Hacker News Reader

Comment by ronnier | Hacker News Reader

> 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.

View on HN

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.

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.

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!

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

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)

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?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com