Sometimes it seems like the internet has always been awash in advertisements, but we're seeing a new change in recent years.
A brief history
The first unsolicited mass e-mailing was back in May of 1978. Gary Thierk sent a product announcement to 393 ARPANET users. At least it was a real product, I guess?
Fast forward to when the internet as we know it was opened to the public in January 1991. It took a while to build a user base, but by 1994, Laurence Canter and Martha Siegel posted legal service ads on Usenet electronic bulletin boards. That unleashed a deluge.
I remember self-replicating pop-ups, early e-mail spam, and the whole gamut of ads evolving since the late 1990s. But in recent years, we're seeing something new, and I know people who fall for this wave.
The new wave of spam
I blame TikTok. OK, not entirely. Video platforms have been exploited for advertisement since ages ago. However, TikTok normalized a lot of the trends used in these new ads, and I doubly hate them as a result. Most of these blatantly fraudulent ads use several of the following elements.
A.I. or text-to-speech narration. People have been using TTS & AI to narrate Reddit posts, 4chan green text, and purported chat conversations for ages, often overlaid on some kind of gameplay footage. Now lazy ads use that as a shortcut. If a company apparently isn't legit enough to pay for voice talent, assume their product is trash.
A.I. images. Sometimes "product photos" are just plain fake, painfully so.
Claims of A.I. technology. It's the newest buzzword, so of course it's mentioned as "A.I. powered" or something.
Outrageous "inspiring" origin stories. The A.I. narrator starts out with something vague like, "This man was working for a megacorporation, but when he offered an smarter idea to make things more gooder, he was fired. So he started this company to make the awesome thing, and even though nobody is using it, it's becoming the most popular thing ever!" Verifiable details lend legitimacy. Nonspecific claims suggest fraud.
Wild claims. Come on, people. You know this. "If it seems too good to be true, it probably is." If the miracle product leans on pseudo-scientific woo-woo health claims, assume it's a lie. If the device claims to be an electronic marvel that outperforms everything on the market, it's nonsense. If this gadget makes your car more efficient or generates free power, it's bullshit.
Mismatches. The brand in the ad may not match the brand on the product shown. The product changes from segment to segment. The claims shift around within the ad. If you're silly enough to click the ad, the website doesn't match the ad claims either. This is a red flag!
FOMO. In the crypto world, you know the "fear of missing out," pressure. These ads almost always suggest they'll be shut down by the government or competitors or the sites hosting the ads because the deal is just too good. "This is worth $1200, but you can get it now for only $99.99!" Nonsense. It's a $3.99 plastic piece of junk from Temu. Their websites double down with discount timers and warnings about limited stock. It's all a scheme to part you from your money, and if you are dumb enough to buy, they try to upsell more after you check out, too.
Stolen content. These ads often blatantly use images and video clips from documentaries, news, or real independent content creators in order to look more legitimate and professional. Needless to say, there is no proper attribution or credit.
Avoiding the scams
Be a skeptic, and assume everyone selling you anything on the internet is scamming you until proven otherwise. Read reviews, and not just the potentially (almost definitely) fake ones on their sites. Search for reviews which are critical of the product and test it independently. Develop a sense of honesty.
I've previously shared posts about Rose Anvil testing boots and shoes, and Technology Connections offers a good foundation on some consumer electronics. However, the Computer Clan channel on Youtube has a lot of specific debunking videos which go into detail explaining what is false, why it's false, and how to spot similar nonsense in other ads. I thought about presenting this as another "Cool Content Creator" post, but it's a better fit for this, I think. Still, there's a lot of neat computer projects over there as well, so you may want to check that out too.
Be a smart consumer, don't feel pressured to buy now, and take your time to seriously research outside the scope of what the seller can control. There's no guarantee anywhere, of course. While the market isn't inherently an adversarial system, caveat emptor (buyer beware) is as true now as it was when posted in Pompeii 2000 years ago.
And if you are a marketeering wanker, be honest. I'm sure at least some tiny spark of a conscience exists in your soul somewhere. Nurture it.
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Good post !
I can suggest two other trends to watch out for:
Hyper-personalisation. Scammers have access to so much data, and so many tools that can pull information from your social media or even your own device, that it's becoming ever-easier to make every scam ad directly addressed to the recipient - "Hey Fred Smith, your ABC bank account number 12345678 has been viewed by the IRS X times this week. Move your $1234.56 to DEF Bank now to be safe from investigation !"
AI-driven anonymisation. In my business I'm seeing it already. Most of the messages on my website contact form are spam. But captchas no longer work because AI's can solve most of them, and banning sender IP addresses no longer works because the scammers are generating a different IP address for every single message.
It's also a problem with any software which prices based on views, searches or clicks. I had a huge dispute with DooFinder because in the last 6 months competitors have started to routinely use AI-generated searches with dynamic IP addresses to price scrape. But DooFinder charges using price bands based on the number of searches, so they were happy to make money off it and refuse to listen to an easy solution that would identify the fake hits.
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Many ads lie to people and some believe them too fast. People should always check before buying. Also, scammers now use fake social media accounts to look real and with AI getting so good and real they'll be getting a new tool added
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