From the article:

> This is especially true among younger people who are digitally savvy but less financially literate.

> People ages 18-to-39 were more than twice as likely to report losing money to social media scams as older adults last year.

Seems like maybe we should be protecting the "young know-it-alls" from themselves?

Do the same rules apply to slot machines and carnival games? Should we make those illegal also because people fall for them? Is it victim blaming to say "you know what you're getting into when you walk into a casino"?

They’re already heavily regulated, the machines inspected, odds posted and support available. You can’t do it online due to the increased risk. And casinos are few, far between, outside of most population centers, and broadly not easy to get to for most people.

If publicly traded companies started putting their treasuries into Caesar’s chips, you bet we’d see more regulation.

We aren't talking about that though, we are talking about whether someone who falla for a scam bears any responsibility for that, at least in this thread started by the parent comment. When you walk into a building with a big sign above it that says "warning: scams ahead" can we really say "blaming the people that walked in here is unequivocally wrong"?

Seems like your lede is “why not victim blame, honestly? Should we really ignore what she was wearing when she walked down that back alley?”

This isn’t an argument that I think is particularly worth entertaining. People should exercise due caution at all times appropriate to their surroundings. However if a criminal robs them it’s the criminals fault.

It's always the criminal's fault. But we aren't trying to blame the criminal in here, we are trying to blame the infrastructure the criminal used. It's a false dichotomy.

If the main thing an infrastructure enables is crime, then it’s ok to blame that infrastructure. For instance if there’s a network of tunnels under the border used exclusively for smuggling, that’s bad infrastructure.

Our reaction wouldn’t be, well, let’s arrest the criminals but leave those tunnels, the tunnels did nothing wrong!!

Doing so would simply give the next criminal a head start.

This is a great analogy for crypto. Sure once in a while an asymlum seeker may get through too, but overwhelmingly it’s narcos and Bolivian marching powder. So we blow up the tunnels.

It's not that great an analogy actually.

It's not about the main thing an infrastructure enables, it's about what the infrastructure is designed for. Tunnels under the border are specifically there to smuggle. Highways are there to do move anything you want, including illegal activity, which is policed separately.

And the asylum seekers and Bolivian marching powder examples are good to address the main point here as well. Does the cokehead share any blame in using coke? Is that victim blaming? Should asylum seeking be illegal?

Was bitcoin created to break the law? In some ways. But it was designed to facilitate commerce without regard for legality. It's not like a smuggling tunnel, it's like a highway. And it's like that because sometimes you want to smuggle something, like asylum seekers, but you want it to serve legitimate purposes also. So not a very good analogy at all.

This is a tortured reading.

> It's not about the main thing an infrastructure enables, it's about what the infrastructure is designed for.

It's not at all, what it was originally designed for is irrelevant, the question is what it's being used for.

> Does the cokehead share any blame in using coke? Is that victim blaming? Should asylum seeking be illegal?

These are all utterly aside the point. These are matters of law. Law governs. Infrastructure which facilitates that is better than infrastructure which does not. Infrastructure that makes breaking the law easy is worse than one that does not.

> Was bitcoin created to break the law? In some ways.

Again intent is completely irrelevant except for the prosecution of those doing the creation.

Because cryptocurrency is slower, less efficient, more volatile, and incorporates dramatically more counter-party risk than classic payment methods it self-selects primarily for the criminal activity. It's useful as a payments system of last resort in certain cases but that's dwarfed by the illicit use which is in turn dwarfed by speculative use. It actually creates roughly zero value.

> It's not at all, what it was originally designed for is irrelevant, the question is what it's being used for.

Then surely you should be able to demonstrate your point with some analogy other than "a smuggling tunnel."

> These are all utterly aside the point.

No, they are the point. This thread was about victim blaming. And you brought up asylum seekers, broadening the discussion to include whether legality should apply at all, or whether we should consider ethical use of a tool regardless of legality. I'm not bringing anything new up in this discussion, I'm only replying directly to points made.

> Infrastructure that makes breaking the law easy is worse than one that does not.

Even if that infrastructure primarily serves (or was created to serve, you choose) the purpose of smuggling, for example, asylum seekers?

Your entire point in this comment seems to be "everything you bring up is irrelevant" which begs the question, why are we even having this discussion at all?

> Then surely you should be able to demonstrate your point with some analogy other than "a smuggling tunnel."

I don't feel I need to. I think it's pretty apt.

> ...broadening the discussion to include whether legality should apply at all...

I didn't do that, you did. I maintain legality is society's decision to make, and that infrastructure should serve society's goals. Infrastructure that makes it dead easy to undermine societies goals is not something I want to encourage.

> Even if that infrastructure primarily serves (or was created to serve, you choose) the purpose of smuggling, for example, asylum seekers?

This is why I suggested it was a tortured reading.

Again, it only really matters what it's actually used for. Asylum seekers need not be smuggled through tunnels because it is lawful to apply for asylum at a port of entry. You show up and ask for it.

Slot machines are heavily regulated to ensure some level of fairness.

Yes, you will "fairly" lose all your money to games designed to be as addictive as possible. Sure the odds are regulated and posted but they are always against you and the advertising around them makes it seem like you can't lose.

They're actually regulated to be completely unfair. Any regulation ensures no randomness in results. You're guaranteed a percentage loss due to regulation. When you walk into a casino you're wittingly consenting to being scammed.