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> patio11’s post “The optimal amount of fraud is non zero”. Thanks, I just skimmed this post. It seems to me that "optimal" is substituting for "cost effective

> patio11’s post “The optimal amount of fraud is non zero”. Thanks, I just skimmed this post. It seems to me that "optimal" is substituting for "cost effective". The optimal amount of fraud is always zero, it's just not cost effective given the existence of people willing to go to lengths to commit fraud. > Can YouTube squeeze more money from ads by doing this? The third option is that this would incentivize a portion of the viewership to purchase Youtube Premium. Netflix seems to be benefiting with the same strategy.

xboxnolifes 3y ago
It's not just cost effectiveness. It's about how awful you will make the user experience for real users if you tried to bring fraud truly to 0. It's essentially the security-convenience tradeoff. In terms of YouTube, it's the monetization-experience tradeoff.
- anonymouskimmer 3y ago
  Yes, because the corporations are optimizing for cost effectiveness (return on sales or return on investment). Corporations don't care what the user experience is for its own sake. They care about keeping and retaining paying users. After a point they don't bother making the user experience better, because it isn't cost effective to do so.
  - xboxnolifes 3y ago
    But cost effectiveness makes it sound like you can fix it by throwing money at it. The point is that you cannot fix it, even with infinite money, because you will reach zero users before you reach 0 fraud.
    - anonymouskimmer 3y ago
      The way to fix it with infinite money is to have individual human curators (concierge services) for every customer. This eliminates fraud and makes a very, very easy-to-use "user interface" when the human concierges are well trained. Regardless, even if I'm wrong with "cost effective", the word still isn't "optimal".
      - inopinatus 3y ago
        However well trained they may be, humans are notoriously easy to manipulate and engineer around. Humans in a customer service role especially, since they are by definition expected to be helpful by default.
        anonymouskimmer 3y ago
        If they're paid enough you can select for humans with superior talents and, at least as important, training. Heck, with infinite money you could have them train for 5 or 10 years before ever having a real-case person to interact with.
        deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
        anonymouskimmer 3y ago
        We've reached maximum reply depth. > This is not a hypothetical. In many healthcare systems, that is the approximate timeframe for medical practice, doctors are amongst the most expensive and selectively educated service professionals on the planet, and can still be readily hoodwinked by a bad faith approach. Yes, because they are trained, licensed, and incentivized to place other things above fraud detection or customer service itself. I was literally discussing with the other person about Youtube, for which 5 - 10 years of training is sufficient to train a concierge and still leave 4.5 - 9.5 years dedicated to fraud detection and prevention. People complain about health care all of the time, yet most of them still come back to it. The threshold for flouncing due to bad user interface is a lot higher than for Youtube.
        deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
    - anonymouskimmer 3y ago
      I think part of the problem here is a mistaken interpretation on my part. I was thinking of "optimal" in terms of an ideal society in which no fraud takes place. I think the article writer was thinking of "optimal" in terms of optimizing the solution to a problem given the constraints and freedoms of current society.
- 127 3y ago
  The willingness and ability of people to commit fraud is not a constant. It's highly variable depending on social context. The more you allow fraud also changes society to accept more fraud, which is a vicious circle.
CSMastermind 3y ago
Cost effective in a way. A more precise thing to say might be that the Nash equilibrium of the system contains a non zero amount of fraud. Or that fraud is an evolutionarily stable strategy within the environment.
- anonymouskimmer 3y ago
  > Or that fraud is an evolutionarily stable strategy within the environment. I like this take on it.

xboxnolifes 3y ago

It's not just cost effectiveness. It's about how awful you will make the user experience for real users if you tried to bring fraud truly to 0. It's essentially the security-convenience tradeoff. In terms of YouTube, it's the monetization-experience tradeoff.

anonymouskimmer 3y ago
Yes, because the corporations are optimizing for cost effectiveness (return on sales or return on investment). Corporations don't care what the user experience is for its own sake. They care about keeping and retaining paying users. After a point they don't bother making the user experience better, because it isn't cost effective to do so.
- xboxnolifes 3y ago
  But cost effectiveness makes it sound like you can fix it by throwing money at it. The point is that you cannot fix it, even with infinite money, because you will reach zero users before you reach 0 fraud.
  - anonymouskimmer 3y ago
    The way to fix it with infinite money is to have individual human curators (concierge services) for every customer. This eliminates fraud and makes a very, very easy-to-use "user interface" when the human concierges are well trained. Regardless, even if I'm wrong with "cost effective", the word still isn't "optimal".
    - inopinatus 3y ago
      However well trained they may be, humans are notoriously easy to manipulate and engineer around. Humans in a customer service role especially, since they are by definition expected to be helpful by default.
      - anonymouskimmer 3y ago
        If they're paid enough you can select for humans with superior talents and, at least as important, training. Heck, with infinite money you could have them train for 5 or 10 years before ever having a real-case person to interact with.
        deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
      - anonymouskimmer 3y ago
        We've reached maximum reply depth. > This is not a hypothetical. In many healthcare systems, that is the approximate timeframe for medical practice, doctors are amongst the most expensive and selectively educated service professionals on the planet, and can still be readily hoodwinked by a bad faith approach. Yes, because they are trained, licensed, and incentivized to place other things above fraud detection or customer service itself. I was literally discussing with the other person about Youtube, for which 5 - 10 years of training is sufficient to train a concierge and still leave 4.5 - 9.5 years dedicated to fraud detection and prevention. People complain about health care all of the time, yet most of them still come back to it. The threshold for flouncing due to bad user interface is a lot higher than for Youtube.
        deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
  - anonymouskimmer 3y ago
    I think part of the problem here is a mistaken interpretation on my part. I was thinking of "optimal" in terms of an ideal society in which no fraud takes place. I think the article writer was thinking of "optimal" in terms of optimizing the solution to a problem given the constraints and freedoms of current society.
127 3y ago
The willingness and ability of people to commit fraud is not a constant. It's highly variable depending on social context. The more you allow fraud also changes society to accept more fraud, which is a vicious circle.

CSMastermind 3y ago

Cost effective in a way. A more precise thing to say might be that the Nash equilibrium of the system contains a non zero amount of fraud. Or that fraud is an evolutionarily stable strategy within the environment.

anonymouskimmer 3y ago
> Or that fraud is an evolutionarily stable strategy within the environment. I like this take on it.