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Why is Google still serving dodgy ads?

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Re: Why is Google still serving dodgy ads?

#61

Post by vintermann »

Scoundreller wrote: post #31
poisonborz wrote: post #17

Meta knowingly earns 10% of its _overall_ sales from scams. https://www.cnbc.com/2025/11/06/meta-reportedly-projected-10...

It's more than that. The 10% is the scam ads that "won" the ad auctions. It doesn't include the effect of scam ads bidding up the market and increasing the price of non-scam ad wins. (Could also argue that the scam ad that won the slot for 10 cents would have gone for 9 cents without the scam and Meta's marginal revenue was only 1 cent... but if every ad is 1 cent more...) Same problem when you want to buy a home in…

> Could also argue that the scam ad that won the slot for 10 cents would have gone for 9 cents without the scam and Meta's marginal revenue was only 1 cent.

They're probably taking that into account in their 10% of profit coming from ads estimate.

Re: Why is Google still serving dodgy ads?

#62

Post by akersten »

stillpointlab wrote: post #45

I don't think it is fair to pin this on Google - I get the worst ads on X. But something about how the X ad network works means that even when I report the ad, block the ad poster, etc. there is this army of alternate ad accounts that all show the same ad. I was feeling very guilty last night as I was watching YouTube and getting 30s+ unskippable ad blocks every 10 minutes in some video. And the repetition and low qu…

Why are you subjecting yourself to that instead of downloading Firefox + uBlock origin?

See the headline of this article for Exhibit (I've actually run out of letters in the alphabet) why adblocking is a moral imperative.

Re: Why is Google still serving dodgy ads?

#64

Post by tanepiper »

codygman wrote: post #59
wnc3141 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The brooklinen ads are mortifying when I'm online in public

Use an adblocker? That's what I do and why I don't even know what brooklinen is.

The web is becoming very hostile to ad blockers. I use a VPN and I've noticed more and more sites just being obnoxious with their popups and even just crashing the site completely in a loop (looking at you EuroNews)

Re: Why is Google still serving dodgy ads?

#66

Post by walrus01 »

MBCook wrote: post #60
walrus01 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 2) There are more ads going out then can be reviewed The "more than can be reviewed" might have been a logical conclusion in a purely human based workflow, even if you have the lowest cost per head click workers in like, an external contractor call centre type environment in Bangladesh. As the author points out, the ordinary consumer class version of publicly available Gemini very accurately classifies the ad as ma…

How about I rephrase it. More than can be reviewed for the time and money they’re willing to spend . Even before AI, they absolutely could’ve done it.

Yes, and I've also seen the absolute shitflood of horrible ads. Every time I see somebody else's system that isn't running ublock origin or similar... They clearly are prioritizing the ad revenue over any actual "don't take a steaming dump on the Internet" ethical priorities.

Re: Why is Google still serving dodgy ads?

#67

Post by StilesCrisis »

CqtGLRGcukpy wrote: post #2

I have two guesses why Google does this: 1) Google wants the most money, so they don't care to let dodgy ads thru. 2) There are more ads going out then can be reviewed, so they would rather have people report them, then they automatically reject the report until enough people report it, then an actual person may review it. As to why Google doesn't use AI to review them? Google would rather use the AI in a way that ma…

It's not like they'll run out of ads to show anyway. If they take this ad down, they'll just show a different one?

Re: Why is Google still serving dodgy ads?

#68

Post by walrus01 »

tanepiper wrote: post #64
codygman wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Use an adblocker? That's what I do and why I don't even know what brooklinen is.

The web is becoming very hostile to ad blockers. I use a VPN and I've noticed more and more sites just being obnoxious with their popups and even just crashing the site completely in a loop (looking at you EuroNews)

It doesn't solve everything but the 'full' desktop version of the ublock origin plugin runs just fine in Android on Firefox. I can't even imagine using any other mobile browser now. I don't know what the situation is for iphone platform stuff these days.

Re: Why is Google still serving dodgy ads?

#69

Post by drorco »

CqtGLRGcukpy wrote: post #2

I have two guesses why Google does this: 1) Google wants the most money, so they don't care to let dodgy ads thru. 2) There are more ads going out then can be reviewed, so they would rather have people report them, then they automatically reject the report until enough people report it, then an actual person may review it. As to why Google doesn't use AI to review them? Google would rather use the AI in a way that ma…

As someone who advertised with them, they do seem to have an AI reviewer, and it also has false positives that no number of appeals seem to resolve. So in these cases you want to pay them money for good ads, but you can't because AI says no.

Re: Why is Google still serving dodgy ads?

#70

Post by mischief6 »

codygman wrote: post #59
wnc3141 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The brooklinen ads are mortifying when I'm online in public

Use an adblocker? That's what I do and why I don't even know what brooklinen is.

abp in firefox doesn't really remove them. I've seen and reported multiple scummy popup-like looking ads like tfn and saw it again for weeks...
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