DELUSIVE SPEECH IN THE SHARING ECONOMY
SCAM INC.
Julie Reid
"Have you ever been afraid of Uber?
Afraid of Tinder? Frightened of Facebook, Booking.com, Lyft, or Airbnb? No?
Well, you should be."
"We put our lives in the hands of strangers whose work is facilitated by tech oligarchs. We get into their cars. We stay in their bedrooms. We invite them into our homes. What could possibly go wrong? Julie Reid has assembled a swathe of international case studies which should cause us to pause."
Julie Posetti, Professor of Journalism at City, University of London, Global Director of Research at the International Center for Journalists, and a UN-published expert on online violence and disinformation.
WHAT'S IT ABOUT?
A QUICK LOOK
This book takes a deep dive into the dark underbelly of the internet - a place where scammers lurk, fraudsters scout for unsuspecting targets, human traffickers set up criminal empires, and where rapists and murderers prowl for their next victim.
Sound scary? It is. That said, you're probably already thinking this has nothing to do with you. But if you are connected to the internet, then you're wrong.
Julie Reid's latest book follows how scammers and criminals are able to use everyday ubiquitous sharing economy platforms like Uber, Airbnb, Facebook, and others, to do enormous harm to innumerable people. She also investigates why Big Tech companies have done too little to make their platforms safer, and what they should do to stem the tide of online crime and scams.
ABOUT THE BOOK
DESCRIPTION
In this examination of how the rise of online sharing economy platforms has facilitated online crime, this book shows how, while marketed as trustworthy peer-to-peer services, these platforms are highly vulnerable to misuse by scammers and are used for the dissemination of delusive speech.
The analysis centres around the concept of delusive speech, a sub-set of disinformation, designed to deceive and motivated by criminal intent. Looking beyond the economic and disruptive impacts of sharing economy platforms like Uber, Airbnb, and others, this book situates these Big Tech giants as mass communication channels that are frequently misused by bad actors to distribute dangerous content globally. Drawing from over 600 cases of victims lured into scams or physical danger via misleading Airbnb listings, the book provides a detailed case study exposing Airbnb's failure to establish legitimate safety measures despite branding its platform as a 'community of trust'. Incorporating netnography and thematic analysis, the author theorises the deceptive semiotic structure of delusive speech and evaluates practical mechanisms Airbnb could employ to prevent scams and crime on its platform.
With a global audience including researchers in communication and media studies, digital media, and media industries, as well as tech journalists, Silicon Valley critics, policymakers, and digital rights advocates, this book unmasks how sharing economy giants like Airbnb contribute to an epidemic of online deception causing real-world harm.
extract
"Throughout this book we will look at many cases where criminals and scammers have employed delusive speech to detrimental effect for their victims. Within the context of the new sharing economy and its mythological sphere of trust, Scam Inc. has been quick to learn and adopt various tactics of deception and has rolled these out at scale. But it does not have to be this way. Once we understand its mechanics it becomes possible to determine the technical and policy interventions that would scupper delusive speech, thus removing the main weapon that Scam Inc. has in its arsenal. But it’s up to the companies that have developed the sharing economy platforms that are now so integral to our daily lives and exchanges, to take action.
Until that happens, we need to decide how we are to protect ourselves. As a start I suggest that we collectively reclaim some of our natural common sense and approach the sharing economy with a smidgen of scepticism rather than blind trust. It’s time to reinvigorate realism. Because the truth of the matter is that when you book an accommodation rental on a platform like Airbnb, or a ride via Uber, you are effectively performing an exercise, not of trust, but of enormous hope. That is, you hope that your host or your cab driver is not a criminal, not a human trafficker, not violent, not a rapist, and not a scammer. Instead of calling it the sharing economy, we should call it the hope-like-hell economy."
REVIEWS
extract
"Where our suspicions might be raised by red flags in more traditional scamming scenarios, in the context of the sharing economy there are simply no red flags to see. Masterfully practiced delusive speech means that fake advertisements are indistinguishable from real ones. You don’t have to be a risk-taker or a poor decision maker to unknowingly pay for a fake consumer product, or to book a fake property rental. This means that in the sharing economy a vulnerability for falling victim to a scam cannot be attributed to a particular demographic or set of personality traits. Instead, everyone who makes use of these platforms is equally vulnerable. So, we arrive at a place where we need to redirect our line of questioning. It is not useful to ask why some people are more vulnerable to scams than others. More to the point, we need to ask why sharing economy and ecommerce platforms are so vulnerable to misuse by scammers."
"SCAM Inc. is a unique and example-filled monograph that answers all questions related to how the sharing economy is manipulated and used to SCAM audiences. Readers will love the international examples, the focus on technology, and the attention to familiar organizations."
Alison N. Novak, Ph.D., Rowan University
“It’s scary to read about real live stories of people who have been scammed by big tech companies. How it happened, how they got away with it or got caught. These stories serve as warning bells to all of us; hence Julie Reid’s book is useful, with a good fast pace.”
Glenda Daniels, Associate Professor and Head of Department, Media Studies, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa.