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Comment by tombert | Hacker News Reader

I agree that we shouldn't dehumanize them, and we should keep that in mind and not necessarily condemn the people Kitboga is actually talking to. It's easy to sit and judge someone comfortably from your cushy office job, and a lot of people aren't as lucky. Desperation is a horrible thing, and it becomes disturbingly easy to turn off your empathy when you feel things are otherwise hopeless.

That said, I think it's still ok for Kitboga to do it, simply because if they're talking to him, they're not screwing someone's grandparents out of their life savings. Whether or not he's talking to the person in charge or a victim of something absolutely horrible, they're still distracted from scamming someone else who might be more vulnerable.

Also, the people actually running the scam operations can go fuck themselves.

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Does your opinion change if, in the course of wasting their time, he puts them at higher risk of beatings or worse?

In the long run we want all these operations to fail. It’s sad that people will be hurt as these criminal bosses see their groups stop being able to steal, but it’s better than more people being recruited into them. That’s in addition to the good of preventing thefts.

I don't have the data, but I suspect a few thieves caught isn't a deterrent to the majority of scammers.

These videos usually end with "[x] has been reported to authorities" with a hopeless probability of law enforcement taking action.

The guy featured in this article is just part of the marketing arm of a bigger public awareness and enforcement trend that is (slowly) reducing demand, if you will, and making it easier to either find them or cut them off from communication services in the target country.

"Reducing demand" isn't supported by the article, anywhere.

The article's tagline is "Scams are on the rise -- and so are..."

I know it's against HN etiquette to presuppose openly, but you didn't read the article. Did you?

We're talking about something a bit broader than the article now. The article is just a fun personal interest story that ties into what I think is a more serious problem. Part of the reason NPR promotes Kitboga is to help its audience be more likely to ignore these calls. Awareness works in hand with coordinated Interpol investigations, FCC sanctions of networks routing excessive robocalls, and so on.

The article using catchy just-so writing doesn't mean it's the end of the bigger story.

> We're talking about something a bit broader than the article now.

I'm not.

If you have support to show these influencers are effective at "reducing demand" (which would go against the article's claims), then please share.

Here's a publication from the DoJ that talks about how public awareness reduces crime. https://www.ojp.gov/pdffiles1/ojjdp/178926.pdf

I don't know where you got the idea that the NPR article contradicts this as an effective public policy/public safety approach, but I won't ask if you read it.

I appreciate the effort and support public awareness.

That said, and FWIW, the content of your documentation is NOT from the DOJ, but from a non-profit in coordination with the DOJ [from 2000 and targeting the National Youth Network]

The DOJ even goes on to disclaim ownership of the contents!

> Points of view or opinions expressed in this document are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official position or policies of the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, BJA, or the U.S. Department of Justice.

Still, I will stand by the contents. I'm surprised to have gotten so much pushback about the concept of public awareness being related to safety and lower crime, but it's been good to think about it some more. Stay safe.

Maybe. But this is not unlike the libertarian ideal of letting the economy crash in 2008. It can create a tremendous amount of short-to-medium term suffering based on the faith that the long term outcome will be better. I’m of the mind there are probably better solutions that mitigate a lot of that downside.

I mean, that's really sad, and of course I don't want people to get beaten, but is the only way to stop that to give into extortion and have grandma be ripped for for $10,000 in the form of Google Play cards?

It's deeply unfortunate that people have to go through that, but fundamentally I don't think we should be capitulating to extortionists. If we do that, we're effectively creating a market for threatening and hurting people.

This is displaying dichotomous thinking. I don’t think the only choices are a) waste their time with vigilante justice and let them be beaten/raped/killed and b) allow the extortion and scamming to continue by capitulating.

What's your proposed third choice?

I've already stated it elsewhere in this thread, but there are diplomatic, regulatory, and educational avenues that would probably be more impactful than a few dudes taking it upon themselves.

In my mind, it's not unlike the people who half-block a traffic lane when there's a merge upcoming. In their mind, I'm sure they think they're doing the Lord's work, and it scratches their itch for a sense of justice in an unjust world. In reality, it slows everyone down and makes the system worse. Giving into our human biases for seeking justice can often lead to worse outcomes.

I am very open to something else, I just don't know what it is. Obviously this is really the job of the authorities to deal with, but they are either unable or unwilling to fix the problem.

What are you actually suggesting here?

ETA:

I should point out that I really don't think what Kitboga does counts as "vigilantism" in the classic sense. He's not going out to directly do anything outside of wasting people's time and reporting bank account numbers to relevant authorities.

>What are you actually suggesting here?

I'm just suggesting that the actions within the article make the situation worse rather than better. As you alluded to, there are other, more fruitful ways to attack this problem, usually related to systemic changes.

I do think his actions count as vigilantism since that term is applied to actions explicitly intended to prevent crimes. From TFA "those who aim to waste scammers' time otherwise spent ripping off innocent victims."

Sure, no argument with this: it would way better to get authorities involved. I agree with your sibling comment that it would be probably fruitful to increase some of the regulations around crypto. In fact that would probably help with a lot of domestic crimes as well...

But just to kind of play devil's advocate; lets suppose we educate people about this stuff, and it's extremely successful, no grandpa is selling his house to buy Google Play cards because we were so good at communication. Wouldn't those same people get beaten (or worse) in the same way that you're suggesting with Kitboga?

>Wouldn't those same people get beaten (or worse) in the same way that you're suggesting with Kitboga?

I think this underscores the importance of looking at this systemically. It's easy to think this is just a story about phone scams. Looking at the bigger picture, though, it's really about human trafficking. To directly answer your question, if we were able to solve the root human trafficking issue that allows these criminal industries to be profitable, then we'd prevent those beatings in the first place. In fact, some people running these organizations are already looking at using AI to run the scams rather than humans. Under that scenario, your educational outreach would be a huge success, but it does require working at the root problem first.

I'm all for increasing education on this, and I do think that would have some value, though I'm not 100% sure what this would look like. My mother-in-law's husband has fallen for these gift card scams multiple times, losing thousands of dollars, even after I've tried showing him some obvious and less-obvious warning signs [1]. Some people are just really gullible, for whatever reason, and I'm not 100% sure that education will actually help them.

I actually don't think we disagree very much about the actual solution to the problem. This is definitely bigger than a few Youtubers making scambaiting videos. It's going to be a brave new world with AI voices getting better and better, and I think law enforcement agencies are going to be pretty proactive.

[1] e.g. the IRS will never ask for payments in gift cards or cryptocurrency, neither will the police, don't just let anyone connect to your computer with Teamviewer or Anydesk, if you're going to be arrested they probably aren't going to do it over the phone, etc.

It's a dichotomous question

Sorry, but it really isn't. "How do I handle a scam phone call?" has a number of options, regardless if you're viewing it as an individual or a society.

Your quote is wrong, the question is "does your opinion change". Typical answers would be yes or no. What does dichotomy mean?

I'll try to be more generous with my description.

When I brought up dich0timous thinking, it was not in response to "no, that wouldn't change my mind" but rather "the only options are to capitulate to the scam or fight it in a way that puts someone else at risk".

There's a strange correlation between pedantry and dichotomous thinking in resarch literature. They are also over-indexed in STEM fields, so I guess it shouldn't be surprising when it's commonly encountered on this forum.

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