Dark Artistry

I used to tell a joke back in the eighties, what’s the difference between an outlaw biker and a cop? The length of their hair. Meta, previously Facebook is the cop.

A major retailer named Sam Ash went out of business recently and the scams flooded in on Facebook offering huge clearance discounts. One account I looked at literally changed their name to Sam Ash and pointed to a shop offering merchandise at ridiculously low prices from guitars to synthesizers in between photos of their children, presumably in Africa.

I have been reporting these ads on Facebook, which was followed up with “we are not removing this ad”. I got more ads where the shop address changed from samashmusicshop.com to sammusicius.shop, I assume there are more. They are all the same site with different addresses and maybe hooks into PayPay. Maybe it’s the same scammer, who knows? How many ‘known’ scams have I reported? Many. How many were removed? Zero.

My point? Facebook seems to not care that scammers are operating on their site. Other members were posting about these scams to warn their friends and yet the ads remain. I don’t think Sam Ash is even operating any longer; although, as of this writing the site is still alive. How hard is it to validate a web-site address or the fact that multiple Facebook accounts are posing as Sam Ash and sending out ads on their platform?

I found email addresses associated with a couple of these scammers on hotmail (thought that was gone) and gmail. You can’t report these addresses on those platforms that I could find as this type of scam is not listed to be reported. It’s not phishing or spam coming from these addresses so no way to report that they are used in a scheme to steal people’s money. Crazy.

So out of all these scam ads appearing on my wall, Facebook refuses to remove any of them? Is that how they feel about their customers? I have reported many ads that bait and switch to a travel site. None of those were taken down either, WTF?

I have also reported sexually explicit videos that occasionally roll across my video feed to Facebook, of course watching even a portion of these shorts gets you more sexual content. I gave up reporting them as quick flashes of vaginas and breasts seem to be within Facebook’s family acceptable content. I hate to say it, but some girls did not look old enough to create that type of content and many, under age or not, may be being exploited for all I know. I guess they don’t care about that either.

Now don’t get me wrong, if women want to make money that way and men want to pay them, that’s their business, but some of the video crosses the line for Social Media content. I personally don’t want it and don’t want to visit porn sites or Only Fans. In the end, it was easier to just hide or ignore it as Facebook isn’t going to do anything. I digress.

Next, I wanted to see if you could report this type of scam to PayPal, since they are being used to transfer funds to the scammers bank accounts. Nope. I found nothing to report this activity. I see I can report not receiving something, receiving a counterfeit, unable to get a response from a seller, but nothing to say that a site using their services to steal money.

Even ads on YouTube are mostly misleading. You have the plug-in wall heater that is amazingly invented by multiple people to challenge the gas companies and the OTA antenna, also invented by multiple people, to challenge the cable companies, which are complete fabrications. Those products are from China and not even invented by Americans or manufactured in America. Shameful.

It seems to me as long as they are making money or not spending money to fix their systems, the answer is yes – scams, misinformation, and deceptive business practices are perfectly acceptable on these platforms until enough people bitch to their representatives causing the government to act. In my opinion, this makes social media and big tech. worse than the people scamming folks, because they are their enablers. I simply decided to delete my accounts and end my use of their services.

More news on this shit company.