Daniel in SD
(supervised)
Masked credit card (maybe there’s a way to block them?)
Of course you can also buy stolen card info on dark web.
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Elon & Twitter
- Thread starter Buckminster
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Of course you can also buy stolen card info on dark web.
I'm seeing reports that some scammers found out how to get UPS tracking numbers that are going to a certain ZIP code and they give the victim the tracking number so that it looks like the product is shipping to you but it never arrives. And apparently they are more reactive than proactive, and someone needs to actively complain in order to get the listing taken down. Of course, if one scammer created 1000 different listings that's a lot of listings that can get taken down after just one complaint. It didn't require a human to go through all 1000 listings because once they identify the account that is involved, they just take down every listing under that seller's account.
They need to start somewhere,
Don't forget the $8 per month may be paid by a significant number of honest and law abiding citizens,
The intention is revenue and some deterrent for scammers/bots.
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ZenRockGarden
Active Member
I don't think you people are remotely aware of just how HUGE the internet fake identity market is, how cheap it is to fabricate a very real looking online persona, and how easy it is to have it be pretty close to untraceable.
There are fake identity farms in various foreign countries with diligent workers manipulating dozens of phones with hundreds of sims and spreadsheets of stolen CC ids. Anything you want for an identity can be had for incredibly cheap prices. If I was so inclined I could troll Twitter with a fleet of fake personas on the budget of a cup of coffee per day, forever.
If you want to create a serious town hall filled with totally-legit fully vetted real people, it will take HUGE effort, including a lot of human labor to research each application and prove it's legitimacy, and it STILL won't be airtight.
All the more reason for companies like Twitter to at least make an effort.
For impersonation, one thing Twitter can improve is responding to complaints. It is important to take the $8 as fast as possible,
Say someone has 100 fake identities and 100 fake accounts, that is $800 on the table, The only question is how long that $800 is allowed to play the game.
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ZenRockGarden
Active Member
Well see, that's the deal - Elon fired most of the people who would check up on this stuff and respond to complaints, hence it's gotten WORSE not better with him at the helm
Trolls, in my experience, are at an endless supply. Whack-a-mole in the fires of eternity.
Elon also fired a few people when he took over at Tesla, the onus is on him to make it work. But I he has had a lot of past success over a wide range of tech industries.
JRP3
Hyperactive Member
As I've said the anti climate change coal rolling crowd may like what he's doing on Twitter but they aren't going to run out and buy a Tesla. We've seen them say as much.
At $8 a pop Twitter might become the most valuable company in the world
I wonder if one of the intents of rolling out the $8 checkmark is to change the meaning to "this person paid" rather than "verified". They had to know this impersonation would happen. Not sure why they didn't use a different icon.
What is the end game for Twitter? Elon is saying that he already had to sell Tesla shares to save Twitter? How is that possible? Elon doesn't give up so IMO he will sell as much Tesla stock as he needs to keep Twitter a float. I just don't see a clear path for Tesla stock to recover in the near future with all this extra noise. If he would make clear how much is needed to run Twitter I think we could recover and it would not be a problem.
JRP3
Hyperactive Member
He doesn't know, it's a dynamic situation right now I'd imagine.
Why do many people here think if a person can do A and B, they must be able to do C too?
(this probably includes Elon Musk himself too)
Maybe if Steve Jobs were still alive today, he would have sent people to Mars. /s
(this probably includes Elon Musk himself too)
Maybe if Steve Jobs were still alive today, he would have sent people to Mars. /s
BitJam
Active Member
Gotcha. Any guesses about what else it could be?
My thinking is Optimist Prime figured if things went well then he wouldn't need to sell more TSLA. But when advertisers fled the chaos he so skillfully created, he suddenly needed a lot more cash for Twitter. The only thing I can thing of is high interest loans but I'm a scientist/engineer not a financial guy. Are there other possibilities?
BitJam
Active Member
Hubris, the deadliest deadly sin and the mother of all vices.
What he is trying to do is;-
- Reduce expenses
- Increase revenue
- Improve the product
- Shore up/expand the user base.
In this phase, I imagine the aim is break-even, or lose money more slowly.
The real added value potentially comes in the phase, banking etc. But to get to that phase this phase has to be a modest success.
I still say this is very similar to the start of Tesla, "cash burn" lots of technical and financial issues to solve, lots of product improvements needed.
ZenRockGarden
Active Member
I've also been fascinated by this line of reasoning (and had people argue both ends of it against me). Elon is clearly a brilliant engineer and designer of things like cars, batteries, rockets engines, space ships, etc.
And he's proven again and again that his instincts with the general human population are TERRIBLE. Both can be true at the same time, and both are predictive of future success depending if you're having Elon work on the next Tesla car, or having him guess at how to make Twitter into a lovely town hall full of civil discourse by formerly neglected moderate voices. He can be great at the first task and terrible at the second one. I figure he'd also suck at playing linebacker in the NFL, which doesn't take anything away from his accomplishments at TSLA and SpaceX - it's just reality.
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