> her colleague was a little too nonchalant about it ( 'it is on her to do her due diligence' ).
I’m always fascinated by victim blaming culture, which has been pervasive long before generative AI.
You see it most frequently in cases where the victim is thought to be a safe target: Someone wealthier, an office rival, a corporation. On HN it appears in every thread about someone being scammed, but it was most obvious in the recent threads where JPMorgan was defrauded by a startup they acquired. Seemingly 1/3 of the comments were from people commenting that JPMorgan was actually at fault for allowing themselves to be scammed. Some even declaring that the fraudster shouldn’t be prosecuted because JPMorgan was entirely to blame for allowing themselves to be scammed.
I don’t know what drives it. The victim blaming people always seem to believe they would not fall prey to similar scams. They also seem to see the world as full of faceless scams everywhere and that allowing yourself to fall victim to them is a moral failing. Many of them just like to be contrarian, snide, and judgmental, so heaping scorn on the victim they know checks more of those boxes than going along with the obvious consensus that the party who committed the crime is the one to blame.
This happens with every new generation of scams. The victim blamers read the news and think it would never happen to them because they’re too smart, therefore any victims deserve blame.
The problem is that we're using "blame" to mean two different things:
1. In an ideal, fair world, which parties should have to change to make the outcome not happen? Scammers shouldn't scam, murderers shouldn't murder, etc.
2. With a reasonable understanding of the world, which parties could have predicted the outcome and changed their behavior to mitigate the problem? JPMorgan not doing due diligence on a deal of that magnitude is pretty negligent. I don't carry open bags full of cash walking around the city either, and I don't comment negatively about our new glorious leader and all of his kingly power. Yes, if I had my savings stolen or were murdered on my next boat trip to the Caribbean that'd be somebody else's "fault" via definition (1), but as a practical matter my life is a hell of a lot better on average if I avoid those activities regardless.
The courts sometimes agree with point (2) to an extent as well. If JPMorgan's negligence caused harm to others, the criminals involved would still have full responsibility to JPMorgan, but the harmed parties might have a civil claim against JPMorgan. By way of analogy, what happens if your local bank's safe is found out to be an unmonitored cardboard box? The fact that somebody would eventually break in is predictable, and the bank would be liable to its customers.
It could also be a more charitable "I make significant efforts to fight against this and spent years/months of my life trying to convince others to do the same only to be ignored, so fuck them".
Like that RMS meme where the world is finally getting the pointy end of the proprietary software trap and cries for help and he just whispers "Gno".
> I make significant efforts to fight against this
More powerful people, the ones profiting from economic crimes, are fighting to keep scams legal. And they are the ones that create confusing laws that blame victims for falling for scams in the disguise of "personal responsibility". When lawmakers are the scammers, scams become legal and the victims will not see justice.
> On HN it appears in every thread about someone being scammed, but it was most obvious in the recent threads where JPMorgan was defrauded by a startup they acquired. Seemingly 1/3 of the comments were from people commenting that JPMorgan was actually at fault for allowing themselves to be scammed.
I find that awful. JPMorgan should be held accountable, like many similar firms, for all the money that they themselves have stolen. But one crime does not justify the other. The people that scammed JPMorgan will not use the money to pay off JPMorgan's victims.
What it seems that in the USA nobody believes in justice anymore, as even the Supreme Court is just another partisan agency helping the rich. Americans may justify getting money thru crime because it is so normalized. Blaming victims helps to feel good about it.
The real answer is to have stronger institutions that see everybody equally under the law, and to have better laws that punish all type of criminals including economic crimes.
Blame directed towards the Supreme Court is misplaced. While some decisions have always seemed partisan, the real fault lies with Congress. The higher courts only come into play when the law is ambiguous or contradictory because Congress did a bad job. At that point any legal decision becomes something of a toss up, and even if the Supreme Court issues the "right" decision today they might reverse themselves tomorrow. Unless voters hold Congress accountable then nothing will improve.
For example, maybe a future President will nominate Supreme Court justices who will overturn the notorious Citizens United v. FEC decision. But ultimately the only stable solution will be to follow the defined process and amend the Constitution rather than trying to patch around it. Yes, that will be difficult but nothing else can really work.
Sadly, a large number of people seem to think "caveat emptor" is some kind of optimal default way to live and organize a society. Like, anyone should be able to do or say anything, and if the counterparty doesn't do their due diligence, they're gullible and deserve to lose.
> You see it most frequently in cases where the victim is thought to be a safe target: Someone wealthier, an office rival, a corporation.
That must be a representation of your own social circle because I can assure you that poor people are commonly blamed for all the bad things that happen to them.
I don't know about that. Regarding that particular example, anyone willing to interview with a "blockchain" company is very likely a scammer (or at least scammer adjacent) themselves. I mean there might be some legitimate use for blockchain technology but so far it's 99.9% scams and anyone unaware of that simply hasn't been paying attention for the past decade.
I think you're making my point -- is the fact that the putative job offer is for a blockchain company truly relevant to that story? What would stop them from making it an "AI company" or whatever else is the hot topic du jour?
I concede that the relevance is perhaps that if you're going to try and steal cryptowallets, you would want to select for people more likely to be crypto-adjacent, but still. It was a novel attack vector that I'm glad I didn't have to learn about the hard way
How is that relevant? If I get a fake offer from a fake company claiming to solve world hunger, does that mean I don't need to be careful about this previously unknown attack vector?
Do you think scammers can only leverage dodgy industries?
You picked a bad example. JPMorgan Chase has itself violated the law many times: for example, they willfully violated the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act and the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act in thousands of cases. So fuck those guys for being scammers themselves. There are no clean hands here and in that instance I absolutely blame the "victim". Like if an armed robber steals cash from a drug smuggler, the smuggler shouldn't expect sympathy from anyone.
My comment is specific to JPMorgan Chase. While I know that I would not fall prey to similar scams, I am not endorsing victim blaming in general.
I’m always fascinated by victim blaming culture, which has been pervasive long before generative AI.
You see it most frequently in cases where the victim is thought to be a safe target: Someone wealthier, an office rival, a corporation. On HN it appears in every thread about someone being scammed, but it was most obvious in the recent threads where JPMorgan was defrauded by a startup they acquired. Seemingly 1/3 of the comments were from people commenting that JPMorgan was actually at fault for allowing themselves to be scammed. Some even declaring that the fraudster shouldn’t be prosecuted because JPMorgan was entirely to blame for allowing themselves to be scammed.
I don’t know what drives it. The victim blaming people always seem to believe they would not fall prey to similar scams. They also seem to see the world as full of faceless scams everywhere and that allowing yourself to fall victim to them is a moral failing. Many of them just like to be contrarian, snide, and judgmental, so heaping scorn on the victim they know checks more of those boxes than going along with the obvious consensus that the party who committed the crime is the one to blame.
This happens with every new generation of scams. The victim blamers read the news and think it would never happen to them because they’re too smart, therefore any victims deserve blame.