4 ms·

Even if they don't know the endorsing parties, they should know something about whoever paid for the ad.

prawn 5y ago
Sure, but that could be a small agency indistinguishable from a spam operation, and is the expectation that the publisher vet each claim and endorsee? They should be able to address complaints and to prevent repeat attempts to breach this, but is stopping it altogether feasible? I don't use Facebook so maybe they already do this, but it's probably reasonable to require anyone advertising in a country to have a registered business presence within that country. But that's only going to work at scale (AdSense, FB, etc) and not with randoms putting ads on a site that anyone can see.
- Nextgrid 5y ago
  > and is the expectation that the publisher vet each claim and endorsee? Maybe yes? If you're paid to artificially promote some content to lots of people, even more so if there's targeting criteria associated (targeting the most vulnerable to fall for such scams) you should share responsibility? In the real world you can't hold a banner "CHEAP DRUGS SOLD HERE" without getting in trouble and I doubt the excuse of "I'm just a platform, not responsible for anything" is going to fly. > is stopping it altogether feasible Yes. Make a human review every single ad and raise the prices if necessary.
  - prawn 5y ago
    Ignoring the targeting aspect for a second, our comments here on HN aren't vetted. If I make a medical claim or a legal claim or a financial claim, @dang doesn't call in a doctor, lawyer or CPA to vet it before it gets live. That would be absolutely cost-prohibitive. And I suspect that vet-before-publish would assign more legal responsibility to the publisher which is partly why this doesn't happen on any major social network or forum. How could a human review an ad with a name, without having contact details for that named individual? Or with a photo if they didn't recognise that person? Or if it was an ad about a person such as a news item? Is there a way with digital keys so that any media claiming endorsement by a person can be signed off? Or requiring an equivalent of talent releases (I get these as photographer/videographer)?
    - BLKNSLVR 5y ago
      To eschew responsibility for the vetting of the advertisement content, there would need to be better vetting, like KYC / AML requirements, for those submitting the ads in order to ensure there's some real person / company at the end of the chain to be brought into court.
      - prawn 5y ago
        I can't see how that is possible without blocking countries from the advertising/participation pool. It's the Wild West otherwise. Pointless having a name if your pursuit doesn't have legal teeth.
        BLKNSLVR 5y ago
        How does it work in pre-internet media advertising? > It's the Wild West otherwise. That's the "do nothing" case that we're in now though isn't it? > Pointless having a name if your pursuit doesn't have legal teeth. Can't advertise into country X if you don't have a legal presence in country X. (Simple? Pending the years of legislative navigation, by which time alternatives will have filtered into the ecosystem: decentralisation and non-censorability, etc.). Which is basically what you've said "blocking countries from the advertising/participation pool". So, yes, I think I agree :)
        prawn 5y ago
        Pre-internet, there weren't infinite scammers hammering magazines and newspapers from overseas with questionable ads. There was still some junk, but no where near as relentless. And most products were physical, so even if you were advertising miracle skin repair, you were manufacturing and shipping a physical product so it was harder to appear and disappear. Ease of money transfer hasn't helped prevent scams either. The issue with locking down by country is, say you have an upstanding SaaS startup and you want to advertise to the world. Can you realistically justify registering your business in 100+ countries? Even something like Stripe Atlas is arguably too heavy-handed for side-project stage. I could see there being a verification engine whereby an advertiser posted a bond before that verification service endorsed them to publishers. But this would require countries to require publishers to use something like this, because they won't do it off their own back.

Sure, but that could be a small agency indistinguishable from a spam operation, and is the expectation that the publisher vet each claim and endorsee? They should be able to address complaints and to prevent repeat attempts to breach this, but is stopping it altogether feasible? I don't use Facebook so maybe they already do this, but it's probably reasonable to require anyone advertising in a country to have a registered business presence within that country. But that's only going to work at scale (AdSense, FB, etc) and not with randoms putting ads on a site that anyone can see.

Nextgrid 5y ago
> and is the expectation that the publisher vet each claim and endorsee? Maybe yes? If you're paid to artificially promote some content to lots of people, even more so if there's targeting criteria associated (targeting the most vulnerable to fall for such scams) you should share responsibility? In the real world you can't hold a banner "CHEAP DRUGS SOLD HERE" without getting in trouble and I doubt the excuse of "I'm just a platform, not responsible for anything" is going to fly. > is stopping it altogether feasible Yes. Make a human review every single ad and raise the prices if necessary.
- prawn 5y ago
  Ignoring the targeting aspect for a second, our comments here on HN aren't vetted. If I make a medical claim or a legal claim or a financial claim, @dang doesn't call in a doctor, lawyer or CPA to vet it before it gets live. That would be absolutely cost-prohibitive. And I suspect that vet-before-publish would assign more legal responsibility to the publisher which is partly why this doesn't happen on any major social network or forum. How could a human review an ad with a name, without having contact details for that named individual? Or with a photo if they didn't recognise that person? Or if it was an ad about a person such as a news item? Is there a way with digital keys so that any media claiming endorsement by a person can be signed off? Or requiring an equivalent of talent releases (I get these as photographer/videographer)?
  - BLKNSLVR 5y ago
    To eschew responsibility for the vetting of the advertisement content, there would need to be better vetting, like KYC / AML requirements, for those submitting the ads in order to ensure there's some real person / company at the end of the chain to be brought into court.
    - prawn 5y ago
      I can't see how that is possible without blocking countries from the advertising/participation pool. It's the Wild West otherwise. Pointless having a name if your pursuit doesn't have legal teeth.
      - BLKNSLVR 5y ago
        How does it work in pre-internet media advertising? > It's the Wild West otherwise. That's the "do nothing" case that we're in now though isn't it? > Pointless having a name if your pursuit doesn't have legal teeth. Can't advertise into country X if you don't have a legal presence in country X. (Simple? Pending the years of legislative navigation, by which time alternatives will have filtered into the ecosystem: decentralisation and non-censorability, etc.). Which is basically what you've said "blocking countries from the advertising/participation pool". So, yes, I think I agree :)
        prawn 5y ago
        Pre-internet, there weren't infinite scammers hammering magazines and newspapers from overseas with questionable ads. There was still some junk, but no where near as relentless. And most products were physical, so even if you were advertising miracle skin repair, you were manufacturing and shipping a physical product so it was harder to appear and disappear. Ease of money transfer hasn't helped prevent scams either. The issue with locking down by country is, say you have an upstanding SaaS startup and you want to advertise to the world. Can you realistically justify registering your business in 100+ countries? Even something like Stripe Atlas is arguably too heavy-handed for side-project stage. I could see there being a verification engine whereby an advertiser posted a bond before that verification service endorsed them to publishers. But this would require countries to require publishers to use something like this, because they won't do it off their own back.