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Comment by pjc50

21 days ago

The only way out of this is to make ad platforms liable for scam ads. At the moment it's simply too profitable to print lies.

11 comments

pjc50

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ocdtrekkie  21 days ago

Yep, one of the big problems is the penalty for any corporate crime today is not enough. Often the crime is more profitable than the penalty hurts.

If you want to fix ads, make a malicious ad cost the ad network triple the amount they got paid to display it. Corporations are psychopathic by design, if you want to fix them you need to make it an actual financial risk to do something bad.

And then heck, if you want to make stopping the original bad actors more effective, make the platforms pay up those damages but empower them to recover that loss if they can get it from the malicious advertiser.

You'll see platforms doing more vetting of content, doing more KYC, and focused on reducing their own risk.

alsetmusic  20 days ago

One only needs to look at the Grok-generating-nudes fiasco to see that potential financial liabilities are a pittance to huge companies. We need to jail CEOs whose companies break the law.

You can just get away with fraud:

Former CEO of Volkswagen AG Charged with Conspiracy and Wire Fraud in Diesel Emissions Scandal

https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/former-ceo-volkswage...

> He remains a fugitive in the United States and is wanted by the Environmental Protection Agency on charges including conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to commit wire fraud, conspiracy to violate the Clean Air Act, and multiple counts of wire fraud.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Winterkorn

giraffe_lady  21 days ago

No there is another way. We can ban advertising completely.

  • lossyalgo  20 days ago

    How else do you make your product known? In many markets, there are just too many competitors, and so the only way to make any money at all is to advertise. I also hate ads, but I also think there is a better way, and better regulation would go a long way to making ads more bearable.

    • ben_w  19 days ago

      > there are just too many competitors

      This ought to be a signal that the market is already being served, that it is unlikely to be a big opportunity to make more money.

      Even with advertising, what you have in such a market is an all-pay auction: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All-pay_auction

      The end point is nobody makes any profit on apps, because all the money that ought to be profit goes to paying for a bidding war on ad slots.

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    • giraffe_lady  19 days ago

      You should never see an ad without seeking it out, so catalogs or something I guess. It's not my problem frankly. If having ads is so important they should have been more careful with them.

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