Comment by collabs
5 hours ago
My opinion is that someone somewhere is paying for those ads and Google needs to get positive identification of a human being for any ad. Google has a near monopoly so there is no reason Google can't force this requirement arbitrarily. Once you have positive identification, suspend them pending further investigation if they serve any dodgy ad. I will be genuinely surprised if Google makes any money off of these dodgy ads. How? Like how does this money flow? Where does it come from?
There has to be a way to enforce positive identification, right?
Google already does this for Google play developers. I can't use a US credit card to pay for the USD 25 fee for a student on Bangladesh for example because I understand the payment method is one of the signals they use to make sure the student developer is a real person.
Is this something Google won't do on its own without being forced to act?
Potential issues: - There are some well-known ways around developer verification (peopl in some countries _need_ them for one reason or another so - they use non-local cards,etc) - it's very basic verification and people who pay for ads likely arleady do it (payment have to come from somewhere). - Proof of address is also spoofable and there are some situations were people making/providing fakes when they don't mean ill intent towards anybody else (example: Russia, some of ways to make non-Russian-only Visa/MC require making fake proof) but such methods could also be abused for doing actual harm. - ID verification sometimes complicated if a lot of countries are involved. Example: I'm not at all sure at least one person in Google actually knew what Abhazian passport is and how to verify it ?