I’m fine with a war on scammers getting out of control to the point where bombs are being dropped on scammers call centres.
They are the modern Hostis humani generis
They are the modern Hostis humani generis
> ... lured to countries through fake job adverts but are instead forced to work in scam call centers, pushing cryptocurrency investments, as well as work-from-home, lottery, romance, and online gambling scams. All this, while being subject to "abject abuse."
> A report from Interpol from earlier this year said victims are also subjected to extortion via debt bondage, beatings, sexual exploitation ...
https://www.theregister.com/2023/12/08/human_trafficking_for...
and:
https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/hundreds-thousand...
For what it's worth, I can get them to hang up immediately if I recommend they join a trade union.
Hopefully the suggestion gave them an idea to reflect on later — I don't know of anything better that can be done when on the receiving end of a phone call.
The very fact that he didn't hangup, that he felt he had to explain away his guilt to me (a few times) shows that he himself wasn't convinced of his rationalization and that he himself believed he was doing something wrong. I can only hope that the guilt gnawed its way into his conscious and that the worm that never dies led him to rethink his life and to pick up some honest work.
May the guilty lose sleep, and may their ill-gotten goods taste of ash, and thus be led to remorse and reform and the righteous path. This is love of neighbor.
I'm glad you broke free eventually :-)
> even when the controller is not there
That's good to know, don't think I knew about that
So yes, if you know someone who is a victim in a controlling relationship, then gently speak truth to them, don't push too hard, but be ready to give them meaningful help as soon as they come to their senses and ask for it.
On the other hand, the examples people commonly share of where someone contacts a knowing scammer to appeal to their humanity, is that the scammers laugh at their victims — so if the people on the phone are the villains, then I think them hanging up immediately may cause more emotional pain than the stream of expletives they're used to.
Regardless, it saves me time.
This approach may not be so useful now that GenAI, both LLMs and synthetic voices, are getting good.
They are getting REALLY good, it is the old "it is photoshopped" except with sound. The problem though is not being able to differentiate, especially not the people scammers usually target (the elderly).
You cannot believe your own eyes AND ears now, sadly. It might sound dramatic, but it takes "trust no one and nothing" to a whole new level.
I expect that, at some point in my lifetime, bio-printing and tissue culture will probably reach the point we can't even have trust in real life, not even with fingerprints and a DNA test.
Will this happen before or after we become post-scarcity? I don't know.
Also literal slaves working together, even if you'd not call it a union: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haitian_Revolution
Is Musk a scammer? Bitcoin? The commission Apple charges on the App Store? The Fortnight monetisation system? Facebook's claim to be able to accurately target adverts? Vaccines and masks? OpenAI?
People on this website have said so about each of those examples.
That is why it's bad to go down that path.
It is, at least hypothetically, possible to define "scammer" clearly enough that the more egregious and clear-cut types are taken care of more expeditiously.
Not sure if there's a way to actually enforce that better, but "it is possible to disagree over whether some things are scams" is not the same as "there's no way to agree on whether anything is a scam".
In this specific case, when it comes to vigilantes in particular? Then no. I think that a society which allows it will end up somewhere between lynching and anarchy.
Better law enforcement, which does not even have to mean "more laws"? Good. Batman wannabes? Bad.
Until the REAL scammers are brought down, people will take actions into their own hands.
If the question's answer was obvious and resolving false then none would have been described thusly, if it was obvious and resolving true then you wouldn't be denying it.
Merely asserting that they are not, in your opinion (though hey, look at those legal cases they have between them…) does nothing to remove the fact that they have been called this.
It also does nothing to help with the lack of legitimacy of vigilantes. Nor, in this case, jurisdiction: part of the problem here is international cooperation, because right now the USA (where the victim is) and China (where the gang is) are a bit chilly towards each other.
> people will take actions into their own hands.
Amateurs sending a bomb their way? That's one way to describe how WW1 started.
People here will lament about the exploited H1Bs causing literal genocides at Meta until the cows come home, but literally other any person working a job they don’t necessarily like and in a living situation that’s undoubtedly worse deserve to be literally bombed because they sent you a text message.
Jesus Christ.