The Loneliness Epidemic Is a Security Crisis | Hacker News Reader

The Loneliness Epidemic Is a Security Crisis

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88 pointslxm74 comments

This was the topic of an amazing podcast Scam Inc from the Economist https://www.economist.com/audio/podcasts/scam-inc that I finished last week. It's subscriber only but absolutely worth it.

Key points are:

"Pig butchering" scams were developed and mastered by Chinese organized crime targeting chinese citizens first, before going worldwide.

The crime is industrialized with call centers with thousands of people working on this. Many of these people are victims themselves, doing this against their will, trafficked from all over the world. Most call centers are in asia/asia adjacent, but also in eastern Europe and near Ireland

Amount the scams steal is $500B<amount<$1T, more than all illegal drug trade in the world.

Money is then washed via incredibly clever ways including sports betting. In fact there is very heavy connection to rise of betting everywhere.

Final clean money is invested into real estate worldwide. Heck, my little island has fancy huge houses bought by chinese sitting empty all year long, likely from this.

Nobody is safe from scams, especially the older/lonelier people. And yes, it is very much a national security threat. The podcast called out Singapore for doing a government sponsored and very empowered task force to combat it. USA was called out for sitting complacently.

Listen to the podcast if you can. Great stuff.

MI is not a tiny island but I see your point, especially over the last 20+ years of living there. However, wealthy people buying multiple mansions around the world and letting them sit there idle is also a story as old as time.

Yep my mom got caught on one of these - paying to "save a vulnerable puppy" only for the dog to "have a medical crises during transport", etc.

If you have a loved one who is vulnerable:

+ Make it clear there is no shame in falling victim or seeking help

+ Teach them to "hang up and call back" anytime someone calls them and asks for money or passwords, personal data, etc. (This just saved her from a bank card scam)

Currently my worry is AI voice impersonation because my mom genuinely doesn't believe that AI can clone a voice. My plan is to have JFK call her and give her an impassioned speech about being aware of scams.

or vote for a bloody tytant who promises to lay the torch to a world order that seems unwilling and unable to do anything against this lawlessness?

At some point in the decline still being libertarian is like handing out fliers for dictators.

A tyrant is someone who treats you like a criminal. You're just asking for leadership.

Hang up and call back may not save you on some landline systems, where scammers are able to keep a connection open when the other party hangs up.

Can you elaborate? How can caller influence my landline connection?

They can't, unless they're physically down the street from you with a buttinski plugged into a junction box. That post was nonsense.

Legislation of all EU countries treat more favorably sports betting than stock investing. It both astonishes and infuriates me.

> Romance scams cost victims hundreds of millions of dollars a year. As people grow increasingly isolated

“People” is accurate but this is largely a male dominated issue. Men are targeted at higher rates and fall for these scams at much higher rates.

Men need to be taught that random unknown women will largely not message them at random for sex. It’s almost always a scam. These scammers are playing on the psychology of men’s deep desperation to meet women, and as it has become harder for men to meet women over the last decade, men are falling victim to these scams in large numbers.

I don't think this is true, I've only ever seen women talk about losing money due to romance scams on the news. Do you have any citations?

I work on this very issue at one of the world’s largest social media companies. It’s completely male dominated.

Fascinating! Well if y'all haven't already, it would be great if you could publish a study of your findings; what you're describing is basically the exact opposite of what I expected based on other reporting.

Gentle reminder that news reporting is not a representative sample of, well, just about anything. It's highly selected and filtered through several layers. The same is true of a survey of internet posts, or online surveys btw. It's very hard to get representative samples.

Strong agree, you have to keep selection bias in mind. But I would expect news reporting to not be the exact opposite of what was being proposed in the comment -- bias and all!

Likewise, a random comment by someone who claims they work on this problem isn't a very representative sample.

Well, it could be a matter of woman, in this case, being far more willing to come forward and talk about their experience. The male ego being fragile and all... Sort of the same that happens with domestic violence, there is a segment of the male population that have been victim of abuse, but when push comes to shove, anything related to that subject is don't ask, don't tell.

Men generally avoid posting their L's.

If it is older folks, it is more likely to be women who are unattached since: (1) women live longer than men, (2) women usually marry men older then them.

Source? A lot of the investigative reporting I've seen covers women targets. Maybe they just think women make better stories, but women do spend more time on dating apps than men. Women participate differently, but they definitely participate, and women are extremely vulnerable to emotional exploitation.

I work on this problem at one of the world’s largest social media companies. I deal with it 7 days a week for several years now. This is my life and it’s extremely sad as to how people are being exploited in these scams.

Why do avaiable sources claim otherwise?

Statista has a report indicating 53% of victims are men and 47% of victims are women.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1481218/us-online-dating...

Additionally, the FTC says women report significantly higher financial losses than men.

https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/data-visualizations/data-spo...

possible reasons I can think of 1) these are based on self reporting and it’s very possible men report at lower rates. 2) it’s possible that the scams happen outside of the areas where I have insights (social media)

Also, the specific social media network you work at would skew your perspective.

I would bet money that romance scam victims are overwhelmingly men on TikTok but overwhelmingly women on Facebook.

Probably not, ticktock isn't male dominated. Twitter and Reddit however, I could see that.

Tiktok facilitates primarily visual interactions and young people, whereas Facebook is less visually focused and has a much older user demographic.

So what are the ways people get exploited, or tricked? Is it a lack of knowledge on part of the people, are scammers just really sophisticated, or just one trick ponies that work at scale?

Any ideas on how to stop or how we can protect he people around us from these scams?

People don't think straight when they think they are in love. [1] In my family we've learned not to confront people directly when they are experiencing this (even when it was me) because it's a delusional state where people won't listen to you.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Love-Limerence-Experience-Being/dp/08...

I'd think Skype should just not let anybody DM anyone they don't know at this point. Bluesky now has an epidemic of 'girls' who send creepy DMs.

Why do you work 7 days a week?

"...women do spend more time on dating apps than men"

How is that statement even true, when there are often more men than women on dating apps, by a significant factor?

There are also studies showing just how difficult women are to retain on dating apps; behind the scenes, a lot more has to be done in the first 24 hours to ensure women match and meet someone of interest so that they stay in the pool.

I mean I definitely feel that among my age (late/mid 20s, early 30s) cohort plenty of women use dating apps and have lots of dates lined up, talk to each other about profiles they come across, and take communal notes on which men they've had bad dates with to warn their friends... It seems like using dating apps has become more of a hobby for some of these women, especially since a bunch of women in my sphere are poly. These aren't particularly lonely women though, as obviously I am less likely to encounter lonely people on account of lonely people statistically encountering less people.

It's a bit like how the average internet comment is posted by a "frequent commenter". Probably another case of the Pareto distribution.

Women spend more total time browsing. There was an amazing article on HN last week showing this but I can't find the link.

Don't confuse total users or interactions with time spent.

this one? (What really happens inside a dating app)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42921659

https://datingzest.com/tinder-statistics/

This claims tinder is 78% male. Not sure of the others.

Nobody cares about men's problems. There's a whole Netflix show about the Tinder Swindler but nothing like that for men. In the last 3 months I think I've dealt with at least 4 different scammers on dating apps. Those are just the obvious ones. Then you sometimes get the foreign women trying to get into the country.

Men are often suckers in dating, far more than women. I mean at least financially speaking there is no contest. Even offline it happens a lot, with men getting suckered for drinks, "foodie calls," and random gifts or financial assistance.

Age is also a factor. From stories I've seen in the news it tends to be much older women. From stories I've heard from friends it is young men.

Women absolutely make better stories.

I saw a crypto scam article with a fairly attractive girl who *could* of probably meet someone in real life. Instead she let a crypto scammer take her for like 300k. Her dad was scammed too and invested another 200k.

The entire story was shaped to make her look like a victim who could have never just said, wait you want me to put $50,000 into a random account and I've never met you in real life, I think I'm going to delete this app and talk to Billy down at Cafe.

There's no way on Earth, if some 400 lb guy thought he was talking to a supermodel and ended up losing his life savings would people react the same way. Everyone would correctly point him out as being an idiot, why would a supermodel want you, don't you know anyone who's that attractive is probably not on a dating site looking for 400 lb guys to go out with?

Although, what I'll never understand about these higher end scams is that at a point you can literally just book a flight to Berlin and pay a professional for services. These service providers have health care, access to affordable higher education, and arguably a higher standard of living than the average American.

Anyway, regardless of gender I think most media outlets are reluctant to look at the elephant in the room. The match group knows a lot of fraud occurs on their platforms, and doesn't take basic steps to ensure the safety of their users. It's to the point where you're much more likely to get robbed, scammed or worse then to actually meet a partner.

Most of our actions are driven by various emotional and mental deficiencies that we hide in our subconscious. Those deficiencies stem from three roots: pride, egoism and the lack of self worth. The three are really one upon close inspection. Dating scams play on the lack of self worth, a desperate need for external validation to distract the victim from what he sees in himself. A trip to Berlin won't buy you that, but an illusion of a relationship with a top notch woman will. Nearly all people have this problem, rich and poor alike, and you can tell that by how much effort they put into appearances.

> Although, what I'll never understand about these higher end scams is that at a point you can literally just book a flight to Berlin and pay a professional for services

Just gonna shine a light on this statement and say that for a HUGE % of men that I know in the USA paying for sex is the the same as failure. This is especially true for the least experienced men.

As someone who frequents gentlemen’s clubs, I don’t really get it. But I sure do SEE IT. It makes me wonder where this idea originated and what keeps it propped up? Is this idea what is preventing the loneliness epidemic from resolving itself?

What’s not to get? People don’t (mainly) want physical pleasure, they (mainly) want love and validation. When a woman has sex with a man without being paid for it, the subtext (even if protection is used) is “You’re worthy of reproducing.” It’s a costly signal to that effect.

Perhaps, but then what? Why not just say "we should educate everybody about this problem"? Why does it add something to point out that men are more victims?

Yeah if cute woman wants to have sex with you out of blue its either scam or you are so attractive overall that you dont need to look for women and its more of a nuissance that they keep hitting on you (I talk about balanced guys and not broken ones riddled with daddy issues who always sleep around)

What kind of male demographic falls for these scams the most?

My sister and I hopefully banged into our father's head saying almost everyone on the internet is a trash connection and never to be trusted unless you have met them in person. Do not accept or respond to any messages on your phone or on the Internet from strangers.

Overall I don't think he ever got scammed with us banging all that into his head while my close friends' father has been scammed numerous times. They had to take away his bank account access after learning of him being scammed. They did so cause they know he still would continue to talk & give money to these totally fake ...beautiful young people who said they loved him.

Personally i think it's best to treat everyone on the internet as scammer until they have proven else-wise. On dating apps I will ask to see if they want to do a video chat or set up a date in a few days or more once we've connected conversationally. If they don't they are a suspect scammer to me and I move onto the next (flat out then tell them i think u might be a scammer ..i am not and want to show you i am genuine looking for a real relationship). Tho video chat soon-ish via deepfakes won't be able to be trusted. I saw a Chinese nationalist try to deepfake ID.me (IRS's authentication system). Thus in person in a few days to less then two weeks to meet for a date is best to ensure real or forget it!

Recently I joined Tinder and Bumble and got more matches with scammers than with real people. I was not aware of pig butchering scams until I got curious about a young crypto-loving woman who helpfully taught me how buying and trading crypto works. Being inexperienced with crypto I just wanted to learn about the basics how to get started.

Long story short: After some time the woman suggested to try out some shady crypto trading website with a small amount which indeed made me about 50$ profit and everything could be successfully cashed out. In the next phase she asked me to repeat the same with at least 5k to make 100% profit.

Luckily all my alarm bells rang and I called it quits. However I can see how somebody less critical could fall for this. We need systems in place to prevent these schemes from succeeding.

> young crypto-loving woman

Your alarm bells didn’t ring here?

Alarm bells ring after the first like.

I know right. On dating app, of all places. Alarms should be screaming.

That's the point. You can't catch that immediately if you don't know what to look for. First the crypto part was mentioned much later. The profile was convincing. The woman said she is working as an illustrator and just mentioned that she does crypto in her free time. Also I know some friends who are also in the crypto space so it was for me not that unusual.

I met a woman who hit the "jackpot". Flew to India for "yoga meditation camp" where she met some Indian AI crypto investors. After coming back home she sold her inherited flat, "invested" part of the money into "AI crypto fund" and rents housing. I do not want to know what she is up to currently.

More and more I feel like online spaces are far more insidiously dangerous than anticipated. We have bots or malicious actors among the userbase explicitly to sow dissent and spin the quality of discussion downwards. We have algorithms that push content based on engagement, which isn't actually connection or anything resembling engaging with community. We then have online cultures that encourage lowering empathy for others and reveling when bad things happen to people who "deserve it", like "leopards eating faces" communities or punching women or whatever. I'm not being a centrist or anything like that but I feel online spaces actually socialize people to be lonelier by encouraging engagement via positions and activities that actively isolate us from each other, as opposed to genuine connections that come with say community service IRL.

I think the next decade will include a shift where we acknowledge that the web is a dark forest and we stop trying to block the scams/propagandists/malware/ads specifically and instead we start blocking everything that isn't signed by somebody we've met in person and trust explicitly (or somebody that they have met in person, etc...).

We're going to have to learn a new kind of hygiene.

Except that phishing means our trusted contacts will get popped...

Trusting people with poor information hygiene is a hazard. Tell your friends. Train your parents.

That's already here for me, and others I believe as the most interesting communication has moved to group chats. The open web is for advertising, and the best LLMs will be for information retrieval.

I'm a bit doubtful. You're seeing my words... do you have data on the transitive trust path between you and I? In the world I'm describing your browser wouldn't render this text unless it had confirmed that path decided that it was acceptable.

I'm exaggerating a bit, but the broad outline is essentially there already I think. The move to walled gardens everywhere (if we call this site a walled garden) is the first move almost everyone has made in terms of where they allocate attention. I think people will just move to smaller and smaller circles of interactions they trust (discord/group chats) especially if you don't need to query the open web for information anymore, and you trust an LLM agent for information retrieval / commerce.

I don't trust LLMs with the truth. I think they are an amazing tool for !!!generating!!! text; but they're wholly untethered from any sort of ground truth. Unfortunately what will happen, and I hate being right about, is that LLMs on everyone's phones will give dumbasses their own personal conspiracy/radicalization machine. You can generate all the text and images you'd ever want to give yourself the thrill of hate without any tether to reality.

I think it's more dangerous as a parasocial playground. You think you are making friends, but in fact it's a poor substitute and doesn't carry the risks/benefits of proper bonding with another human. This is independent of whether the other person is a bot or their communication is curated by an algorithm.

Can you say more about those risks and benefits?

Risks - you might be exposed to an idea that challenges you, you might be bored for stretches of time, you might think the relationship is stronger than it is for the other side and embarrass yourself, especially if you read romantic interest. You might have to alter your behavior in the name of social grace. You might lose that companion.

Benefits - IRL human companionship.

A system is kind of like an unthinking lifeform. It will adapt to find ways to make itself stronger and to grow. It will use whatever resources it has access to to and does not care about (or is even conscious of) the damage it does in the process. All systems are like a virus in this way. Social media as a system is just playing this out. The social media system feeds on engagement and use and, it turns out, that isolation and polarization lead to more social media engagement. So it adapts itself to make more that, the users well-being is irrelevant. Corporate bureaucracy, capitalism, religion even are similar. They may have been created for some purpose (that was useful for the people who created it), but once they reach a certain scale, that purpose inevitably shifts to simple self-perpetuation.

Another example is a charity formed to help with some problem which it initially does well at. But then over time the charity matures and more and more of its funds are devoted to keeping the charity running, paying salaries, renting office space, paying for trips, organizing fund-raising events. Less goes to the cause. The primary purpose of all the fundraising then becomes to cover the overhead of doing all the fundraising. The cause is a second order consideration at best.

Social media has matured from being about connection, information exchange, community building. Now its just to keeping the clicks and comments coming so the ad-revenue and data-mining can be used to cover the cost of the servers, developers, and executive bonuses.

I don't get how or why it seems to have gotten worse in the last 20-25 years.

I was a very online teenager at the end of the 90s and I have formed friendships that last to this day. Or at least staying in touch. And it's not just me, it's the same for a lot of people I got to know offline who have different such circles.

Maybe because it was just a smaller circle of people? Maybe because it was so not normal that people were much more cautious? Or because half of the online venues were run by hobbyists? Or because no companies and bots and people trying to make money were involved. Probably the latter.

I'm also a little confused, because I remember such common empathy-lacking rhetoric like demanding boob pics of any proclaimed female on the internet being common in my tween online years. Or sending shock stuff as a joke (2girls1cup, tubgirl etc). So its not like the internet didn't have troll-y cesspits. And yet somehow something has changed such that as a population we've been trained against forming human connections. Even 4chan organized against scientology once upon a time, that required at minimum real organizational labor and forming some kind of community action. I can't imagine any similar thing happening now.

IMO back in the 90s anyone looking to do harm on the internet was working alone or in a small group. That's bad, but not a system-level danger. It wasn't trillions of dollars worth of market cap conspiring against us.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffusion_of_innovations

Early adopters of just about anything are smarter and better than the people who come along later.

paypal brought us freedom.

Prime targets for state sponsored espionage. This is not a new problem but a growing one.

one person's evil espionage is another (significantly different) person's intercultural relations, albeit unofficial ones.

Mata Hari comes to mind. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mata_Hari

https://archive.ph/oFpT2

I just can't take the people who fall for these seriously

Not just the money part, but the whole online-only "long distance relationship" thing. Why would you spend hours investing your time in someone if there's no immediate plan for it to turn physical (doesn't even have to be sexual)?

It's a thing I see redditors talking about like it's normal or something

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