Won't Fix Episode 3: With KTLYST Labs' Assaf Kipnis

Assaf Kipnis spent years hunting financially motivated bad actors on Meta's e-crime team and in Google's Ads Trust & Safety org.He now runs KTLYST Labs, where he's building the threat intelligence tooling he always wished existed inside big platforms. We get into the practical realities of scam fighting — what's actually changed in the AI era, what hasn't, and why so much of the industry's effort gets aimed at the wrong targets.About the guest: Assaf Kipnis is the founder of KTLYST Labs. Previously: Meta e-crime, Google Ads Trust & Safety, ElevenLabs, LinkedIn threat intel.What We Cover:Why AI isn't reinventing scams — it's just adding a more convincing final layer to playbooks that have existed for years.The asymmetry problem: bad actors run conferences, sell each other tools, and share playbooks on Telegram, while defenders can't share findings across teams at the same company.A case study in what actually works — how changing product, policy, and operations together pushed a misinformation-for-profit ring off the platform in a week.Why "accounts taken down" is a near-useless metric, and the "learned futility" it creates inside big trust & safety orgs.The Swiss cheese model of abuse prevention, and why chasing a single silver-bullet solution keeps companies chasing their tail.Where regulation has teeth (banking) and where it's mostly performative (social media), plus the cross-platform gap no one is addressing.How AI is changing investigative work — compressing a week of open-source research into two hours — and why that makes entry-level talent pipelines a real concern.Episode Highlights:00:00 Intro01:06 Professional Background and Career Journey ‎03:47 AI's Role in Scaling Rather Than Changing Scams ‎07:05 Adversary Collaboration vs. Defender Silos ‎09:02 The Frame Rate Discovery Example ‎10:26 KTLYST Labs and Operationalizing Threat Intelligence ‎12:40 AI's Impact on Investigation Work ‎15:15 Career Entry Points and AI's Impact on Junior Roles ‎20:38 The NextTag Affiliate Program Attack ‎23:00 The Misinformation Campaign Investigation ‎27:52 The Limitations of Location-Based Solutions ‎30:30 The Futility of Single-Solution Thinking ‎33:47 The Reality of Platform Defense Goals ‎34:50 Government Regulation and Enforcement Challenges ‎40:31 The Problem with Takedown Metrics ‎Links:Assaf KipnisKTLYST LabsRob Leathern