I used to tell a joke back in the eighties, what’s the difference between an outlaw biker and a cop? The length of their hair. Facebook is the cop.
A major retailer named Sam Ash went out of business recently and the scams flooded in on Facebook offering huge clearance discounts. One account I looked at literally changed their name to Sam Ash and pointed to a shop offering merchandise at ridiculously low prices from guitars to synthesizers in between photos of their children, presumably in Africa.
I had been reporting these ads on Facebook for years. My reports were all followed up with “we are not removing this ad” or “that does not go against our community guidelines”. I got more ads where the shop address changed from samashmusicshop.com to sammusicius.shop, I assume there are more. They are all the same site with different addresses and maybe hooks into PayPay. Maybe it’s the same scammer, who knows? How many ‘known’ scams have I reported? Many. How many scams were removed? Zero.
My point? Facebook seems to not care that scammers are operating on their site. Other members were posting about these scams to warn their friends and yet the ads remain. Sam Ash is not even operating any longer. How hard is it to validate a web-site address or the fact that multiple Facebook accounts are posing as Sam Ash and sending out ads on their platform?
Looking around, I could not find a way to report this activity on PayPal at all. They don’t want to know about thieves using their services to steal from PayPal’s customers.
Doing a little research I found email addresses associated with a couple of these scammers on hotmail and gmail. I did not find a way to report these addresses. I only found phishing or spam.
Out of all these scam ads appearing on my wall, Facebook refuses to remove any of them? Is that how they feel about their customers? I reported many bait and switch ads. Meta refused to take those down as well. WTF?
Rarely sexually explicit videos rolled across my video feed. I went down that rabbit hole, unfortunately. Watching even a portion of these shorts gets you more sexual content. Quick flashes of vaginas and breasts seem to be within Facebook’s family acceptable content. Some girls did not look old enough to create that type of content. I guess they don’t care about that either.
Now, I am not a prude and have no problem with people making money off that type of content or consuming it, but some of that video crosses the line for Social Media. Personally, I don’t want it and don’t want to visit porn sites or Only Fans. In the end, it was easier to just hide or ignore it as Facebook isn’t going to do anything.
Even some ads on YouTube are misleading. Have seen the plug-in wall heater, which is somehow invented by multiple people, to challenge the gas companies? Complete fabrication. Those products are from China. Shameful.
As long as these companies are making money, they don’t seem to care. Scams, misinformation, and deceptive business practices are perfectly acceptable on these platforms. In my opinion this makes social media and big tech. enablers. I simply decided to delete my accounts and end my use of their services.
More news on this shit company.
Tech. junkie, artist, coder, and supporter of open source.
