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Comment by autobodie | Hacker News Reader

Source? A lot of the investigative reporting I've seen covers women targets. Maybe they just think women make better stories, but women do spend more time on dating apps than men. Women participate differently, but they definitely participate, and women are extremely vulnerable to emotional exploitation.

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Women absolutely make better stories.

I saw a crypto scam article with a fairly attractive girl who *could* of probably meet someone in real life. Instead she let a crypto scammer take her for like 300k. Her dad was scammed too and invested another 200k.

The entire story was shaped to make her look like a victim who could have never just said, wait you want me to put $50,000 into a random account and I've never met you in real life, I think I'm going to delete this app and talk to Billy down at Cafe.

There's no way on Earth, if some 400 lb guy thought he was talking to a supermodel and ended up losing his life savings would people react the same way. Everyone would correctly point him out as being an idiot, why would a supermodel want you, don't you know anyone who's that attractive is probably not on a dating site looking for 400 lb guys to go out with?

Although, what I'll never understand about these higher end scams is that at a point you can literally just book a flight to Berlin and pay a professional for services. These service providers have health care, access to affordable higher education, and arguably a higher standard of living than the average American.

Anyway, regardless of gender I think most media outlets are reluctant to look at the elephant in the room. The match group knows a lot of fraud occurs on their platforms, and doesn't take basic steps to ensure the safety of their users. It's to the point where you're much more likely to get robbed, scammed or worse then to actually meet a partner.

Most of our actions are driven by various emotional and mental deficiencies that we hide in our subconscious. Those deficiencies stem from three roots: pride, egoism and the lack of self worth. The three are really one upon close inspection. Dating scams play on the lack of self worth, a desperate need for external validation to distract the victim from what he sees in himself. A trip to Berlin won't buy you that, but an illusion of a relationship with a top notch woman will. Nearly all people have this problem, rich and poor alike, and you can tell that by how much effort they put into appearances.

> Although, what I'll never understand about these higher end scams is that at a point you can literally just book a flight to Berlin and pay a professional for services

Just gonna shine a light on this statement and say that for a HUGE % of men that I know in the USA paying for sex is the the same as failure. This is especially true for the least experienced men.

As someone who frequents gentlemen’s clubs, I don’t really get it. But I sure do SEE IT. It makes me wonder where this idea originated and what keeps it propped up? Is this idea what is preventing the loneliness epidemic from resolving itself?

What’s not to get? People don’t (mainly) want physical pleasure, they (mainly) want love and validation. When a woman has sex with a man without being paid for it, the subtext (even if protection is used) is “You’re worthy of reproducing.” It’s a costly signal to that effect.

I work on this problem at one of the world’s largest social media companies. I deal with it 7 days a week for several years now. This is my life and it’s extremely sad as to how people are being exploited in these scams.

Why do avaiable sources claim otherwise?

Statista has a report indicating 53% of victims are men and 47% of victims are women.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1481218/us-online-dating...

Additionally, the FTC says women report significantly higher financial losses than men.

https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/data-visualizations/data-spo...

possible reasons I can think of 1) these are based on self reporting and it’s very possible men report at lower rates. 2) it’s possible that the scams happen outside of the areas where I have insights (social media)

Also, the specific social media network you work at would skew your perspective.

I would bet money that romance scam victims are overwhelmingly men on TikTok but overwhelmingly women on Facebook.

Probably not, ticktock isn't male dominated. Twitter and Reddit however, I could see that.

Tiktok facilitates primarily visual interactions and young people, whereas Facebook is less visually focused and has a much older user demographic.

So what are the ways people get exploited, or tricked? Is it a lack of knowledge on part of the people, are scammers just really sophisticated, or just one trick ponies that work at scale?

Any ideas on how to stop or how we can protect he people around us from these scams?

People don't think straight when they think they are in love. [1] In my family we've learned not to confront people directly when they are experiencing this (even when it was me) because it's a delusional state where people won't listen to you.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Love-Limerence-Experience-Being/dp/08...

I'd think Skype should just not let anybody DM anyone they don't know at this point. Bluesky now has an epidemic of 'girls' who send creepy DMs.

Why do you work 7 days a week?

"...women do spend more time on dating apps than men"

How is that statement even true, when there are often more men than women on dating apps, by a significant factor?

There are also studies showing just how difficult women are to retain on dating apps; behind the scenes, a lot more has to be done in the first 24 hours to ensure women match and meet someone of interest so that they stay in the pool.

Women spend more total time browsing. There was an amazing article on HN last week showing this but I can't find the link.

Don't confuse total users or interactions with time spent.

this one? (What really happens inside a dating app)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42921659

https://datingzest.com/tinder-statistics/

This claims tinder is 78% male. Not sure of the others.

I mean I definitely feel that among my age (late/mid 20s, early 30s) cohort plenty of women use dating apps and have lots of dates lined up, talk to each other about profiles they come across, and take communal notes on which men they've had bad dates with to warn their friends... It seems like using dating apps has become more of a hobby for some of these women, especially since a bunch of women in my sphere are poly. These aren't particularly lonely women though, as obviously I am less likely to encounter lonely people on account of lonely people statistically encountering less people.

It's a bit like how the average internet comment is posted by a "frequent commenter". Probably another case of the Pareto distribution.

Nobody cares about men's problems. There's a whole Netflix show about the Tinder Swindler but nothing like that for men. In the last 3 months I think I've dealt with at least 4 different scammers on dating apps. Those are just the obvious ones. Then you sometimes get the foreign women trying to get into the country.

Men are often suckers in dating, far more than women. I mean at least financially speaking there is no contest. Even offline it happens a lot, with men getting suckered for drinks, "foodie calls," and random gifts or financial assistance.

Age is also a factor. From stories I've seen in the news it tends to be much older women. From stories I've heard from friends it is young men.

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