I have an elderly client who sends me links of stuff to buy all the time. One day it's one of these streaming sticks, the next day it's half-price stamps, and I tell her every time, please don't buy this stuff. And yet she does anyway, as if I was almost being mean and saying no just to say no.

So yes, I do want to blame the purchasers of these things, sometimes. To prove her point that her stamps were legitimate, she mailed me a card using one of her half priced (but likely fake) stamps and it made it through!

▲

Terr_ 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Perhaps they grew up in a time/environment where "if it was that bad they wouldn't be allowed to advertise it", and they're still using that old calibration?

▲

mhurron 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

My falther-in-law was less that and more, if I can get away with it, it's actually legal. Many know their fake, and do it because they can get away with it.

That was his justification for a satellite descrambler, they're sending me the signals, obviously I'm allowed to.

	▲	mmooss 18 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		I can imagine many on HN having excited discussions about their satellite descramblers. > do it because they can get away with it. Lots of people on HN download and upload copyrighted materials. Is it really different?
	▲	brewdad 11 minutes ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		There's an old Carlin joke about "If a cop didn't see it, I didn't do it."

▲

iamben an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I think that's a default for a lot of the older (and some of the younger!) generation, same goes for news and media. They grew up in a time where there was a practical barrier to publishing and (largely) laws behind you doing it.

So they trust literally everything they read. I still don't think my folks can fathom you can spin up a very real looking newspaper website with fake articles in about 10 minutes.

▲

mmooss 17 minutes ago | parent [-]

I find younger people are more likely to trust whatever they read - social media rumors, LLM output, Reddit threads - and older people looking for credible sources.

	▲	brewdad 6 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		When my kid was young I set up a basic web server and taught him how to make a VERY basic web page. I let him write whatever nonsense he wanted to and then we made it live. It was both a gateway into learning how the web works but also that literally anyone can post anything to the internet and it doesn't make it true. I like to think he's more savvy than many of his peers but we all have our blind spots.

▲

Pxtl 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Of course, what they're missing is that laws are for poor people.

Amazon will be notified they sold something illegal and will take it down and ban the seller who will immediately launch a new store under a new name.

The purchaser, on the other hand, will be fully liable for whatever horrible thing they bought.

	▲	an hour ago \| parent [-]
		[deleted]

▲

floam an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Half priced stamps work though, and nobody is going to prosecute grandma for counterfeiting postage stamps.

▲

zeafoamrun an hour ago | parent [-]

Yes they do. USPIS does not f around

▲

Pxtl 39 minutes ago | parent [-]

Oddly they don't ever seem to prosecute the sites that profit from selling them. Funny, that.

	▲	kube-system 17 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Makes sense to me, the only place I've ever seen them personally advertised are overseas websites.

▲

Scroll_Swe 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Then again I used to torrent everything under the sun and it actually rocks to have every tv show, movie, game ever released for free forever.

So is it greed? Yes, but I did it too so now that its more accessible I cannot really blame people.