Money. They make so much money from malvertisement that it doesn't make sense to remediate them. It's corporate greed and they've known about this since the 2010s, various campaigns have sprung up and have caused untold X amount of dollars in damages in breaches, and nothing changes. I've heard at least one FBI agent who had investigated cases related to malvertisement put Google up there with some of the worst ad networks.
Why is Google still serving dodgy ads?
111–120 of 425 posts
Re: Why is Google still serving dodgy ads?
#112Every YouTube ad I see now is an AI-generated scam ad hawking everything from free electricity to anti-aging products to birdhouses hand-carved by an AI-generated senior citizen. I've seen some multiple times, days or weeks apart. Their advertising standards are a complete joke.
This senior citizen doing stuff got me. I bought a pair of cow slippers because I thought he was making them from his farm in Australia. Turns out they use that same "character" to hawk multiple products.
Re: Why is Google still serving dodgy ads?
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
As much I love a good old "Why don't you just ..." response that terrifically misses the point - in this particular case I was watching YouTube through their Apple TV app. Now, there may be another "why don't you just ..." or "well, actually ..." response you have queued up, maybe some ramblings about a pi hole, or some anti-Apple hate, or some other solutioneering. Go ahead, tell me. But it is the structure of incen…
> I was watching YouTube through their Apple TV app.
That is an active choice, not forced in any way.
> The YouTube creators that make the content do need to get paid.
There are better ways, and we would all be better off except for the small group of greedheads benefiting from the chaos
The ad supported internet is dying. Good riddance
Re: Why is Google still serving dodgy ads?
#114I 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 has worked for Google Ads, I should say that they do review ads with both AI and humans, and do spend quite a bit of money and energy on finding and stopping both bad-faith advertisers ("buy side", what we see) and bad-faith publishers ("sell side", more of a scam on the advertisers/google itself).
Is it enough? Probably not, based on this article. Are their policies strict enough? IMHO no way, considering Youtube left an ad up for "Ukranian women" in the early years of the war which wtf. But they certainly do try.
Like most businesses, the actual people involved are also well-intentioned, at least in the abstract; they wanted to make ads that sell products without annoying people. Obviously there's material conditions beneath and around all that, but we don't need to explain that part here ;)
Re: Why is Google still serving dodgy ads?
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
When Google broke the original uBlock origin and made people switch to uBlock Lite, I found out about the change because my grandmother called me in a panic. She saw an ad like the one in this article on her Facebook page and clicked it, then it was telling her to call Microsoft support because her computer was infected. Like, Google removing Adblock directly caused that . Facebook allowing the ad caused that . The a…
> When Google broke the original uBlock origin and made people switch to uBlock Lite Not me. Is that because I stuck with Firefox?
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Re: Why is Google still serving dodgy ads?
#116These days almost all Google search results return nothing but links to stuff that you can buy instead of useful information you were looking for. They do this because they think they can get away with it, they're the only game in town. To me this signals a huge opportunity for other companies to dive into. If a new internet search company appeared that returned actual useful search results and clearly delineated ads…
Kagi is better. You might want to try it.
Kagi is such an amazing team, building a truly next-level product. It's hard to realize what you're missing until you experience a real search engine for the first time in decades. It's wonderful.
Re: Why is Google still serving dodgy ads?
#117Money. They make so much money from malvertisement that it doesn't make sense to remediate them. It's corporate greed and they've known about this since the 2010s, various campaigns have sprung up and have caused untold X amount of dollars in damages in breaches, and nothing changes. I've heard at least one FBI agent who had investigated cases related to malvertisement put Google up there with some of the worst ad ne…
This is it. The truth is Google's largest revenue sources are scams, fraud, and malware, and they wouldn't be in business without them. They're not going to remove all of their highest pay per click customers because it might harm society or something.
Just try to convince Google to remove "MapsQuest Driving Directions", a browser hijacking extension advertiser who clearly impersonates one of Google's competitors: It's an extremely high value scam targeting seniors (the folks who mostly look for MapQuest on... Google) and it makes them way too much money for them to stop it.
Re: Why is Google still serving dodgy ads?
#118Google's ad-serving is dumb as a rock. It seems to be based just on things it thinks you may be interested in, even when it should be 100% obvious that they are not things you are going to buy. They should let people have more control over what ads they do and don't see. If Google served me ads on stuff I was interested in (I'd be happy to tell them) rather than women's clothing, they I might buy it. I'm a guy - show…
They've got ads to shift, they need eyeballs, they don't really care about conversion beyond if it hits the bottom line.
It's like the whole purpose of ads, they're not trying to sell you stuff you need - they want your money.
Re: Why is Google still serving dodgy ads?
#119I 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…
I think section 230 immunity shielding from from any liability is also very motivating. Google was born into a world where companies had 10,000s of support personnel, today there are companies with over a million employees, they could easily human-review every single ad and they probably would if they weren't able to divert that cost into profits without consequence. AI makes it even easier and cheaper but... why bot…
Does section 230 shield them from ads they select for display? Ads are not randomly hosted by random people and if you visit a random page those people uploaded, you see them. Google selects the ads they want to show you on search results, before youtube videos, or on third party websites. There's no "we don't know what that might be" going on at all -- they are running sophisticated algorithms to optimize the impact of those ads. Is that still be covered under section 230?
Re: Why is Google still serving dodgy ads?
#120These days almost all Google search results return nothing but links to stuff that you can buy instead of useful information you were looking for. They do this because they think they can get away with it, they're the only game in town. To me this signals a huge opportunity for other companies to dive into. If a new internet search company appeared that returned actual useful search results and clearly delineated ads…
Kagi is better. You might want to try it.
Kagi will never make it. Asking people money for search is a non-starter.
Also, I type in something in the search bar and...nothing happens. There's a pop-up below the search bar which tells me nothing is saved with a "Dismiss" button. When I press it I'm being directed to the homepage telling me to pay-up.