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> Last year, Libgen also told users that it's primarily funded through Google advertising. In the video, Libgen was warning users that while admins are difficul
by kmeisthax 2y ago
> Last year, Libgen also told users that it's primarily funded through Google advertising. In the video, Libgen was warning users that while admins are difficult to unmask, "Google gets informed of every download, and if a user has ever registered with Google, then Google knows exactly who they are, what they've downloaded, and when they downloaded it."
In my opinion, this seems like a particularly stupid risk to take as a pirate site. Ad networks would be in a prime position to dox all your users and, were the publishers so inclined, they could easily get that data and target your individual users for legal harassment.
Are the costs of running Libgen seriously that high that they have to defray them with advertising specifically?
- crazygringo 2y agoIt's factually wrong. First, while Google aggregates lots of data for analytics and advertising, and if subpoenaed may be able to say that a given user visited a given pirate site, they only know the user opened pages -- not that they clicked a download link or successfully downloaded an ebook, because the ebook file itself contains no Google advertising. It's not illegal to do a search on a pirate site. The only illegal part is the downloading, and ad networks don't have any record of that part.
- saalweachter 2y agoIt depends whether your goal is "to make information free" or "give away stolen goods to trick users into giving you their PII so you can monetize with internet ad bucks". Just because you like what someone is doing in principle doesn't mean they're good people doing it for good reasons.