SCAM warning! Elon Musk deepfake ad for "investment fund" spreading

[iameatingjam]

who is naive enough to actively not use a systemwide aggressive adblocker? even the FBI wants you to use one to protect yourself and the first thing i did when my mom got her first tablet was installing brave with aggressive ad and tracker blocking, adguard for apps and telling her about scams on the internet.

View attachment 320696

Probably old people who don't have somebody to guide them through the process like your mom had. You never know the unique circumstances people are in, what kind of roadblocks are in their way etc. I use brave, and I try to get other people to use it all the time. But you know - I can't reach everybody. And not everybody grew up like us.

"You've inherited a diamond mine in Nigeria" comes to mind.

I have? How can I claim the rewards? I can pay in itunes gift cards!

 

[lexluthermiester]

I was just pointing out that the reverse-evolution thing didn't make sense.

Ah ok, fair point.

 

[PLAfiller]

@AusWolf thanks for the heads up. As you said even for an "internet veteran" I also sometimes take a second look on some ads. I am actually starting to wonder about paying for Youtube Premium to avoid the ads as they started cracking down on ad blockers. I've seen people mention using a Raspberry Pi or Lenovo Tiny (most often) as firewall/media center and ad blocker, but I don't know how to do that.

 

[AusWolf]

Scams are like evolution in reverse - they select for the least, rather than most, fit. Which is why I'm totally in favour of letting as many people as possible being caught by them, because seeing dumb greedy boomers lose their house to incredibly obvious and easily avoidable scams never gets old (see also: the BTC boom and bust). Schadenfreude is a dish best served piping hot.

Is that mean and/or unfair? Probably. But I, like evolution, don't care about your emotions - just your fitness.

Falling for a trap that seems obvious to you doesn't mean that one is stupid. Not everybody grew up in the digital world and not everybody understands it. Heck, when it comes to AI, even I don't understand it fully. The fake Elon Musk interview seemed convincingly real. If it wasn't about making free money (which is a fake topic on its own), I would have had no problem to believe it. Who knows what else is fake out there? This is not evolution. This is madness.

Besides, you can get scammed many ways. Who knows? Maybe your workplace's chosen pension company is a scam, and you'll only realise it when you retire and your whole life's investment is gone.

@AusWolf thanks for the heads up. As you said even for an "internet veteran" I also sometimes take a second look on some ads. I am actually starting to wonder about paying for Youtube Premium to avoid the ads as they started cracking down on ad blockers. I've seen people mention using a Raspberry Pi or Lenovo Tiny (most often) as firewall/media center and ad blocker, but I don't know how to do that.

Cracking down on ad blockers at the advent of the AI deepfake era seems to be the worst possible time. Google should thoroughly re-evaluate their ad policies if they want to see a penny from me.

As for ad blocking, people have said that resetting the cache or ad filters seems to be doing the trick. There's a whole thread about this somewhere here. I haven't had any problem with mine, yet (touch wood).

 

[Assimilator]

@AusWolf thanks for the heads up. As you said even for an "internet veteran" I also sometimes take a second look on some ads. I am actually starting to wonder about paying for Youtube Premium to avoid the ads as they started cracking down on ad blockers. I've seen people mention using a Raspberry Pi or Lenovo Tiny (most often) as firewall/media center and ad blocker, but I don't know how to do that.

Simple DNS blockers like Pi-hole unfortunately cannot block YouTube ads, since YouTube serves ads from the same domains as it serves videos. You'd need a network appliance that can inspect individual packets to distinguish between ad videos and real videos and dump the former (probably based on length), and that's a very different proposition.

Falling for a trap that seems obvious to you doesn't mean that one is stupid. Not everybody grew up in the digital world and not everybody understands it. Heck, when it comes to AI, even I don't understand it fully. The fake Elon Musk interview seemed convincingly real. If it wasn't about making free money (which is a fake topic on its own), I would have had no problem to believe it. Who knows what else is fake out there? This is not evolution. This is madness.

The beauty of the internet is that the ability to educate oneself is easier than getting scammed. If you choose not to do research to prevent yourself getting scammed, that's entirely your fault. And if you aren't capable of doing that research, you really shouldn't be using the internet.

Besides, you can get scammed many ways. Who knows? Maybe your workplace's chosen pension company is a scam, and you'll only realise it when you retire and your whole life's investment is gone.

That wouldn't be my fault because I didn't make the choice to use that company, and I didn't do it out of greed.

As for ad blocking, people have said that resetting the cache or ad filters seems to be doing the trick. There's a whole thread about this somewhere here. I haven't had any problem with mine, yet (touch wood).

I haven't had any problems with blocking YT ads for a week or so now - uBlock Origin seems to have come out on top again. Ultimately YouTube's war on ad blockers is one they cannot win unless they embed the ad videos in the original video stream, and that's computationally infeasible because it would require re-encoding the original stream for every different ad they want to run.

 

[AusWolf]

The beauty of the internet is that the ability to educate oneself is easier than getting scammed. If you choose not to do research to prevent yourself getting scammed, that's entirely your fault. And if you aren't capable of doing that research, you really shouldn't be using the internet.

"Educate yourself" is the lazy answer. Not everybody has time or energy to read about everything. Besides, even if you do, you can still get scammed. Like I said, I know about AI, I've watched documentaries and read numerous articles about deepfake, but if the Musk interview wasn't about free money, I would have believed it, it looked and sounded that convincing. Deepfake is real and it's coming to a web page near you!

Edit: Also, if you don't know about the existence of AI deepfake at all, then you don't know what you need to educate yourself on to begin with.

That wouldn't be my fault because I didn't make the choice to use that company, and I didn't do it out of greed.

Would you still shrug and simply call it evolution, though?

 

[AleXXX666]

It's also true though.


He was scamming people well before he bought and ruined twitter.


Yep. Isn't AI wonderful?

twitter was useless BS, so I don't really care.

Simple DNS blockers like Pi-hole unfortunately cannot block YouTube ads, since YouTube serves ads from the same domains as it serves videos. You'd need a network appliance that can inspect individual packets to distinguish between ad videos and real videos and dump the former (probably based on length), and that's a very different proposition.


The beauty of the internet is that the ability to educate oneself is easier than getting scammed. If you choose not to do research to prevent yourself getting scammed, that's entirely your fault. And if you aren't capable of doing that research, you really shouldn't be using the internet.


That wouldn't be my fault because I didn't make the choice to use that company, and I didn't do it out of greed.


I haven't had any problems with blocking YT ads for a week or so now - uBlock Origin seems to have come out on top again. Ultimately YouTube's war on ad blockers is one they cannot win unless they embed the ad videos in the original video stream, and that's computationally infeasible because it would require re-encoding the original stream for every different ad they want to run.

well, there are android YT apps that shows content without ads. Take the risk of your google account or watch the google scat on you with more and longer apps in yt videos, hmmm, tough choice...

also extensions for Chrome work perfectly, they block one, and there is another, lmfao

 

[Assimilator]

"Educate yourself" is the lazy answer. Not everybody has time or energy to read about everything. Besides, even if you do, you can still get scammed. Like I said, I know about AI, I've watched documentaries and read numerous articles about deepfake, but if the Musk interview wasn't about free money, I would have believed it, it looked and sounded that convincing. Deepfake is real and it's coming to a web page near you!

How long did it take you to Google the company name and find out it was a scam?

Edit: Also, if you don't know about the existence of AI deepfake at all, then you don't know what you need to educate yourself on to begin with.

Deepfakes are irrelevant, they're just the newest vehicle for scamming. Being critical of things that sound too good to be true, preventing greed from dictating your actions, and doing your research on such things; is and always will be the defense against being scammed.

Would you still shrug and simply call it evolution, though?

I would ask why you're so intent on making a point about my morality that you're willing to conflate two things that I've already demonstrated to be incomparable, thus being intentionally intellectually dishonest.

 

[freeagent]

Its crazy, I see deep fakes on all platforms..

So in 2001 or so I pretty much quit watching tv. Mostly because of commercials, then the dumbing down of society so I bailed on that scene.

Could deep fakes pull the people using the internet for entertainment back into tvland?

Doubtful.. will have to go back to books

 

[Arco]

Its crazy, I see deep fakes on all platforms..

So in 2001 or so I pretty much quit watching tv. Mostly because of commercials, then the dumbing down of society so I bailed on that scene.

Could deep fakes pull the people using the internet for entertainment back into tvland?

Doubtful.. will have to go back to books

Text ads on every page are inserted randomly. Thanks for the Nobel prize-winning idea!

 

[lexluthermiester]

Deepfakes are irrelevant, they're just the newest vehicle for scamming. Being critical of things that sound too good to be true, preventing greed from dictating your actions, and doing your research on such things; is and always will be the defense against being scammed.

On this we could not agree more, however...

thus being intentionally intellectually dishonest.

...this is a bit too far. I would not consider Auswolf to be dishonest, intellectually or otherwise, either in general nor in this discussion.

So in 2001 or so I pretty much quit watching tv. Mostly because of commercials, then the dumbing down of society so I bailed on that scene.

For the most part, I agree. There are exceptions though.

 

[Arco]

Whenever I see ads I go to whatever browser I'm using and install uBlock Origin.

I really don't like seeing them and watching MULTIPLE ads for a 10-second video isn't right.

 

[r9]

"You've inherited a diamond mine in Nigeria" comes to mind.

Me too.
I kept sending them money to cover for the cost to get the paperwork done but it wasn't meant to be.

 

[lexluthermiester]

I really don't like seeing them and watching MULTIPLE ads for a 10-second video isn't right.

It's not right even for a 30 minute video. Ads/commercials need to be limited to 2.5% of the total viewing time. More is intrusive, inappropriate and dishonest.

 

[PLAfiller]

It's not right even for a 30 minute video. Ads/commercials need to be limited to 2.5% of the total viewing time. More is intrusive, inappropriate and dishonest.

You had my curiosity, now you have my attention 2.5% where is that number coming from? Is it personal opinion or something else? Genuinely asking.

 

[lexluthermiester]

You had my curiosity, now you have my attention 2.5% where is that number coming from? Is it personal opinion or something else? Genuinely asking.

While I admit an element of personal preference, the playtime vs profit numbers for YouTube heavily sway my conclusion. On average, 2.5 minutes of ads per 100 minutes of content shown is greatly more than what Youtube needs to both pay the bills AND make a very healthy profit. However, without ad blockers, YouTube will routinely show upto 20 minutes of ads per 100 minutes watched, and sometimes upward of 30 minutes of ads per 100 minutes watched. This is blatant greed and is dishonest from the perspective of Youtube "stealing time" from us users by over saturating content with ads. To compound that problem, YouTube frequently shows inappropriate ads that are unsuitable for work OR home viewing.

That said, we're getting somewhat off topic. If further discussion is desired on this subject, we can discuss in a new thread or a group PM.

 

[r9]

You had my curiosity, now you have my attention 2.5% where is that number coming from? Is it personal opinion or something else? Genuinely asking.

I was more at 2.4% but I'll compromise at 2.45%.

 

[Dr. Dro]

As more and more society relies on the internet (some people don't even socialise offline anymore), I'm scared to think what humanity will become. Cyberpunk 2077?

We are headed that way. Fast.

 

[Vayra86]

@AusWolf thanks for the heads up. As you said even for an "internet veteran" I also sometimes take a second look on some ads. I am actually starting to wonder about paying for Youtube Premium to avoid the ads as they started cracking down on ad blockers. I've seen people mention using a Raspberry Pi or Lenovo Tiny (most often) as firewall/media center and ad blocker, but I don't know how to do that.

Just keep updating ublock origin on a proper browser. No ads here on Firefox with ublock origin.

Its crazy, I see deep fakes on all platforms..

So in 2001 or so I pretty much quit watching tv. Mostly because of commercials, then the dumbing down of society so I bailed on that scene.

Could deep fakes pull the people using the internet for entertainment back into tvland?

Doubtful.. will have to go back to books

Yep we killed the cable about 10 years ago too. Havent looked back... books, it is indeed seeing where series and gaming is going. God almighty. Books!

 

[evernessince]

The beauty of the internet is that the ability to educate oneself is easier than getting scammed. If you choose not to do research to prevent yourself getting scammed, that's entirely your fault. And if you aren't capable of doing that research, you really shouldn't be using the internet.

This libertarian ideal works if you apply it sparingly but it becomes a problem when you apply it broadly. What you get when you keep repeating "You got scammed lul, do your research next time" is a system where increasingly no one can trust anyone and doing your research becomes an increasingly impossible task as eventually everything requires research. It's a system that rewards scams and deceit.

 

[DemonicRyzen666]

who is naive enough to actively not use a systemwide aggressive adblocker? even the FBI wants you to use one to protect yourself and the first thing i did when my mom got her first tablet was installing brave with aggressive ad and tracker blocking, adguard for apps and telling her about scams on the internet.

View attachment 320696

someone needs to show that to YouTube.

 

[AusWolf]

How long did it take you to Google the company name and find out it was a scam?


Deepfakes are irrelevant, they're just the newest vehicle for scamming. Being critical of things that sound too good to be true, preventing greed from dictating your actions, and doing your research on such things; is and always will be the defense against being scammed.

So you're saying that even if a deepfake ad convinces you of something, you can still avoid being scammed by finding out about the topic before you invest. That's a good point, I agree.

I would ask why you're so intent on making a point about my morality that you're willing to conflate two things that I've already demonstrated to be incomparable, thus being intentionally intellectually dishonest.

Because whether you're being scammed by your own choice or by that of your employer, is not relevant in this discussion, in my opinion. We could apply the "do your research" point here, but even if you want to research the genuinity of your employer's chosen pension company, how do you know what to look for? Unless you're a pension expert by profession.

 

[R-T-B]

Doubtful.. will have to go back to books

Be careful... not everything you read is true either! You can't win!

 

[AusWolf]

While I admit an element of personal preference, the playtime vs profit numbers for YouTube heavily sway my conclusion. On average, 2.5 minutes of ads per 100 minutes of content shown is greatly more than what Youtube needs to both pay the bills AND make a very healthy profit. However, without ad blockers, YouTube will routinely show upto 20 minutes of ads per 100 minutes watched, and sometimes upward of 30 minutes of ads per 100 minutes watched. This is blatant greed, and is dishonest from the perspective of Youtube "stealing time" from us users by over saturating content with ads. To compound that problem, YouTube frequently shows inappropriate ads that are unsuitable for work OR home viewing.

That said, we're getting somewhat off topic. If further discussion is desired on this subject, we can discuss in a new thread or a group PM.

I agree. Also, on a relevant-to-the-topic note, they should screen ads before allowing them on the website/app. If it's not from a genuine source, it should not be allowed to show. Youtube is indirectly contributing to people being scammed otherwise.

 

[Frick]

While I admit an element of personal preference, the playtime vs profit numbers for YouTube heavily sway my conclusion. On average, 2.5 minutes of ads per 100 minutes of content shown is greatly more than what Youtube needs to both pay the bills AND make a very healthy profit. However, without ad blockers, YouTube will routinely show upto 20 minutes of ads per 100 minutes watched, and sometimes upward of 30 minutes of ads per 100 minutes watched. This is blatant greed, and is dishonest from the perspective of Youtube "stealing time" from us users by over saturating content with ads. To compound that problem, YouTube frequently shows inappropriate ads that are unsuitable for work OR home viewing.

Communist, wanting to rob corpohumans of their profits like that, thus limiting their freedoms. Don't you like freedom?

Be careful... not everything you read is true either! You can't win!

Personally I'm going with guy at the pub.