No More Deceptive Download Buttons • Hacker News Board

Re: No More Deceptive Download Buttons

#151

Post by fencepost » Thu, Feb 04, 2016, 5:39 PM UTC

notzorbo3 wrote: post #89

whyleyc wrote: post #9

This is a joke right ? We run Adsense display ads on our site and have to spend significant time every day reviewing and blocking new ads which try to use these deceptive practices. Since Google clearly has the tech to detect this they should be implementing it at source on the advertisers (malvertisers). Instead they are pushing this down to the publishers and hitting them with penalties. It's a clever ploy in some…

> We run Adsense display ads on our site and have to spend significant time every day reviewing and blocking new ads which try to use these deceptive practices. This may be a very stupid question, but are there no ad networks that are more trustworthy?

You could look at something like Project Wonderful, but I think they're a little more geared towards small-scale niche advertising (gaming, comics, blogs).

Actually, never mind. I just looked and their top 5 sites are all well under 1,000,000 page views - and 4 of the 5 are webcomics plus Omegle which I think is one of those random chat sites that popped up a few years ago.

Re: No More Deceptive Download Buttons

#152

Post by davidgerard » Thu, Feb 04, 2016, 5:41 PM UTC

notzorbo3 wrote: post #89

whyleyc wrote: post #9

This is a joke right ? We run Adsense display ads on our site and have to spend significant time every day reviewing and blocking new ads which try to use these deceptive practices. Since Google clearly has the tech to detect this they should be implementing it at source on the advertisers (malvertisers). Instead they are pushing this down to the publishers and hitting them with penalties. It's a clever ploy in some…

> We run Adsense display ads on our site and have to spend significant time every day reviewing and blocking new ads which try to use these deceptive practices. This may be a very stupid question, but are there no ad networks that are more trustworthy?

tl;dr no. AdSense sucks, but all other networks are actually worse. (There are tiny ad networks that are actually trustworthy, e.g. Project Wonderful, but they won't make you a living.)

Re: No More Deceptive Download Buttons

#153

Post by onion2k » Thu, Feb 04, 2016, 5:44 PM UTC

alkonaut wrote: post #138

clinta wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This does not make any sense. Advertisers paying per view do not get charged for a view if crome prevents the user from viewing the page. The good news here is we now have official admission by google that allowing adsense ads without filtering is dangerous. And those of us who do not have sophisticated techniques that can detect deceptive ads have no choice to but to block the entire network serving them, if we want…

Any blockning of "malverts" should arguably just emulate view so it costs the advertiser even more than the lost view. If Google don't want to do that themselves (which would be understandable) they could likely expose it in APIs so plugins like ad blockers can do it.

Google can't do that. It'd be fraud.

Re: No More Deceptive Download Buttons

#154

Post by mrtron » Thu, Feb 04, 2016, 5:54 PM UTC

ethbro wrote: post #101

derefr wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure they need to. Google's approach here tackles the problem of these ads being created from an economic direction: if nobody is seeing these ads, they won't make any CPM money any more, so their creators will stop running them. That's a much more sensible approach than doing what you're suggesting—trying to catch specific instances of people doing something nefarious that makes them money. That just causes…

The point was made elsewhere, but I think you stated it most eloquently. Here's my question though: does it not benefit the user to enforce some minimum of deterrence through automated policing on the ad acceptance side? Yes, it's whack-a-mole, but so is SEO, and Google's continually tweaking that instead of giving up. Based on the current rudimentary techniques used by the advertisers (e.g. "DOWNLOAD!" buttons), eve…

Google is trying quite hard to stop the download ads. The people running those ads are trying even harder.

It has nothing to do with CV, it is not an engineering problem.

Re: No More Deceptive Download Buttons

#155

Post by drhayes9 » Thu, Feb 04, 2016, 5:57 PM UTC

cloudwalking wrote: post #147

drhayes9 wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> might as well use the terrible option with the highest ROI, right? No, thanks. Does The Deck serve spammy, malicious ads? I know they're tightly targeted at the techy/designy crowd, but they're also a great example of high ROI ads that aren't terrible.

You can't just use The Deck, you have to be invited.

Valid point. But I still reject the notion of "that sucks but might as well get mine". Sounds like there's a lot of space for ad networks that don't suck. Or monetization models that don't rely on spammy, useless ads.

Re: No More Deceptive Download Buttons

#156

Post by ryanlol » Thu, Feb 04, 2016, 5:59 PM UTC

dheera wrote: post #148

This "Google Safe Browsing" initiative seriously worries me. It's effectively some unknown, mysterious, un-contactable set of AI algorithms/people/who knows what controlling the internet because Google owns everyone's browser. One of my websites got tagged as "Dangerous" and having "harmful programs" despite having nothing of the sort. My guess is a silly hiccup of their neural network algorithms. And I have absolute…

As with most things in this world, you could sue them.

Re: No More Deceptive Download Buttons

#157

Post by dheera » Thu, Feb 04, 2016, 6:02 PM UTC

ryanlol wrote: post #156

dheera wrote: post #148

This "Google Safe Browsing" initiative seriously worries me. It's effectively some unknown, mysterious, un-contactable set of AI algorithms/people/who knows what controlling the internet because Google owns everyone's browser. One of my websites got tagged as "Dangerous" and having "harmful programs" despite having nothing of the sort. My guess is a silly hiccup of their neural network algorithms. And I have absolute…

As with most things in this world, you could sue them.

It wasn't a major or revenue-generating site, so I don't want to spend on legal fees. If it had been though, I would.

Re: No More Deceptive Download Buttons

#158

Post by spdustin » Thu, Feb 04, 2016, 6:08 PM UTC

Here are some more proactive approaches that would support their desired perception of caring about the browsing safety of their users:

* How about updating the radio buttons that appear when you "report this ad" to include "deceptive" as the reason for the report

* DoubleClick (by Google) serves the majority of these "Download now" ads that I've seen on sites that cater to the general public. Don't let advertisers run these ads. Do. Not. Allow. Many of them have "start download" in the plain text of the ad unit, and others are easily found by a bit of OCR on an image ad unit.

Please do not give me a Google-branded poncho (telling me how amazing it is with an infomercial about its revolutionary Dry Living Experience™) when you could patch the leaky roof to truly create a Dry Living Experience.

Re: No More Deceptive Download Buttons

#159

Post by mtgx » Thu, Feb 04, 2016, 6:08 PM UTC

ryanlol wrote: post #156

dheera wrote: post #148

This "Google Safe Browsing" initiative seriously worries me. It's effectively some unknown, mysterious, un-contactable set of AI algorithms/people/who knows what controlling the internet because Google owns everyone's browser. One of my websites got tagged as "Dangerous" and having "harmful programs" despite having nothing of the sort. My guess is a silly hiccup of their neural network algorithms. And I have absolute…

As with most things in this world, you could sue them.

How many of the sites that were illegitimately blocked can afford to sue Google? How many can afford to win against Google's top notch legal team?

Re: No More Deceptive Download Buttons

#160

Post by rackforms » Thu, Feb 04, 2016, 6:10 PM UTC

My AdWords account was suspended a few days ago because of, I presume at least, this: https://www.rackforms.com/rackforms-express-for-wordpress.ph...

A popup in AdWords says I've violated "Unsupported content free desktop software". RackForms Express is a free version of my flagship product, that one actually being advertised.

You're feelings may very well differ, but if I've clicked on a link, organic or ad, and I get offered a solution to the problem I was seeking an answer for, that seem like a pretty good deal. If nothing else, this differentiation may well be the difference between getting a sale or not.

The appeal process is to fill out this form: https://support.google.com/adwordspolicy/contact/advertise_s..., but from my reading in Google's product forms this doesn't always work. If this fails, the end result will be to remove free software from the net.

We're all for blocking those horrible "Download Firefox" ads, but this change, and the resulting aftermath, feels...I don't know, dangerous. If the end result is small companies like mine pulling valuable resources from the web, I think we all loose.

Fingers crossed my appeal goes through.