Comment by tgsovlerkhgsel

> It completely upsets the economics of content management

Exactly. It moves the economic incentives from "serve the ads from the highest bidder and turn a blind eye to the fact that that's a scammer/malware" to "drop an ad platform that can't or won't keep the scammers/malware out".

Or even better, refusing to use ad platforms that let the ads serve arbitrary code. There is no strict reason why an ad can't be an image (re-rendered by the platform) and a link. Slapping scripts all over the place just makes it easier to collect data (among other things to verify that all the companies involved in serving your ad aren't cheating you, because the ecosystem is full of scammers in all directions).

The deterrent here would be prosecuting the accomplices involved in, and directly getting paid for, the crime.