> scamming someone requires obtaining something like money I would say "something of value". It doesn't have to be money. Attention is valuable - personally I

> scamming someone requires obtaining something like money I would say "something of value". It doesn't have to be money. Attention is valuable - personally I consider it my most scarce and valuable resource. I don't think it's unreasonable to create a comparison between stealing people's attention and stealing people's money. We focus a lot on the latter, but we are starting to focus on the former too, usually in the form of criticizing social media. Take Facebook. They grabbed people by creating a system to connect with friends, family etc. and created an inescapable network effect for an entire generation. Then they morphed slowly into an outrage generation private data stealing machine to the huge detriment of millions of people - entire countries in fact, like Myanmar. The money they make is one step removed from the people being scammed, which makes it a little harder to directly characterize this as a scam. But it is a scam, just as much as this crypto stuff is, only far worse. Reporters running puff pieces to generate outrage - or rather, their publications - are doing the same. Stealing your attention to get money from advertisers. They are just less successful. Same sea, tiny biting fish where Facebook is a shark.