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Yes, companies should be banned for scammy-looking ad design. It's not the job of an ad service to go "well, you look really scammy, but digging deeper it turn

Yes, companies should be banned for scammy-looking ad design. It's not the job of an ad service to go "well, you look really scammy, but digging deeper it turns out you might be OK, so go ahead". Scammy ads make advertising worse for everyone, even if they just look scammy. That's leaving aside that "looks scammy" is a reasonable signal for "is scammy". I'm in the "all ads are bad" camp, but I can also observe that scammy ads contribute to more widespread perceptions of ads being bad, even among people who might otherwise intentionally click on some ads.

CogitoCogito 5y ago
I entirely disagree. Google _should_ be required to provide its reasoning. Google _should_ provide redress. And frankly I don't even think the ad looks all that scammy. At least nothing even remotely specially compared to all other ads I see by Google. Regardless, we don't even know that this is the reason why Google banned it because they refused to say why they did. They should be required to do so.
fauigerzigerk 5y ago
No. We cannot allow an oligopoly that no one can avoid to issue life bans for small mistakes without any recourse or due process. Punishment has to fit the crime. If we allow corporations that are more powerful than nation states and can crush a person's chances in life then conflict resolution needs to be bit more sophisticated than a cost optimisation algorithm.
- JoshTriplett 5y ago
  > We cannot allow an oligopoly that no one can avoid If this is true (which is very much in question), that's the issue. If it's true that nobody else can enter that market, then that's the problem we should address. A monopoly or oligopoly does not suddenly become OK because we put some rules in place for how it should operate, and those rules may in fact entrench the established companies because they can afford the overhead.
  - fauigerzigerk 5y ago
    >A monopoly or oligopoly does not suddenly become OK because we put some rules in place for how it should operate, and those rules may in fact entrench the established companies because they can afford the overhead I think in some areas it is extremely difficult to prevent market concentration. How many viable operating systems can there be for instance? Some markets simply have a structural bias towards very few global players. Trying to prevent that is a quixotic effort. We need some rules to govern the relationship between dominant platforms and those whose livelihoods depend on those platforms.

CogitoCogito 5y ago

I entirely disagree. Google _should_ be required to provide its reasoning. Google _should_ provide redress. And frankly I don't even think the ad looks all that scammy. At least nothing even remotely specially compared to all other ads I see by Google. Regardless, we don't even know that this is the reason why Google banned it because they refused to say why they did. They should be required to do so.

fauigerzigerk 5y ago

No. We cannot allow an oligopoly that no one can avoid to issue life bans for small mistakes without any recourse or due process. Punishment has to fit the crime. If we allow corporations that are more powerful than nation states and can crush a person's chances in life then conflict resolution needs to be bit more sophisticated than a cost optimisation algorithm.

JoshTriplett 5y ago
> We cannot allow an oligopoly that no one can avoid If this is true (which is very much in question), that's the issue. If it's true that nobody else can enter that market, then that's the problem we should address. A monopoly or oligopoly does not suddenly become OK because we put some rules in place for how it should operate, and those rules may in fact entrench the established companies because they can afford the overhead.
- fauigerzigerk 5y ago
  >A monopoly or oligopoly does not suddenly become OK because we put some rules in place for how it should operate, and those rules may in fact entrench the established companies because they can afford the overhead I think in some areas it is extremely difficult to prevent market concentration. How many viable operating systems can there be for instance? Some markets simply have a structural bias towards very few global players. Trying to prevent that is a quixotic effort. We need some rules to govern the relationship between dominant platforms and those whose livelihoods depend on those platforms.