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YouTube doesn't want to take down scam ads

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Re: YouTube doesn't want to take down scam ads

#241

Post by machdiamonds »

GaryNumanVevo wrote: post #64

Twitter actually has some of the best ad oversight, almost entirely by accident too. Community Notes (formerly Birdwatch) lets users flag tweets that are misleading. Since Ads on Twitter are just normal tweets, they can be fact checked. Twitter's average ad quality has plummeted recently, but most of the scam ads I see have a massive user-added disclaimer outlining how it's a scam. I wonder how this affects the click…

It's definitely not by accident, it would be very easy to turn off community notes for tweets flagged as ads.

Re: YouTube doesn't want to take down scam ads

#242

Post by anonymousab »

mr_mitm wrote: post #228
iteratethis wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, it's a high interest rate phenomenon. Investors want to see profitability. But it's also a problem unique to trillion dollar companies: finding growth. If you have a money printer of $280B per year, how do you find growth that moves the needle? For new product development, you'd need to launch a product that brings in revenue of say $20B, otherwise it's just not that interesting. Imagine how hard it is to launch…

Why do they have to grow, though? Can't they just be profitable? They can just pay out dividends like coca cola, no?

A not terribly uncommon belief is that continuous growth (pick your metric) is the raison d'être of all entities operating in a capitalist society, and so achieving and maintaining some high level of profitability and then staying there means that you and your company are failing to do their job.

But "growth" is a moving and indulgent target. For some, increasing profits isn't the growth that matters. Rather, increasing the rate at which profits are increasing is the true metric. So even vastly increased profits can still be a form of failure that requires more actions be taken to wring more money out of the platform and its users.

Re: YouTube doesn't want to take down scam ads

#243

Post by chgfxdfgg »

IF YOU ARE USING A GOOGLE SERVICE, YOU ARE NOT THE CUSTOMER, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT. Advertisers are the customers. Google customer service is for the customers, not for you.

Even services that you pay for every month like Drive, they can lose all your data and you won’t be able to talk to a human about it. Photos will build anti-competitive walls around your content with no warning. Maps will track your every move and drown you in ads. Search and Youtube will profile you and steer you toward shallow promoted content. You are the product.

Re: YouTube doesn't want to take down scam ads

#244

Post by jrmg »

We’ve returned to the days of traveling medicine shows: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medicine_show

YouTube is just full of very obviously fraudulent tech and medical/health ads, especially if you’ve switched off ad personalization. Was it this bad on cable TV in the past? Isn’t the FTC meant to be actively policing things like this?

Re: YouTube doesn't want to take down scam ads

#245

Post by dragonwriter »

jrmg wrote: post #244

We’ve returned to the days of traveling medicine shows: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medicine_show YouTube is just full of very obviously fraudulent tech and medical/health ads, especially if you’ve switched off ad personalization. Was it this bad on cable TV in the past? Isn’t the FTC meant to be actively policing things like this?

> Isn’t the FTC meant to be actively policing things like this?

No, generally the FTC is not designed, equipped, or funded for actively policing advertisements. Its consumer protection action is almost entirely complaint-based/reactive, not active.

If you want active policing of advertisement by the FTC, you need to lobby Congress to vastly expand the FTC’s role and funding.

Re: YouTube doesn't want to take down scam ads

#246

Post by wharvle »

dado3212 wrote: post #160

YouTube does not have the scale to manually review every time someone flags an ad. HN community believes that “oh, but MY report is high signal” which may be true, but user reports as a whole are not high signal. So instead it’s going through some ML classifier first. An automatic answer saying “this doesn’t go against policy” does not mean that it escalated to YT staff who carefully considered the ad and said “actua…

Seems tough. Guess they should stop operating that kind of business if they can’t figure out how to do it without scamming people.

Re: YouTube doesn't want to take down scam ads

#247

Post by idlephysicist »

mywacaday wrote: post #179
passwordoops wrote: post #5

They're all like that. A whole back I reported an obvious real estate scam using Wayne Gretzky and some Blue Jays player (I'm in Canada). The reply was it didn't break any policy. When ads are the primary source of revenue, there's zero incentive to police the platform

When the Irish Tánaiste (US VP equivalent) and former Taoiseach (President equivalent) has to go to court and looses when he tries to find out from google who is advertising using his identity you know the whole think is a sham that has to be protected at all costs, https://www.irishtimes.com/crime-law/courts/2023/12/06/tanai...

> has to go to court and looses[sic] when he tries to find out from google who is advertising using his identity

I believe from the article that you linked that the case is still before the High Court and so he has not lost yet.

I wonder would the case have been better made as an instance of identity theft?

Also while you are accurate in saying that the Tánaiste is equivalent to the Vice President in U.S. terms, because they are the deputy head of government. The same being true with respect to Taoiseach. I would like to point out that they are not the same positions. While the U.S. President is commander in chief of the U.S. military, the Taoiseach is not the command in chief in Ireland – that falls to the Uachtarán (the President).

Tánaiste = Deputy Prime Minister

Taoiseach = Prime Minister

Uachtarán = President

Re: YouTube doesn't want to take down scam ads

#248

Post by mjcl »

GaryNumanVevo wrote: post #64

Twitter actually has some of the best ad oversight, almost entirely by accident too. Community Notes (formerly Birdwatch) lets users flag tweets that are misleading. Since Ads on Twitter are just normal tweets, they can be fact checked. Twitter's average ad quality has plummeted recently, but most of the scam ads I see have a massive user-added disclaimer outlining how it's a scam. I wonder how this affects the click…

I think the scammers are starting to get wise. I've seen over 50 different accounts running the same ad copy for some car solar defrosting gadget. There's just too many ads for any single one to get a published note and if one does they can delete the individual post.

Re: YouTube doesn't want to take down scam ads

#250

Post by octacat »

michaelt wrote: post #16
sys_64738 wrote: post #3

When you are an ad company then why would you reject the source of revenue?

* Risk of popular support for ad-blocking, because of all the scams. * Risk of regulators taking an interest, because it shows the ad industry can't self-regulate. * Risk of regulators taking an interest, because their voters are getting scammed. * Risk of regulators taking an interest, because celebrities complain. * Risk of regulators taking an interest, because deepfakes.

- ad-blocking - they are working on disabling ad-blockers, give it some time. You cannot block ads in the official apps. - regulators are slow, you can make money now. Probably even with regulations they would still make money from the scam ads.
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