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

[R-T-B]

Personally I'm going with guy at the pub.

He says he's talked with aliens, he must be enlightened.

 

[the54thvoid]

This is becoming lounge worthy. The horse appears to have bolted, so if nobody's talking about crypto scams, I'm thinking about closing the stables.

 

[R-T-B]

This is becoming lounge worthy. The horse appears to have bolted, so if nobody's talking about crypto scams, I'm thinking about closing the stables.

No objections, sorry for bolting. I'm a frog btw.

 

[A&P211]

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

I'll compromise at 0.42069%

 

[R0H1T]

Musk deepfakes claiming profitable ventures in crypto are about as old as Viagra spam emails by now. I imagine a lot of people still fall for them though

Well there was his quasi endorsement for DOGE so there's that

 

[R-T-B]

Well there was his quasi endorsement for DOGE so there's that

It wasn't really quasi, he literally self-proclaimed himself the "dogelord" and then pulled the rug on the whole thing when people bought into it. I'm sure him and his buddies made bank, but no one else did.

 

[de.das.dude]

2 words, who cares.

Only people falling for this would be those idiotic musk fanatics.

 

[MarsM4N]

I dont get youtube ads

Haven't seen a Youtube add in more than a decade. But according to Louis Rossmann most users do not use adblockers & get the "default experience", lol.

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.

You just need to follow the news, it's unbelievable for what scams people fall. Nigerian romance scams (I love you, just send 6k for a plain ticket); your uncle Todd from overseas died and you'll get his house if you pay the notary expenses; your daughter just killed someone with her car and you need to pay 30k bail or else she's going to jail (no money? we will send over our colleague to pick up your expensive jewellery). Just today a female "psychic" made into a news report, scamming people with fake blood filled eggs from the supermarket. See the blood, that's a clear sign, now you need to pay me big so I can save your sons life.

Most call those people dumb. But it's often not really dumb people, they just lack critical thinking skills. And it gets worse the older people get. There needs to be more awareness. But you can't force feed information to people who like to waste their time with watching gossip all day instead of keeping themself up-to-date. And if they just hand out 100k to complete strangers without any security checks, the loss can't be that big to them. A human/AI check for the transactions for older people might also not be a bad idea, in addition of banning ShoppingTV.

 

[the54thvoid]

2 words, who cares.

Only people falling for this would be those idiotic musk fanatics.

People like Musk are used in these scams because of their wealth. Nothing new tbh.

 

[Assimilator]

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.

Which is why laws to protect people against scams (should) exist. But big tech companies like YouTube have managed to abuse other laws to shield themselves from being regulated, and since a large portion of the USA's lawmakers are libertarians, new laws to address that abuse have not been forthcoming. Until or unless that happens, the internet will continue to be a libertarian hellscape and people will continue to be scammed, and the only defense against that will continue to be using your individual noggin.

Aside, I've always found it interesting that those who claim to be libertarians are almost never willing to pack up and move to a third-world country where the government is a failure and rule of law has broken down. After all, isn't such a society the ultimate expression of libertarianism? It's almost like most libertarians are massive hypocrites who are really just using the moniker to justify why laws shouldn't be applied to them (see also the quotes in my signature).

 

[lexluthermiester]

People like Musk are used in these scams because of their wealth. Nothing new tbh.

True. The problem with these kinds of scams is that they are very compelling and convincing given the public perception of the person they're faking.

Which is why laws to protect people against scams (should) exist.

They do exist, they're just not utilized the way they need to be.

 

[Ruru]

To be honest, I never thought that phishing would evolve to something like this. Here in Finland we still have scams which for example look like a legit bank webpage (or its url with minor modification) but the text is usually something straight outta google translate.

 

[TheinsanegamerN]

Which is why laws to protect people against scams (should) exist. But big tech companies like YouTube have managed to abuse other laws to shield themselves from being regulated, and since a large portion of the USA's lawmakers are libertarians, new laws to address that abuse have not been forthcoming. Until or unless that happens, the internet will continue to be a libertarian hellscape and people will continue to be scammed, and the only defense against that will continue to be using your individual noggin.

Aside, I've always found it interesting that those who claim to be libertarians are almost never willing to pack up and move to a third-world country where the government is a failure and rule of law has broken down. After all, isn't such a society the ultimate expression of libertarianism? It's almost like most libertarians are massive hypocrites who are really just using the moniker to justify why laws shouldn't be applied to them (see also the quotes in my signature).

Well your first issue would be assuming most US politicians are Librertarians, which, just, LMFAO no. They are not.

What they ARE is ideologically motivated to protect the interests of Their Side and attack the interests of the Other Side. The US legal system was set up to prevent one side from dominating law without cooperation from others, which is why nothing gets done. And thank god for that, imagine if this two party system could wholesale uproot everything that came before to replace with THEIR ideology.

"The only thing that saves us from bureaucracy, is its inefficiency".

Second, the government wont fix any of these issues, because spreading The Message is important, and actually enforcing things like section 230A or fixing the "harmful material" loophole would allow those they dont like to call them out for said Message. And since everyone is convinced that they can spread their own Message once elected, nobody is willing to plug the holes.

And frankly, how DO you use legal action to stop this? Scams happen across the world, from free market America, to socialist Europe, to communist China and plutocratic Russia. Nobody has been able to stop it, because sadly it seems for every competent person there are 10 with the critical thinking skills of goldfish.

People like Musk are used in these scams because of their wealth. Nothing new tbh.

Musk specifically is used because Cryptobros have this strange fascination with the man thanks to Dogecoin and Twitter. Kinda like how wall street apes follow ryan cohen with religious fervor.

Haven't seen a Youtube add in more than a decade. But according to Louis Rossmann most users do not use adblockers & get the "default experience", lol.

You just need to follow the news, it's unbelievable for what scams people fall. Nigerian romance scams (I love you, just send 6k for a plain ticket); your uncle Todd from overseas died and you'll get his house if you pay the notary expenses; your daughter just killed someone with her car and you need to pay 30k bail or else she's going to jail (no money? we will send over our colleague to pick up your expensive jewellery). Just today a female "psychic" made into a news report, scamming people with fake blood filled eggs from the supermarket. See the blood, that's a clear sign, now you need to pay me big so I can save your sons life.

Most call those people dumb. But it's often not really dumb people, they just lack critical thinking skills. And it gets worse the older people get. There needs to be more awareness. But you can't force feed information to people who like to waste their time with watching gossip all day instead of keeping themself up-to-date. And if they just hand out 100k to complete strangers without any security checks, the loss can't be that big to them. A human/AI check for the transactions for older people might also not be a bad idea, in addition of banning ShoppingTV.

Raising awareness of critical thinking skills may lead some people to notice things that they dont want noticed. Our education system gave up on teaching critical thinking a long time ago.

 

[RJARRRPCGP]

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

Reminds me of those "congratulations" ads.

 

[iameatingjam]

I shit you not I heard Elons voice coming from my dads phone " I can make anyone a billionaire" and I immediately thought of this. I don't know if he is that gullible but the poor guy is on a lot of meds so you never know. Glad I was there to yell 'Scam!'

 

[R0H1T]

It wasn't really quasi, he literally self-proclaimed himself the "dogelord" and then pulled the rug on the whole thing when people bought into it. I'm sure him and his buddies made bank, but no one else did.

I was being slightly polite about the edgelord, also didn't follow that whole timeline closely so

I'm not fan of Musk, fragrance or that person, but I'll go back to that great line from GoT & I'm sure you probably remember that ~

Power resides where men believe it resides. It's a trick. A shadow on the wall. And a very small man can cast a very large shadow.

Over the last few years I've kinda come to the conclusion that we've traded most of our freedoms & indeed liberties hoping for a better world "delegating" our powers to the (global) leaders ~ political or others in various sectors. You could argue in exchange for "order" or at least the illusion of order/peace we've let go of far too much. Elon's just a symptom of what probably the vast majority of us want i.e. a carefree life without thinking too much about a trillion other issues plaguing the rest of the world out there & yes that includes me! The ones in power will exploit whatever they can & wherever/wherever possible & most of us would likely do the same if we were in that position.

You can't fix "human" & I guess all roads will eventually lead here ~

Spoiler

 

[Ruru]

Reminds me of those "congratulations" ads.

Good old 90s and early 2000s internet... wonder how many prizes I won and how many times I was a millionth or something visitor..

 

[the54thvoid]

Power resides where men believe it resides. It's a trick. A shadow on the wall. And a very small man can cast a very large shadow.

Looks like GRRM got his idea for his fantasy from the Wizard of Oz.

 

[FreedomEclipse]

Nothing new. Usually how they do it is they livestream the entire video from hacked youtube channels except that is a slow process and requires some idiot YouTuber to fall for their initial scam so they can take control of their channel.

Since youtube has opened the doors to anyone or entity who is willing to pay them to advertise on YT. The whole process just got a whole lot easier.

Its the same thing when people started opening up these fake LLCs and claimed to represent record labels or movie studios and went around copyright striking peoples videos on YT to claim their ad revenue. No checks on YouTubes side were ever done to make sure if these fake media company reps were legit. And it wasn't surprising that most of them werent

 

[RJARRRPCGP]

Good old 90s and early 2000s internet... wonder how many prizes I won and how many times I was a millionth or something visitor..

That seemed to possibly carry on until the 2010s! I saw a lot of similar stuff with '00s internet. Even though I don't know if I was seeing "congratulations" popping up as much. But, I swear that more ads like that were popping up as time went on that decade.

 

[Assimilator]

Its the same thing when people started opening up these fake LLCs and claimed to represent record labels or movie studios and went around copyright striking peoples videos on YT to claim their ad revenue. No checks on YouTubes side were ever done to make sure if these fake media company reps were legit. And it wasn't surprising that most of them werent

This is because YouTube is a garbage company run by garbage human beings (Google).

 

[lexluthermiester]

This is because YouTube is a garbage company run by garbage human beings (Google).

So you must absolutely loath and despise the likes of Apple and microsoft...

 

[R-T-B]

Most big tech companies aren't really great at things like "ethics." Almost like you can't really trust huge corporations to not try and make money off you or something...