Yeah, it seems that driving this fact home may in fact be beneficial. Right now a lot of people still assume that everyone on the internet is truthful with good intentions. Making it very clear that this isn't true may be helpful to reset this frame of mind.
Yes, that isn't lost on me but it seems somewhat unavoidable. I would love it if we could trust everyone we meet, but unless we can somehow get everyone to stop doing bad things then you will need to be skeptical of people that you don't have a reason to trust. I think it is important that we add strong mechanisms for trust where possible such as regulations for companies and trust via relationships but it seems that no trust is the inevitable default. People have been running phone scams for decades and it doesn't seem like stopping them from making these attempts is feasible. The most viable solution seems to be helping people identify who they are talking with so that they can avoid falling for the scam.
Maybe I am too pessimistic and we will be able to fulfill everyone's needs one day. But as the rich keep getting richer and focusing on power for themselves that doesn't seem like a direction that we are going to move towards soon.
First, let me acknowledge I was not trying to single you out. Your comment just prompted that thought. I have seen such talk in a lot of places (and I consume a lot of GPT stuff these days). Sorry if it came off that way.
Second, I think you are being too pessimistic. In the sense that you feel like it isn't a solvable problem. I feel like people have thrown their hands up on this problem because in the history of the internet we have not been able to solve it. For me that just looks like a conclusion drawn from insufficient data. To me modern internet is quite young in the grand scheme of things. We haven't even had a generation live out their full life all online. I think we at least should have a hopeful tone about this problem and encourage people to work on it. Presently it feels like everyone is in doom mode.
I don't feel singled out, it is an interesting train of thought that I also ponder every once and a while.
I don't feel like this is specific to the internet. People have been scamming other people for thousands of years. Sure, the internet makes it easier to extend a scammers reach and easier to get away but the fundamental concept is unchanged. Maybe it is a solvable problem, that would be great. But it also seems like this is unlikely to change soon, so at least in the meantime we need to remind ourselves to be careful who we trust.
I agree it's nothing new that scams exist, and that is my point. Our response to bad actors was never to just give up and stop trusting anyone. In most societies people tried to solve the problem by regulations or making laws etc. We get new iterations of these issues every generation. Why have we suddenly decided this time it's not worth it to fight it?
Have these regulations or laws ever been particularly effective? They may stop legitimate companies but AFAICT never really stopped the "anonymous" scammers. This makes it more like a form of establishing trust like I was talking about originally. It gives us a way to trust established companies, but not a way to trust everyone.
They have never been perfect, but they have been effective enough that we didn't go around saying "trust no one". There is a difference between saying "don't trust everyone" and "trust no one". And I feel like we have more of the latter now than the former.
