# Diseconomies of scale in fraud, spam, support, and moderation

DevFeed: [Diseconomies of scale in fraud, spam, support, and moderation](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/diseconomies-of-scale-in-fraud-spam-support-and-moderation-77682.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://danluu.com/diseconomies-scale/>)

Published: 2024-02-18T00:00:00Z

Content type: opinion

Language: en

Sources: [Danluu](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/danluu.md>)

Topics: [online-fraud-prevention](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/online-fraud-prevention.md>), [fraud signal sharing](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/fraud-signal-sharing.md>), [fake account fraud](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/fake-account-fraud.md>), [AI Chat](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/ai-chat.md>)

Tags: [fraud](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/fraud.md>), [moderation](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/moderation.md>), [scale](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/scale.md>), [support](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/support.md>)

## AI overview

The article argues that large technology platforms often perform worse than smaller services at moderation, fraud and spam detection, and customer support. It attributes these problems to incentives, scale related complexity, and systems that overlook false positives, while acknowledging that economies of scale can benefit users in some areas.

## Source excerpt

If I ask myself a question like "I'd like to buy an SD card; who do I trust to sell me a real SD card and not some fake, Amazon or my local Best Buy?", of course the answer is that I trust my local Best Buy1 more than Amazon, which is notorious for selling counterfeit SD cards. And if I ask who do I trust more, my local reputable electronics shop (Memory Express, B&H Photo, etc.), I trust my local reputable electronics shop more. Not only are they less likely to sell me a counterfeit than Best Buy, in the event that they do sell me a counterfeit, the service is likely to be better. Similarly, let's say I ask myself a question like, "on which platform do I get a higher rate of scams, spam, fraudulent content, etc., [smaller platform] or [larger platform]"? Generally the answer is [larger platform]. Of course, there are more total small platforms out there and they're higher variance, so I could deliberately use a smaller platform that's worse, but I'm choosing good options instead of bad options, in every size class, the smaller platform is generally better. For example, with Signal vs. WhatsApp, I've literally never received a spam Signal message, whereas I get spam WhatsApp messages somewhat regularly. Or if I compare places I might read tech content on, if I compare tiny forums no one's heard of to lobste.rs, lobste.rs has a very slightly higher rate (rate as in fraction of messages I see, not absolute message volume) of bad content because it's zero on the private forums and very low but non-zero on lobste.rs. And then if I compare lobste.rs to a somewhat larger platform, like Hacker News or mastodon.social, those have (again very slightly) higher rates of scam/spam/fraudulent content. And then if I compare that to mid-sized social media platforms, like reddit, reddit has a significantly higher and noticeable rate of bad content. And then if I can compare reddit to the huge platforms like YouTube, Facebook, Google search results, these larger platforms have an ev