Rafał Brzoska wants to hit platforms in the pocket: Scams must stop paying off

Polish billionaire Rafał Brzoska, founder of InPost, is launching a social initiative named '150%' aimed at penalizing technology platforms that profit from online scams. The initiative demands that platforms generating revenue from fraudulent advertisements should face financial sanctions equivalent to 150% of their earnings from such content.

The widespread issue of online fraud, including fake advertisements featuring celebrities, manipulated interviews, and AI-generated deepfakes, is draining internet users' finances. Brzoska's '150%' initiative seeks to disrupt the current model, which he argues relies too heavily on urging users to be more cautious. The core economic principle is simple: if an online service charges for hosting scam advertisements, it must face a penalty exceeding its profit.

Brzoska stated, "It's no longer about my image. Anyone can see a fake ad every day, believe it, and lose all their savings. If a platform charges money for hosting such an ad, it cannot remain a purely passive intermediary. We want to reach a point where profiting from scams simply stops being worthwhile."

Beyond financial penalties, the initiative plans to establish a public Online Scam Registry to monitor how quickly platforms respond to reports of illegal content. Brzoska argues that platforms must have an economic incentive to remove scams swiftly and effectively, as they also profit from these advertisements. Global damages from deepfake scams alone are estimated at $3.7 billion, with social media platforms accounting for 47% of these losses, according to data from Surfshark.

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It's no longer about my image. Anyone can see a fake ad every day, believe it, and lose all their savings. If a platform charges money for hosting such an ad, it cannot remain a purely passive intermediary. We want to reach a point where profiting from scams simply stops being worthwhile.