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It's a problem, but it's not "the" problem. The problem is that letting advertisers write their own JS means advertisers are willing to pay more for the ad. If
by streptomycin 5y ago
It's a problem, but it's not "the" problem.
The problem is that letting advertisers write their own JS means advertisers are willing to pay more for the ad. If Google banned that practice, or put in a lot of oversight, people would pay less for ads through Google. But some other ad networks would still allow the bad practices, and thus be able to pay higher rates. So sites would just move more ads to those other networks.
That doesn't absolve Google of responsibility, but it does mean that we can't actually solve the problem just by being mad at Google.
- mattgreenrocks 5y agoI don’t think expecting Google to take responsibility for the ads they serve is unreasonable. It is profoundly strange that we extol the virtues of succeeding in society and yet also act like said success doesn’t come with heavy responsibility.
- luckylion 5y agoThe value in adsense is absolutely not in the ability to run unvetted javascript served from a google-hosted domain. The value is in the tracking and retargeting. Serving javascript from a well-connected CDN isn't something that sets anyone apart, you can just sign up with cloudflare and have that working in a few minutes.
- jasonjayr 5y agoThose other networks would start getting blocked hard with adblock/DNS block/public shaming of sites using them.
- streptomycin 5y agoAd blockers already block all ad networks. And the status quo is that all ad networks have ads with shitty JS, and public shaming doesn't seem to have done much about it.