Comment by Telaneo
10 hours ago
We need strict liability on this front. Google is complicit. No newspaper or equivalent publication in the days before web ads would allow ads that are down at the level of scam that seemingly make up the modus operandi of Google today (and even the ads back then that did bend the truth a bit, overpromised, or showed products that didn't actually have any legitimate use, shouldn't really have been legal back then either. They just weren't big enough of a problem to worry about).
There were so many scam ads in magazines and newspapers back in the day. Same with all the made for tv stuff and infomercials.
The difference for the newspaper and magazine ads is you couldn't just click on it in an instant. You had to spend a lot more effort and had more chances to realize it is a scam.
In a way, ads like that can be a bit scarier. We recently bought a house and through the next 3 months I got so many scary warnings in the mail, most of which looked legit and official, saying that if I dont visit sign up for X then I will be billed Y, or my house will be at risk of Z, and other such tactics. I was not expecting this inondation but I can see someone falling for this.
Not trying to justify either, BTW. Its just scary how many different ways there are to defraud people.
We need strict liability on this front. Companies behind websites that embed ads that they didn't verify (and don't control) are complicit.
You are looking at this backwards. The average user DOES hold the site complicit. The issue is that there are many hundreds of millions (possibly billions) of sites serving Google ads. 1 user avoiding/blacklisting 1 site due to scam/spam ad won't even be a rounding error to most sites, and it is nothing at all to Google. Given that the internet has evolved to be ad-driven, of which Google is a major player, you also aren't going to convince sites to stop serving Google ads.
The change has to start with Google, and they can't be bothered to do so, thus far.
Liability is kind of wild and the fact that “the internet” washes it all away is wilder still.
In my state, which perhaps takes liability too far in the other direction, if I serve sober you a single beer, you proceed to visit a second bar, have ten shots of tequila in an hour, and kill a man driving home - I share equal liability as the tequila bar.
Perhaps there is a middle ground in this world where a firm that makes billions has to have some basic “Know Your Customer” systems to prevent abuse?
(Premise: it isn't 'alcohol and drugs'; it is 'drugs'. Alcohol is a drug, and while we are at it: a powerful one.)
The reason for that is that you've been serving a hard drug to a customer. Don't do that if you cannot bear the responsibility (liability). In order to bear the liability, the price has to go up, including perhaps a safe escort home of the drug user, but of course that would be too expensive/socialist/authoritarian (blimey they want us to take responsible action regarding our customers! I knew a club here for young people where it was very normal to have them taxi'd home. Son, wanna go out? The taxi is part of the price), and lead to 'off the record' drug usage. Which is how we ended up in opioid crisis.
If alcohol would only be invented today, there's no chance it would be legal in the current umbrella of drugs. And, for good reason: it is too addictive, too harmful for self and their environment. Compare with the various empathogens or harmfulness of psychedelic drugs. These cause, normalized, far less damage to both user and their environment.
I abstain from drinking (I am sensitive to addiction which is how I ended up to that conclusion), and this weekend I had a tiramisu (it was on sale, wife bought it). Did I notice that? Oh hell, yes. Would you serve a child tiramisu? No, we should not.
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I have a feeling this is supposed to be mocking and showing that the liability might extend too far.
Either way, I agree with the literal interpretation. They should vet the ads they serve and are complicit in this mess if they serve ads through Google et al.
The water-injection system for your carburetor that the oil companies don't want you to know about! -- paraphrase of an actual Popular Mechanics ad circa 1978
I later in life learned that the “test cards - all channels” ads I saw in the back of the library’s Popular Science in the 90s probably weren’t scams.
Joke's (partly) on you: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_injection_(engine)
Oh, it's been proven to work, even in a limited number of production vehicles. Just not with what you buy out of the back of a magazine. :-)
We are in a golden age of scams and fraud. I don't like the chances of Google seeing any liability for this stuff any time soon.