Comment by piltdownman | Hacker News Reader

Comment by piltdownman | Hacker News Reader

So the actual context of this is a long-standing feud between Meta and our elected representatives (and some prominent media figures) regarding social engineering scam ads.

You've probably seen some variant of it - a 1:1 copy of a reputable newsoutlet - in this case The Irish Independent, The Irish Times, RTÉ or Newstalk - with a purported video from our Prime Minister or similar which leads to a crypto-trading or forex-trading sales funnel. Simon Harris, our previous Head of State, was inundated with variants of the same script:

“In the nation’s best interests, we’ve carried out a full investigation to make sure it’s not a scam,” the AI-generated Harris appears to say in the scam ad shown on YouTube.

“This is your chance to change your life. All it takes is one small step: invest €250 and start earning today,” the deepfaked figure tells a press conference.

https://www.thejournal.ie/facetcheck-debunk-ai-scam-ad-deepf...

https://www.newstalk.com/news/social-media-platforms-see-sur...

The existing fraud and advertising laws cover these kind of scams. Because the bottleneck is enforcement, adding new laws won't make the world safer.

Except they don't - enforcement is circumvented by psuedo-anonymous users pushing illegal ad campaigns that revert back to inoffensive content or a similar cop-out by the time Meta/X responds to the report

https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/despicable-simon-harri...

https://www.reddit.com/r/irishpolitics/comments/1i1shz3/anyo...

Does this require a belief that it isn't reasonable for meta to control or even be aware of ad content they are paid to show?

Sounds like a criminal conspiracy between the psuedo-anonymous users and Facebook.

This is only going to change if prosecution is brought against Meta itself, which it looks like the "recklessly" clause is intended to imply. I look forward to Meta facing criminal charges for profiting from fraud.

What's the Irish equivalent of Hansard, by the way? Can we look up the debate?

> facing criminal charges for profiting from fraud

Amazon, too, but this seems to be "fraud that annoys pols," so I guess The Big A is going to be left alone...

There hasn't been a debate. The headline is not reflective of the facts. There hasn't been any agreement to fast track this bill, but the politician sponsoring it has said in a radio interview that (surprise!) he thinks it should be fast tracked.

The Dáil record can be found here, but there's nothing of interest in it:

https://www.oireachtas.ie/en/search/?searchType=debates&deba...

Oh for fuck's sake.

HN: "Ireland fast tracks Bill to criminalise harmful voice or image misuse"

TFA: "Calls to fast track Bill to criminalise harmful misuse of someone’s voice or image"

Call to action. Not action. And the call is coming from the bill's proposer! He would say that, wouldn't he? But what matters is if the actual government takes that bill further. If they don't, we don't need to care about what this guy thinks.

HN headline (possibly an earlier headline of TFA) is fundamentally misrepresenting the situation.

You can email the mod team with this explanation and get them to change the title.

Oh they won't. Vance will say a few mean words and threaten to bomb Dublin if anyone lifts a finger against Meta.

What makes you think Meta will do a better job of policing this than the actual police?

Granted, they might be able to crack down harder in some respects since unlike the police they don't have to worry about due process, but is that really "doing a better job" on balance?

The police doesn't have access to all the data for starters. Meta does.

These are public posts we're talking about, right? Or are we saying Meta should be cracking down on content in private communication too? (And if so, isn't that the same concern I just mentioned about due process, but for privacy instead?)

If we're talking about profiting from fraud, then we're talking ads. Which are semi-public, you only see them if you fall within the targeting bucket, which definitely wouldn't include "law enforcement officer".

They profit from regular posts too, since those usually have ads next to them. But fair point.

>What makes you think Meta will do a better job of policing this than the actual police?

Meta announce they will stop political/electoral advertising in EU, so this ios proof that Meta can do but we need to foce them to act, otherwise Meta makes money from all the scams in the ads that are published, in fact I remember Meta looked into the scam problem and decided to stop looking sicne solving the problem would reduce their profits.

Now in case all those well paid engineers at Meta can't find a solution here is an idea I had just by thinking at it for a few seconds, those geniuses shoudl be able to find better ones if they want.

1 when a scam ad is reported block that account and their ads

2 before the ad is published have an AI scan it, if it looks to be related to politics, crypto or other scam friendly domains have someone review it . do not allow fresh accounts to publish this kind of shit without a human review

3 for Facebook content when someone shares fake shiot, like a proven fake document, or scam or faked video block the account and then notify all the people that liked or shared the scam that they were scammed/tricked ... when your users will get 10 daily notifications "You are an idiot you shared this fake shit" you might realize you should do something about scams or users will stop engaging with your stuff.

I am talking here about proveable scams and fakes , so not about some gray area. I mean scams, faked videos/images/documents etc

Banning some fraudulent advertising is doing a better job than leaving it up, yes.

Because it'd give companies like Meta has a strong incentive to stop profiting from it or else people start getting fined/jailed.

It also addresses the problem at (what is often) the source. Police in Ireland don't have the ability to march into Facebook's server rooms and start removing posts, so requests have to be made to Meta anyway which takes additional time. Making Facebook clean up their own mess directly would mean cutting out the middle man and all the red tape and hoops police have jump though to get them to take action.

As a common-law legal system, I would expect Ireland to have something similar to Canada's Criminal Code identity fraud.

    403 (1) Everyone commits an offence who fraudulently personates another person, living or dead,

        (a) with intent to gain advantage for themselves or another person;

        (b) with intent to obtain any property or an interest in any property;

        (c) with intent to cause disadvantage to the person being personated or another person; or

        (d) with intent to avoid arrest or prosecution or to obstruct, pervert or defeat the course of justice.

    Marginal note:Clarification

    (2) For the purposes of subsection (1), personating a person includes pretending to be the person or using the person’s identity information — whether by itself or in combination with identity information pertaining to any person — as if it pertains to the person using it.

    Marginal note:Punishment

    (3) Everyone who commits an offence under subsection (1)

        (a) is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for a term of not more than 10 years; or

        (b) is guilty of an offence punishable on summary conviction.

(Harris was our head of government (ie. PM or equivalent) rather than head of state (which would be the president).)

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