4 ms·

I hear about this repeatedly with South Korea - just googled and sure enough the first result is a sponsored scam site.

by neom 1y ago

BLKNSLVR 1y ago
I'm not sure how Google can't be held responsible for this. They're literally advertising scams. They're taking money for putting up an ad for a scam site. I don't know how there is an excuse for this that's acceptable to any authority. It's their own platform that they seem unable to control. Take some responsibility Google, you are profiting by facilitating evil (even moreso than by regular advertising).
- ricudis 1y ago
  Nowadays 90% of the "Sponsored" category that I see are scams and clickbait sites The most "innocent" of them are competitor ads trying to convert you from what you're actually searching for. Unfortunately there are no incentives for Google to fix this. Apparently they make too much money out of it.
  - BobaFloutist 1y ago
    The most most innocent just duplicate the natural correct search result.
- AnthonyMouse 1y ago
  > I'm not sure how Google can't be held responsible for this. They're literally advertising scams. They're taking money for putting up an ad for a scam site. The thing I don't understand is why people keep expecting them to. Who even wants Google to be the police? To actually act as a deterrent you need the ability to impose penalties, and for that you need the actual police. All Google can do is close their account, and then there are no real penalties so they just make new ones until they figure out how to beat the fraud detection system. And if you try to impose penalties on third parties for not being able to solve a problem they're structurally unable to solve, all they can do is crank up the false positive rate and mess things up for innocent people. Stop even asking for this. It's a dystopia. Put the actual scammers in prison instead.
  - gambiting 1y ago
    I don't want them to be the police. I want them to give me the thing that I'm searching for first, not whoever outspent everyone else on SEO this year. If I'm searching for "Canadian visa application" then the first result must be the official government website for this. No policing involved - just good old accurate search, like Google used to be known for.
    - fallpeak 1y ago
      You're in luck! If you search for "canadian visa application" the first two results are "Visit Canada" and "How to apply for a visitor visa" on https://www.canada.ca/ https://www.canada.ca/
      - phonon 1y ago
        On my phone I get several screenheights of sponsored links, with oh so helpful sitelinks and summaries of each scam site. The fourth result is the legit one.
        fallpeak 1y ago
        Interesting, I'm surprised the results vary so much for a query with such an objectively correct answer. I tested it on my desktop in private browsing mode because I wanted to see whether Kagi was much better, but figured I should report the null result when Google actually did fine.
  - Eddy_Viscosity2 1y ago
    We want the actual police (law enforcement) to enforce the law and the includes google. If someone reports that this is a scam to them, and they don't act (i.e. take reasonable measures to check), then they become a party to that fraud. We already have laws about this and they are breaking them.
  - BLKNSLVR 1y ago
    I don't understand your position at all (and I don't mean this aggressively, I just can't get myself into a position of understanding). From my current perspective you seem to be absolving Google of any responsibility for, literally, their product. My reasoning is: Google have created an advertising platform. It is their raison d'etre; their entire millions per hour profit engine. But they only built the easy, profitable half because there were / are no regulations to enforce the responsible, difficult half. They built the half that allows anyone with the money to put something on their platform. They didn't build the half that makes sure that they're not helping scammers, con artists, and outright criminals from reaching the global audience that their wonderful, profitable, scalable platform enables. They should be policing it on their own to an extent that obvious scams and fake banking websites and clickbait should be detected. Even just to appear to not be a crime-facilitation platform, which they currently are. To me it feels analogous to Microsoft and their commitment to security of Windows. It's not a priority because it's counter to profitability. Privatise the profits and socialise the costs. If they can't control their own platform, they should not have the platform. It is not a mature enough product to be released upon the world. It is Frankenstein's monster, left to roam. I would be supportive of legislation that outright banned advertising with Google until they were able to provably clean up their act; if their product was market-ready. Which three letter agency said that an ad blocker was a required layer of security when browsing the web? There's a good reason: Google. If the Internet is full of scams, who is most responsible for its proliferation? (I have a massive bias against advertising, so that heavily colours my opinion. I also understand that advertising is inevitable, but it should be held to a much higher standard than, well, the none that exists)
yongjik 1y ago
South Korean internet is dysfunctional enough that it's possible that Google is not showing the correct site at the top because the government site's designer helpfully decided to make the site "secure" by adding to robots.txt: User-agent: * Disallow: / Source: Worked at Google Korea years ago. Back then, those things were common, and were commonly accepted as a solution to the problem "All your user's profiles are available in plain text, open to public, and searchable from Google!"

I hear about this repeatedly with South Korea - just googled and sure enough the first result is a sponsored scam site.

by neom 1y ago

I hear about this repeatedly with South Korea - just googled and sure enough the first result is a sponsored scam site.

I'm not sure how Google can't be held responsible for this. They're literally advertising scams. They're taking money for putting up an ad for a scam site. I don't know how there is an excuse for this that's acceptable to any authority. It's their own platform that they seem unable to control. Take some responsibility Google, you are profiting by facilitating evil (even moreso than by regular advertising).

ricudis 1y ago
Nowadays 90% of the "Sponsored" category that I see are scams and clickbait sites The most "innocent" of them are competitor ads trying to convert you from what you're actually searching for. Unfortunately there are no incentives for Google to fix this. Apparently they make too much money out of it.
- BobaFloutist 1y ago
  The most most innocent just duplicate the natural correct search result.
AnthonyMouse 1y ago
> I'm not sure how Google can't be held responsible for this. They're literally advertising scams. They're taking money for putting up an ad for a scam site. The thing I don't understand is why people keep expecting them to. Who even wants Google to be the police? To actually act as a deterrent you need the ability to impose penalties, and for that you need the actual police. All Google can do is close their account, and then there are no real penalties so they just make new ones until they figure out how to beat the fraud detection system. And if you try to impose penalties on third parties for not being able to solve a problem they're structurally unable to solve, all they can do is crank up the false positive rate and mess things up for innocent people. Stop even asking for this. It's a dystopia. Put the actual scammers in prison instead.
- gambiting 1y ago
  I don't want them to be the police. I want them to give me the thing that I'm searching for first, not whoever outspent everyone else on SEO this year. If I'm searching for "Canadian visa application" then the first result must be the official government website for this. No policing involved - just good old accurate search, like Google used to be known for.
  - fallpeak 1y ago
    You're in luck! If you search for "canadian visa application" the first two results are "Visit Canada" and "How to apply for a visitor visa" on https://www.canada.ca/ https://www.canada.ca/
    - phonon 1y ago
      On my phone I get several screenheights of sponsored links, with oh so helpful sitelinks and summaries of each scam site. The fourth result is the legit one.
      - fallpeak 1y ago
        Interesting, I'm surprised the results vary so much for a query with such an objectively correct answer. I tested it on my desktop in private browsing mode because I wanted to see whether Kagi was much better, but figured I should report the null result when Google actually did fine.
- Eddy_Viscosity2 1y ago
  We want the actual police (law enforcement) to enforce the law and the includes google. If someone reports that this is a scam to them, and they don't act (i.e. take reasonable measures to check), then they become a party to that fraud. We already have laws about this and they are breaking them.
- BLKNSLVR 1y ago
  I don't understand your position at all (and I don't mean this aggressively, I just can't get myself into a position of understanding). From my current perspective you seem to be absolving Google of any responsibility for, literally, their product. My reasoning is: Google have created an advertising platform. It is their raison d'etre; their entire millions per hour profit engine. But they only built the easy, profitable half because there were / are no regulations to enforce the responsible, difficult half. They built the half that allows anyone with the money to put something on their platform. They didn't build the half that makes sure that they're not helping scammers, con artists, and outright criminals from reaching the global audience that their wonderful, profitable, scalable platform enables. They should be policing it on their own to an extent that obvious scams and fake banking websites and clickbait should be detected. Even just to appear to not be a crime-facilitation platform, which they currently are. To me it feels analogous to Microsoft and their commitment to security of Windows. It's not a priority because it's counter to profitability. Privatise the profits and socialise the costs. If they can't control their own platform, they should not have the platform. It is not a mature enough product to be released upon the world. It is Frankenstein's monster, left to roam. I would be supportive of legislation that outright banned advertising with Google until they were able to provably clean up their act; if their product was market-ready. Which three letter agency said that an ad blocker was a required layer of security when browsing the web? There's a good reason: Google. If the Internet is full of scams, who is most responsible for its proliferation? (I have a massive bias against advertising, so that heavily colours my opinion. I also understand that advertising is inevitable, but it should be held to a much higher standard than, well, the none that exists)

yongjik 1y ago

South Korean internet is dysfunctional enough that it's possible that Google is not showing the correct site at the top because the government site's designer helpfully decided to make the site "secure" by adding to robots.txt: User-agent: * Disallow: / Source: Worked at Google Korea years ago. Back then, those things were common, and were commonly accepted as a solution to the problem "All your user's profiles are available in plain text, open to public, and searchable from Google!"