This reminds me of this article from a while back: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-03-27/ad-scammers-need-suckers-and-facebook-helps-find-them http

This reminds me of this article from a while back: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-03-27/ad-scammers-need-suckers-and-facebook-helps-find-them https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-03-27/ad-scamme... I worked for a company that hired media buyers that came from this shady world, most of them are the most degenerate people I've ever met. They target people in lower-income parts of the country with "530 FICO Scores" (in the words of a previous coworker). 9 out of 10 times, they couldn't legitimately market a product to save their life if they couldn't rely on scare tactics, snake-oil/miracle cures, and other shady tactics such as "free trial re-billing". They view running an online business as "building a cash printer" and view customers as prey to target. They have a million tactics to keep FB campaigns going such as amassing more credit cards than you'd think a bank would issue (since FB blocks cards from offending accounts), relying on off-shore account farms for fresh Facebook ad accounts, cloaking their landing pages, etc. I once heard a story about a marketer that would pay college students $100 and give them a free laptop with TeamViewer running as long as they stayed logged into facebook and could create ad accounts on their behalf. Needless to say my time at the company was short, as I was not a fan of the aggressive tactics being used to market the products. Most of the media buyers had substance abuse problems, and the sick mindset turned me off to digital marketing completely until I had the opportunity to network and work with more ethical advertisers and founders of ecommerce brands. These people ruin the internet and slow progress by damaging customer trust in shopping online. Background: I'm an engineer, but I joined a DTC brand startup a couple years ago doing basic front-end work just so I could be in that environment every day learning the problem space and getting domain expertise in ecommerce and B2C customer acquisition. I've worked with more legitimate brands, and I'm currently building a product for the industry (on top of Shopify's platform), but I can't wait for the day that these scammers are completely rooted out.