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Re:The fake Facebook profile industry by djsumdog on Tuesday November 14, 2017 @09:06AM (#15695030)
I think the saddest part of this is that they prey on people. Many of the peeps here on HN can look at a profile and say "spam," so it's hard to imagine the people who can't. The 1% return from SPAM that click on those links, or put in their credit card details.

There was a ReplyAll podcast episode where one of the reporters actually tracks down a shop in India; even goes there and talks to people who've worked at a "tech support" places which charges $400 to remove fake viruses they've implanted.

I think this is even more insidious because they're preying on people who may be extremely lonely or desperate. When you really think about that, it's really sad. It's either psychopathic or they justify it to themselves in some horrible way like, "These people are losers anyway," or "If we say the girls are underage, then we're only going after sexual predators." .. The same crazy logic used by the Ashley Madison leakers.

Re:The fake Facebook profile industry by laumars on Tuesday November 14, 2017 @09:27AM (#15695208)
I've reported spam accounts to Facebook - in fact I do so whenever I come across one. And on more than one occasion Facebook have closed the ticket claiming the account was legitimate.

If some of Facebook's own moderation team cannot differentiate between spam accounts and legitimate ones then what hope is there for others?

Re:The fake Facebook profile industry by LeifCarrotson on Tuesday November 14, 2017 @09:48AM (#15695424)
Facebook's moderation team faces far different incentives and consequences than you when checking if an account is spam. Which is worse - a false positive, or a false negative?

Facebook would rather leave 999 false profiles up and not accidentally close 1 genuine profile that just happens to look spammy. From their perspective, ruining someone's Facebook experience by deleting their account is worse than letting everyone else have a slightly worse experience (after all, even those fake profiles are generating ad revenue).

In contrast, Youtube is flagging, demonetizing, and three-striking channels left and right, using much more trigger-happy moderation (and even auto-mods) to control videos. They have plenty of content creators, but need to keep both viewers and lawyers happy.

Be careful that you know where you stand on these platforms, especially on important things like Amazon AWS accounts.

Re:The fake Facebook profile industry by pjc50 on Tuesday November 14, 2017 @10:34AM (#15695866)
Facebook will happily ban real people using names they are commonly known by if that's not their birth name. I agree that false positives are bad but they need to take a look at their prioritisation of these actions.

https://www.shortlist.com/tech/facebook-has-fixed-its-real-n...

Re:The fake Facebook profile industry by anpat on Tuesday November 14, 2017 @10:15AM (#15695681)
I am sure I will sound naive to you but what do you mean by AWS accounts here?
Re:The fake Facebook profile industry by LeifCarrotson on Tuesday November 14, 2017 @02:21PM (#15698260)
Amazon Web Services is a cloud computing service which, to put it briefly, allows you to run websites. You could have a physical server rack in a datacenter near you, or spin up some servers on AWS (or Google Cloud, or Azure).

A lot of very large companies use it, including a lot of Fortune 500s for their ordinary company websites, as well as major web apps like Netflix, Reddit, Pinterest, Spotify, etc. And of course Amazon itself.

Now, those listed sites probably would get a call if something were to happen, but too many HN startups are running on AWS accounts linked to the founder's gmail and personal shopping account. Imagine if a dispute over a return of some counterfeit junk bought on Amazon by some CTO suddenly took down all of Netflix...

Re:The fake Facebook profile industry by ahakki on Tuesday November 14, 2017 @10:41AM (#15695948)
AWS stands for Amazon Web Services. https://aws.amazon.com/
Re:The fake Facebook profile industry by pjc50 on Tuesday November 14, 2017 @10:35AM (#15695875)
Closing someone's https://aws.amazon.com/ account for any reason potentially destroys their business and (if not reversed promptly) loses data.
Re:The fake Facebook profile industry by ern on Tuesday November 14, 2017 @05:37PM (#15699874)
Anecdotally, Facebook seems to have gotten worse at handling fake account reports recently. I have a hunch that it’s because their moderation team has grown, and the average moderator ability hasn’t kept up.
Re:The fake Facebook profile industry by kolbe on Tuesday November 14, 2017 @11:33AM (#15696502)
Why do you need to impart any ethical justification? For millennia, humans have been stealing from other humans for their own benefit. It's not psychopathic in any exceptional sense. It's so prevalent that it's hard to call it anything but human nature.
Re:The fake Facebook profile industry by trevman on Tuesday November 14, 2017 @01:20PM (#15697667)
Intervention did a fantastic episode on "Greg," a man who had a large cash windfall that managed to squander it all on internet scams. You'll probably cry; I know I did.

http://intervention-directory.com/2011/12/episode-105-greg/

Re:The fake Facebook profile industry by jmcgough on Tuesday November 14, 2017 @06:23PM (#15700239)
It's easy to dehumanize people when they live thousands of miles away, and are comparatively wealthy.