Comment by Toutouxc
1 day ago
That’s surprising, because in my opinion Google doesn’t care about malicious anything. The other day I had to look for something on YouTube on my dad’s computer with a disabled ad-blocker. I saw like 30 ads in 15 minutes, every single one of them was a scam, literally not a single non-fraudulent ad. Google is full cartoon villain evil at this point.
The more you ad-block and tracker block, the more scammy the ads when you take down the guards.
People who never do any sort of blocking are the most valuable ad-targets, and hence get the highest bids when their views are auctioned. They get Toyota, Coke, and Downy ads.
Scam advertisers are bottom feeders and the "advertiser of last resort". Google doesn't really care that much about people with blank profiles, and why would they, these people use their services and contribute nothing back. I don't think Google is vindictive, but it just doesn't make business sense to put a lot of resources into cleaning up ads that pay google nothing and mostly go to people who temporarily disabled their ad-block.
> doesn't make business sense to put a lot of resources into cleaning up ads that pay google nothing
If we lived in a sane world, Google would be held accountable for every scam they advertise. It doesn't matter if you think someone deserved to get scammed for using an ad blocker, because they never would have been scammed if Google didn't choose to put them in danger for the sake of profit.
"But they can't possibly review every ad before publishing" they say. If that's the case, then they should scale down the amount of ads they allow until it reaches a manageable scale (eg every single ad can be reviewed by a human employee). They might make less money, but it's an expectation we have of nearly all industries (eg commercial truck drivers have to follow extra restrictions in addition to regular speed limits)
> "But they can't possibly review every ad before publishing" they say.
That defense doesn't work either way as they (and Facebook) also reject manual reports from users.
Yes. "At our scale, we can't possibly do X" is a reason to not scale. It's not a reason to dodge doing X.
> "But they can't possibly review every ad before publishing" they say. If that's the case
It's not, it never is; it's a lie on the level of "Poland attacked first". Say, if someone was offering you $40+ billion every 3 months to solve the issue, do you think you could? It's a ridiculous question, of course you could.
If we lived in a sane world, people would simply pay for what they use. Then we could avoid all this confusion, and google would have large (monetary) incentive to protect it's customers.
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Yep, if Google lost money/owed damages every time someone got a fraudulent Google ad, you better believe those ads would be squeaky clean.
Sergey's flotilla needs a new vessel this year though, so can't do that.
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> it just doesn't make business sense to put a lot of resources into cleaning up ads that pay google nothing and mostly go to people who temporarily disabled their ad-block
I see where you are coming from, but getting burned by a scam Google advertised to me just pushed me to cutting Google out of my life completely. If it were the occasional bad actor slipping through I might have been more forgiving, but the scam that got to me had become well known for at least the last 18 months. If Google doesn't care enough to keep the well known bad actors off their service, then I protect myself & my family by blocking Google.
Low quality ads should be the bottom of the barrel. Actual criminal activity should not be anywhere in the barrel.
That might make sense, but to clarify, my dad has disabled his ad blocker a few months ago by accident, so he’s fair game. An older guy too, I guess that’s why there were so many scams.
That sucks, I'm not sure why that would be without deep diving your fathers computer. I'm sure you agree these corporations are greedy, and definitely don't like leaving money on the table, so it's odd when their automated systems miss creating a profile. Profiles translate straight to revenue.
I can also assure you that scammers don't payout more than Coca-Cola or Proctor and Gamble for ads.
That's interesting to note. So the fact that there is less data about someone makes them a preferred target for the bottom of the advertising bucket. Is there an equivalent in the paper world? I remember those old paper magazines that were constantly about aliens or other conspiracies. Maybe the same effect?
They aren't preferred targets so much as they are the cheapest targets.
These scam ads are trying to play the numbers game that email spammers do. So they just bid on everyone at the minimum bid. For people with fleshed out ad-profiles, the big advertisers that pay decent money will buy those slots. The auctions almost never fall through.
For people with no profile, no one bids, and the auction falls through to the scammer who will pay $0.00001 for their ad to load.
So ironically, the (second?) best way to remove scammy ads from google is to keep loading ads from google.
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> these people use their services and contribute nothing back
Each and every single human on the planet has made a contribution to Google in the form of their data — whether they wanted to or not! What more must we give for the great and all-knowing Google to contribute ANYTHING back to the commons? Remember when CAPTCHA was meant to crowd source the deciphering of old books for the good of all?
Remember “Do no evil”?
I mean for fucks sake are you a Google agent? Or even a human?
I went through a phase of reporting scams and every single time my report was rejected.
I guess I shouldn’t have expected any differently when their income is dependent on displaying those scam ads.
Same here. Seems they love AI-generated nonsense ads!
As long as it makes them money, they're incapable of caring.
Make them liable for what they show, and watch them suddenly discover they are able to care a lot.
Sometimes I am convinced that there are no good products and so all advertising must happen for bad products.
I mean how often do you see an ad for a product, buy it (not even from the ad itself, maybe from a recommendation from a friend) and you are happy with the product and think the ad was truthful?
Advertising stopped really working on me as an adult. You just get burned too often with overly advertised products in the past and you get cynical with all of them going forward. I guess I just don't really buy stuff much at this stage of my life beyond necessities. I got hobbies with gear, but I already have all my gear, and know what I am looking for already with any new gear and have a good sense of enshittification.