Scamming

By: Ahaan Saddiq

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

Length: 31 mins

Publisher's summary

Everyone hates a liar, but as many salespeople know, this is sometimes the only way to sell a service or product, especially if it's inferior or fake. Social media has changed many aspects of people's lives around the world, and although a great deal of it has been authentic and generated connections at an extremely high rate globally, not all the profit from ad revenue, subscribers, and popular content has been lawful. In general, social media influencers get paid for the number of subscribers and posts that are liked and shared with other people on platforms or across platforms. Social media companies profit off of data mining users personal information and selling it as well as ad revenue. This, of course, is how most social media influencers get paid, but as anyone who has participated in the social media revolution knows, content that is bold and risky is often the most rewarded. This has resulted in a class of swindlers on social media that make broad claims about products that they are selling that are not backed by scientific evidence and much more. Some of the most devious people participating on social media outright lie and fake terminal illnesses to increase support, get subscribers, increase ad revenue, and gain monetary support through Patreon or GoFundMe campaigns. Governments have had a laissez-faire approach to most of these users and platforms, but this has changed a bit as many of those running the scams have been turned in to the authorities and have been found to have directly and indirectly profited off of false lies and deceit regarding products, illnesses, and/or both. Social media adoption will grow and change well into the future in combination with AI and blockchain technology that will be implemented by the social media platforms as a result of increased liability of content creators in conjunction with forcing verification of identities and information posted on these sites. People's deception on social won't change anytime soon, but individuals and social media platforms will be forced to adopt AI and blockchain technology industry standards that will eliminate most bad actors and people creating misinformation and deceptive content that is used to dupe people, conning them out of their time and money, and which causes societal unrest. It's not illegal to lie about disease as the public doesn't have a legal right to know about people's health, but it's illegal to monetize it, which involves both social media influencers and the sites hosting their frauds!