers. It's not necessarily the victim's fault. Our brains are different, people have different levels of trust and optimism, but the best way to protect people definitely isn't going to be warning them of the obvious unless it's done on a systemic level, like this thread or one like it being a
requirement to read before publishing. If someone telling you to look both ways before you cross the street is what saves your life today, then expecting someone to do it every day is unrealistic.
Where can I read about this 404 thing you mentioned? I noticed that just a couple hours ago and sent an email.
I'll bite. What makes you think it's A.I? We're on a website for writing. Anyone with a keyboard can type that much without issue, so I'm assuming you're not questioning the length. Are you saying that because I referenced a statistic? I'll give you that much, but who doesn't know at least
some stats. I happened to research this last month because I thought it was odd how many scams seem to target Gen Z, and yeah, turns out Gen Z is actually more gullible towards scams than Boomers. It's apparently
very easy to promise Gen Z
anything so long as it's framed with minimal work. That's relevant to this entire discussion, because a lot of people identify scams based off the "too-good-to-be-true" ideology, and that would be enough so that they either avoid the scam, or do their research, but for people that don't think like that by default, giving them the tools to identify scams is a mental rewiring that would be more difficult than a platform just banning these very repetitive spam messages.
Also, I spend a lot of time worrying about everyone pointing fingers at each other with A.I accusations. I keep timestamped notes on everything I write for that eventual day, but for a comment that I wrote while watching YouTube, I'm just gonna take it as a compliment that you thought it was A.I.
It should be a standard to have kids of newer generations watch at least a couple videos of Kitboga.
Had to google him, but this is the guy that hacks the call center cameras, and sends them cockroaches and stuff? Does he actually offer any advice on not getting scammed? He's entertaining, but for an average person, getting a random phone call and hanging it up because it's a scam is an entirely different realm than waging war against the call center itself.
Maybe Kit can find the data center that makes all the spam comments. Now that I think about it, they're so unoriginal between every platform, I'm wondering if this is even an organized effort or if it's just one dude with a bot.
