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I feel like there are almost two completely incompatible stories being sold by ad tech people. One is that "you shouldn't use an ad blocker, reputable websites

by mort96 1y ago

I feel like there are almost two completely incompatible stories being sold by ad tech people. One is that "you shouldn't use an ad blocker, reputable websites have ads from Google and other reputable companies and they wouldn't be scams or malware". The other is that any time there's a story about malware and scams on reputable websites, they say: "there are so many ads being submitted, Google is doing their best but you can't expect them to successfully weed out every single bad ad". The reality is, of course, that Google and its ilk doesn't give a single rat's ass about people falling from scams or getting infected by malware. Scams and malware pays better than "ethical" ads (to the degree that such a thing exists). It's a travesty that there are apparently no laws against their behavior.

tbrownaw 1y ago
> One is that "you shouldn't use an ad blocker, reputable websites have ads from Google and other reputable companies and they wouldn't be scams or malware". But I don't care* about that, I care that they're visually obnoxious and sometimes slow. * Well, usually. Way back when, there used to be occasional news about browser sandbox escapes.
- mort96 1y ago
  I agree, I would be using an ad blocker even if all the ads were "only" annoying attempts at manipulating my behavior rather than scams and malware. But pointing out that ads can damage your computer or scam you out of money or information is a stronger pro-ad-blocking argument.
hnlmorg 1y ago
> It's a travesty that there are apparently no laws against their behavior. there is in the UK. And likely in most other jurisdictions too. But it's about penalizing the advertisers rather than the platform. Which clearly neither works at scale nor across borders. This definitely feels like a better use case for an "online safety act" -- but instead we got censorship laws....
- ToucanLoucan 1y ago
  Because scams are a threat to the serfs, and people spreading the truth about global events and issues is a threat to the powerful. That's why I really don't bag on "slacktivists" anymore. I'm not saying there isn't SOME truth to the notion that people reliably pick the one kind of activism that doesn't require getting off the sofa, it's a fair critique. However even that kind of activism is now heavily policed around the humanitarian crisis that won't be named. If it wasn't a threat, they wouldn't police it so hard.
jrmg 1y ago
It's a travesty that there are apparently no laws against their behavior. In the USA I’m pretty sure advertising scams - even the more ‘benign’ ones like claiming a product does something it doesn’t do or lying about its efficiency - are illegal. There’s just no - or not nearly enough - enforcement. https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/topics/truth-advertising https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/topics/truth-advertising
- mort96 1y ago
  There's no meaningful difference in my mind between "there are no laws" and "there are technically laws but they're completely unenforced".
  - RajT88 1y ago
    There's a lot of that going around in the US these days.
    - mort96 1y ago
      And everywhere else, honestly. It's not like banner ads on the web are particularly honest here in the EU/EEA.
      - RajT88 1y ago
        I was referring specifically to, "laws not being enforced".
        mort96 1y ago
        Both the EU and various EU/EEA members have laws related to misleading advertising on the books which seemingly aren't being enforced either.
        RajT88 1y ago
        Whoosh.
kevin_thibedeau 1y ago
Google Tag Manager is a malware vector. It's very design is to distribute non-Google code through a supposedly trusted source. They are part of the problem and JS blocking is the only dependable safeguard.
detourdog 1y ago
My mail server easily gets the most phishing attempts from gmail. This is due to my unwillingness to blacklist Gmail. I report the abuse through there abuse page. The results in a slowdown while the abuser reformulates their sending process. I know this by watching the changes to the sending path in the header of the phishing attempts. The content and subject often don’t change but the header does.
- mort96 1y ago
  I bet that if you were using gmail, those phishing mails would end up in your trash ... which raises the question: why does Google allow people who Google's own spam-filter can detect are sending 99% spam to keep sending e-mail?
bradlys 1y ago
Genuinely curious: why do I always get scammy ads in iOS apps and Google products but I don’t see anywhere near the same amount on Instagram or TikTok? Are Meta and TikTok better at filtering scammy ads out? Maybe their ML recommendation systems realize I’d never click on such an ad and the other platforms can’t figure that out.
- cm2012 1y ago
  IG, TikTok, Meta have a lot of data they can use to do good ad targeting that is harder to apply to Google/iOS apps. Also has to do with the ad format, placement, etc.
  - bradlys 1y ago
    I get that but I’m surprised that Google doesn’t have that info too. Google’s ad biz is bigger than Meta’s.
    - cm2012 1y ago
      Some formats are better than others. The Meta products comparable to GDN (audience network, various banner ad placements in its platforms) also kind of suck. Google wishes they had a feed based website, thats where people respond to direct respond ads in a big way.
jerf 1y ago
This is the motte & bailey fallacy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motte-and-bailey_fallacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motte-and-bailey_fallacy While it has gotten around the "logical fallacy community", for lack of a better term, in the last few years, it could still stand to be known by more people. It's become very popular. I think there are many who have subconsciously picked it up as just how things are done.
PaulHoule 1y ago
It's been that way a long time with other media. I used to work out a lot during the day and would wind up watching TV in the daypart aimed at people who don't have their own money to spend on things and there were ads running for about a decade that were obviously a scam. https://oig.hhs.gov/fraud/consumer-alerts/fraud-alert-nationwide-brace-scam/ https://oig.hhs.gov/fraud/consumer-alerts/fraud-alert-nation... When you heard the vocal equivalent of large type text every real person knew that it was time to get grandma away from the TV but... the people at the TV network didn't, law enforcement didn't, your congressman didn't, anybody in a position of power didn't. And no wonder people feel cynical, hate the media, distrust the cops, distrust politicians, feel "the game is rigged", etc.
tracker1 1y ago
It'd be relatively easy for Google to screen out and filter ads... Charge enough when creating an account or starting/changing a campaign. Then you can pay staff for manual review. They could charge $1000 for account creation (half of which you get back after the first year), then they charge even $20 at campaign creation/change... They can even provide context/feedback, "Sorry, but this seems misleading, doesn't relate to what you are linking, is scammy, etc." And have an additional "check" of each ad and target after a day, a week and a random point within each month. Charge an additional minimum of $20/mo per ad for (re)validation. For the bulk of legit advertisers, this won't affect the bottom line of a given campaign and will keep out the scammers, etc. Leading to a much higher quality ecosystem. It would also give Google the potential for a higher percentage share of profits in the system. It would also likely reduce the CPM pricing though, possibly to a larger extent than profits from the validation system itself. But it would be a much healthier overall system.
- Sophira 1y ago
  Until management realises they can skip the checks and come out $20 on top each time, with no complaints from advertisers.
snailmailman 1y ago
When google switched off uBlock origin, it took less than a week for my grandmother to call me in a panic because she clicked on a malicious Facebook ad. Google disabled the Adblock, Facebook let the ad run on their site, and Microsoft hosted the malicious site on their cloud provider. Shoutout to Microsoft for taking the site down within the hour after I reported it- more than I can say for any of the blatantly illegal or scam ads I’ve seen on YouTube. but still, 3 big tech companies that could have definitely stopped this is they really wanted to.
- lelanthran 1y ago
  > When google switched off uBlock origin, it took less than a week for my grandmother to call me in a panic because she clicked on a malicious Facebook ad. What did your grandmother need Chrome for? You couldn't find the 5m it would take to set her up with Firefox?
  - snailmailman 1y ago
    She uses a super cheap Chromebook. Unfortunately I don’t think Firefox can be easily installed on it? I don’t think it’s even x86. It’s a very limited device, but all it needs to be capable of is loading Facebook and a few other specific sites- so it “works”
chrisjj 1y ago
> One is that "you shouldn't use an ad blocker, reputable websites have ads from Google and other reputable companies and they wouldn't be scams or malware". As if people read only reuptable sites ...
account42 1y ago
The whole point of ads is to mislead and manipulate people into acting against their best interests. They are not colluding with scammers, they are the scammers. The whole business is inherently rotten and that's before getting to second order effects. It's a travesty that ads are tolerated at all.

by mort96 1y ago

tbrownaw 1y ago

> One is that "you shouldn't use an ad blocker, reputable websites have ads from Google and other reputable companies and they wouldn't be scams or malware". But I don't care* about that, I care that they're visually obnoxious and sometimes slow. * Well, usually. Way back when, there used to be occasional news about browser sandbox escapes.

mort96 1y ago
I agree, I would be using an ad blocker even if all the ads were "only" annoying attempts at manipulating my behavior rather than scams and malware. But pointing out that ads can damage your computer or scam you out of money or information is a stronger pro-ad-blocking argument.

hnlmorg 1y ago

> It's a travesty that there are apparently no laws against their behavior. there is in the UK. And likely in most other jurisdictions too. But it's about penalizing the advertisers rather than the platform. Which clearly neither works at scale nor across borders. This definitely feels like a better use case for an "online safety act" -- but instead we got censorship laws....

ToucanLoucan 1y ago
Because scams are a threat to the serfs, and people spreading the truth about global events and issues is a threat to the powerful. That's why I really don't bag on "slacktivists" anymore. I'm not saying there isn't SOME truth to the notion that people reliably pick the one kind of activism that doesn't require getting off the sofa, it's a fair critique. However even that kind of activism is now heavily policed around the humanitarian crisis that won't be named. If it wasn't a threat, they wouldn't police it so hard.

jrmg 1y ago

It's a travesty that there are apparently no laws against their behavior. In the USA I’m pretty sure advertising scams - even the more ‘benign’ ones like claiming a product does something it doesn’t do or lying about its efficiency - are illegal. There’s just no - or not nearly enough - enforcement. https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/topics/truth-advertising https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/topics/truth-advertising

mort96 1y ago
There's no meaningful difference in my mind between "there are no laws" and "there are technically laws but they're completely unenforced".
- RajT88 1y ago
  There's a lot of that going around in the US these days.
  - mort96 1y ago
    And everywhere else, honestly. It's not like banner ads on the web are particularly honest here in the EU/EEA.
    - RajT88 1y ago
      I was referring specifically to, "laws not being enforced".
      - mort96 1y ago
        Both the EU and various EU/EEA members have laws related to misleading advertising on the books which seemingly aren't being enforced either.
        RajT88 1y ago
        Whoosh.

kevin_thibedeau 1y ago

Google Tag Manager is a malware vector. It's very design is to distribute non-Google code through a supposedly trusted source. They are part of the problem and JS blocking is the only dependable safeguard.

detourdog 1y ago

My mail server easily gets the most phishing attempts from gmail. This is due to my unwillingness to blacklist Gmail. I report the abuse through there abuse page. The results in a slowdown while the abuser reformulates their sending process. I know this by watching the changes to the sending path in the header of the phishing attempts. The content and subject often don’t change but the header does.

mort96 1y ago
I bet that if you were using gmail, those phishing mails would end up in your trash ... which raises the question: why does Google allow people who Google's own spam-filter can detect are sending 99% spam to keep sending e-mail?

bradlys 1y ago

Genuinely curious: why do I always get scammy ads in iOS apps and Google products but I don’t see anywhere near the same amount on Instagram or TikTok? Are Meta and TikTok better at filtering scammy ads out? Maybe their ML recommendation systems realize I’d never click on such an ad and the other platforms can’t figure that out.

cm2012 1y ago
IG, TikTok, Meta have a lot of data they can use to do good ad targeting that is harder to apply to Google/iOS apps. Also has to do with the ad format, placement, etc.
- bradlys 1y ago
  I get that but I’m surprised that Google doesn’t have that info too. Google’s ad biz is bigger than Meta’s.
  - cm2012 1y ago
    Some formats are better than others. The Meta products comparable to GDN (audience network, various banner ad placements in its platforms) also kind of suck. Google wishes they had a feed based website, thats where people respond to direct respond ads in a big way.

jerf 1y ago

This is the motte & bailey fallacy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motte-and-bailey_fallacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motte-and-bailey_fallacy While it has gotten around the "logical fallacy community", for lack of a better term, in the last few years, it could still stand to be known by more people. It's become very popular. I think there are many who have subconsciously picked it up as just how things are done.

PaulHoule 1y ago

It's been that way a long time with other media. I used to work out a lot during the day and would wind up watching TV in the daypart aimed at people who don't have their own money to spend on things and there were ads running for about a decade that were obviously a scam. https://oig.hhs.gov/fraud/consumer-alerts/fraud-alert-nationwide-brace-scam/ https://oig.hhs.gov/fraud/consumer-alerts/fraud-alert-nation... When you heard the vocal equivalent of large type text every real person knew that it was time to get grandma away from the TV but... the people at the TV network didn't, law enforcement didn't, your congressman didn't, anybody in a position of power didn't. And no wonder people feel cynical, hate the media, distrust the cops, distrust politicians, feel "the game is rigged", etc.

tracker1 1y ago

It'd be relatively easy for Google to screen out and filter ads... Charge enough when creating an account or starting/changing a campaign. Then you can pay staff for manual review. They could charge $1000 for account creation (half of which you get back after the first year), then they charge even $20 at campaign creation/change... They can even provide context/feedback, "Sorry, but this seems misleading, doesn't relate to what you are linking, is scammy, etc." And have an additional "check" of each ad and target after a day, a week and a random point within each month. Charge an additional minimum of $20/mo per ad for (re)validation. For the bulk of legit advertisers, this won't affect the bottom line of a given campaign and will keep out the scammers, etc. Leading to a much higher quality ecosystem. It would also give Google the potential for a higher percentage share of profits in the system. It would also likely reduce the CPM pricing though, possibly to a larger extent than profits from the validation system itself. But it would be a much healthier overall system.

Sophira 1y ago
Until management realises they can skip the checks and come out $20 on top each time, with no complaints from advertisers.

snailmailman 1y ago

When google switched off uBlock origin, it took less than a week for my grandmother to call me in a panic because she clicked on a malicious Facebook ad. Google disabled the Adblock, Facebook let the ad run on their site, and Microsoft hosted the malicious site on their cloud provider. Shoutout to Microsoft for taking the site down within the hour after I reported it- more than I can say for any of the blatantly illegal or scam ads I’ve seen on YouTube. but still, 3 big tech companies that could have definitely stopped this is they really wanted to.

lelanthran 1y ago
> When google switched off uBlock origin, it took less than a week for my grandmother to call me in a panic because she clicked on a malicious Facebook ad. What did your grandmother need Chrome for? You couldn't find the 5m it would take to set her up with Firefox?
- snailmailman 1y ago
  She uses a super cheap Chromebook. Unfortunately I don’t think Firefox can be easily installed on it? I don’t think it’s even x86. It’s a very limited device, but all it needs to be capable of is loading Facebook and a few other specific sites- so it “works”

chrisjj 1y ago

> One is that "you shouldn't use an ad blocker, reputable websites have ads from Google and other reputable companies and they wouldn't be scams or malware". As if people read only reuptable sites ...

account42 1y ago

The whole point of ads is to mislead and manipulate people into acting against their best interests. They are not colluding with scammers, they are the scammers. The whole business is inherently rotten and that's before getting to second order effects. It's a travesty that ads are tolerated at all.