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At first I expected this to be about JS-mining ads. How the hell can these companies turn blind eyes to bogus advertising like [1] to the point that the FTC st

At first I expected this to be about JS-mining ads. How the hell can these companies turn blind eyes to bogus advertising like [1] to the point that the FTC steps in - but suddenly have a conscience about cryptocurrency. It would please me to no end for advertising to magically become 100% truthful and fact-based. But this is selective censorship for reasons I don't care to understand, the ads these companies serve will continue to be rife with lies and propaganda with or without cryptocurrency. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_weird_trick_advertisements https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_weird_trick_advertisements

Buge 9y ago
Is/was Google serving "one weird trick" advertisements? Or is that other ad networks?
- newnewpdro 9y ago
  "In all of the cases, news sites such as MSNBC and washingtonpost.com appear to be passive hosts of the “flat belly” ads. The ads are “served” to the news sites and thousands of others by ad networks, including those operated by Google and Pulse360, based in New York." taken from [1]. There's probably a comprehensive list in the FTC documents, but the other articles cited by the wikipdia article make it sound like the ads were ubiquitous at the time, run on every major ad network. [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/ubiquitous-tiny-belly-online-ad-part-of-scheme-government-says/2011/06/27/gIQAbI6Q1H_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/ubiquitous-ti...
afarrell 9y ago
Individuals learn and organisations learn. Perhaps the intervention of the FTC lead to a change in organisational incentives that made the organisation more wary of allowing possibly-fraudulent ads.
- newnewpdro 9y ago
  It's worth noting that the FTC seems to have only stepped in here because of the "negative-option" recurring payment model these sales channels were employing. They made it very difficult to successfully stop purchasing the advertised products.

Buge 9y ago

Is/was Google serving "one weird trick" advertisements? Or is that other ad networks?

newnewpdro 9y ago
"In all of the cases, news sites such as MSNBC and washingtonpost.com appear to be passive hosts of the “flat belly” ads. The ads are “served” to the news sites and thousands of others by ad networks, including those operated by Google and Pulse360, based in New York." taken from [1]. There's probably a comprehensive list in the FTC documents, but the other articles cited by the wikipdia article make it sound like the ads were ubiquitous at the time, run on every major ad network. [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/ubiquitous-tiny-belly-online-ad-part-of-scheme-government-says/2011/06/27/gIQAbI6Q1H_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/ubiquitous-ti...

afarrell 9y ago

Individuals learn and organisations learn. Perhaps the intervention of the FTC lead to a change in organisational incentives that made the organisation more wary of allowing possibly-fraudulent ads.

newnewpdro 9y ago
It's worth noting that the FTC seems to have only stepped in here because of the "negative-option" recurring payment model these sales channels were employing. They made it very difficult to successfully stop purchasing the advertised products.