| ▲ | Meta made scam ads harder to find instead of removing them(sherwood.news) |
| 94 points by wtcactus 3 hours ago | 21 comments |
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| ▲ | lax0 11 minutes ago | parent | next [-] |
| Not to distract from Meta but I’m surprised Google doesn’t also get heat for this. A number of phishing sites win >30% of the auction on my company’s brand keywords and I see it on many others as well, especially in CPG and e-commerce. I’ve yet to have any luck getting Google to ban the advertisers. |
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| ▲ | akagusu 6 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| My first question in 2026. Why does such company is allowed to exist and harm society? |
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| ▲ | alsetmusic an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46446838 |
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| ▲ | jqpabc123 10 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Easy solution: Don't patronize Meta. |
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| ▲ | barishnamazov an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| The original source is from Reuters article [0]. It is profoundly ironic that Meta is apparently using cloaking techniques against regulators. Cloaking is a black-hat technique where you show one version of a landing page to the ad review bot (e.g., a blog about health) and a different version to the actual user (e.g., a diet pill scam). Meta has spent years building AI to detect when affiliates cloak their links. Now, according to this report, Meta is essentially cloaking the ads themselves from journalists and regulators by likely filtering based on user profiling, IP ranges, or behavioral signals. They are using the sophisticated targeting tools intended for advertisers to target the "absence" of scrutiny. [0] https://www.reuters.com/investigations/meta-created-playbook... |
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| ▲ | medalblue an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | "First, they identified the top keywords and celebrity names that Japanese Ad Library users employed to find the fraud ads. Then they ran identical searches repeatedly, deleting ads that appeared fraudulent from the library and Meta’s platforms." That doesn't sound like cloaking. They really are deleting the ads. They're just concentrating on the ads that the regulators are most likely to see based on what they usually search for. | | |
| ▲ | paddw an hour ago | parent [-] | | > The scrubbing, Meta teams explained in documents regarding their efforts to reduce scam discoverability, sought to make problematic content “not findable” for “regulators, investigators and journalists.” This seems to be the "smoking gun"... but it's unclear from the article what the source or context of the quotations are. | | |
| ▲ | billyp-rva 20 minutes ago | parent [-] | | > “not findable” for “regulators, investigators and journalists.” > but it's unclear from the article what the source or context of the quotations are. Good point, this quote could just be painting their actions in the poorest possible light. |
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| ▲ | raverbashing an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | So there's Dieselgate for Meta as there is Dieselgate for Honey | | |
| ▲ | croes an hour ago | parent [-] | | Both are American companies, not like VW, so not much will happen | | |
| ▲ | wtcactus an hour ago | parent [-] | | What does this have to do with them being American? You do realize nothing much happened to VW, I hope. | | |
| ▲ | epistasis 42 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | VW executives went to prison: https://qz.com/dieselgate-sentences-handed-down-1851782440 I do not yet know if there's wrongdoing here, but even if it was screaming bad, all US government enforcement bodies have been gutted and made completely subservient to the will of the president rather than their legislatively mandated mission, under a novel "unitary executive" philosophy. Further, that unitary executive is completely corrupt, and has already been laid off by Meta. Ukraine is a model of clean government with proper anti-corruption investigations and teeth compared to the US. | |
| ▲ | sgarland 40 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Jail time [0] and billions of dollars in fines is “nothing much?” 0: https://apnews.com/article/volkswagen-germany-diesel-emissio... | | |
| ▲ | wtcactus 27 minutes ago | parent [-] | | Those billions are because of the USA. In the EU, it was merely a slap in the hand. Annual revenue of VW at the time was 217B €. In the EU, they paid 1.5B €. So, 0.7% of their annual revenue for a scheme that went on for years. Granted, in the US, they actually did persecute VW properly, and they ended up paying close to 30B $. A much proper sum. As for the jail time, they arrested 2 from middle management in the EU. No member from the board or the CEO went to jail here. Is that what we call justice now? Specially when we want to pretend we are superior to the USA in that regard? | | |
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| ▲ | dleslie 37 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | The American Justice system. Many no longer trust in its willingness and ability to enforce the rule of law. |
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| ▲ | commandersaki 27 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I posted in the other thread but in case that no longer has traction I will repeat my question here: I'm still wondering what the Scam Prevention Framework enacted in Australia will do to mitigate this kind of stuff. https://www.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/viewdb/au/legis/cth/conso... (Part IVF) |
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| ▲ | zaphar an hour ago | parent | prev [-] |
| The original reuters article quotes Meta as claiming that making them harder to find by removing them from the system. This article doesn't offer any evidence to suggest that Meta is lying. This is lazy and poor reporting as far as I'm concerned. |
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| ▲ | billyp-rva 18 minutes ago | parent [-] | | Reuters: Restaurant hides unsanitary waste from food inspectors by hiding it in dumpster. | | |
| ▲ | fwipsy 11 minutes ago | parent [-] | | Restaurant seen throwing waste in dumpster after removing it from food inspector's plate. Insists there's no other waste on other plates, apparently without checking. What proportion of the scam ads do you think this approach caught? |
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