[ceejayoz]

Facebook doesn't provide phone support, and people get desperate. People then Google things like "Facebook support phone".

All you'll find is results like https://gethuman.com/phone-number/Facebook or https://facebook-pay.pissedconsumer.com/customer-service.htm... or the Quora post that all have numbers that almost certainly goes to a scammer.

Bonus points when it makes it into the AI models (as happened here) where they repeat it verbatim as if it were the truth.

[dylan604]

again, even if I were the one doing that Google search, with the domain examples you provided, I wouldn't trust one of them.

Like, common sense on the interwebs just continues to disappear. Gullibility seems to have increased as critical thinking and coming to logical conclusions are disappearing.

[ceejayoz]

In this case, it was Meta's own AI regurgitating something it found on Quora. Quite a few people would trust that, especially non-technical folks.

[dylan604]

Yes, that is the point of the TFA, but I was commenting on what data was posted online well before the AI was "born". I'm guessing that Meta can fix it with a prompt that tells the system it is not allowed to verify FB phone numbers or there are NO phone numbers for the public to use to contact FB but do not inform the user that there are not phone numbers. Only deny any phone number is a valid phone number for FB (or Meta).

[ceejayoz]

That’s where the black hat SEO comes in. Google lost the war well before tinkering with generative AI in the results; they just make it even worse.

The collapse of search has happened faster than non-technical folks realize. They still trust the computer quite a bit.