Hacker News Reader

Comment by october8140 | Hacker News Reader

Is this fraud?

I might age myself out here, but, does anyone take influencers at face value, for anything at all, but especially for anything involving money?

Sadly, yes.

Isn't everything these days? It's all gotten so gross.

Yeah. It's so demoralizing, seeing all these people make fortunes while honest people scrape by. It feels like getting in on the grift is the only way to make it.

you may be confusing it with deregulation.

only lawyers care what the laws say. I care about what's right and good and leads to prosperity for people I care about (which is to a greater or lesser extent everyone)

It's the lawyers job to make the laws align with some version of the above, and many of them, like most other people with power in society, are doing a willfully terrible job of it

This is not correct. It's a politician's job to make them selfrich by any means necessary. It's a lawyer's job to make you pay for as many hours as possible.

correct - "a" lawyer. a single lawyer is but a cog in the machine. Lawyers as a whole, as an institution, however are at least ostensibly supposed to exist for some benefit to society. They, like other institutions, must act to prevent principal agent problems. And like other institutions, they are failing dramatically

No. There are still people and companies being proud of their work and not doing it only for the money side. I know, shocking..

Prior art; “More Doctors Smoke Camels” - 1946

Would it matter if the bets were real and they picked the 0.00001% big winners to feature in the ad? Would that be less fraudulent in any meaningful sense, would it have a different impact on the world?

Is the real crime here that they were too lazy to lie with selective facts?

> Would that be less fraudulent…

Is this even a question? Yes, it would be less fraudulent.

I question your definitions. In what sense is it legally or morally useful to discriminate between lying with statistics and lying without them? It's an academically useful distinction, but why does it matter in practice? People are misled, the misleading is intentional, but if you hire a statistician to do it for you instead of an actor then you're A-Okay?

"Someone won" is truthful.

"Celebrity X won" was not.

I am not a fan of gambling, nor gambling advertisements, but this was outright fraud, and a violation of FTC rules (https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/resources/ftcs-endorse...) on disclosure.

It's useful because honesty and dishonesty are strongly self-correlated. Someone who works hard to ensure their advertising is technically true will likely work hard towards technically satisfying other goals and rules we set for them; someone who's comfortable outright lying in their ads will likely also lie about other things.

In the US, the FTC is very clear that faking or purchasing testimonials is illegal. Fabricating, purchasing, or misrepresenting customer experience is deceptive advertising and is a form of fraud. On the other hand, selecting and advertising specific real testimonials is fine. A customer described their actual experience that way, and presumably the consumers understand that advertisers will select especially positive individual testimonials for their advertisements. I can't believe I'm actually trying to explain this, but fake testimonials are illegal because the consumer has no way to know that they are made up. Real testimonials are not "lying with statistics", they're not statistics at all, and are legal because consumers can understand that it's not the median customer experience.

If picking real winners and real winnings to feature in the ad was just as good, they could do that. If not, then yes, it makes an impact on the world to mislead people with that marketing.

Somehow there's a difference between things that happened and didn't happen, and that's a good place to draw a line in the sand of what you're allowed to advertise and not.

> Fabricating, purchasing, or misrepresenting customer experience is deceptive advertising and is a form of fraud.

Doesn’t this make every ad fraud? It’s an actor pretending to enjoy drinking Coca Cola, every ad is the same.

How do you know the actor is merely pretending ? Maybe they actually it?

Not GP, but here is how I know. Messi and Steve Carell did an ad for local chips brand, (market size < 10 million people). There is no way that brand could afford them. Searched online and found the same ad for Lay's. Turns out Pepsi owns a lot of local snack brands. They'll buy local brand and if it's popular they will keep the brand (instead of replacing it with global brand like Lay's). Ad is recorded for all brands at once, they just replace bag of Lay's with bag of whatever is the local chips they own.

The actual verbiage is narrower.

First result with a summary of 16 CFR Part 465: Trade Regulation Rule on the Use of Consumer Reviews and Testimonials: https://www.goodwinlaw.com/en/insights/publications/2024/09/...

Believe it or not, the laws don't say verbatim "Fabricating, purchasing, or misrepresenting customer experience is deceptive advertising...". I can't really believe that this is a real question and that I'm trying to explain this, either. The actual laws are more specific, and combined with how the courts interpret them, cover a lot of different situations and try to do so in a reasonable way.

If you actually want to understand why "an actor pretending to enjoy drinking Coca Cola" is okay while other kinds of endorsements are not, in the US at least, you could start with the FTC "Truth in Advertising" website, and "Advertising Endorsements" specifically, or other resources on that page.

https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/topics/truth-advertising

https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/topics/truth-advertising/adv...

Laws are for poor people.

Is fraud "more fraudulent" than non-fraud? Yes. Wtf man?

Would a prosecution have high chance of succeeding?

Yes, it is 100% a misrepresentation of reality to fool the general public into joining a platform that condones deceptive user acquisition strategies.

I was listening to a podcast and heard an ad for supplements (I think it was collegian). The thing that struck me was the specificity of the health claims they were making in the ad.

There was no "promotes healthy whatever" it was like "this will make your skin younger and eliminate/prevent wrinkles and other signs of aging."

Then the quiet fast-talking guy said that none of their health claims have been reviewed by the FDA.

So that's where we are now. Everything is scams and nobody will do anything about it.

I don't see an end to any of it when the Grifter-in-chief is in office.

[flagged]

I mean maybe Trump also caused it but there's no way he's just an innocent bystander here.

Yes I already said that he’s bad, don’t roast me, I’m trying to use nuance here like we’re supposed to.

I agree with your point in general, but doesn't that disclaimer apply to any kind of supplement? As far as I know that sort of thing has been allowed for quite some time. For whatever reason the FDA allows for an almost completely unregulated vitamin/supplement industry.

They used to be vague and not make specific claims because that wasn't allowed. They'd say "Vitamin K helps promote healthy eyes." They can't say "our chewable will cure your glaucoma. (claimhasnotbeenreviewedbytheFDA)"

But apparently they can do that now, or at least they are doing it.

It's not up to the FDA, their hands are tied thanks to the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994, sponsored by Senator Orrin Hatch from Utah on behalf of the supplement lobby.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dietary_Supplement_Health_and_...

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2018/12/31/6738513...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com