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The problem isn't that advertisers should be allowed to ship malware, it's that it's hard to distinguish malware from non-malware. Also the adjacent problem of

The problem isn't that advertisers should be allowed to ship malware, it's that it's hard to distinguish malware from non-malware. Also the adjacent problem of "not quite malware, but shitty code that spams error logs and runs way slower than it should".

hetspookjee 5y ago
Why should ads be so free to run arbitrary code? It seems to me that in the end Google should be held responsible for anything they serve to others. If they'd be fined for this lack of oversight, perhaps they'd block javascript as a whole until they do have proper oversight in place?
- streptomycin 5y ago
  Because advertisers pay more for it, and publishers like making money. If Google didn't offer it, someone else would, and they might do even worse than Google at sandboxing the code and trying to filter out abusive ads. Not saying it's a great situation, just explaining why there's not an easy solution.
  - hetspookjee 5y ago
    It's an odd argument to say that Google must do it in this poor way, as it is atleast better than how the others would do it. If Google stopped offering it to not waste compute cycles of others or invade too much, that would be a good choice. It seems Google would not like to lead by example but rather take the profits and risk the fine as cost-of-doing-business. If google would stop doing it. It would atleast cause >30% of the worldwide ads to run arbitrary code. A massive improvement on both user privacy and climate. The wasted cycles are not free. The solution is easy on Google's side. Just don't do it and accept the reduction in revenue. But I guess the economic incentives are just too big, like you say.
voakbasda 5y ago
Shitty code should be rejected too, if they have any kind of a standard for of quality. If it runs slow during testing, how do you think users will feel when they run it on their systems? Code that makes your system appear infected with malware is indistinguishable from actual malware.
- streptomycin 5y ago
  They already try to detect and ban poor performing ads, but it is hard to do perfectly.

hetspookjee 5y ago

Why should ads be so free to run arbitrary code? It seems to me that in the end Google should be held responsible for anything they serve to others. If they'd be fined for this lack of oversight, perhaps they'd block javascript as a whole until they do have proper oversight in place?

streptomycin 5y ago
Because advertisers pay more for it, and publishers like making money. If Google didn't offer it, someone else would, and they might do even worse than Google at sandboxing the code and trying to filter out abusive ads. Not saying it's a great situation, just explaining why there's not an easy solution.
- hetspookjee 5y ago
  It's an odd argument to say that Google must do it in this poor way, as it is atleast better than how the others would do it. If Google stopped offering it to not waste compute cycles of others or invade too much, that would be a good choice. It seems Google would not like to lead by example but rather take the profits and risk the fine as cost-of-doing-business. If google would stop doing it. It would atleast cause >30% of the worldwide ads to run arbitrary code. A massive improvement on both user privacy and climate. The wasted cycles are not free. The solution is easy on Google's side. Just don't do it and accept the reduction in revenue. But I guess the economic incentives are just too big, like you say.

voakbasda 5y ago

Shitty code should be rejected too, if they have any kind of a standard for of quality. If it runs slow during testing, how do you think users will feel when they run it on their systems? Code that makes your system appear infected with malware is indistinguishable from actual malware.

streptomycin 5y ago
They already try to detect and ban poor performing ads, but it is hard to do perfectly.