331–340 of 549 posts
Snakeoil on every corner these days - from online scams to text message scams to the whole supplements industry to prosperity gospel to ... it sure feels like we're surrounded by hustlers and charlatans.
Supplements industry? I only take whey protein and creatine from known sources. Anything on this?
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if only there were some websites, an Ads Library or Ads Transparency Center of some kind, where people could easily verify any or all of this
Would anything change if there were?
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If people demanded ad-free paid services with the same vigor that they evangelize ad-blocking, we would have it.
I don't really get why that's the responsibility of the consumer? Businesses offer shitty deal, consumer works around said deal... it's on the businesses to offer a better deal (a la Spotify vs limewire, or Netflix vs thepiratebay)
That's in large part why the Internet sucks, it's not made for people who ad-block.
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The "you can just not agree to it" argument is so bogus. You can only buy good/services that are for sale, and when they all have the same crappy terms, you have to agree to somebody's to live in the modern world. That's like the people who claim only idiots live in HOAs but neglect the fact that, in some markets, nearly all real estate worth living in is covered by an HOA of some sort so your alternative isn't "buy…
> You can only buy good/services that are for sale The world is full of custom car builders. Buying a something like the F-150, but without the undesirable computing components, is quite practical and very possible. It'll be expensive , which I expect is what you were really trying to say when you pretend there is no such thing for sale, but you're just returning us to the heart of discussion: The F-150 is cheap, com…
Mind to help me out a bit and point me at a few companies doing that? Around Kentucky if you don't mind since that's where I am.
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I pay for YouTube so all I get is paid creator promotions for VPNs and Squarespace unless it's someone being sent a free thing in exchange for a review Normalize paying for things instead of selling your attention to the highest bidder.
Normalize paying for things instead of selling your attention to the highest bidder. But you just admitted that you pay for YouTube and it shows you creator promotions. You are literally paying to see ads, then telling people not to do the same. Unless there's some subtlety I'm missing here. I haven't been on YouTube in at least a decade. I see no difference between a blogger pushing a VPN and Google showing an ad fo…
Youtube Premium is fighting back against the sponsor segments with this "commonly skipped segment" feature. You hit a fast forward button and it automatically skips ahead to the place most people jumped to.
It was christmas time, and I got an ad for a cool looking steam punk keyboard. I ordered it for my kid who had recently got into PC gaming. It was only $60, and when it didn't come I checked my bank and credit card and didn't see any charges, so I assumed that I didn't actually finish the order. Until almost a year later when I realized I paid with paypal, and they used funds I had sitting in there for some reason. By then it was too late to challenge.
At least 50% of the YouTube promoted videos I get are crypto currency scams where some paid actor walks you though deploying an eth contract that empties your wallet. I report every one and nothing changes :(
It's because google has no profile on you, likely because you block all tracking. Which is fine, but at least understand that it's not the norm. Normal non-tech users (from watching youtube at friends houses or at my parents), mostly get ads for fabric softener and cat litter.
Does trillion-dollar Google desperately need the 3½¢ of revenue the scam ad generates?
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> It is not possible for Big Tech to exclude scammers It's 100% possible . It might not be profitable An app store doesn't have the "The optimum amount of fraud is not zero" problem. Preventing fraudulent apps is not a probability problem, you can actually continuously improve your capability without also blocking "good" apps accidentally. Meanwhile, apple regularly stymies developers trying to release updates to alr…
> Preventing fraudulent apps is not a probability problem Unfortunately it is. You've even provided examples of a false positive and a false negative. Every discrimination process is going to have those at some rate. It might become very expensive for developers to go through higher levels of verification.
The answer is that it just takes a lot of people. What if no content could appear on Facebook until it passed a human moderation process?
As the above poster said, this is not profitable which is why they don't do it. Instead they complain about how hard it is to do programmatically and keep promising they will get it working soon.
A well functioning society would censure them. We should say that they're not allowed to operate in this broken way until they solve the problem. Fix first.
Big tech knows this which is why they are suddenly so politically active. They reap billions in profit by dumping the negative externalities onto society. They're extracting that value at a cost to all of us. The only hope they have to keep operating this way is to forestall regulation.
Move fast and break things indeed.
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I pay for YouTube so all I get is paid creator promotions for VPNs and Squarespace unless it's someone being sent a free thing in exchange for a review Normalize paying for things instead of selling your attention to the highest bidder.
Normalize paying for things instead of selling your attention to the highest bidder. But you just admitted that you pay for YouTube and it shows you creator promotions. You are literally paying to see ads, then telling people not to do the same. Unless there's some subtlety I'm missing here. I haven't been on YouTube in at least a decade. I see no difference between a blogger pushing a VPN and Google showing an ad fo…
Personally I pay for youtube and I don't mind the sponsor sections. They're easy to fast forward through and income goes directly to the creator. Youtube doesn't take a cut. These are the only kinds of ads that work on me - in the rare case that the product is something I'm interested in, I go out of my way to make sure I use the creator's link.
The long story short is that there are creators I like and I want them to devote all their time to making more content. I'm glad some of them get sponsors. For many I just straight up give them money on Patreon.