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Note that before he could ever be charged, he checked a box next to text (that even in the video) showed that there was a monthly fee. I think these "deals" ar

by snewe 17y ago

Note that before he could ever be charged, he checked a box next to text (that even in the video) showed that there was a monthly fee. I think these "deals" are dirty, but there is some user input involved.

henrikschroder 17y ago
Yes, but that was only the first one. If it had stopped after him giving the first site his cell phone number, and if he would have then been redirected back to the game and credited with his coins, it would simply be a bad offer, but not a particularly dirty one. You would pay thirty bucks for a random number between 100-144, and your virtual coins. My guess is that they made sure to clean up the first service so that it looks legit, and you only discover that it's a scam if you actually go through with it, and if you do, they're just piling on the cash-grabs. I cannot imagine that any of the following services are aware that the user came from a game and that some virtual currency should be credited back. So the results of this story is that they're going to clean up the second set of services so it looks legit when you're two steps removed, and then pile on the cash-grabs, hoping no-one digs that deep. It is also really important to remember that the biggest beneficiaries of these scams are the mobile networks themselves. If you've ever worked with mobile payments you know that they always take more than half of the money. Payout rates average at 45% throughout the world. Compare that to other payment methods such as PayPal which charges 6%, or roll your own solution and get down to 3%. It's a cash machine for all the networks, they have no liability, almost no costs for the transactions, and they still get the lion's share of the money, so they have absolutely no incentive to stop the scammers. So attacking this problem only from the Facebook side is probably not as effective as if you could force the networks to get rid of the scammers, but I have no hope of that ever happening, all the money they're making on it can buy a lot of lobbying to keep that money rolling.
fnid 17y ago
The point isn't the deals, it's the obvious shadiness of the whole thing and the awareness by the perpetrators that it is shady because they are showing one thing to one group and another thing to another group.
- paulgb 17y ago
  I wouldn't put it past Zynga to do something like this on purpose, but we can't assume that was their intent. They could have been doing A/B tests and put Arrington and his friend into different buckets. IIRC, Zynga are big on A/B testing.

by snewe 17y ago

henrikschroder 17y ago

Yes, but that was only the first one. If it had stopped after him giving the first site his cell phone number, and if he would have then been redirected back to the game and credited with his coins, it would simply be a bad offer, but not a particularly dirty one. You would pay thirty bucks for a random number between 100-144, and your virtual coins. My guess is that they made sure to clean up the first service so that it looks legit, and you only discover that it's a scam if you actually go through with it, and if you do, they're just piling on the cash-grabs. I cannot imagine that any of the following services are aware that the user came from a game and that some virtual currency should be credited back. So the results of this story is that they're going to clean up the second set of services so it looks legit when you're two steps removed, and then pile on the cash-grabs, hoping no-one digs that deep. It is also really important to remember that the biggest beneficiaries of these scams are the mobile networks themselves. If you've ever worked with mobile payments you know that they always take more than half of the money. Payout rates average at 45% throughout the world. Compare that to other payment methods such as PayPal which charges 6%, or roll your own solution and get down to 3%. It's a cash machine for all the networks, they have no liability, almost no costs for the transactions, and they still get the lion's share of the money, so they have absolutely no incentive to stop the scammers. So attacking this problem only from the Facebook side is probably not as effective as if you could force the networks to get rid of the scammers, but I have no hope of that ever happening, all the money they're making on it can buy a lot of lobbying to keep that money rolling.

fnid 17y ago

The point isn't the deals, it's the obvious shadiness of the whole thing and the awareness by the perpetrators that it is shady because they are showing one thing to one group and another thing to another group.

paulgb 17y ago
I wouldn't put it past Zynga to do something like this on purpose, but we can't assume that was their intent. They could have been doing A/B tests and put Arrington and his friend into different buckets. IIRC, Zynga are big on A/B testing.