10 ms·

Why It Took Google So Long to End Shady Rehab Center Ads

77 points by champagnepapi 9y ago

Cenk 9y ago
This is a good article on the problem: https://www.theverge.com/2017/9/7/16257412/rehabs-near-me-google-search-scam-florida-treatment-centers https://www.theverge.com/2017/9/7/16257412/rehabs-near-me-go...
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- default-kramer 9y ago
  I love this part: > Business name paperwork took a pretty surreal turn during this analogue SEO war. In 2004, a former Sea Winds exec named his new company A ALCOHAAAAAL A + A ABUSE 24 HOUR AAAA ABLE HEPLINE AND COUNSELING CENTER, INC
mrtron 9y ago
The CPA is so high for rehab that there are many highly motivated people doing highly elaborate schemes for client acquisition. They were among the early adopters for tv ads on adwords a decade ago.
ballenf 9y ago
I would suggest Bloomberg and other media research what can be done to educate people that advertisers sometimes, once in a while, aren't spending money in order to make people's lives better. To be clear, the parties behind these sham recovery centers are scum that deserve any and every legal repercussion available. And, if illegal, no Google shouldn't do business with them. But the bottom line reason why Google didn't act faster was because they weren't per se illegal, but more so loophole exploiters. Policy makers subsidized an industry and, learning nothing from every other subsidy in the history of the world, forgot that subsidies invite bad actors. (Calling coverage of medical treatment a 'subsidy' is admittedly somewhat of a stretch, but in the context of all the medical issues that health insurance does not cover I stand by the label. E.g., German public health insurance used to cover 'prescriptions' for sun and relaxation, until it became abused by people taking taxpayer subsidized vacations. Designations of coverage have a similar effect as a subsidy, at the very least.) This path we're heading down of expecting "the internet" to protect us from the latest baddies out there worries me on a much deeper level. And I don't see this as a 'slippery slope' argument: this is just looking at existing data points and following the trajectory. The current direction is worrying, without regard for the potential of acceleration. Exploitive ads have been around forever -- from the literal snake oil salesmen to the ads in every newspaper, magazine and yellow pages to the present. Hard cases make bad law. That's a maxim that is depressingly unpopular today.
- 659087 9y ago
  > This path we're heading down of expecting "the internet" to protect us from the latest baddies out there worries me This isn't expecting "the internet" to do anything, though. It's expecting Google, a corporation, to stop helping bad actors promote their "services". While Google would love to be "the internet", they aren't quite there yet.
  - Eridrus 9y ago
    I'm sympathetic towards the argument that Google should do more, but besides banning these advertisements overall, how should Google verify a legitimate clinic vs an illegitimate clinic? Would these proposed solutions actually get in the way of scammers, or would they just add to the cost of doing business with no real gain for consumers?
    - apendleton 9y ago
      The states (most, at least, and I think all) already take care of the verifying: you need a license to operate a treatment center. Google should require that they submit information about their state licensure to run a treatment facility. Patient brokers and sham operators presumably aren't licensed treatment providers and wouldn't be able to meet that standard, and if they're found to be falsifying their documentation, rather than just being booted from adwords they should be turned over to their respective states for criminal prosecution.
      - othersideofcoin 9y ago
        I work in the addiction industry, on the marketing side. I can tell you that the licensure requirements are generally a joke. Only Florida, California, and maybe a couple other states are tougher to open a treatment center instead of, say, getting licensed as a hair stylist. Until the past year or so, all levels of government were unable to track down the shady operators. IMO, it's not Google's job to do what law enforcement was unwilling to do. (Now, Google could be extra ethical on this, but why would they be? Generally, we expect corporations to follow law enforcements lead, rather than hold them to a higher standard.)
SCAQTony 9y ago
Unfortunately there is no procedure, process or prescription that can terminate drug dependency for all. Psychology is still somewhat in the middle ages when compared to mechanical or digital sciences. Could one make an argument that all rehab centers are "shady" if they can't deliver a final product for all? With that in mind, rehab centers are VERY important till we figure out the human mind and addiction.
- tyingq 9y ago
  At least in the US, I view any addiction treatment center that would pay for leads as useless. Barring the few clinics that are run by charitible organizations, they all follow the same pattern. Your treatment plan always happens to be equal to the amount that your insurance will pay for, or that you can pay out of pocket. Several hundred dollars per day, at a minimum. That means that for all but the rich, it's a 2 week stay, which isn't going to do anything useful. Tldr: If the clinic can afford to pay ppc advertising to get patients, they aren't really helping anyone.
ocdtrekkie 9y ago
At $230 a click, Google has no incentive to stop selling scams, particularly with internet regulation being so weak. Safe harbor effectively gives them immunity to prosecution for profiting on the malicious content they host. All they have to say is "we're not responsible for content others post on our platforms". Currently, The Verge has more power to regulate Google's behavior does than the US government, by bringing them to the court of public opinion. Which is why I have actually started to lean in favor of laws that strip away safe harbor protections like SESTA. Internet companies don't need or deserve blanket immunity: They should be able to be taken to court when they misbehave.
- izacus 9y ago
  Here's an idea - let's punish the scum that creates those ads instead of demanding that Google plays the moral police for the whole world. You're literaly demading that Google (a private for-profit corporation) becomes a private censorship force instead of going after scum that creates those ads.
  - ocdtrekkie 9y ago
    I'm not suggesting Google be the moral police: I'm suggesting Google take the necessary measures to ensure they are not operating a criminal enterprise. Generally, doing business in illegal goods is considered a crime, and Google was well aware that they will profiting on illegal rehab ads. But right now, they're not legally responsible for that, so they had no reason to do what they should've done: Individually have humans vet the ads. Most businesses have to take reasonable steps to ensure they're not aiding and abetting criminal activity. Pawn shops register stuff sold to them and who sells it, and they lose out if something they bought turns out to be stolen. Gun stores run background checks. Banks end up on the hook for fraudulent charges. Google just profits and has blanket immunity from prosecution. Google made millions of dollars (at least) off sending people suffering from drug addictions to scammers, and got to walk away with all the profit scot-free.
    - moftz 9y ago
      In this case what should ad networks like Google do to make sure they are running ads for legit businesses? In your gun store example, the seller is relying on the government to provide any information that would disqualify a sale. Rarely is a gun shop going to deny a sale despite government approval unless there is suspicion of a crime happening. If these scam rehab clinics can show Google they are properly licensed by the state they reside in, then what else should Google be doing? Google is not a medical license board. The states need to make sure that any sort of rehab or medical facility is legit and using best practices. These clinics rely on insurance money coming in so insurance companies would definitely be interested in making sure that the clinics they are paying out to are using effective treatments. I could see Google having a clause stating that if any business advertises themselves as any sort of medical or rehab facility, that they provide documentation from the state that proves such. This should be the same with doctors, lawyers, notaries, professional engineers, or anyone that advertises themselves as something that requires an approval from the government. Despite Google making a lot of money off of dubious advertisements, if Google can verify that a business is properly licensed to do what they advertise, then Google shouldn't be at fault for any fraud that is being committed. If someone shoots someone unlawfully and the gun was purchased legally, the gun shop doesn't get in trouble.
sireat 9y ago
Holy cow, $187 per click, that seems ridiculously high and no wonder has attracted attention of all kind of bad faith actors. Granted, I have not checked AdWords in 10 years back when most things cost less than $1 per click, save for some mesothelioma searches which used to go for $10-15 per click.
- CobrastanJorji 9y ago
  Most things still do, but there are a handful of CRAZY expensive searches. Stuff like "home insurance price quote" or "dui lawyer LA" or "good mortgage" cost an arm and a leg.
  - Karunamon 9y ago
    That reminds me, on a slightly related tangent: AdNauseam now works with the latest Firefox nightly. It's a uBlock Origin fork that stashes the ads in the background and clicks on them (but as a simple request, so the other side never gets loaded). Great for ruining your tracking profile and contributing ever so slightly to the downfall of attention abuse as a business model.
ykler 9y ago
Speaking as someone perpetually puzzled by the American healthcare system, from an economic standpoint, it seems like it is primarily the responsibility of government or perhaps the insurance industry to fix this. (Government, of course, is paralyzed. As for insurance companies, I don't understand that well their incentives and the impact of regulation on them. For instance, could they refuse to pay for expensive treatments or for relatively ineffective treatments, and would it be worth it for them?) It is good that Google is finally cracking down and bad that they didn't earlier, but it is a bad idea to present corporations (or people) with opportunities to legally make huge profits by doing harmful things (or allowing harm to harmful things to happen).
- sjg007 9y ago
  They do refuse to pay for experimental treatments or ineffective treatments. The question is why not in the case of shady addiction centers.. my guess is that Florida has/had some language regulating the payers effectively tying their hands. Mental health / substance abuse got a big push from the ACA as well which likely enabled things as well. <conjecture> Also a lot of these early adopters may have likely first started out as court ordered so they were already established for this type of "acute" care and just scaled up when the demand developed. </conjecture>
coldcode 9y ago
As long as there is enormous revenue from selling ads, Google and Facebook and others have to do stuff like this, or their sky-high valuations might come down. So wether you take money from scummy fake rehab centers (and real ones who now have to play the game) or Russian election manipulators, its not likely to stop without costing a lot revenue. Looking the other way until you get called out is probably good business from their point of view.
JacobJans 9y ago
Here's the core of the issue. Google may be making over one billion dollars from ads in this space. However, they say it is "hard for Google to cut off shady treatment providers unless someone tipped off the company." Surely, with a small portion of that one billion dollars, they could figure out a solution. Of course, they have no interest in actually solving this type of situation, which is widespread across many verticals. In one of my markets, I have repeatedly complained about deceptive advertisers. They've done next-to-nothing to stop them. I used to be against ad blocking software.
- 086421357909764 9y ago
  It's the same argument for Facebook and questionable ads (IE current news). If you are a company making money in the ad space, you'll err on the side of money 9 times out of 10.
  - Zigurd 9y ago
    Khrushchev was prescient. We sold them the rope. Through an online self serve portal with keyword targeting.
  - ghostbrainalpha 9y ago
    We are really just asking for that 1 of 10 here. It's amazing what you can advertise on Google without penalty.
- zeep 9y ago
  Maybe the issue is that there is no consequences for promoting known crooks...
- leggomylibro 9y ago
  What, do you want companies to be responsible for the negative externalities of their products? Next you'll want oil companies to pay for cleaning up their messes, and banks to pay for financial crises, and data processors to take responsibility for their huge data breaches. That's crazy talk - where are we, the people's republic of canada?
tcj_phx 9y ago
My friend is currently at her second 'rehab' center... The first one was a disaster for her because all they did was go to 12-step meetings, and charged her $25,000 or $30,000 for the month. Talking about drugs all the time is a good strategy to get an addict to want to use drugs. She didn't last very long at that place before she relapsed and they sent her back to the psychiatric hospital, who decided that they'd clearly made an error in allowing the tranquilizers to lapse. Tranquilizers do not treat poor diets. Her current center specializes in "dual diagnosis". This is the fraudulent diagnosis that pretends that patients' psychiatric diagnoses are of no relation to their tendency to self-medicate with the street pharmacy. Really this second place just gets their clients "stabilized" on their psychiatric medications and hauls them around to daily 12-step meetings. My friend is doing better now because I went to the courts to try to get the treatment provider to explain why they had her on double-doses of tranquilizers, when my phone videos clearly prove that she was fine before she got assaulted with Haldol ("anti-psychotic") when she ran out of alcohol [1]. Sometime doctors do good work, sometimes they make work for themselves. [1] http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/289848-overview http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/289848-overview : Alcohol-related psychosis spontaneously clears with discontinuation of alcohol use and may resume during repeated alcohol exposure. Distinguishing alcohol-related psychosis from schizophrenia or other primary psychotic disorders through clinical presentation often is difficult. It is generally accepted that alcohol-related psychosis remits with abstinence, unlike schizophrenia. If persistent psychosis develops, diagnostic confusion can result. Comorbid psychotic disorders (eg, schizophrenia spectrum and other psychotic disorders) and severe mood disorder with psychosis may exist, resulting in the psychosis being attributed to the wrong etiology. The only thing the current treatment center gives my friend is "structure" and an expectation that she needs to be sober. She's doing well now, in spite of the anti-treatments, because my court cases motivated the treatment provider to take her off the worst of the psychiatric drugs. Maybe Abilify is the least-bad of the anti-psychotics, but it is known to cause new problems for many patients [2]. [2] Abilify drug blamed for compulsive gambling, eating, shopping, sex - http://kdvr.com/2017/02/15/abilify-drug-blamed-for-compulsive-gambling-eating-shopping-and-sex/ http://kdvr.com/2017/02/15/abilify-drug-blamed-for-compulsiv... edit: All drug treatment businesses are "shady", to some degree. What the industry needs is to move beyond the 12-step program, which is rooted in the 1930's approach to alcoholism. There are aspects of the 12 steps that are helpful, but it's very important to address the biological problems that now are known to be associated with people's tendency to self-medicate. Just yesterday I read of a study that used some chemical to 'extinguish' cocaine cravings... Naltrexone is FDA-approved for alcohol abuse, and prevents people from getting high on opiates. Effective approaches to addiction need to be investigated. A good first step would be to stop treating these people like criminals.
ballade 9y ago
I can answer this. Money.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
thrownaway954 9y ago
Something has to be done with the treatment industry as a whole. It's sad when a group of them come into an AA and/or NA meeting and the meeting is used as their "therapy" session. I see this way too often in the rooms. The center should be treating the mental aspects of addiction as well as the physical at the center. Most of these fly by night treatment centers have no interest in addressing the mental aspect of addiction, and as a result, the center becomes a revolving door for some. Maybe by removing these shady centers from advertising on Google it will help put them out of business and the centers that are trying to help will thrive. Time will tell.
- goialoq 9y ago
  These shady centers have been testing the boundaries of the law for _decades_. Google is the modern version of the Yellow Pages.
- mapster 9y ago
  its the same approach the free market has to elder care. they are for profit cash machines with a thin veneer of care. they are run on a shoe string, hiring barely qualified technicians working 12 hr shifts. what could go wrong?
bogomipz 9y ago
Google, one of the world's largest analytics companies didn't think there was anything suspicious about an uptick in revenue from "treatment center" AdWords? This is the same willful ignorance that Facebook employed when it failed to notice an uptick in political ad buys by "The Internet Research Agency" during the US election season. It seems clear that both Google and Facebook can be counted on to do the right thing but only after someone else blows the whistle.
solomatov 9y ago
The price for clicks is exorbitant. No wonder, that everybody wants to sell ads instead of selling products.
bob_theslob646 9y ago
If this is the case that scam companies are getting to the top, why not try and bankrupt the scam companies, by clicking the ads of the known bad companies on purpose with no intention of going to rehab ? Oh wait,that would be considered click fraud or is it, if it brings up a conversation between owners and google. Oh wait, does google want to have that conversation?
- BearGoesChirp 9y ago
  Is there actually a law preventing me from doing a search and clicking on ads that have a high cost per click just because? Assuming I'm not related to any party involved?
Animats 9y ago
Google has done outreach to some very shady industries. They were at IFX Expo in Cyprus in 2016, pitching Google ads to binary options "brokers".[1] (Binary options are a total scam; start at the link and read the multi-part Times of Israel expose.) [1] https://www.timesofisrael.com/as-victims-pile-up-the-binary-options-industry-parties-in-cyprus/ https://www.timesofisrael.com/as-victims-pile-up-the-binary-...
gregshap 9y ago
"America’s $35 billion addiction treatment market" $35 Billion. That's at least 10x-50x what I would have guessed. Google isn't creating this market, but yes they should try to help. This is a fundamental and enormous societal problem.
lifeisstillgood 9y ago
In the U.K. We have the ASA - advertising standards authority, which while often derided has actual teeth when forcing a "bad" ad to be removed. I am unclear if these ads would get removed (the ad is not untruthful, just the service advertised is scam) but the point I am making is that we need to move beyond Google removing the ads and "us" removing them. This is a society sized problem - and like all society problems it needs society level action - that's either market based where externalities and other effects are in the right direction or plain and simple regulation. The opiods crisis that middle America seem enmeshed in now has to be dealt with at massive governmental action level. Googles ads are a tiny sideshow. And if you do fix it we can use the same model for alcohol, elderly care, sexual abuse. We got lots to fix.

77 points by champagnepapi 9y ago

Cenk 9y ago

This is a good article on the problem: https://www.theverge.com/2017/9/7/16257412/rehabs-near-me-google-search-scam-florida-treatment-centers https://www.theverge.com/2017/9/7/16257412/rehabs-near-me-go...

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
default-kramer 9y ago
I love this part: > Business name paperwork took a pretty surreal turn during this analogue SEO war. In 2004, a former Sea Winds exec named his new company A ALCOHAAAAAL A + A ABUSE 24 HOUR AAAA ABLE HEPLINE AND COUNSELING CENTER, INC

mrtron 9y ago

The CPA is so high for rehab that there are many highly motivated people doing highly elaborate schemes for client acquisition. They were among the early adopters for tv ads on adwords a decade ago.

ballenf 9y ago

I would suggest Bloomberg and other media research what can be done to educate people that advertisers sometimes, once in a while, aren't spending money in order to make people's lives better. To be clear, the parties behind these sham recovery centers are scum that deserve any and every legal repercussion available. And, if illegal, no Google shouldn't do business with them. But the bottom line reason why Google didn't act faster was because they weren't per se illegal, but more so loophole exploiters. Policy makers subsidized an industry and, learning nothing from every other subsidy in the history of the world, forgot that subsidies invite bad actors. (Calling coverage of medical treatment a 'subsidy' is admittedly somewhat of a stretch, but in the context of all the medical issues that health insurance does not cover I stand by the label. E.g., German public health insurance used to cover 'prescriptions' for sun and relaxation, until it became abused by people taking taxpayer subsidized vacations. Designations of coverage have a similar effect as a subsidy, at the very least.) This path we're heading down of expecting "the internet" to protect us from the latest baddies out there worries me on a much deeper level. And I don't see this as a 'slippery slope' argument: this is just looking at existing data points and following the trajectory. The current direction is worrying, without regard for the potential of acceleration. Exploitive ads have been around forever -- from the literal snake oil salesmen to the ads in every newspaper, magazine and yellow pages to the present. Hard cases make bad law. That's a maxim that is depressingly unpopular today.

659087 9y ago
> This path we're heading down of expecting "the internet" to protect us from the latest baddies out there worries me This isn't expecting "the internet" to do anything, though. It's expecting Google, a corporation, to stop helping bad actors promote their "services". While Google would love to be "the internet", they aren't quite there yet.
- Eridrus 9y ago
  I'm sympathetic towards the argument that Google should do more, but besides banning these advertisements overall, how should Google verify a legitimate clinic vs an illegitimate clinic? Would these proposed solutions actually get in the way of scammers, or would they just add to the cost of doing business with no real gain for consumers?
  - apendleton 9y ago
    The states (most, at least, and I think all) already take care of the verifying: you need a license to operate a treatment center. Google should require that they submit information about their state licensure to run a treatment facility. Patient brokers and sham operators presumably aren't licensed treatment providers and wouldn't be able to meet that standard, and if they're found to be falsifying their documentation, rather than just being booted from adwords they should be turned over to their respective states for criminal prosecution.
    - othersideofcoin 9y ago
      I work in the addiction industry, on the marketing side. I can tell you that the licensure requirements are generally a joke. Only Florida, California, and maybe a couple other states are tougher to open a treatment center instead of, say, getting licensed as a hair stylist. Until the past year or so, all levels of government were unable to track down the shady operators. IMO, it's not Google's job to do what law enforcement was unwilling to do. (Now, Google could be extra ethical on this, but why would they be? Generally, we expect corporations to follow law enforcements lead, rather than hold them to a higher standard.)

SCAQTony 9y ago

Unfortunately there is no procedure, process or prescription that can terminate drug dependency for all. Psychology is still somewhat in the middle ages when compared to mechanical or digital sciences. Could one make an argument that all rehab centers are "shady" if they can't deliver a final product for all? With that in mind, rehab centers are VERY important till we figure out the human mind and addiction.

tyingq 9y ago
At least in the US, I view any addiction treatment center that would pay for leads as useless. Barring the few clinics that are run by charitible organizations, they all follow the same pattern. Your treatment plan always happens to be equal to the amount that your insurance will pay for, or that you can pay out of pocket. Several hundred dollars per day, at a minimum. That means that for all but the rich, it's a 2 week stay, which isn't going to do anything useful. Tldr: If the clinic can afford to pay ppc advertising to get patients, they aren't really helping anyone.

ocdtrekkie 9y ago

At $230 a click, Google has no incentive to stop selling scams, particularly with internet regulation being so weak. Safe harbor effectively gives them immunity to prosecution for profiting on the malicious content they host. All they have to say is "we're not responsible for content others post on our platforms". Currently, The Verge has more power to regulate Google's behavior does than the US government, by bringing them to the court of public opinion. Which is why I have actually started to lean in favor of laws that strip away safe harbor protections like SESTA. Internet companies don't need or deserve blanket immunity: They should be able to be taken to court when they misbehave.

izacus 9y ago
Here's an idea - let's punish the scum that creates those ads instead of demanding that Google plays the moral police for the whole world. You're literaly demading that Google (a private for-profit corporation) becomes a private censorship force instead of going after scum that creates those ads.
- ocdtrekkie 9y ago
  I'm not suggesting Google be the moral police: I'm suggesting Google take the necessary measures to ensure they are not operating a criminal enterprise. Generally, doing business in illegal goods is considered a crime, and Google was well aware that they will profiting on illegal rehab ads. But right now, they're not legally responsible for that, so they had no reason to do what they should've done: Individually have humans vet the ads. Most businesses have to take reasonable steps to ensure they're not aiding and abetting criminal activity. Pawn shops register stuff sold to them and who sells it, and they lose out if something they bought turns out to be stolen. Gun stores run background checks. Banks end up on the hook for fraudulent charges. Google just profits and has blanket immunity from prosecution. Google made millions of dollars (at least) off sending people suffering from drug addictions to scammers, and got to walk away with all the profit scot-free.
  - moftz 9y ago
    In this case what should ad networks like Google do to make sure they are running ads for legit businesses? In your gun store example, the seller is relying on the government to provide any information that would disqualify a sale. Rarely is a gun shop going to deny a sale despite government approval unless there is suspicion of a crime happening. If these scam rehab clinics can show Google they are properly licensed by the state they reside in, then what else should Google be doing? Google is not a medical license board. The states need to make sure that any sort of rehab or medical facility is legit and using best practices. These clinics rely on insurance money coming in so insurance companies would definitely be interested in making sure that the clinics they are paying out to are using effective treatments. I could see Google having a clause stating that if any business advertises themselves as any sort of medical or rehab facility, that they provide documentation from the state that proves such. This should be the same with doctors, lawyers, notaries, professional engineers, or anyone that advertises themselves as something that requires an approval from the government. Despite Google making a lot of money off of dubious advertisements, if Google can verify that a business is properly licensed to do what they advertise, then Google shouldn't be at fault for any fraud that is being committed. If someone shoots someone unlawfully and the gun was purchased legally, the gun shop doesn't get in trouble.

sireat 9y ago

Holy cow, $187 per click, that seems ridiculously high and no wonder has attracted attention of all kind of bad faith actors. Granted, I have not checked AdWords in 10 years back when most things cost less than $1 per click, save for some mesothelioma searches which used to go for $10-15 per click.

CobrastanJorji 9y ago
Most things still do, but there are a handful of CRAZY expensive searches. Stuff like "home insurance price quote" or "dui lawyer LA" or "good mortgage" cost an arm and a leg.
- Karunamon 9y ago
  That reminds me, on a slightly related tangent: AdNauseam now works with the latest Firefox nightly. It's a uBlock Origin fork that stashes the ads in the background and clicks on them (but as a simple request, so the other side never gets loaded). Great for ruining your tracking profile and contributing ever so slightly to the downfall of attention abuse as a business model.

ykler 9y ago

Speaking as someone perpetually puzzled by the American healthcare system, from an economic standpoint, it seems like it is primarily the responsibility of government or perhaps the insurance industry to fix this. (Government, of course, is paralyzed. As for insurance companies, I don't understand that well their incentives and the impact of regulation on them. For instance, could they refuse to pay for expensive treatments or for relatively ineffective treatments, and would it be worth it for them?) It is good that Google is finally cracking down and bad that they didn't earlier, but it is a bad idea to present corporations (or people) with opportunities to legally make huge profits by doing harmful things (or allowing harm to harmful things to happen).

sjg007 9y ago
They do refuse to pay for experimental treatments or ineffective treatments. The question is why not in the case of shady addiction centers.. my guess is that Florida has/had some language regulating the payers effectively tying their hands. Mental health / substance abuse got a big push from the ACA as well which likely enabled things as well. <conjecture> Also a lot of these early adopters may have likely first started out as court ordered so they were already established for this type of "acute" care and just scaled up when the demand developed. </conjecture>

coldcode 9y ago

As long as there is enormous revenue from selling ads, Google and Facebook and others have to do stuff like this, or their sky-high valuations might come down. So wether you take money from scummy fake rehab centers (and real ones who now have to play the game) or Russian election manipulators, its not likely to stop without costing a lot revenue. Looking the other way until you get called out is probably good business from their point of view.

JacobJans 9y ago

Here's the core of the issue. Google may be making over one billion dollars from ads in this space. However, they say it is "hard for Google to cut off shady treatment providers unless someone tipped off the company." Surely, with a small portion of that one billion dollars, they could figure out a solution. Of course, they have no interest in actually solving this type of situation, which is widespread across many verticals. In one of my markets, I have repeatedly complained about deceptive advertisers. They've done next-to-nothing to stop them. I used to be against ad blocking software.

086421357909764 9y ago
It's the same argument for Facebook and questionable ads (IE current news). If you are a company making money in the ad space, you'll err on the side of money 9 times out of 10.
- Zigurd 9y ago
  Khrushchev was prescient. We sold them the rope. Through an online self serve portal with keyword targeting.
- ghostbrainalpha 9y ago
  We are really just asking for that 1 of 10 here. It's amazing what you can advertise on Google without penalty.
zeep 9y ago
Maybe the issue is that there is no consequences for promoting known crooks...
leggomylibro 9y ago
What, do you want companies to be responsible for the negative externalities of their products? Next you'll want oil companies to pay for cleaning up their messes, and banks to pay for financial crises, and data processors to take responsibility for their huge data breaches. That's crazy talk - where are we, the people's republic of canada?

tcj_phx 9y ago

My friend is currently at her second 'rehab' center... The first one was a disaster for her because all they did was go to 12-step meetings, and charged her $25,000 or $30,000 for the month. Talking about drugs all the time is a good strategy to get an addict to want to use drugs. She didn't last very long at that place before she relapsed and they sent her back to the psychiatric hospital, who decided that they'd clearly made an error in allowing the tranquilizers to lapse. Tranquilizers do not treat poor diets. Her current center specializes in "dual diagnosis". This is the fraudulent diagnosis that pretends that patients' psychiatric diagnoses are of no relation to their tendency to self-medicate with the street pharmacy. Really this second place just gets their clients "stabilized" on their psychiatric medications and hauls them around to daily 12-step meetings. My friend is doing better now because I went to the courts to try to get the treatment provider to explain why they had her on double-doses of tranquilizers, when my phone videos clearly prove that she was fine before she got assaulted with Haldol ("anti-psychotic") when she ran out of alcohol [1]. Sometime doctors do good work, sometimes they make work for themselves. [1] http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/289848-overview http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/289848-overview : Alcohol-related psychosis spontaneously clears with discontinuation of alcohol use and may resume during repeated alcohol exposure. Distinguishing alcohol-related psychosis from schizophrenia or other primary psychotic disorders through clinical presentation often is difficult. It is generally accepted that alcohol-related psychosis remits with abstinence, unlike schizophrenia. If persistent psychosis develops, diagnostic confusion can result. Comorbid psychotic disorders (eg, schizophrenia spectrum and other psychotic disorders) and severe mood disorder with psychosis may exist, resulting in the psychosis being attributed to the wrong etiology. The only thing the current treatment center gives my friend is "structure" and an expectation that she needs to be sober. She's doing well now, in spite of the anti-treatments, because my court cases motivated the treatment provider to take her off the worst of the psychiatric drugs. Maybe Abilify is the least-bad of the anti-psychotics, but it is known to cause new problems for many patients [2]. [2] Abilify drug blamed for compulsive gambling, eating, shopping, sex - http://kdvr.com/2017/02/15/abilify-drug-blamed-for-compulsive-gambling-eating-shopping-and-sex/ http://kdvr.com/2017/02/15/abilify-drug-blamed-for-compulsiv... edit: All drug treatment businesses are "shady", to some degree. What the industry needs is to move beyond the 12-step program, which is rooted in the 1930's approach to alcoholism. There are aspects of the 12 steps that are helpful, but it's very important to address the biological problems that now are known to be associated with people's tendency to self-medicate. Just yesterday I read of a study that used some chemical to 'extinguish' cocaine cravings... Naltrexone is FDA-approved for alcohol abuse, and prevents people from getting high on opiates. Effective approaches to addiction need to be investigated. A good first step would be to stop treating these people like criminals.

ballade 9y ago

I can answer this. Money.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

thrownaway954 9y ago

Something has to be done with the treatment industry as a whole. It's sad when a group of them come into an AA and/or NA meeting and the meeting is used as their "therapy" session. I see this way too often in the rooms. The center should be treating the mental aspects of addiction as well as the physical at the center. Most of these fly by night treatment centers have no interest in addressing the mental aspect of addiction, and as a result, the center becomes a revolving door for some. Maybe by removing these shady centers from advertising on Google it will help put them out of business and the centers that are trying to help will thrive. Time will tell.

goialoq 9y ago
These shady centers have been testing the boundaries of the law for _decades_. Google is the modern version of the Yellow Pages.
mapster 9y ago
its the same approach the free market has to elder care. they are for profit cash machines with a thin veneer of care. they are run on a shoe string, hiring barely qualified technicians working 12 hr shifts. what could go wrong?

bogomipz 9y ago

Google, one of the world's largest analytics companies didn't think there was anything suspicious about an uptick in revenue from "treatment center" AdWords? This is the same willful ignorance that Facebook employed when it failed to notice an uptick in political ad buys by "The Internet Research Agency" during the US election season. It seems clear that both Google and Facebook can be counted on to do the right thing but only after someone else blows the whistle.

solomatov 9y ago

The price for clicks is exorbitant. No wonder, that everybody wants to sell ads instead of selling products.

bob_theslob646 9y ago

If this is the case that scam companies are getting to the top, why not try and bankrupt the scam companies, by clicking the ads of the known bad companies on purpose with no intention of going to rehab ? Oh wait,that would be considered click fraud or is it, if it brings up a conversation between owners and google. Oh wait, does google want to have that conversation?

BearGoesChirp 9y ago
Is there actually a law preventing me from doing a search and clicking on ads that have a high cost per click just because? Assuming I'm not related to any party involved?

Animats 9y ago

Google has done outreach to some very shady industries. They were at IFX Expo in Cyprus in 2016, pitching Google ads to binary options "brokers".[1] (Binary options are a total scam; start at the link and read the multi-part Times of Israel expose.) [1] https://www.timesofisrael.com/as-victims-pile-up-the-binary-options-industry-parties-in-cyprus/ https://www.timesofisrael.com/as-victims-pile-up-the-binary-...

gregshap 9y ago

"America’s $35 billion addiction treatment market" $35 Billion. That's at least 10x-50x what I would have guessed. Google isn't creating this market, but yes they should try to help. This is a fundamental and enormous societal problem.

lifeisstillgood 9y ago

In the U.K. We have the ASA - advertising standards authority, which while often derided has actual teeth when forcing a "bad" ad to be removed. I am unclear if these ads would get removed (the ad is not untruthful, just the service advertised is scam) but the point I am making is that we need to move beyond Google removing the ads and "us" removing them. This is a society sized problem - and like all society problems it needs society level action - that's either market based where externalities and other effects are in the right direction or plain and simple regulation. The opiods crisis that middle America seem enmeshed in now has to be dealt with at massive governmental action level. Googles ads are a tiny sideshow. And if you do fix it we can use the same model for alcohol, elderly care, sexual abuse. We got lots to fix.