How is this not grounds to be sued into oblivion by Google and Meta? They clearly violate ToS for profit. This is something I expect to find on a dark web forum where 0days are traded, not in public.
> How is this not grounds to be sued into oblivion by Google and Meta?
Because they don't care. It doesn't matter that it's AI slop, it generates views. And Google and Meta can bill advertisers for those views.
Zuckerberg is paying people to put AI slop Shrimp Jesus on facebook. (Not directly to platforms like this, but with the incentive structure)
Really, they're not just cashing in on the views of AI slop being put in front of boomers. They're cashing both ways; While the low end spam industry is merely guessing and iterating on whatever generates views, the more refined spammer does not leave the performance of their latest slop post up to chance, and just uses good old viewbotting. Viewbotting that these days, is mostly done on real devices. Which show ads, to the bots or underpaid developing world workers. Google and Meta'll still charge you for those impressions though.
The losers? People who sincerely try to use these platforms, and whatever idiot businesses are still paying for ads by the impression or click, rather than conversions that immediately generate revenue.
This kind of thing has been common for ages. Obviously AI has kicked it into overdrive, but it’s not darkweb kind of stuff.
Note that they do not mention any specific companies on that landing page. That is pretty intentional.
But realistically going after bots is expensive and rarely successful, so most companies don’t do it. Even if you find the guy, the chances they can be legally reached are pretty low.
US Government literally forced the sale. If the 1st amendment by bypassed by forced sales of the media that does not follow the party line, then what’s the point?
Crypto facilitates bypassing financial regulations, drug trade, evading taxes, extorting ransoms, breaking sanctions and so on.
I’m not at all surprised it’s popular. I’m surprised that even relatively sane US admin did not crush it.
This is a common retort used by crypto proponents (of which I am one). It overlooks, however, that is it much, much, much easier to do large-scale financial crime using cryptocurrencies than it is to do so with USD due to the intense and robust controls applied to USD for precisely that purpose.
One need only look at the rapid rise of cryptocurrencies in criminal enterprises over the last 10 years or so to see the truth in that.
I have been saving in bitcoin since I understood it, and people who tell me bitcoin has no use simply make no sense to me. My purchasing power goes up in the long term, and much more than theirs even if they "invest" with traditional banking.
It’s because we were promised cheap, fast, and decentralized and got the opposite.
It’s expensive as hell to use crypto to move money. It’s very slow, and I’m forced to use centralized coin exchanges which destroy the original decentralized nature of the currencies.
Why should we be excited about a product that is the opposite of what it sets out to do?
You want what was promised, but you use it in the way that's prescribed by the state, that's your failure. Besides, why do people keep pretending like lightning doesn't exist..
I find a good use in it via making legal, but otherwise “high risk” transactions traditional financial institutions either don’t touch or make very difficult to engage in.
Much easier for me to send a small amount of crypto to a VPN provider, or a custom parts supplier in a “strange” country where Visa/MC/bank wires are a huge hassle if available at all.
It’s not a huge use case, but it removes a ton of unnecessary friction from transactions traditional banking left behind as deemed “not worth the hassle” to them.
Or as I describe it: Digital cash. I don’t need the flea market vendor to need to be vetted by some financial provider to sell me their 3d printed parts collection.
Donating to Wikileaks is entirely legal. The blockade undertaken by Visa and MC at the behest of the USG was extralegal; there were no charges against anyone at the time.
Even had there been charges, donating would still have been legal.
Furthermore, your criterion was “not better served”; please don’t move the goalposts.
Remittances and cross-border donations are way better served by cryptocurrencies than any other mechanism, full stop. It’s faster, cheaper, and way more reliable than any other method.
The fees come from fulfilling legal requirements like detection of money laundering and terrorism financing, and also customer security features like fraud detection and multi-factor authentication.
There are fintechs for customers who want lower fees and don't need e.g. physical branches or phone support. That's perfectly fine.
But a fintech that didn't perform KYC would be shut down pretty quickly by the police, so there's a floor on how low fees can be while remaining legal.
> more competitive because of government regulation
That's the same as "not legal".
But I agree that it's still a useful technology, because the moral argument sometimes trumps the legal one. If a north korean defector uses Bitcoin to exfiltrate their life savings, I don't think anybody will complain how it was technically illegal under North Korea's law.
You realize the irony of looking at those titles, and then at the present day price of bitcoin, which is 25x, 10x the price at the time of those articles.
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