Scam culture news link dump

Previously: Scam culture is everywhere

Lawsuit alleges Sony investigated WPP’s media operation and said it ran a ‘global crime scene’, WPP seeks to seal ‘highly confidential and sensitive’ client information from lawsuit with former exec by Lara O’Reilly. (This may be a common pattern. ICYMI: Meta tolerates rampant ad fraud from China to safeguard billions in revenue.)

Why does everything feel like a scam? by Hanna Horvath. (I thnk I know this one. As the IT industry ran out of ideas, but had to keep growing anyway, they filled in the gaps with crime. Phoebe Gates and Sophia Kianni reportedly knew Phia was ‘cookie stuffing’ for months.)

8 thoughts on “Who’s Tracking You? Use This New Service to Find Out” by Brian Krebs. A powerful and free new service called DecryptAds scrapes and correlates this adtech data and makes it simple to quickly learn a great deal about the entities that are tracking you. (This is a good start. What’s harder is figuring out the ML “inferences” about whether you’re a person in immediate need of the product, or a bargain hunter with more options.)

Separating AI’s Technological Problems from Its Capitalism Problems by Bruce Schneier. The question is not whether it is possible to develop AI in a non-exploitative way, or even whether we can trust AI companies to act in the public interest. The question is whether we will recognize that our existing social and economic systems are failing to achieve these outcomes, and whether we can act in time to make structural change. (A big part of the problem is the extent to which “AI” investors and execs see themselves as post-capitalist: a cognitive elite capable of ML-assisted economic central planning with better judgment than old-fashioned markets. More: reinventing Gosplan)

Be a Rube. by George Tannenbaum. I noticed the Times had told the story with six or seven cartoonish pictures and a few hundred words of copy. The New York water system is one of the most-complex infrastructures in the world. If it can be explained this simply, why can’t we do the same when we’re selling AI, or data migration, or Quantum, or whatever? (Maybe a clear explanation would be not so helpful? The More People Learn About AI, the More They Want It Out of Their Lives)

Federal lawsuit accuses four major publishers of extorting article processing charges The case, which became unsealed July 30, claims Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley and Informa forced U.S. research institutions to submit false claims to the government for reimbursement through article fees up to 10 times the cost of processing the articles.

AI is Removing Bottlenecks to Effective Content Moderation at Scale by Dave Willner. When platforms don’t prevent this kind of harm, it’s clear that it is no longer because the problem is technically hard. It’s because they’ve decided not to. (I agree: but I want to turn people into dinosaurs)

Reddit ads pose as news stories to promote AI investment scams by Chance Townsend. The promoted posts redirect users to cloned news websites designed to closely mimic the appearance of legitimate publishers, where fabricated articles, invented testimonials, and fake profit screenshots are used to build false credibility. (Why are ad blocker users happier than non-users? Some possibilities: picking up cheap shoes in front of a steamroller)