Why are scam ads everywhere online?
On Point with Meghna Chakrabarti
WBUR
4.2 • 3.5K Ratings
🗓️ 18 November 2025
⏱️ 34 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Scam ads are flooding Facebook, YouTube and other social media. Tech companies are making billions allowing them. Who's behind all of these online ads? And what can we do about it?
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Support for this podcast comes from Is Business Broken, a podcast from the Marotra Institute at BU Questrum School of Business. A recent episode asks, are boardrooms ready for the new geopolitical reality? Stick around until the end of this podcast to preview the episode. |
| 0:18.1 | WBUR Podcasts, Boston. |
| 0:25.2 | This is On Point. I'm Magnetak Robardi. |
| 0:28.2 | A YouTuber who goes by the name Jam Lab recently did an experiment. |
| 0:33.6 | He decided to actually click on some of the strange ads he's been seeing online. |
| 0:38.3 | One of them was a YouTube ad that seemed to be for shoes from the brand Hey Dudes. |
| 0:44.3 | As you can see by the big text here, they're all under $5. |
| 0:47.3 | Of course, like most official advertisements, the website they're linking here is simply called Sale with an icon that's just an H. |
| 0:55.1 | H for Hey Dudes, of course. |
| 0:56.6 | This seems legit to me. |
| 0:57.9 | Let's go check out these hey dudes for $5. |
| 1:00.4 | Jam Lab clicked on the URL at the bottom of the YouTube ad. |
| 1:04.0 | If you go ahead and click that link, it'll take you to ward shopp.com. |
| 1:08.9 | That's shop with two peas. |
| 1:10.4 | So naturally, we're just greeted with very generic exclusive deals |
| 1:14.2 | Elevate your wardrobe with the latest trends. And then we've got hot collection doesn't even have a brand or anything, right? Like this is just it is just a shirt. If we go to the official hey dudes website, we can see that they cost I don't know take your guys. Over or under $5? What do you guys think? Oh, right. $90? I don't know. I mean, $5, that sounds really good. It's worth a shot, right? Well, I guess that's what they're hoping people will think when they see this ad. But unfortunately, I'm here to break the hard truth to you guys. I don't think it's legit. |
| 1:45.0 | Neither do we, Jam Lab. |
| 1:47.0 | And chances are you have seen strange and seemingly scamy ads like this one, too. |
| 1:53.0 | They are all over social media and YouTube right now. |
| 1:58.0 | Like this one on Facebook, from a company calling itself America One retirement. |
| 2:04.4 | The ad asks, are you 59 plus and worried about rising taxes and RMDs? Have you looked at Roth |
| 2:10.6 | conversions? Wait, I didn't know I could convert my IRA into a Roth and avoid thousands in future taxes. |
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