The fake Facebook profile industry - <AUTHOR> http://ici.radio-canada.ca/special/sextorsion/en/index.html <comment><USER2> Using a throwaway account to keep things private

Last year I was "sex-torted" on Facebook but not by a ring of French criminals. Instead, it was by someone I had chatted with on the internet years ago (while we were both still teenagers)

She had recently gotten divorced and contacted me after many years away. We spoke about intimate things (I never shared intimate images, though she did) and were getting closer and closer to each other.

She eventually asked me for money to cover an expense for her daughter, but I didn't send it fearing I was being scammed. In exchange, she took screengrabs of the most intimate parts of our conversations and shared them to all of my professional contacts via LinkedIn as well as friends , colleagues and family on Facebook.

The experience haunts me to this day, I discussed _consensual_ kinky stuff with her and she used this to paint me as a freak and deviant. The only people who understood it were those who had been in a similar situation or those who were in the "lifestyle" as well. Strangely, most of the support I received after the fact were women who have been similarly extorted. Men in my entourage just whispered and snickered.

To this day, I still feel shame in certain circles because of what is unsaid. The police have done absolutely nothing even in the face of evidence (reports filed with local police and FBI) but it's simply not a priority. Facebook won't even pull the posts because no intimate images were actually shared and it doesn't technically violate their "guidelines"

Net result: I've deleted my social profiles. Every last one of them (and feel better as a result). However, the damage is done and I'm totally still feeling PTSD as a result of the ordeal.

I consider myself very tech savvy (engineer, infosec background, on the internet since the early 90's) and able to smell a scam. However, it's really really easy to fall victim to something like this. Be careful.

<comment><USER3> This is something that could have happened to anyone. Not just because of misplaced trust in an online partner but because it's easy to create fake screenshots of conversations using Photoshop or simply Inspect Element.

I'm interested in how you mitigated the damage once the post was published. A good strategy might have been to simply discredit it as being fake/photoshopped along with a small tutorial showing how easy it is to create (most aren't tech savvy enough to understand this already).

True you'd be lying, but this is certainly not below the level of someone who's falsely accusing you.

<comment><USER4> It's shocking how easy it is to become a liar without missing a beat.

If they slipped and someone caught them lying, it would become exponentially worse. Bad idea.

But they should be proud of their sexuality. Whether it's BDSM or hotwifing or whatever strange kink, who cares? It's the same as shaming someone for being gay.

I dislike that we have to be so Victorian about sex. It's the social climate we live in, but... Why?

There are also broader implications: Whenever we discredit the truth, we're contributing to how easy it is to manufacture fake news. There's a certain piece of potentially fake news I've been dying to bring up. It had a big impact on me, and then I realized it might be fake. But in an era when the truth is so easy to distort, what should you believe?

<comment><USER5> _" I dislike that we have to be so Victorian about sex. It's the social climate we live in, but... Why?"_

It's religion. It teaches roughly 4 bn† people that sex is dirty, that nakedness is shameful, and that talking about it's acts and/or requisite body parts is taboo.

† According to Wikipedia 2.4 billion Christians, and 1.6 billion Muslims.

<comment><USER6> If that was true, you should see significant differences between religions. And at the same time very little differences within religions.

That does not seem to hold. Looks like religions just tend to echo some sort of natural chastity. And that is hardly surprising given how recent things religions are and how old thins STDs are.

"Oh you have tingling feeling in your weewee, it's wrath of God!" and you just explained one thing away while giving more credibility to the god thing your trying to promote.

<comment><USER5> _If that was true, you should see significant differences between religions. And at the same time very little differences within religions._

Not following you. The Decalogue exists in Judaism, Christianity and in Islam. The Decalogue, and marriage, are indeed extremely recent social constructs.

I'm not promoting religion - I despise any form of it. I merely posit religion as being the source of humanity's prudishness (something the rest of nature does not share).

<comment><USER7> "I merely posit religion as being the source of humanity's prudishness (something the rest of nature does not share)."

Nature as a whole may not, but there are species even more monogamous than we are out there. I've sort of played a game of "construct an even remotely sensible sexual strategy no species uses" and so far I've come up empty; everything you can think of, including the closest equivalent to "prudishness", is used out there.

On that note, the "missing link" for you is probably that sex and reproduction are inextricably linked for all non-humans, and for all humans up until _very_ recently. Hangups about sex are not hangups about sex; to put it in quite atheistic terms, they are hangups about whose selfish genes get to win out over whose. Start looking at it that way and it makes a lot more sense than your current model, probably.

Our current reproductive strategies are currently in total chaos because of the extremely _recent_ introduction of effective birth control and I see little reason to believe that we have found the best response to that in what is still effectively just one generation, nor that our current responses will be stable over the generations, because the shock is simply too recent in generational terms. (Not to mention all the near-in-generational-term shocks that may be yet to come, including but not limited to: Effective male-directed birth control, effective sex robots for males, technology to permit cloning without loss, technology to edit genes in eggs or sperm, technology to permit taking children to term out of a biological womb, and in the craziest case, technology to completely digitize people and make biology essentially irrelevant.) In particular, it does not seem particularly clear to me that the idea that "sex is 100% just sex and nobody should be ashamed about anything as long as it is consensual" is going to win out, because that crowd tends to use birth control of one form or another, and therefore, in the next several generations can be expected to be bred out. By some definitions of morality it may well be moral, but it won't be stable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Throwaway to share a valuable perspective. My dad is a chronic target for scammers, and falls for them at a rate where I can only think it intentional on some level. He'll allow fake MSPs to install programs as root, on the same machine he does banking and legal on. He'll call numbers when strange javascript alerts tell him he has a virus. He'll then pay people to "remove" said malware, giving them full access to the machine via teamviewer etc.

I've managed to limit his internet usage to an iPad and a chromebook - but as mentioned above that does little good. He is extremely proud and talking to him is useless. A good chunk of these events come while browsing porn, which he refuses to admit. I feel hopeless and am in the process of separating any financial connections with my mother for fear I'll become a victim. My mother has been saving cash for years to insulate herself (my dad also refuses to write a will - but thats another problem entirely).

I know a major event is coming soon. While I'm fairly certain his porn usage is tame, all it would take is a fake $THAT_ACTRESS_WAS_ACTUALLY_17_WE_WILL_REPORT_TO_FBI email and he could probably be extorted for everything he has. I don't know what to do honestly. This is a real threat to millions of Americans and it seems there is no solution.

<comment><USER9> Have you considered running OpenWRT / LEDE or a pi-hole ([https://pi- hole.net/](https://pi-hole.net/)) to block adverts / known websites where such scams occur at a network level?

(There are publicly available lists of known botnet / scam IP's)

<comment><USER10> I've use OpenDNS at my parents house to help block most of the worst scams, works pretty well.

<comment><USER11> So far I have just installed Ghostery for my parents, since it doesn't break most sites, and they are sharp and AFAIK don't visit sketchy sites. But I have seen one grandfather turned into a Fox Geezer and ripped off by scammers, despite his children trying to clue him in, so I suspect I will have to do something more aggressive at some point in the future. Thankfully, I think they have enough distrust of humanity that I should have no problem installing a firewall.

Also, they thankfully show no interest in social networks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> 1\. I got told many years ago, that when you get that crazily bad emails, where it claims to be from some official source, but there are spelling mistakes, the return email address is obviously wrong, grammer is terrible, etc. the sort where it is so completely obviously it is a scam - often this is done on purpose, they aren't intereseting >99% of people who can spot a scam, they are interested in the <1% who can't spot it is obviously a problem. Basically they cast a wide net, but when the haul it in, only the whales are found within. At that point, they can use a large amount of resource, per victim, as they know they have a reasonable chance of success.

2\. Separately to the above, a reasonable amount of men (perhaps women to? I don't know, I feel like it is more men) will happily look at girls, whether this in a Playboy Magazine in the 50's, looking at girls as the enter a bar in the 90's or whether it is flicking through images of a girl on Facebook/Instagram in the 21st century. Some of these men actually know it is a scam, but don't really care, at the end of the day it's a picture of an attractive girl/woman, they so they look through. Maybe they even add that profile as a friend, as they don't mind having the pictures appearing naturally in their news feed. I don't know whether many (any?) of this group of people end up getting scammed. Perhaps somehow overtime, they get convinced the account isn't fake, or perhaps they still think it is fake but agree to go onto a video chat and then are convinced on there, or perhaps they are trying to catch the scammer out, but end up being caught out themselves.

<comment><USER13> See Why Do Nigerian Scammers Say They are From Nigeria?: [https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/why- do-...](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/why-do-nigerian- scammers-say-they-are-from-nigeria/)

<comment><USER14> I remember that post. I also remember when I first learned that Nigerian scammers are actually for Nigeria. I thought for sure they'd pick a different country than their actual one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I think the saddest part of this is that they prey on people. Many of the peeps here on HN can look at a profile and say "spam," so it's hard to imagine the people who can't. The 1% return from SPAM that click on those links, or put in their credit card details.

There was a ReplyAll podcast episode where one of the reporters actually tracks down a shop in India; even goes there and talks to people who've worked at a "tech support" places which charges $400 to remove fake viruses they've implanted.

I think this is even more insidious because they're preying on people who may be extremely lonely or desperate. When you really think about that, it's really sad. It's either psychopathic or they justify it to themselves in some horrible way like, "These people are losers anyway," or "If we say the girls are underage, then we're only going after sexual predators." .. The same crazy logic used by the Ashley Madison leakers.

<comment><USER15> I've reported spam accounts to Facebook - in fact I do so whenever I come across one. And on more than one occasion Facebook have closed the ticket claiming the account was legitimate.

If some of Facebook's own moderation team cannot differentiate between spam accounts and legitimate ones then what hope is there for others?

<comment><USER16> Facebook's moderation team faces far different incentives and consequences than you when checking if an account is spam. Which is worse - a false positive, or a false negative?

Facebook would rather leave 999 false profiles up and not accidentally close 1 genuine profile that just happens to look spammy. From their perspective, ruining someone's Facebook experience by deleting their account is worse than letting everyone else have a slightly worse experience (after all, even those fake profiles are generating ad revenue).

In contrast, Youtube is flagging, demonetizing, and three-striking channels left and right, using much more trigger-happy moderation (and even auto-mods) to control videos. They have plenty of content creators, but need to keep both viewers and lawyers happy.

Be careful that you know where you stand on these platforms, especially on important things like Amazon AWS accounts.

<comment><USER17> I am sure I will sound naive to you but what do you mean by AWS accounts here?

<comment><USER16> Amazon Web Services is a cloud computing service which, to put it briefly, allows you to run websites. You could have a physical server rack in a datacenter near you, or spin up some servers on AWS (or Google Cloud, or Azure).

A lot of very large companies use it, including a lot of Fortune 500s for their ordinary company websites, as well as major web apps like Netflix, Reddit, Pinterest, Spotify, etc. And of course Amazon itself.

Now, those listed sites _probably_ would get a call if something were to happen, but too many HN startups are running on AWS accounts linked to the founder's gmail and personal shopping account. Imagine if a dispute over a return of some counterfeit junk bought on Amazon by some CTO suddenly took down all of Netflix...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I find it unbelievable that Facebook doesn't have the fake profile situation under control. Facebook builds an incredibly detailed social graph of every user (and non-user) with a big trail of activity, on and off Facebook.

Surely there are signs; surely there are common characteristics, and if this journalist can write such a detailed exposé with only public data, Facebook can do much better.

<comment><USER19> Why would they scuttle their own engagement metrics by pruning out highly- engaged segments of the social network, though?

<comment><USER20> This.

Facebook will only remove the accounts that give them too much (media) trouble.

<comment><USER21> Yeah, but surely they must understand (especially after their uncomfortable turn in front of a congressional committee) that if they keep up the bullshit for too long they are going to find themselves regulated.

There may be no immediate financial incentive, but I'll bet good money that they fear a future of regulatory compliance.

Edited for spelling.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> "One of them said that she made 10,000 euros ($14,800 CDN) in a single month by "sharing links on Facebook." She also claimed that the network was based in France, Spain and Italy. Both women abruptly ended all communication with us after initially agreeing to an interview."

I'd rather suspect those are false confessions and more an attempt to attract new members in this scheme network who hope to make huge amount of money.

</comment><comment><USER23> Worth reading despite many from HN likely knowing this existed already.

What I find interesting is that to me and I assumed a lot of people, fake profiles are very obvious and as such I assumed there were, relatively, easy techniques to deal with them.

After working on some twitter marketing campaigns over the years and witnessing the swarming bot networks do their thing I have concluded that they are not dealt with whole heartedly on purpose.

</comment><comment><USER24> Lately I have been getting contacted by random 'women' on gtalk who 'just want to be friends'. I usually just block them but last week I decided to play along.

Long story short: they wanted me to cam with them and to see my picture. I sent them a link to non-existent page on my domain and logged their IP. I confronted them with their IP and the fact that they were in Nigeria and not south Carolina. The account was immediately deleted.

<comment><USER25> I had one contacting me on my Playstation messager account. I didn't even know that was a thing to be honest.... Same story about cam.... "She" wanted to go on cam with me.... sounded more like a bot. I didn't follow through so I don't know what was the final plan.

<comment><USER26> Blackmail, they get a dick pic and threaten to send it to all your contacts unless you pay up.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I deleted my facebook app since half of the posts in my feed were fake anyway. Facebook disguises ads as friend's share and likes, even when it is obvious that a particular friend would never like a corporate page. They even pushed the bad taste by making my deceased father (who's account we didn't think to delete) like things after he passed. So if you add fake profiles to that...

As a note, I hadn't received an email from facebook since pretty much I registered many years ago. Since I deleted the app a few weeks ago, facebook started spamming my email with notifications. And they use this trick that is really a new low, they create a thousand different kinds of mailing list so that every time you unsubscribe from one, you still receive new spam because it's "another" mailing list.

<comment><USER28> Even worse, Facebook seems to allow people to open an account using someone else's email address. I've never had a FB account yet occasionally I get emails from 'facebookmail.com' addressing me by a woman's name (I'm a man) and pestering me with friend suggestions of people I've never heard of. My email has never been compromised, yet Facebook spams it with the assumption I'm part of their network. I will never join their pile of shit spam den, and have never clicked on anything in the emails they send.

<comment><USER29> To be fair this sounds more like phishing. I would assume emails from facebook came from the facebook.com domain.

<comment><USER28> I thought that too but after looking it up FB email does indeed come from facebookmail.com

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> This is why Facebook's new Non Consensual Image Program seems like a really bad idea.

The technical implementation is fine, seems reasonable, only concern is that a human has to screen every image.

The real problem is that internet users have learned "Anything you upload to the internet is as good as public." Facebook is trying to teach people a new precedent: "Images uploaded to facebook in the right way will REMOVE images from the public".

People are going to fail to read the fine print, and thousands will be phished for nudes through facebook with similar schemes.

</comment><comment><USER31> The 2010 documentary catfish, and subsequent mtv series, offers an interesting look behind the curtain at the type of people who create fake facebook profiles. It covers a wide variety of reasons for creating them spanning from people who suffer from low self-esteem and confidence issues to not being able to reveal that they are homo-sexual out of fear of their friends and family finding out, just out of pure malice or even in one case creating a fake account story to get the show to pay for flights so they could finally meet face to face. Its crazy some of the lengths people go to keep up the charade and how much evidence certain people will ignore to keep the idea that the person is real alive.

<comment><USER32> You should be aware that this is a very questionable documentary and the makers of the documentary who are now the presenters of the TV show have been credibly accused of faking footage and exploiting the subject.

> Some journalists and film critics have cast doubt on the filmmakers > motivations. Kyle Buchanan of MovieLine questions why the filmmakers would > begin obsessively documenting Nev's online relationship so early on, and > argues that it is highly improbable that media-savvy professionals like the > Schulmans and Joost would not use the Internet to research Megan and her > family before meeting them. Buchanan and others have suggested that the > filmmakers likely discovered the fabrications in Wesselman-Pierce's story > earlier than is presented in the film and pretended to be fooled only so > that they could exploit her story for the documentary. > [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catfish_(film)#Authenticity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catfish_\(film\)#Authenticity)

<comment><USER33> > You should be aware that this is a very questionable documentary

Your links only talk about the film makers; the phenomenon of cat-fishing is real.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> All of the problems with fake profiles are fixable if we just use the social graph. It drives me nuts that this a problem. I have a solution, which i'll share here. I'm sharing it because i hope SOMEONE can build this or share it with someone at a high level at FB or twitter.

I have a mortgage in silicon valley and a young child, so i'm not in a position to take the time and risk to do this. But i really desperately want to see it in the world.

All we have to do is use the social graph to verify each other, and follow 'verified' edges to determine trust in a third party. People can just tell fb or twitter 'yes i know this account', and that's all we really need.

If I can't follow any 'yes i know this person edges' to a remote account, don't let me interact with that account. Shadowban them. It's THAT simple. This technique stops bots and it stops trolling by fake remote accounts.

If someone claims "i know all these fake accounts", then we ban that person, for creating all the fake accounts. Fake accounts are easily identified after the fact; when no real person pays any price, they'll keep getting created.

Yes it has the downside of temporarily slowing adoption. That's the main reason imagine twitter and FB haven't done this. They think us being harassed is less important than onboarding new people.

[https://s3.neyer.me/respect-matrix-slides.pdf](https://s3.neyer.me/respect- matrix-slides.pdf)

<comment><USER35> I don't see this working. Too many people on Facebook accept friend requests from unknown people already for it to work. I guess you could have some kind of "have you actually met this person in real life" test, but that's an annoying friction, and people seem to enjoy inflating "friends" regardless.

<comment><USER30> Also breaks as soon as anyone in your graph gets their password stolen.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Facebook recently started sending me notifications that somebody unknown was trying to log into my account, that they'd temporarily blocked it, and later re-enabled it. The emails actually come from Facebook, the problem is that the email address they're contacting me on is one I've never used for Facebook. The email contains a link to log into Facebook to "fix" the situation, but I obviously can't log in. The other link in the email is to unsubscribe from their notifications, but not from Facebook. There is absolutely no way for me to say "yes, this is my email address, and no, it should not be tied to Facebook in any way". There is also no way for me to check what Facebook account is supposedly attached to this email. This feels incredibly underhanded, it's either "join Facebook, or risk having somebody steal an account you never created". So back to the point of the article, Facebook is at the very least passively encouraging this fake profile stuff, and the cynic in me thinks it might not be that passive...

<comment><USER37> Doesn't this mean that someone at one time had access to your Email account at one time, in order to register a Facebook account with it? I would ask myself how much of my email history might have been compromised.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> I find it amusing and sad at the same time when I get targeted with these sorts of things. Amusing because they seem so obviously 'honey traps' of one form or another, and sad because I'm sure there are many people that fall for them (this article just confirms that suspicion).

I had hoped they would have done a bit of work to track the money flow in these scams. Clearly there is an opportunity here to disrupt that cash flow since most use electronic payment providers with at least some level of tracking. I want the electronic equivalent of 'marked bills' which have mandatory reporting requirements at all financial institutions that process them.

</comment><comment><USER39> I'm glad others are digging into this. It's a fairly common problem. I had to deal with my with my deceased friend's account being hijacked by a 'bait' account a few months ago. Facebook seemed fairly indifferent to the issue.

Wrote about the process here: [https://medium.com/@vonkunesnewton/facebook- parasite-the-sec...](https://medium.com/@vonkunesnewton/facebook-parasite-the- second-death-of-john-ezzard-2f3744f8a070)

<comment><USER40> They've gotta keep increasing those gross margins.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Two stories that I remember about this:

1\. Sextortion scam for personal gain Back in 2002 i was using MSN Messenger as a teenager, being like 17yo and full of testosterone, I accepted any girl wanting to share intimate details with me. There was one local girl, chatting with me for 2 years, but always had excused for not opening her cam. I was sharing intimate details while being on cam, but finally stopped, as she never wanted to meet me, despite living 20km away. She always had excuses. Two years later, I was dipping again into script kiddie stuff and trying out some trojan generators, combining it with an exe cryptor to make it undetectable for the early anti-virus tools. I contacted that girl again, and told her I had some new videos of my holidays. Sent it to her (holiday-in-france.avi.exe) and two mins later I was on "her" PC. Turns out it's a local guy, 5 years older than me, having like 100 folders named after local boys, where he kept videos, screen grabs and photos neatly organized. Most of them underage. Fortunately I found a word document with his resumee, even with a photo of him. I reported that guy to the feds the same day.

\--

2\. Sextortion with the wrong guy

Years later I migrated to an asian country. I now speak the local language and have a second Facebook and Skype profile that I only use for local contacts here, that I barely know and who are not family, friends or business contacts.

Every now and then some fake russian/eastern european girls try to add me on Skype or Facebook randomly. This time those girls are real, they even start a real webcam conversation.

But this time I'm prepared, being interested in infosec and online since the early 90ies and prepared because I was scammed before (see story 1.).

Those girls quickly start skype video calls, where they try to scam guys. Me, knowing this scam for years, had a laugh and continued the video chat, also sharing intimate details with them, and who says no to watch a beautiful girl undress herself and sharing her sexual preferences?

After usually 20-30 minutes of showing off on the camera, asking my sexual preferences and begging to add me on Facebook, they will change the tone of the conversion and try to blackmail me. Since I knew the scam, I was laughing and telling them, that my whole online presence is fake and all the profiles they have from me are filled with fake friends. They swore at me and immediately blocked me on Skype and Facebook.

Happened several times.

</comment><comment><USER42> The article explores sextortion, but doesn't ponder too deeply whats going on the with sharing images of disabled people etc. Perhaps people who respond sympathetically are also easy marks for sob story and pleading for money?

<comment><USER43> Off the cuff opinion:

Sex has a strong emotional component. People who are "sexually needy" are often really emotionally needy and emotionally unhealthy. They are attracted to things with a strong emotional component, but low commitment. Liking pics of people who have cancer or whatever fits those criteria. The people gushing at pathetic photos of that sort are (probably) more likely than others to also be vulnerable to sextortion.

I am handicapped and had a lengthy medical crisis. Lots of people wanted me to be their big feels hit for the day while not actually giving a flying fuck about my welfare. Trying to get people to invest two nanoseconds in actually being helpful instead of merely using me as some emotional drug was a huge uphill battle.

A good filter for who to not waste my time on is folks who seek me out because I have a disability (or other sob story) and they have such big feels about it. These are always leeches who cannot respect me as a person and will only ever talk to me to meet their emotional needs. It's really sick stuff.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> One of the worst thing about it is that they seemed to have started this not to make money but to have fun and hurt some people.

</comment><comment><USER45> Thank you for sharing this investigation.

Sometimes when I warn my friends and family about oversharing online, and the "dangers of social media" (on-the-internet-nobody-knows-you're-a-dog 1993 cartoon) they think I'm paranoid.

This is a very good case study for all social media users to understand.

</comment><comment><USER46> Ironically, if you try sharing this piece on social media you'll see that their graphic designer could spell neither "temptation" nor "extortion" correctly. In Canada! Yikes!

<comment><USER47> Were you looking at the French text portions? This reads like a study conducted and first published in French and then translated into English. Where I could find "extorsion" the context was French.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> Is there a plugin that tags fake profiles?

<comment><USER49> How? If a plugin could do that then the site could do that.

<comment><USER50> The site has incentives to avoid doing that. A crowd-sourced plugin similar to uBlock's 3rd party filters would probably work way better.

<comment><USER51> Maybe Twitter does but Facebook doesn't. That's why in the article they talk about how scammers are very eager to get the conversation off Facebook before the account is deleted.

<comment><USER50> Yes, FB absolutely does. Their inflated "active user" count is where their money comes from.

<comment><USER51> I think in Facebook's case it has more to do with having highly detailed information about their users, which fakes go against. Anyway, a lot of fake accounts get deleted quickly, as mentioned in the article (and I've observed this myself, as obviously fake profiles I've gotten friend requests from usually end up deleted in a day or two).

<comment><USER50> And a lot of other fake accounts _don 't_ get deleted. FB doens't _really_ care about the detailed information about their users, as long as they advertisers keep sending them money. Don't mix up what FB says they want, and what they actually want.

<comment><USER51> OK, but if the information is obviously bogus will advertisers keep paying? I don't think deleting fake accounts is necessarily an easy problem. Particularly when we consider that a false positive is much worse than a false negative as far as user impact goes.

<comment><USER50> > OK, but if the information is obviously bogus will advertisers keep paying?

Apparently yes. It's no secret that FB's numbers are not accurate, but they are still making a ton of money.

> I don't think deleting fake accounts is necessarily an easy problem. > Particularly when we consider that a false positive is much worse than a > false negative as far as user impact goes.

Nobody said it was easy. Only that FB is incentivised to do detection poorly. FB doesn't really care about user impact, they only care about profit. If it's not enough user impact to cause a dent in profit, they aren't incentivised to care.

<comment><USER51> > Nobody said it was easy. Only that FB is incentivised to do detection > poorly. FB doesn't really care about user impact, they only care about > profit. If it's not enough user impact to cause a dent in profit, they > aren't incentivised to care.

I think you've misunderstood my point (or perhaps glossed over it). From a UX perspective, it's way, way worse to delete a real person's account and tell them they're fake (tons of negative news coverage every time these screw-ups happen) than it is to let a fake account slide. So any technique that errs on the side of being too aggressive they are unlikely to use.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> How does the SEC not crack down on Facebook misleading investors around the number of "active" users?

<comment><USER53> It's a secondary metric and investors only carry about the revenue/profit. (Look at Snap, whose user count is growing, and stock price is not).

And since FB advertisers are paying for engagement, not impressions, the amount of ad fraud is likely insignificant.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> This... was an unreadable experience. Gratuitous animations, football field sized paragraph widths, proportional/fluid CSS sizing (thought maximizing my browser on a 1080p screen would allow me to see more), bite sized paragraphs interspersed with information-thin graphic inserts, full width graphics that have a larger height than your browser viewport, text swooshing down the screen while you're scrolling because the above graphic is dynamically resizing.

I appreciate the desire to experiment with the medium, but it just does a disservice to the content.

<comment><USER14> I agree. It was pretty annoying. So are the new top/bottom footers on Medium. I sometimes open up the inspector and delete those two divs just to read the page, but most of the time I don't bother, give up on the article, and just close the tab.

Content should just be content. You shouldn't need Javascript to simply view a page. Even if this was all just CSS tricks, it's still pretty annoying. I mean it's a neat idea. Scrolling animation can be kinda neat if done right, but this totally wasn't. It takes away from the content, which is pretty interesting.

<comment><USER55> > I sometimes open up the inspector and delete those two divs just to read the > page

It's crazy how often I need to do this as well. I remember back in the old days hitting esc would stop all the animations on a page, now you need to inspect + delete those elements.

There needs to be some crowd sourced way of doing this, so if you delete an element and I visit the site, the element is gone.

<comment><USER56> > There needs to be some crowd sourced way of doing this, so if you delete an > element and I visit the site, the element is gone.

This is how adblockers work (sort of).

We could probably leverage the same tech used for adblockers to make UI blockers, which maintain lists of "bad" UI and remove their tags and scripts.

Of course, I find it easier to just not use those websites.

<comment><USER57> In fact you can just right click an element and block it with most desktop ad- blockers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> Ugh, there is no way to just read the text, you have to scroll from short paragraph to short paragraph, like a fancy tweet storm. Do they even want people to read that thing?

<comment><USER59> Can someone with a longer attention span than me provide a summary? I didn't get far enough to glean what the "scam" is.

<comment><USER60> from above: [https://outline.com/vznfxw](https://outline.com/vznfxw)

<comment><USER58> Thanks, that's a useful site!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> It's about time Facebook should start taking action against fake profile. They should make use of AI to separate them out.

<comment><USER50> They have every incentive to do the opposite though. Fake profiles still count towards ad-revenue because advertisers aren't calling Facebook out on their bullshit.

<comment><USER62> Sounds like a competitor of Facebook should do it then..

<comment><USER63> You can't compete with mindshare on that scale. The network effects are ludicrous. People have made generally better products than Facebook for years that all wither because they don't have a billion people and everyone you already know on them.

If Facebook were using an open protocol like Ostatus anyone could make a peer network that is better than Facebook and actually compete, but their userbase is entirely locked into their platform. On purpose, of course, thats why investors value FB so highly. Its entirely against their interests to enable competition.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> This is what technology is - a double edged weapon. Use it wisely.

</comment><comment><USER65> What do you do with the real profiles, that are fake too? Too many people just present on Facebook what they perceive to be their best self.

</comment><comment><USER66> Hah, how stupid do you need to be to fall into this obvious trap. Let's see... a random cute girl approaches you online and wants to initiate a sexy chat. The chances of this happening for real and not being a scam are about the same as you being a distant cousin to a Nigerian prince who just passed away and left you millions of dollars of inheritance.

<comment><USER14> Spam relies on that 1% return, and it comes from either the lowest, the most ignorant, the most uneducated, .. or potentially the most lonely. That's what's probably the most insidious about this particular type of scam, that they target people who may have already made a series of bad decisions, or who are desperate and alone.

<comment><USER67> > that they target people who may have already made a series of bad decisions, > or who are desperate and alone.

like alcohol, casinos+lotteries, and free-to-play games with microtransactions

<comment><USER68> Are you comparing sextortionists to EA? I agree.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER69> I can totally understand that as i was into the same situation earlier

</comment><comment><USER70> Is this something that the blockchain could help with? Seems to me that a scalable method of authentication would be a real asset to solving the problem.

<comment><USER71> > Is this something that the blockchain could help with?

The answer to every problem isn't "blockchain". Sometimes it is "Rust". And, difficult as it may be to believe, sometimes the problem has no technical solution at all.

Hold on for one more day and things will go your way.

<comment><USER51> If those don't cut it try Big Data.</comment></comment></comment>


Google Play Protect is reporting that Android Lost can damage my device, Why? - <AUTHOR> I've used Android Lost since before google had an option to track your device. Now today I received an alert from google play protect saying the app can damage my device. Does anyone else use the app?  Have they received that message before? <comment><USER2> I think it has to do with thr one before latest update which enabled remote camera and mic usage without any notification. Right now I got an update which rolled this back, probably as a response to this reaction by Google.

Interestingly enough, Android lost, which I have been using for past several years, is not working very well on some devices of family members and I have been considering uninstalling it as they now have a data plan and the great function to respond to sms commands is not needed by me anymore.</comment>


Ask HN: 30+ year olds - how much have you saved so far? - <AUTHOR> Curious to know how much people have saved (total assets) by the time they are in their 30s. <comment><USER2> I'm 29, almost 30, and my situation won't have changed significantly by then. My net worth is about -$90k. I feel like my salary will cap out at around $70k because I'm a mediocre developer and not very smart. Can't get married, can't have children, can't travel. My girlfriend doesn't even know how bad it is because I'm ashamed to tell her. I mostly just resort to escapism (reading, video games, etc) because the dread of not being debt free until my 40s is too much weight to bear. I don't like programming, maybe because I'm not good at it, but it's the only thing I can do to stay afloat. If I had no debt I'd love to go work on a farm or something.

<comment><AUTHOR> Take a deep breath. This feeling of claustrophobia gets to all of us at times. Come up with a plan and stick with it. Discipline, while less fun, can make you feel really good and can be a turning point in your life. Hey, and there is always bankruptcy. I know somebody who is going through it right now because it was compounding faster than he could pay it off. Sometimes (definitely not always) it's the right option (comes with a bunch of other side effects). Tell your girlfriend too. Maybe she can help you with your plan. :) Best of luck (email in profile if you want to chat).

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'm 32, not married, and my net worth is ~$1.3M, all invested in Vanguard index funds.

Started at $0 right after college (no student debt luckily) and got there through savings and frugality and good employment options in the Bay Area.

The cost of living is insane over here, but if you are not pretentious, financially disciplined (and in my case don't want kids), you're going to be easily saving 6 figures a year, which you probably couldn't in other more reasonable areas.

<comment><USER4> That's a good nest egg for your age. Are you part of the FIRE movement(not sure how else to phrase this)? If so, what are your plans? If not, same question lol.

<comment><USER3> FIRE is one of the things I'd like most in this world, so I'm definitely trying to pursue it, but I'm very different than the crowd you'd find on reddit or other online communities: I don't assume an happy path that will allow me to FIRE as soon as my expenses are 4% of my nest egg, I see that as too risky.

I am personally using a conservative estimation that my portfolio will just keep up with inflation (0% real growth), and since I don't plan to leave any legacy, my math is simple, adjusted for inflation I can withdraw PORTFOLIO / (90 - CURRENT_AGE) every year. Based on that math, I still have a long way to go.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> 32 year old here. Not much savings, 2 grand in emergency fund, 10 grand in 401k (realized a little bit late!)

</comment><comment><USER6> 31, married so all numbers are as a couple. Lived in DC for a year then moved to Denver. Started at a defense contractor then gave that up to work remotely for an ecommerce company for almost the same salary.

Net worth is about $450k, ~425k in Vanguard and $25k in checking/savings accounts. Of the Vanguard money, 2/3rds in 401k or IRA accounts and 1/3 in taxable accounts. Came out of college with $210k in debt (paid for both of us to get Bachelors and Masters).

Anyone who has questions about investing or anything, feel free to reach out. Email in profile.

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm 29 but I'll soon hit 30. I have roughly $85k.

I save all my money in normal savings account, no investing or anything related to 'value increasing'. I don't have a separate retirement account either. I feel like I am not managing my money well enough, but I also don't feel like I have a "plan" for when I'm older. My next job have a clause where they will match retirement savings up to X percentage, that's a good step I guess? Kinda lost on the whole thing.

<comment><USER8> A matching 401k is really a great asset to have when job hunting. It's a sure- fire way to quickly compound a large amount of money. It's "free money" as they say, and always worth contributing to get the maximum match.

Also, 401k's often (don't have to be, but usually) are usually pretty moderate index funds. The risk associated with them isn't always like buying Tesla before he went and made his "$420" comment. They're a good start to investing when you don't know that much about it all.

<comment><USER7> As in my other comment, I mis-read the contract details. They will contribute only 2% and I am able to myself contribute 2-15% (isn't this the same as just saving myself?).

Also the country is Thailand, so there might be differences.

<comment><USER8> > Isn't this is the same as just saving myself?

Yes, it is. Though you'll more than likely see returns much higher than a standard (but safe) savings account will give you. You'll also get that 2% float on top of free money.

2% still isn't bad. Free is free, as I said.

In my particular case it's only 5% (best case):

50% match up to the first 10%.

So if I contribute 1% of my pay to it, I'll get a .5% match. If I contribute 10% to it, I'll get a 5% match. I can contribute more but I'll only ever get that 5%.

In your case, this is good compared to my situation in that you don't have to contribute 4% to get that 2% match, you can contribute even just 2%.

This is in the US FWTW. It's a pre-tax situation. I don't pay taxes on my contributions or my employers contributions; but I do when I withdraw them (earliest I can start withdrawing is age 59-1/2\. The assumption is that when I start withdrawing, my tax rate will be lower than it is now so I'll still "come out ahead".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Almost none. I had about 6 digits savings and it went down 5 digits a year.

Salary has gone up about 30%/year and I invested very heavily in that. But even with no savings, I'm much safer than I've ever been. Good insurance coverage, lots of job opportunities.

For context, about 80% of the region has no disposable income and the median annual salary for a senior engineer is US$20k. Household debt is 82% of GDP, so basically everyone owes each other, and payment often comes late.

</comment><comment><USER10> 30 in few months. I'm in an awful debt-spiral. This years goal is to get my credit card to zero and start saving some money. First step is to find a better paying job.

</comment><comment><USER11> 31 years old with $140,000 split across a 401k, Vanguard funds (bonds, total stock market and total international stock index) and some cash for an emergency fund. The only other expensive asset is a car which is valued around $8,000.

</comment><comment><USER12> 35, 6k - I got started really late in life, "bootstrapped" my career, and I'm not in a tech hub. We're a single income family though, we're surviving and fairly recently debt-free.

</comment><comment><USER13> 34, with about 800k saved up (mostly index funds, a third in 401k and the rest in taxable / roth ira). The lion's share is from the past couple of years after joining Facegooglesoftazon.

</comment><comment><USER14> 31, married, $362,000 in a variety of index funds (mostly 401k, some taxable). $132,000 in ibonds, money market, CDs. $250,000 in a paid off house. Car is worth $5000. so about $720,000 net worth.

</comment><comment><USER15> What about yourself?

</comment><comment><USER16> 31, married, $70k in a 401k, $1.5k in a savings account. Don't get student loans, kids!

</comment><comment><USER17> 30

192K in Robinhood 127k Equity in my apartment 65k 401k 82k IRA 10k Savings 3k Bonds Net worth: 479K

<comment><USER18> What does $192K in Robinhood mean, do you have it in stock/shares, or just sitting there? Why Robinhood? They are kind of a risk to put your money in, with that amount you can probably call up one of the larger companies and get X free trades, free level 2 and so on for moving your funds over, also better fills on your orders. Also, they have better customer service and they aren't just figuring out what they do. Lots of horror stories on Robinhood.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> 30, $0

</comment><comment><USER20> 23, 0 savings. I don't have any savings account.</comment>


Liquid Page – A bookmarklet to rearrange webpages – by [as] - <AUTHOR> http://www.alexschreyer.net/programming/liquid-page-a-bookmarklet-to-rearrange-webpages/ <comment><USER2> That is incredible. That makes the browser into a visualization tool. Can we save the page? Resize the divs?

<comment><USER3> Agreed. I would love to see this developed further, it has significant game- changing potential. If one could save arrangements on pages whose elements were consistently labeled, then people could swap their save files, and that can lead to all sorts of other changes.

The web is in need of a shake up - it's a bit late to write an essay on why, but would sum it up as 'siloed by design'. I think disintermediation offers a way out of this - users should be able to take dynamic subsections from websites, filter and recombine them. Publishers will naturally resist this strongly because it upends a lot of typical web business models (a great many websites run on the same principle as free magazines/papers and suffer from the same faults as a consequence).

The ease of interaction here is what embedding * should* be like. Not sure where it will lead, but I hope we'll find out.

<comment><USER2> Yes, why can't you load pieces of sites in any arrangement you want?

The advertisers will have to get in there and make sure all the div names keep changing, with unique ids on every request, to foil this ability.</comment></comment></comment>


Meet the Egyptian Technician who is mysteriously ranking #1 for "Google" - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@eyadnour/meet-the-egyptian-technician-who-is-currently-ranked-at-1-for-google-and-he-doesn-t-even-know-6cf1040efeab

<comment><USER2> this is amazing ! ah ah ah ! ! !</comment>


Notable aspects of Groupon IPO & S-1 Filing - <AUTHOR> http://www.quora.com/Groupon-IPO-S-1-Filing-June-2011/What-are-the-most-notable-aspects-of-the-Groupon-S-1

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a great analysis of Groupon S-1</comment>


Social media startups please - <AUTHOR>

I run a social media news blog(http://fastgush.com) and I am looking for social media startups to write about. Currently the blog has a small readership, but it has been growing steadily for the past six months and will enter Alexa's 100,000 soon.
I have covered few startups till now and would love to cover many more. The main problem I have been facing is finding social media startups.
If any of you is building or has built a site/app/anything related to social media, please get in touch with me at email@example.com
Would love to hear from you. <comment><USER2> Very nice site.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks a lot.</comment></comment>


How "illegal" teacher strikes rescued the American labor movement - <AUTHOR> https://news.vice.com/en_us/article/mbzza3/how-illegal-teacher-strikes-rescued-the-american-labor-movement <comment><USER2> The fundamental problem with public school teachers are that the "customer" in the relationship isn't the parent or the child, but the gov bureaucrat. So while the results of a teacher might hurt the child or the parent, who cares as it's not them to who they cater to.

The incentives aren't aligned properly and there is no negative incentive when a school fails a generation of children. The teacher and admins will just carry on business as usual(rather monopoly) charge a higher fee and deliver a worse product.

<comment><USER3> >The fundamental problem with public school teachers are that the "customer" in the relationship isn't the parent or the child, but the gov bureaucrat. So while the results of a teacher might hurt the child or the parent, who cares as it's not them to who they cater to.

Thanks no child left behind! Tying school funding and teacher pay to child test schools is one of the largest blunders this country has made.

<comment><USER4> Thanks to government in general. America's students are much worse since the inception of the DOE.

<comment><USER3> Citation needed

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Teachers are still poorly paid, they aren't really changing any of the problems teachers face, and a great deal of opportunity and advancement is determined purely by seniority....

They may win some battles but I would argue they aren't winning the war, and their emphasis on seinority above all isn't very appealing.

I still see young teachers with new ideas held back by a union that caters to luddite established teachers who are effectively untouchable, don't want to change and enjoy most of the benefits.

American unions focus on seinority > all is the reason I would never want to be a part of them.

<comment><USER6> The article addresses this, pointing out that many of these teacher strikes are led by the workers themselves, rather than union leadership (which often tries to avoid strikes).

This is HN, right? I'd expect someone here to seize on that opportunity, and develop some sort of service to help workers organize themselves, perhaps against the wishes of their union-appointed bureaucrats.

<comment><USER5> I'm not convinced that either the unions or one off actions are doing much.

<comment><USER7> Teachers keep withholding their labor and getting pay increases as well as increases in overall school funding. I'm curious why you feel that is not "doing much".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I generally support teacher labor movements. However, I think it's important to consider the effects that even the smallest disruption. For example, last year in NC the teacher's groups organized a "Rally for Respect." What they did to bypass strike laws was they encouraged every teacher in the state to request unpaid personal day, which is normally rubberstamped by the principal as you only have a couple. When half the school wants leave, that would be when you stop signing them. But instead, to avoid that conflict, nearly all major districts cancelled school entirely, treating everyone taking leave as a foregone conclusion.

So, one extra teacher workday, barely even worth noting, right? Well, it just so happens that the day selected was the day of the AP Lang exam that year. By the time they saw fit to announce the non-strike, all of the exams had already been ordered and students and teachers had been planning for the normal date. Thanks to the non-strike, the state had to pay $45/exam to get late exams, and it could have caused some students to miss the exam if they had to take a conflicting exam late for a legitimate reason. Oddly enough, College Board wouldn't have charged if it were a real strike.

<comment><USER9> The whole point of strikes is that they are disruptive.

<comment><USER8> But when government workers strike, they don't disrupt the legislatures that set their pay, they disrupt the everyday citizens who might have even been sympathetic to their cause.

<comment><USER7> I'm not sure what point you are trying to make here. Of course strikes are disruptive to the general public; that's one of the reason people strike. Ordinary citizens who have their lives disrupted will turn to their elected officials to end the disruption. There will always be people who turn unsympathetic when workers withhold their labor. The long-term benefit is worth it.

<comment><USER10> As an ordinary citizen affected by, I support privatization where possible and at-will employment regimes for public servants where not. Public servants are privileged and should not have the right to strike.

<comment><USER11> So if public servants are forbidden from striking and their employer (govt) starts abusing them, what would be their recourse? Voting might be insufficient if size of the workforce is too small to matter.

In general, strike is a tool labor has against capital. Just because capital happens to be provided by taxpayers, how does that warrant a special case handling?

<comment><USER10> They can always quit. But nobody quits from guaranteed for-life employment with generous pensions, lots of paid leave and limited workload.

<comment><USER12> Public school teachers don't have any of those benefits, at least in the US. Their pay and pension are anything but generous, they have little paid leave (where I live, maternity or paternity leave uses up paid sick days too), and they work long hours, with the expectation that they are available to answer emails practically every day.

This is pretty much why there are very few public school computer science teachers who do a decent job, since the ones who can legitimately write code can get a much better job at a private company.

<comment><USER13> They have little paid leave because they have summers and other holidays off, and as for answering emails - welcome to having a job in America.

When you factor that they only work 2/3 of the year, the value of their pension and healthcare teachers actually make a considerable amount of money.

That being said I'm not sure what the right amount is - I put a great deal of value on education - then again the best private institutions probably pay less than public ones at the k-12 level

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Labor laws were a carefully negotiated compromise between economic chaos and workers rights.

I think the lesson here is that that they've been weakened to the point of irrelevance, people still need to (and will) strike, and it will cause more harm to employers than the system that was intentionally dismantled after the last few decades.

</comment><comment><USER15> I don't get labor movements for public institutions. I mean for corporate or private businesses its makes sense to counter the profit above all else motive, but for something like a school which uses public funds to push a societal good I find it to be a bit entitled.

<comment><USER16> I think that the issue is that even though school is a societal good (and presumably most teachers are motivated at least somewhat by altruism) it is also how teachers make their living. So the same forces involved in a private sector strike are in play, just with management replaced by the government, school board, or citizens.

<comment><USER17> On the other hand, private workers don't typically vote for their leaders, but public unions can and do get to vote. So they have additional levers to pull

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Vice writers are unionized and are thus profiting from pro-union laws that allow them to undermine the contracting rights of their employer and get themselves above-market wages. Therefore the angle they choose for this article is not surprising to me.

Most of those working in the media have a major conflict of interest when writing about politics.

<comment><USER16> Can you explain what you mean by contracting right?

<comment><USER18> The right to hire whoever you want at whatever terms you want to offer. Collective bargaining mandates for one violate that right. You can't offer an employment contract that doesn't obligate you as an employer to collectively bargain, meaning negotiate with a representative of a collective bargaining unit to the exclusion of all other parties, in the event that a majority of workers in a work unit unionize and demand it.

Anything the press commonly defines as a "labor right" is really a restriction on the employer's right to freely contract.

<comment><USER16> I see what you are saying; however, I think those restrictions are often necessary due to to the dramatic difference in power between a corporation and an individual employee.

Since most people do not have the opportunity to support themselves anymore (because they cannot afford farmland or the capital to start their own business), for most people working for someone else is no longer voluntary. Therefore, I think those people must have the right to negotiate fair* working conditions with their employer.

* I realize that the exact definition of what constitutes fair is going to differ between different people and political views. However, I think there are general principles that most people can agree on such as making enough to provide for ones family, a safe work environment, being treated with respect by the employer, and work hours that allow the employee to participate in other aspects of life.

<comment><USER19> No, "fair" is more like a lack of fraud or coercion. It means that you get what you can manage without those, which is generally the market rate. You may be able to trade off pay, safety, respect, and hours. (give up some of one to get more of another) The deal you get comes from the value you bring. Getting more than your share, for example by coercion against the employer or by defrauding the employer, is definitely not fair.

<comment><USER16> I definitely agree that it is legitimate for an individual to trade off certain benefits of a job for others. I think the issue arrises when they either do not have the opportunity to actually make that decision (e.g. if all of the jobs they are able to get lack one of those traits) or if the overall split of benefits between the employer and employee is skewed (e.g. the business becomes more profitable but the increase in profit is not split with the employees).

<comment><USER19> Employees get their wages. They must be paid the market rate no matter if the business is profitable or not. If they aren't paid that, they leave. The business can't force employees to stay and work for less, even if the business is losing money. If the business had to share profit, then it would only be fair that it gets to share losses, forcing employees to stay and work like slaves... but we don't find that to be acceptable.

Profit is the dream that drives entrepreneurs to take crazy risks to start businesses. Without that, they would not try, and jobs would not get created.

There is some justification for keeping the profit from getting extreme, to keep customers from being hit with abusive monopoly pricing. The least harmful way to do this is by enforcing the existence of competition, breaking up any business that gains excessive market share. One could draw the line at 15% for example, splitting any business with a greater market share. Another possibility is to persuade businesses to split themselves, perhaps via taxes based on market share. A danger is that innovation slows due to businesses avoiding hitting the market share limit.

<comment><USER18> >>There is some justification for keeping the profit from getting extreme, to keep customers from being hit with abusive monopoly pricing.

Another option is for the state to directly fund open-source software in sectors prone to monopolization. Then there will be competition, and if the open source software wins out and becomes the market standard, no profit gouging.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Logify: Log out of all your online accounts with one click - <AUTHOR> Recently, I built a that tool that lets you logout of all your online accounts with a single button click.<p>We're live on ProductHunt and If you have a couple seconds, I'd really appreciate an upvote and any feedback via comments!<p>(https://www.producthunt.com/posts/logify-2-0-2) <comment><USER2> Flagged because you linked to producthunt rather than the actual site. Obviously your intention is that people vote you up you there - rather than actually engage in constructive feedback.

</comment><comment><USER3> The headline is a clickbait. It may log me out from some of the "most popular" sites, but certainly not all.</comment>


Ask HN: Does this service exist? Lookup and bulk delete all my online accounts? - <AUTHOR> Dear HN,
Over the years, I have registered for many different services, email subscriptions, and the like online. I worry about how much of myself is out there that I have simply lost track of or forgotten about.
Is there a service where you can look up all these accounts in one place by email address, and manage/delete them? I'm talking something beyond the bulk-unsubscribe email services like Unroll Me. I want more closure than that -- full account deletion. Is there such a thing?
Thanks!
BTW if this doesn't exist, consider this some startup idea validation! You have at least one sincere customer willing to pay for such a thing if it exists. I suspect I'm not the only one. <comment><USER2> I'd be interested in this, too.

One problem is that I've already lost accounts to time. No matter what I do, I can't recover my first gmail account, which means there's a little time capsule of my teenage self just hanging out in the ether, assuming it hasn't been hijacked by a botnet or something.</comment>


Blue Origin Crew Capsule 2.0 First Flight [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSDHM6iuogI&feature=youtu.be <comment><USER2> Pretty impressive. So many people get caught up with SpaceX they don't realize there are other rocket startups out there. Didn't Rocket Labs NZ just have a launch?

<comment><USER3> Rocket Labs (a US/NZ company) just had a last-second launch abort.</comment></comment>


The Myth of the Infrastructure Phase - <AUTHOR> https://www.usv.com/blog/the-myth-of-the-infrastructure-phase <comment><USER2> The 8 comments on here are spot on accurate. Blockchain is not 3.0 and has a very limited use case that enthusiasts refuse to acknowledge. I predict a great failure in 1-2 years with a few surviving beheamoths that are actually using blockchain for it's one legit use case, a ledger.

<comment><USER3> Hopefully it won't crash the same time as the ML and javascript framework hype explodes. Or maybe it'd be the kick in the bum this comfortable industry needs to start innovating for real again.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This article has elements of insight, but it seems oblivious to the main direction of causality.

What drives technology is stuff people want.

In that context apps __are __infrastructure too. I want to tell people something, so the app email helps me. And the infrastructure TCP /IP helps email. But from my perspective "I want to tell Dan the meeting changed" it's all just infrastructure, a way to solve that problem.

The article implies that the infrastructure is like sitting there waiting for apps. But apps don't just stroll along into the story. Apps come from needs.

People have a need for a way to send money for illegal stuff, and a need/desire for a medium of gambling. Crypto has risen to meet those needs.

Unless there are other _demonstrated_ needs that blockchain solves there aren't going to be more apps, or more anything.

<comment><USER5> Did we read the same article? I got exactly the opposite point from the article: that apps preceed infrastructure, e.g. light bulbs came before the electric grid and airplanes came before airports. The apps are made better by the infrastructure but are still useful without it. That infrastructure supports new apps that wouldn't be useful without the infrastructure, but the infrastructure is always built for the previous apps, not the new ones it will make possible.

<comment><USER4> Yes I got that part.

The problem is that the electric grid doesn't come from lightbulbs. They both come from people wanting to do stuff in the dark. Airplanes and airports come from people wanting to get places faster.

The whole concept of the article is still backwards, it's still trying to rationalize why there have to be blockchain apps and infrastructure. There doesn't.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I must have missed that the blockchain enthusiasts assigned themselves "web 3.0"

<comment><USER7> They have been able to do so because there is no agreed definition on what 'Web 3.0' means. When the blockchain believers call their work 'Web 3.0' it is like evangelists that claim their cult-church already has the the 'third testament'. There is implication that they already own the future.

There currently is no need for 'Web 3.0' as a phrase. The Internet of Things is a thing that could arguably be called 'Web 3.0' but that internet connected refrigerator is not needing the 'Web 3.0' moniker to convince people to buy it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> or it could be that blockchains have limited usefulness outside the world of zero trust currency.

From a spade-a-spade point of view, blockchains are very slow,expensive and limited log database.

<comment><USER9> As someone who works on a major blockchain project, I agree with this statement. Blockchain only has one major use case; cryptocurrency.

The main purpose of cryptocurrency is to replace the role of debt in our economy. The value of a cryptocurrency is determined by the economic value provided by entities which use that cryptocurrency as a medium of payment for goods and services. Because anyone can issue a cryptocurrency, the underlying tokens can behave like shares in a company.

Cryptocurrencies are better than shares in that they exist outside the laws of any single country. The ownership of tokens is not enforced by law, it is enforced by mathematics and your own ability to keep your passphrases secret.

<comment><USER10> > Blockchain only has one major use case; cryptocurrency.

Currencies have value only because governments force everyone to use them for paying taxes and welfare.

Your 'tokens-as-shares' vision is flawed, because at the end of the day it devolves into a million little barter schemes, and barter sucks. (As we discovered back in the bronze age.)

The only place where blockchain could provide a use is with smart contracts. If you've experienced buying or selling real estate, then you understand how insanely inefficient low-trust, high-value deals can be. Anything that removes this friction would be a great boon.

<comment><USER8> >then you understand how insanely inefficient low-trust high-value deals can be.

I think you misunderstand how real estate contracts work.

Real estate contracts are more or less cut and paste, in fact you can generate them here: [https://www.lawdepot.com/contracts/real-estate-purchase- agre...](https://www.lawdepot.com/contracts/real-estate-purchase- agreement/?loc=US)

The thing that takes the time is due diligence, finding and arranging money, and/or buyers. The actual contract is the easy part, unless you are putting in custom stuff.

Smart contracts are basically glorified escrow, but with no legal precedence. If something _were_ to go wrong, and your smart contract doesn't complete properly, you'll still be going to court to carry out the remediation steps. Also, smart contract require mutual agreement to work properly, there is no over-riding system to mediate should things become undefined. (well, there could be, you need to program that in.)

The friction in high value deals is the due diligence. it doesn't matter if the contract is smart. Undoing a house move is expensive, having a contract where one party can terminate instantly without warning or redress is a dystopian nightmare.

<comment><USER8> Also, the value of currency is not because of paying taxes, its because you agree it has value. In the same way that gold has "value"

if that were the case US Dollars would have no value in failed states.

There is nothing inherent in value, its down to consensus.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> If I go to start a personal project, I very rarely get anywhere unless I'm approaching it from the perspective of solving a specific need. I have to hold that need in mind and let it carry me through to completion, otherwise the inspiration gets blunted when yak-shaving turns into distraction.

Just going home one day and saying, "I'm going to work on something" and then looking for something to work on never yields anything of use at the end of it.

A need has to _burn_ before I can make appreciable progress on it. And once it's burning, it has my undivided attention until I can call my intervention complete and I can relax.

Companies can waste all kinds of money on building things that don't yet have burning needs. But if they want to be efficient with their spending, they need to treat that sort of thing with the same kid gloves as any other kind of research. As money you probably won't ever get back and won't lead to immediate revenue growth. As something you don't understand but hope to as a result of the process.

Because building 'infrastructure' is planning for a future that doesn't exist yet. Either solve a need, or go looking for one. The two should never be conflated because they require different mindsets.

</comment><comment><USER12> These dweebs are trying to claim the name "Web 3.0" for blockchain of all things.

<comment><USER13> I thought 3.0 was going to be the semantic web?

<comment><USER14> I usually interpret Web 3.0 as "re-decentralized web applications" that generally implies owner control of data and access.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> All structure is derivative. It's one of those things that once you see, you can't un-see.

I blogged about this a while back: [http://tiny-giant-books.com/blog/process- scale-invariance-um...](http://tiny-giant-books.com/blog/process-scale- invariance-uml-diagramming/)

I'm not a religious TDD person. I think it's the only way to professionally code mutable OO. At the business level it's the only way to manage your goals and progress. (ATDD, that is)

But the thing that TDD brought to the table that was missing from the larger discussion is that things exist in code (and infrastructure) for reasons. When you can create as much stuff as you like, it's important to make those reasons explicit. TDD is not a test discipline. It's a design discipline. You write the test first, then the code/infrastructure/business/whatnot is created to support the test. It's not just a fashionable thing to do. It's the only sane way to plan out architecture. Otherwise you're just kind of looking at thing ascetically.

And this is the reason we have such a framework explosion. You write function that does X, then you _imagine_ X prime and X two, then you generalize, then you imagine some more. This is the same thing we see in startups: the desire to build over the desire to meet needs. Worst-case scenario is that people actually like 2 or 3 things out of your 100-thing toolset. Then you're off to the races building another 100.

Blockchain is still struggling with all of that. It's such an attractive tech they'll probably get it worst than most. It's quite seductive to see something you _might_ need instead of something you actually need.

</comment><comment><USER16> What the market teaches entrepreneurs is that the best thing you can do is build and own the infrastructure, because that's how you extract rent.

So if you see applications that already exist, then you don't want to build "just another application," you want to build the infrastructure they all live on.

It seems like this should be the way it works, but it just doesn't. Good products with infrastructure attract other enterprises to their infrastructure by having a very successful product first, which other enterprises emulate. Twilio is probably the #1 example of this.

I'd argue it's impossible to build infrastructure that others play on at scale, without owning some large segment of users with a great product first.

</comment><comment><USER17> hmm the apps infrastructure diagram for the crypto age showed what a weak offering there actually is imho.

<comment><USER18> I agree, it's weird that CryptoKitties is listed as a successful application of the 'cryptocurrency' infrastructure, I thought that was a joke...

<comment><USER19> Joke or no, it was a complete disaster as an infrastructure showcase. It brought the etherium network to a halt.

<comment><USER20> Just like Ashton Kutcher brought out Twitter's fail whale.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I have a casual objection to USV saying that the investment opportunities they missed aren't good because it reminds me of the Wolf and the Crane fable.

The Wright brothers didn't need airports to build the first airplane, but for commercial flight to exist airports must first be created. Likewise, I find many of the Web3 apps that I use to be perfectly fine as they are, because I know what I'm doing and I find the experience of being a trailblazer exhilarating hence why I also make my living building these platforms.

For most people, including plenty of highly competent technologists, it's still too far out and uncomfortable for them to use web3 apps, so we need to build better infrastructure that can accommodate other use cases, have better UX and dX, and bring in more people.

edit: Come and build the web3 with us! [https://twitter.com/sserrano44/status/1048718205127151616](https://twitter.com/sserrano44/status/1048718205127151616)

</comment><comment><USER22> I do agree with the blockchain tech still hasn't reached a stage where 'general public' can experience their usefulness. But the outright rejection of broader scope of the technology and declaring 'ledger' as the only legit case is equally not true. The reality should be somewhere in the middle.

</comment><comment><USER22> For example, blockchain technology does provide a mechanism to shift the ownership of data and ownership to the users which wasn't there in 2.0. The ownership of data with the platforms was mainly responsible for creating business models completely based on advertisements.

</comment><comment><USER23> What a misleading title on that blog post. It sounds like it's about economic development, not tech / blockchain...</comment>


Vimium - The Hacker's Browser - <AUTHOR> http://github.com/philc/vimium

<comment><USER2> There seem to be a bunch of options out there. Vim-like smoozie (Jap page) <http://code.google.com/p/vimlike-smooziee/>

Chrome-vim: <http://github.com/rodimius/chrome-vim>

Vrome: [http://samuelololol.blogspot.com/2010/02/vrome-vim- keybindin...](http://samuelololol.blogspot.com/2010/02/vrome-vim-keybindings- extension-for.html)

and the above. Anyone compared the features. I'm moving to Snow Leopard soon (from PPC), so need to know. How do these compare to Vimperator (Firefox) ?

</comment><comment><USER3> Vim sucks. So does Emacs. Mate ftw.</comment>


N-Korea, N-Test - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/north-korea-apparently-conducts-another-nuclear-test-south-korea-says/2017/09/03/7bce3ff6-905b-11e7-8df5-c2e5cf46c1e2_story.html?utm_term=.3ee8905738f4 <comment><USER2> I know there are lots of outrages going on today, but put in perspective, the situation with North Korea is far and away the gravest concern.

We are talking about literally millions of lives at stake -- perhaps many more if it gets out of control and becomes a war involving both China and the US.

I don't have a solution, but I think we need to be prepared for tough choices. It may be that no good outcome is possible at this point.

<comment><USER3> Which lives do you mean, exactly? North Korean, or others?

IMHO, KJU has nothing to gain and everything to lose by provoking other powers into a forceful response. The erratic behavior of him and his government is the defensive tactic itself. The ability to cause destruction overseas is of secondary concern, and it would seem to be a negligible one in the face of a potential response.

Trump employs something similar--act unpredictably and people keep their distance. Create the next sensationalist headline and people will 1) stop and think about what exactly is going on and 2) stay their distance. Do this enough times, often enough, and you're relatively shielded from serious threats to your power.

Of course, there is a limit, but so far they both are acting within tolerances.

<comment><USER2> "The ability to cause destruction overseas is of secondary concern"

No, that's my _primary_ concern.

If your calculation is off, and they do attack, or scare someone else enough to attack them, the result will be horrific.

And you seem to assume the situation there is stable and KJU will behave rationally. If domestic politics in NK get complicated or KJU gets too paranoid, there's no telling what he will do.

<comment><USER3> I meant that, for KJU, he is less concerned about the ability to cause destruction than he is about preserving his seat of power. I believe KJU is more rational than he broadcasts, in that his motivations for acting the way he does comes from a plan to keep everyone at arm's (or rocket's) length and not out of some crazed all-or-nothing brigade. It doesn't seem sustainable in the long run, I agree. It's a matter of time until something off-the-wall happens.

I also find it hard to believe that the US, China, and Russia don't all have sophisticated countermeasures in place in case a rocket is launched with a trajectory toward something important. It may still cause horrific damage, but not on the level of a megacity.

Your primary concern is not his. That is my wager. Let's hope my optimism wins out...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> North Korea has been making peace offers for a while, South Korea has been in discussions with them, the US has turned them down without much consideration.

North Korea, China and Russia all think Trump's bellicose attitude towards North Korea has been unhelpful. This test is a quite rational response to the pressures that are being turned up on North Korea.

</comment><comment><USER5> Guardian live timeline: [https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2017/sep/03/north- kor...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2017/sep/03/north-korea- nuclear-test-south-korea-yohap-kim-jong-un-live)

</comment><comment><USER6> Gradual nuclear proliferation continues to bring us closer to hell on earth. Can we please ban nuclear weapons before this happens?

We've banned chemical and biological weapons. Why not nuclear? They post a much greater threat to humanity, and that threat is growing as states like North Korea improve their capability.

<comment><USER7> Nuclear weapons are the greatest instruments of world peace ever conceived. Don't you think we'd have had another set of massive industrial total wars in the 20th century had it not been for MAD? As it is, we've had only a few occasional brush fires. There is practically zero risk of an actual nuclear exchange.

If you waved a magic wand and eradicated all nuclear weapons and other forms of mass destruction, you'd return us to a world of bloodshed and horror. It's counter-intuitive, but it's true.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Someone in the 'mighty' 'murica will begin to taste fear

</comment><comment><USER9> are they actually seeing radiation from these blasts? or just calling "nuclear sized" blasts as nuclear blasts...?

There are some pretty big and serious reasons for being specific about this.

</comment><comment><USER10> Also reported by the BBC, no paywall:

[http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-41139445](http://www.bbc.com/news/world- asia-41139445)

</comment><comment><USER11> North Korea is enabled by China; without China, North Korea government will never be able to get all the technologies/parts/fuels it need to survive. It would have collapsed.

We (US) and the world enable China by allowing manufacturing to be offshored to China, an authoritarian government which has horrific track record of censorship, human rights abuse, pollution, etc.

We need to stop, and punish China for supporting North Korea.

<comment><USER12> > punish China for supporting North Korea.

How?

<comment><USER13> Stop wrong them paychecks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> A victory of socialism.

<comment><USER15> It's a great symbol for socialism really, the whole country is starving to death whilst the literal fat man at the top makes some nukes to threaten America with. Great success!</comment></comment>


As Carbon Dioxide Levels Rise, Major Crops Are Losing Nutrients - <AUTHOR> https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2018/06/19/616098095/as-carbon-dioxide-levels-rise-major-crops-are-losing-nutrients?t=1529475584040 <comment><USER2> > The chamber is really bright to mimic the sun. A few neat rows of green > coffee plants are growing. The air that they're absorbing has about the same > amount of CO2 as in the preindustrial age, about 250 years ago.

> Across the hall, we can see a possible glimpse of the plant's future. Here, > there's a chamber with plants growing at CO2 levels projected for the end of > this century.

> "Some of the varieties, you ought to see that they're bigger," says Ziska. > They've all been growing for the same amount of time, but the high CO2 > coffee plants are larger. The extra CO2 seems to be making them grow faster.

> Scientists have noticed that in many kinds of plants, higher CO2 produces > bigger crops. That sounds like a good thing.

> But there's a problem. Bigger doesn't necessarily mean better. And while > they're still testing what this means for coffee's quality, scientists have > seen that other crops have lost some of their nutritional value under higher > CO2 conditions.

If they are bigger they absorb (or have absorbed) more CO2 into their carbohydrates, I wonder what the effect is on CO2 levels in the atmosphere, is this taken into account in all the models? Moreover, how were the effects when compensated for the increased mass of the plant? Were there the same amount of nutrients but just more carbohydrates and water? If so, other ways of preparing the food may help.

<comment><USER3> > is this taken into account in all the models

It is in the relevant ones (having "all" in the question makes the question not meaningful).

Not only it is in the relevant models, but modelling all the effects includes the aspects that the most probably would never think about. E.g. "bigger crops" store C but it is "returned back" after harvesting. What matters is only what can permanently store C.

<comment><USER2> Good points but Jungles or Taigas can now also have more mass presumably. I guess that is accounted for in the relevant models indeed.

<comment><USER3> > I guess that is accounted for in the relevant models indeed.

Yes it is, take a look here how complex it is:

[https://www.earth-syst-sci- data.net/10/405/2018/essd-10-405-...](https://www.earth-syst-sci- data.net/10/405/2018/essd-10-405-2018-discussion.html)

And it's not just "models" for the predictions, the data about what happens from day to day and from year to year are measured constantly, and all give the numbers that are very clear. CO2 in the atmosphere increases. And it won't be nice.

To quote one scientist that first didn't believe, but checked the data and now himself corrects the false claims by those who have some special agendas:

"Of the 7 GtC, which we blow into the atmosphere every year, only 3 remain there. 2 are absorbed by the ocean and 2 by the forests. This means that in the atmosphere and in the land biosphere and in the ocean the amount of stored carbon is increasing. And the source of all this additional carbon is the fact that we extract loads of fossil carbon from the earth's crust and add it to the system."

"The system was almost exactly in equilibrium before humans intervened. That is why the CO2 concentration in the air was almost constant for several thousand years."

Now it's not, even if the biosphere takes some of CO2 the we extract from the Earth's crust, still more remains up there and makes the Earth surface warmer.

We measure that year after year already.

Here you can find the graph of the measurements of CO2:

[https://e360.yale.edu/features/how-the-world-passed-a- carbon...](https://e360.yale.edu/features/how-the-world-passed-a-carbon- threshold-400ppm-and-why-it-matters)

Yes, there is more CO2 every year, yes, some CO2 remains in biosphere, but no, there's no balance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> If in high CO2 rice grows 10% better, you can use only 90% of your land for rice and still get the same amount of rice. And then use the freed 10% of your land to grow some other, super nutritious plants. Perhaps you end up getting more food and more nutrients from your land.

<comment><USER5> Or you get two crops instead of one during the growing season. And you get more to eat. If protein is down 10%, but plant growth is up 15%, it would be possible to eat 10% more. For people getting barely enough food, that might be a good thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The text-only version of the article, thanks to the GDPR:

[https://text.npr.org/s.php?sId=616098095](https://text.npr.org/s.php?sId=616098095)</comment>


The Guy Who Worked For Money - <AUTHOR> http://shareable.net/blog/the-guy-who-worked-for-money

<comment><USER2> Great illustration of the pitfalls of both social and monetary obligations

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I was sure this was a great fit for here, but I'm not sure how to attract attention to it.</comment></comment>