This is exactly why People need to use the store only as much as possible, and Paint.NET needs to get on the Windows Store as well
Google and Paint.NET need to stop misleading users (2013)
21–30 of 109 posts
Re: Google and Paint.NET need to stop misleading users (2013)
#22Interesting, I've visited this website multiple times before and didn't know about this problem until today. Ad blocker browser add-on seems to be doing its job really well.
Re: Google and Paint.NET need to stop misleading users (2013)
#23I find that article hilarious with this context: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/02/googl...
Yeah, everyone got so riled up they forgot to see that this article is from 2013
That's my point though. Four years ought to be time enough for them to sort this out after implementing that new view on ads. What's worse, that initiative was about blocking sites altogether if they had this crap on them, despite still allowing their own partners to use these practices.
Re: Google and Paint.NET need to stop misleading users (2013)
#24This is trivially solved with an ad blocker. Frankly, I do not see the problem. Why should you rely on Google/Paint.NET/state legislation when the solution is literally a few button clicks away on both chrome and firefox? All browsers should come with ad blockers by default. Hell, the OS should come with blocking hosts.txt. That would make the digital world a whole lot safer. And before you say the internet will die,…
As much as I agree that the problem is solved for those who know about ad blockers, many people (e.g. non-hacker news types!) do not know about them. In any case, whether users can solve this by installing an ad blocker is beside the point - this is really shitty behaviour that I wouldn't have expected Google to allow, or for Paint.NET to allow on their site.
I think a lot of the reason Google has been allowed to get away with this is because of ad blockers... the people in a position to most loudly condemn the practice and push for change... aren't using the same Internet as the rest of us, they don't see the problem.
Re: Google and Paint.NET need to stop misleading users (2013)
#25Sounds like a personal problem to me...
This is a little shady, but all the units are clearly labeled as ads. I have a hard time getting as worked up over this as the author does. Paint.NET is a free product, what do you expect?
Re: Google and Paint.NET need to stop misleading users (2013)
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wonder if they ran an A/B test on customer spending depending on the time it takes from "uploading" an ad to the network and the ad showing positive metrics. My guess is the result of such a finding would impact the duration and thoroughness of the review process. And my guess is youtubers make up such a small slice of revenue that the threat of lawsuits outweighs the convenience of the customer.
I highly doubt it has to do with the time it takes to have someone review the submission. Google does not like hiring people to do things it thinks algorithms can do adequately, because people cost a lot more than servers.
At least on adwords, you get a "quality score" for ads, which is essentially a clickthrough rate, which lowers your cost per impression. In this case, I assume those ads get a high clickthrough rate due to being terribly misleading, which leads the algorithm to believe these ads are the most appropriate for this ad slot (they are if the only metric you care about is money going into Google's pockets).
Re: Google and Paint.NET need to stop misleading users (2013)
#27My question is why is it so easy to have advertisements that directly link to downloadable software? If I'm clicking on an advertisement I want to know more about a product, not be forced to run a binary of which I have no certainty of it's true purpose. Or am I thinking wrong? If you disallow download based advertising including linking to pages that only offer you a download, this could be a little more useful agai…
The problem is enforcement. Telling malware distributors "that's not allowed" obviously isn't going to do anything, and it's easy to have the ad go to one place when Google is investigating and another when a user clicks the ad in the wild.
Re: Google and Paint.NET need to stop misleading users (2013)
#28This is trivially solved with an ad blocker. Frankly, I do not see the problem. Why should you rely on Google/Paint.NET/state legislation when the solution is literally a few button clicks away on both chrome and firefox? All browsers should come with ad blockers by default. Hell, the OS should come with blocking hosts.txt. That would make the digital world a whole lot safer. And before you say the internet will die,…
It has been, for some time in the U.S., frowned upon, if not simply illegal, to partake in deceptive advertising practices. This "things are different now in the internet age" is getting a bit tiring. It should not fall upon the user to protect against this when we ALREADY have laws/rules in place to protect them.
Re: Google and Paint.NET need to stop misleading users (2013)
#29My question is why is it so easy to have advertisements that directly link to downloadable software? If I'm clicking on an advertisement I want to know more about a product, not be forced to run a binary of which I have no certainty of it's true purpose. Or am I thinking wrong? If you disallow download based advertising including linking to pages that only offer you a download, this could be a little more useful agai…
I can't believe Google couldn't categoricatically add context to these type of ads if they really cared.
Google knows the ad link. Google can crawl the target page / file. If it's an installer, Google can run it in a VM and note what ends up being installed.
If you can't pull a clear "this is crapware" signal out of that, then their ML is a lot less advanced than it seems.
And if they can, then just automatically put a stronger visual border around it with something like "This is an advertisement" in bold. Then let advertisers sort it out. Google penalizes SEO they disagree with all the time, and people stop doing it because they don't want to take the hit.
And I'm pretty sure it is (image recognition) and they don't... so... advertising buys trump "don't be evil."
Re: Google and Paint.NET need to stop misleading users (2013)
#30https://ninite.com/ Accept no substitutes when installing on Windows.