Its wild to see the community notes under most of the ads warning of scams. I've see debates break out in the comment thread under the ads about just what kind of scam it is.
I stumbled across one of these sponsored posts, it looked like a blatant scam but was well enough crafted that unsuspecting folk could easily fall for it.
Surprisingly, some comments were >6 weeks old (meaning it had been up for at least that long), and it had hundreds of 'reactions' (hinting it had been displayed to a lot of people).
the worst part about arguing the worth of things like this is one side has a strong financial/emotional motive to be hostile and disingenuous. so it’s best not to engage what’s clearly a scam. it’s like trying to tell someone who is in an MLM that it’s a pyramid scheme
Something I'm learning from reading the comments is that the culture has moved in what it calls a "scam"
In my mind, and from my background, a scam is a pretty brutal outright fraud. You buy a toaster and they send you a box of bricks.
From the top comment:
- Rainbow vacuum cleaner (I would say it is not a scam, just an overpriced and underwhelming product)
- Aqualife water filter (Similarly I would just call this an overpriced product)
- Hiring someone to take us to another city to buy a car to "help get a good deal" - turned out he was working for the seller, and it was not a good deal at all. (Depending on details, this actually does sound like a scam, though a small one. The scam part is where they hired the intermediary, other than that it's just abusive sales)
- A summer job for me selling Vector cutlery (not a scam, It's a crap job for sure, and MLM for sure, but they do in fact pay you for what you sell. I sold cutco and I made a little money)
Some others:
Trading in a car? Last-minute they discount the trade-in value due to damage and hope you won't realize that's already counted in the KBB value. (arguably a scam, but mostly I would just call that aggressive hagling)
Car's making a weird noise? The mechanic wants to replace your struts for 1800$ even though the sound is just from the brakes being worn down. (Might be a scam, but it also might just be a mechanic who's not great at their job. I have blown many thousand dollars in billable hours for my clients by misdiagnosing software issues before. Sometimes the people we hire just fuck up and that's part of life. If you as the client are really out of your territory then you are more prone to hiring someone incompetent)
Inherited money in a trust? The trust manager calls you to "discuss your plans" and get you to let them manage the money without you ever seeing it. (Again, conceivably a scam, but also it's a little tricky because the trust working just right would look similar. This feels a lot more the mechanic example where it's not so much a scam as you are hiring someone who isn't very good)
Miss paying taxes in a state because you thought you didn't owe them anything because you didn't actually live there? I'm still getting fake letters that try to scare me into calling them even though the bill was cleared up. years ago. (Ok, this one sounds like it's pretty much a scam)
And then the infamous "investing in a Friend and Family business" and never getting the money back.
I have no doubt that this is sometimes a scam... but I'm an angel investor and also do quite a bit of F&F investments and I can say for sure: I don't think I have ever been scammed, and the vast majority fail burn the capital and show no positive return. That doesn't make it a scam! Running a business is hard! I think we already know this on HackerNews. Just because someone bets and looses doesn't mean they got scammed!
The scams highlighted by the scamville series of articles pale in comparison to some of the offers being promoted and the deceptive ways they are being promoted everyday by affiliate marketers and people in the performance marketing space. Not saying that everyone is a bad apple, but it's a mess out there.
Which is why I assume everything is a scam since the ones I notice from comments are simply the ones that they either didn't bother to delete comments on or had too many negative comments to delete.
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