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Section 230 didn't prevent Google from being fined $500M for publishing ads for Canadian pharmacies selling drugs to US citizens. What kind of illegal activitie

Section 230 didn't prevent Google from being fined $500M for publishing ads for Canadian pharmacies selling drugs to US citizens. What kind of illegal activities are you talking about, exactly?

ocdtrekkie 7y ago
Google regularly distributes malicious websites and malware through ads, and refuses to delist reported malicious websites. (Google Ads is the primary distributor of Windows PC malware today, if my customer support experience is any indication.) And the problem is that Google has a perverse incentive: More bidders for ads means higher bids. Since malicious actors raise the prices, they benefit from bad actors selling ads. And the problem is that even if someone finally comes in and shuts those actors down, Google kept all the profit from the malicious activity. In order to incentivize Google to police it's ad platform, we need to implement a requirement which seizes all revenue from malicious advertising, retroactively when a malicious account is flagged/reported. If Google is losing revenue on allowing bad actors on their ad platform, they'll be incentivized to quickly respond to reports and remove them so that legitimate ads, which they make money on, can have those ad slots.
- icebraining 7y ago
  More clicks on ads that lead to malware also leads to fewer clicks in the future, though. Have you published data about this anywhere, like a list of reported links that were ignored?
  - 4ntonius8lock 7y ago
    > More clicks on ads that lead to malware also leads to fewer clicks in the future, though. I really doubt this works this way. There's 3 assumptions here, for your scenario to play out, people must pass the following funnels: 1- The person notices the malware 2- The person associates the connection between the ad and the malware. 3- After making the connection they install a non-dummy adblocker. Dummy adblockers like the one by Eyeo whitelist google's ads while actually harming the competition. It benefits them! Note: if I look up adblock on google, uBlock is only mentioned on page 2 of google and only because it's mentioned as a competitor to adblock on a zdnet article. The first whole page is dedicated to the Eyeo plug in. I'd say very few people will get through that funnel. My experience is that when my family and friends actually seek out help with their computers, they have let it go for years until the computer is a slow mess of malware, self installed spyware in the form of browser add ons and other crazy stuff. I've actually known a person who buys a computer every couple of years when it 'gets slow' simply to avoid maintenance. The few that I know from IRL relationships that do use an adblock, mostly use adblock by Eyeo, simply because of the domain and ranking on google.

Section 230 didn't prevent Google from being fined $500M for publishing ads for Canadian pharmacies selling drugs to US citizens. What kind of illegal activities are you talking about, exactly?

ocdtrekkie 7y ago

Google regularly distributes malicious websites and malware through ads, and refuses to delist reported malicious websites. (Google Ads is the primary distributor of Windows PC malware today, if my customer support experience is any indication.) And the problem is that Google has a perverse incentive: More bidders for ads means higher bids. Since malicious actors raise the prices, they benefit from bad actors selling ads. And the problem is that even if someone finally comes in and shuts those actors down, Google kept all the profit from the malicious activity. In order to incentivize Google to police it's ad platform, we need to implement a requirement which seizes all revenue from malicious advertising, retroactively when a malicious account is flagged/reported. If Google is losing revenue on allowing bad actors on their ad platform, they'll be incentivized to quickly respond to reports and remove them so that legitimate ads, which they make money on, can have those ad slots.

icebraining 7y ago
More clicks on ads that lead to malware also leads to fewer clicks in the future, though. Have you published data about this anywhere, like a list of reported links that were ignored?
- 4ntonius8lock 7y ago
  > More clicks on ads that lead to malware also leads to fewer clicks in the future, though. I really doubt this works this way. There's 3 assumptions here, for your scenario to play out, people must pass the following funnels: 1- The person notices the malware 2- The person associates the connection between the ad and the malware. 3- After making the connection they install a non-dummy adblocker. Dummy adblockers like the one by Eyeo whitelist google's ads while actually harming the competition. It benefits them! Note: if I look up adblock on google, uBlock is only mentioned on page 2 of google and only because it's mentioned as a competitor to adblock on a zdnet article. The first whole page is dedicated to the Eyeo plug in. I'd say very few people will get through that funnel. My experience is that when my family and friends actually seek out help with their computers, they have let it go for years until the computer is a slow mess of malware, self installed spyware in the form of browser add ons and other crazy stuff. I've actually known a person who buys a computer every couple of years when it 'gets slow' simply to avoid maintenance. The few that I know from IRL relationships that do use an adblock, mostly use adblock by Eyeo, simply because of the domain and ranking on google.