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I feel like people are more susceptible to scams today than in past times? Maybe something to do with more effective dark patterns and more influential “influen

by tempsy 6y ago

I feel like people are more susceptible to scams today than in past times? Maybe something to do with more effective dark patterns and more influential “influencers” who are able to convince more people at scale to participate in something scammy.

bobthepanda 6y ago
People are also more economically vulnerable as the middle class continues to shrink and major debts like education or medical debt in the US rise faster than incomes.
- DaiPlusPlus 6y ago
  > the middle class continues to shrink Can you elaborate on this please. Thank you.
  - bobthepanda 6y ago
    https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2020/01/09/trends-in-income-and-wealth-inequality/#upper-income-households-have-seen-more-rapid-growth-in-income-in-recent-decades https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2020/01/09/trends-in-income-... > The growth in income in recent decades has tilted to upper-income households. At the same time, the U.S. middle class, which once comprised the clear majority of Americans, is shrinking. Thus, a greater share of the nation’s aggregate income is now going to upper-income households and the share going to middle- and lower-income households is falling.9 > The share of American adults who live in middle-income households has decreased from 61% in 1971 to 51% in 2019. This downsizing has proceeded slowly but surely since 1971, with each decade thereafter typically ending with a smaller share of adults living in middle-income households than at the beginning of the decade. > But middle-class incomes have not grown at the rate of upper-tier incomes. From 1970 to 2018, the median middle-class income increased from $58,100 to $86,600, a gain of 49%.10 This was considerably less than the 64% increase for upper-income households, whose median income increased from $126,100 in 1970 to $207,400 in 2018. Households in the lower-income tier experienced a gain of 43%, from $20,000 in 1970 to $28,700 in 2018. (Incomes are expressed in 2018 dollars.) > More tepid growth in the income of middle-class households and the reduction in the share of households in the middle-income tier led to a steep fall in the share of U.S. aggregate income held by the middle class. From 1970 to 2018, the share of aggregate income going to middle-class households fell from 62% to 43%. Over the same period, the share held by upper-income households increased from 29% to 48%. The share flowing to lower-income households inched down from 10% in 1970 to 9% in 2018. > These trends in income reflect the growth in economic inequality overall in the U.S. in the decades since 1980.
    - chrisseaton 6y ago
      This article seems to conflate middle-class and middle-income. It even switches from one to the other seemingly at random during the text!
      - quadrangle 6y ago
        This is confused in almost every discussion. "Middle class" usually means "middle income" in most cases as people use it. They mean "wealth comparable to that of historic middle-class level" often. Yes, we could have a "middle class" of managers and white-collar workers who just struggle to get by on the same low wealth of working-class laborers. Class and wealth are often just confused because of the ways they are correlated.
      - lotsofpulp 6y ago
        I had to click through a few times to find this definition on the same website: >Middle-income households – those with an income that is two-thirds to double the U.S. median household income – had incomes ranging from about $48,500 to $145,500 in 2018. Lower-income households had incomes less than $48,500 and upper-income households had incomes greater than $145,500 (all figures computed for three-person households, adjusted for the cost of living in a metropolitan area, and expressed in 2018 dollars). Although, I would not agree with equating the above to middle class. In fact, I would simply never use the word "class" as it's utility in a discussion is zero except to evoke an emotional response, in my experience.
        deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
- kjs3 6y ago
  I know both very poor and very rich people who fall for MLMs all the time (and other foolishness). You're going to have to provide a lot more support for the assertion that this is somehow unique to a deteriorating middle class.
brabel 6y ago
This kind of stuff has been common for a long time, as the article mentions (they mention tupperware parties, I remember friends of my mom having these jewerly/perfum/cometic products "parties" as well in the 80's).
- tempsy 6y ago
  of course but the internet and social media have made it easier to reach more people hence “scamming people at scale” perhaps it’s just a function of the reach of the internet, but would argue that platforms and influencers get better at “influencing” all the time in a way that sucks more unsuspecting people into something like this even if they would be more skeptical in someone else’s living room.
  - sct202 6y ago
    Among my FB friends I've seen a ring of acquaintances in the same MLM like and comment on each other's posts to fake engagement and excitment. In real life it might be more obvious when the plant in the room is being overly enthusiastic, but on facebook it might pass as real at first glance.
- DaiPlusPlus 6y ago
  I'unno - Tupperware Parties were about selling the product, right? Not about recruiting other people as downline sellers... were they?
tzs 6y ago
I don't think people are more susceptible now, at least in the sense that the probability that an average person would fall for a given scam given the same amount of information about the scam has gone up. I think it is just that people are exposed to a lot more scams now. You see more scams in a month now than you would have seen in years 40-50 years ago. Exposing people to a lot more scams increases the number of successful scam attempts, even if people are as skeptical or gullible as they were in the past, for several reasons: 1. If you fall for 1/N of the scams you are exposed to, multiplying the number of scams by K means you fall for on average K times as many scams. 2. Debunking scams is more work than promoting them. With much faster spreading of information nowadays, a new scam can reach a large number of people before the debunking is available. 3. Acting on a scam is faster now. In the '70s I wasn't just a few clicks away from being able to transfer irreversibly and untraceably a large amount of money to a scammer. 4. Many people now get most of their information via the same channels that the scammers use. Even if the debunking information is available there by the time they see the scam, many will miss it. Even if a person sees as many debunking items as scam items, they won't necessarily see the right debunking items. They might see current scams 2, 4, 5, and 7, but see the debunking items for scams 1, 2, 4, and 5.
- fractionalhare 6y ago
  > 1. If you fall for 1/N of the scams you are exposed to, multiplying the number of scams by K means you fall for on average K times as many scams. Only if exposure to each scam is independent! I wouldn't expect that to be the case. I hypothesize people prone to falling for scams get exposed to comparatively more scams, and people resistant to scams get exposed to relatively fewer over time. So your main point stands: delivery of scams has been thoroughly optimized to saturate a vulnerable population and not waste time on a resistant population, compared to a few decades ago.
  - g8oz 6y ago
    >>Only if exposure to each scam is independent! I wouldn't expect that to be the case. Yes! It's a social contagion.
Nextgrid 6y ago
Technology has made it easier for anyone to become a scammer, but the law hasn't scaled to be able to deal with it. In the past, being a scammer required certain resources and hard work to lure people into your scam, and the few (well compared to today) scammers that succeeded eventually got dealt with by the law. Nowadays anyone can be a scammer by just posting on social media (or buying ads), law enforcement can't scale to deal with them all and the platforms that empower these scammers aren't forced to prevent this activity. Also, back in the day, scamming actually required some smarts where as nowadays a lot of people are scammers without even realizing it, like by peddling these stupid pyramid schemes. In fact, they don't intend to scam per-se, but are deluded in their idea that this is a legitimate business and is beneficial not only to them but to their victim (and those that lose money just didn't try hard enough).
toast0 6y ago
It seems about the same to me. When I was growing up, my grandparents were getting scammed with foreign lotteries and commerative coins. Then later, they were MLM 'sales consultants' for ephedra, until that was banned. Now my cousins are MLM 'sales consultants' for whatever crap. If anything, it's easier to see how many people are hooked in, because social media makes it easier to see when your tenuous contacts are engaged in MLM.
kjs3 6y ago
It's just like spam. In the past, you had to pay for a stamp to send your scam out. That limited the reach of the scam, because eventually, all those pennies added up. In the age of the internet and email, while there are costs to send vast amounts of email, it's a tiny fraction of sending physical letters. MLMs in the Internet age are analogous. Once, you had to pay for 'inventory' then actually take time and expense to engage your marks and sell them on the shill. You had to set up an Amway or whatever party, or harass someone at the grocery store, or take advantage of your family and friends. Now, you get website for a few bucks a month, a FB/YT/Twitter/TikTok/etc web of accounts (including copious sockpuppets) for nothing, maybe pay a bit for an 'influencer' to feed you some eyeballs, and you're able to reach thousands or more. It's all a matter of percentages at that point.

by tempsy 6y ago

bobthepanda 6y ago

People are also more economically vulnerable as the middle class continues to shrink and major debts like education or medical debt in the US rise faster than incomes.

DaiPlusPlus 6y ago
> the middle class continues to shrink Can you elaborate on this please. Thank you.
- bobthepanda 6y ago
  https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2020/01/09/trends-in-income-and-wealth-inequality/#upper-income-households-have-seen-more-rapid-growth-in-income-in-recent-decades https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2020/01/09/trends-in-income-... > The growth in income in recent decades has tilted to upper-income households. At the same time, the U.S. middle class, which once comprised the clear majority of Americans, is shrinking. Thus, a greater share of the nation’s aggregate income is now going to upper-income households and the share going to middle- and lower-income households is falling.9 > The share of American adults who live in middle-income households has decreased from 61% in 1971 to 51% in 2019. This downsizing has proceeded slowly but surely since 1971, with each decade thereafter typically ending with a smaller share of adults living in middle-income households than at the beginning of the decade. > But middle-class incomes have not grown at the rate of upper-tier incomes. From 1970 to 2018, the median middle-class income increased from $58,100 to $86,600, a gain of 49%.10 This was considerably less than the 64% increase for upper-income households, whose median income increased from $126,100 in 1970 to $207,400 in 2018. Households in the lower-income tier experienced a gain of 43%, from $20,000 in 1970 to $28,700 in 2018. (Incomes are expressed in 2018 dollars.) > More tepid growth in the income of middle-class households and the reduction in the share of households in the middle-income tier led to a steep fall in the share of U.S. aggregate income held by the middle class. From 1970 to 2018, the share of aggregate income going to middle-class households fell from 62% to 43%. Over the same period, the share held by upper-income households increased from 29% to 48%. The share flowing to lower-income households inched down from 10% in 1970 to 9% in 2018. > These trends in income reflect the growth in economic inequality overall in the U.S. in the decades since 1980.
  - chrisseaton 6y ago
    This article seems to conflate middle-class and middle-income. It even switches from one to the other seemingly at random during the text!
    - quadrangle 6y ago
      This is confused in almost every discussion. "Middle class" usually means "middle income" in most cases as people use it. They mean "wealth comparable to that of historic middle-class level" often. Yes, we could have a "middle class" of managers and white-collar workers who just struggle to get by on the same low wealth of working-class laborers. Class and wealth are often just confused because of the ways they are correlated.
    - lotsofpulp 6y ago
      I had to click through a few times to find this definition on the same website: >Middle-income households – those with an income that is two-thirds to double the U.S. median household income – had incomes ranging from about $48,500 to $145,500 in 2018. Lower-income households had incomes less than $48,500 and upper-income households had incomes greater than $145,500 (all figures computed for three-person households, adjusted for the cost of living in a metropolitan area, and expressed in 2018 dollars). Although, I would not agree with equating the above to middle class. In fact, I would simply never use the word "class" as it's utility in a discussion is zero except to evoke an emotional response, in my experience.
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
kjs3 6y ago
I know both very poor and very rich people who fall for MLMs all the time (and other foolishness). You're going to have to provide a lot more support for the assertion that this is somehow unique to a deteriorating middle class.

brabel 6y ago

This kind of stuff has been common for a long time, as the article mentions (they mention tupperware parties, I remember friends of my mom having these jewerly/perfum/cometic products "parties" as well in the 80's).

tempsy 6y ago
of course but the internet and social media have made it easier to reach more people hence “scamming people at scale” perhaps it’s just a function of the reach of the internet, but would argue that platforms and influencers get better at “influencing” all the time in a way that sucks more unsuspecting people into something like this even if they would be more skeptical in someone else’s living room.
- sct202 6y ago
  Among my FB friends I've seen a ring of acquaintances in the same MLM like and comment on each other's posts to fake engagement and excitment. In real life it might be more obvious when the plant in the room is being overly enthusiastic, but on facebook it might pass as real at first glance.
DaiPlusPlus 6y ago
I'unno - Tupperware Parties were about selling the product, right? Not about recruiting other people as downline sellers... were they?

tzs 6y ago

I don't think people are more susceptible now, at least in the sense that the probability that an average person would fall for a given scam given the same amount of information about the scam has gone up. I think it is just that people are exposed to a lot more scams now. You see more scams in a month now than you would have seen in years 40-50 years ago. Exposing people to a lot more scams increases the number of successful scam attempts, even if people are as skeptical or gullible as they were in the past, for several reasons: 1. If you fall for 1/N of the scams you are exposed to, multiplying the number of scams by K means you fall for on average K times as many scams. 2. Debunking scams is more work than promoting them. With much faster spreading of information nowadays, a new scam can reach a large number of people before the debunking is available. 3. Acting on a scam is faster now. In the '70s I wasn't just a few clicks away from being able to transfer irreversibly and untraceably a large amount of money to a scammer. 4. Many people now get most of their information via the same channels that the scammers use. Even if the debunking information is available there by the time they see the scam, many will miss it. Even if a person sees as many debunking items as scam items, they won't necessarily see the right debunking items. They might see current scams 2, 4, 5, and 7, but see the debunking items for scams 1, 2, 4, and 5.

fractionalhare 6y ago
> 1. If you fall for 1/N of the scams you are exposed to, multiplying the number of scams by K means you fall for on average K times as many scams. Only if exposure to each scam is independent! I wouldn't expect that to be the case. I hypothesize people prone to falling for scams get exposed to comparatively more scams, and people resistant to scams get exposed to relatively fewer over time. So your main point stands: delivery of scams has been thoroughly optimized to saturate a vulnerable population and not waste time on a resistant population, compared to a few decades ago.
- g8oz 6y ago
  >>Only if exposure to each scam is independent! I wouldn't expect that to be the case. Yes! It's a social contagion.

Nextgrid 6y ago

Technology has made it easier for anyone to become a scammer, but the law hasn't scaled to be able to deal with it. In the past, being a scammer required certain resources and hard work to lure people into your scam, and the few (well compared to today) scammers that succeeded eventually got dealt with by the law. Nowadays anyone can be a scammer by just posting on social media (or buying ads), law enforcement can't scale to deal with them all and the platforms that empower these scammers aren't forced to prevent this activity. Also, back in the day, scamming actually required some smarts where as nowadays a lot of people are scammers without even realizing it, like by peddling these stupid pyramid schemes. In fact, they don't intend to scam per-se, but are deluded in their idea that this is a legitimate business and is beneficial not only to them but to their victim (and those that lose money just didn't try hard enough).

toast0 6y ago

It seems about the same to me. When I was growing up, my grandparents were getting scammed with foreign lotteries and commerative coins. Then later, they were MLM 'sales consultants' for ephedra, until that was banned. Now my cousins are MLM 'sales consultants' for whatever crap. If anything, it's easier to see how many people are hooked in, because social media makes it easier to see when your tenuous contacts are engaged in MLM.

kjs3 6y ago

It's just like spam. In the past, you had to pay for a stamp to send your scam out. That limited the reach of the scam, because eventually, all those pennies added up. In the age of the internet and email, while there are costs to send vast amounts of email, it's a tiny fraction of sending physical letters. MLMs in the Internet age are analogous. Once, you had to pay for 'inventory' then actually take time and expense to engage your marks and sell them on the shill. You had to set up an Amway or whatever party, or harass someone at the grocery store, or take advantage of your family and friends. Now, you get website for a few bucks a month, a FB/YT/Twitter/TikTok/etc web of accounts (including copious sockpuppets) for nothing, maybe pay a bit for an 'influencer' to feed you some eyeballs, and you're able to reach thousands or more. It's all a matter of percentages at that point.