4 ms·

99% of advertisers give the rest a bad name... Why do we put age restrictions on explicit or violent movies? Because we don't want to influence kids' brains fo

99% of advertisers give the rest a bad name... Why do we put age restrictions on explicit or violent movies? Because we don't want to influence kids' brains for the worse. This principle applies to adults as well. The purpose of ads is to influence you. That "influence" goes to the highest bidder. At their most benign, they just want you to buy their brand of otherwise identical detergent. The worst ads are the ones for charities where some emaciated kid is filmed (in HD) tearfully looking into the camera. Fuck. That. My emotions are not the plaything of some advertiser. What about the "one quick tip to lose weight" scams that don't-be-evil Google insists on serving up. Is that fine? The advertising industry is not your friend. Don't waste your life trying to help them. Block everything.

austinz 13y ago
The advertising industry gets implicit carte blanche to do things to thousands or millions of complete strangers that, if I were to do to my friend, would be considered mortifyingly offensive or rude. I really don't understand it.
JohnTHaller 13y ago
Each AdSense advertiser can turn off specific channels for their sites including 'health and wellness' (weight loss) and 'dating' (scam chat sites). Unfortunately, there are baddies in nearly every category. The software category, for instance, which is the majority of our income, is a hotbed of spyware/adware vendors. And blocking them is nearly impossible since Google doesn't really care to know. So you're left manually determining domains yourself and blocking them. But it's just wack-a-mole as they create new domains when enough sites block them. This isn't too surprising considering that the top link for a Google search for Firefox is a Google ad for an advertiser that will deliver Firefox via a downloader along with 8 different spyware/adware apps. My mom made that mistake last weekend. We would up reimaging her computer.
- troels 13y ago
  Just a thought: Couldn't advertisers collaborate on maintaining a blocklist, just like users do with adblockers? Does it already exist?
  - JohnTHaller 13y ago
    I've considered it, but you'd have to manually update your domains list and you're limited to only 500 total.
- cabalamat 13y ago
  > the top link for a Google search for Firefox is a Google ad for an advertiser that will deliver Firefox via a downloader along with 8 different spyware/adware apps Is it? I get http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/new/ http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/new/
  - JohnTHaller 13y ago
    It is here: http://imgur.com/gallery/NeSbeBM http://imgur.com/gallery/NeSbeBM

austinz 13y ago

The advertising industry gets implicit carte blanche to do things to thousands or millions of complete strangers that, if I were to do to my friend, would be considered mortifyingly offensive or rude. I really don't understand it.

JohnTHaller 13y ago

Each AdSense advertiser can turn off specific channels for their sites including 'health and wellness' (weight loss) and 'dating' (scam chat sites). Unfortunately, there are baddies in nearly every category. The software category, for instance, which is the majority of our income, is a hotbed of spyware/adware vendors. And blocking them is nearly impossible since Google doesn't really care to know. So you're left manually determining domains yourself and blocking them. But it's just wack-a-mole as they create new domains when enough sites block them. This isn't too surprising considering that the top link for a Google search for Firefox is a Google ad for an advertiser that will deliver Firefox via a downloader along with 8 different spyware/adware apps. My mom made that mistake last weekend. We would up reimaging her computer.

troels 13y ago
Just a thought: Couldn't advertisers collaborate on maintaining a blocklist, just like users do with adblockers? Does it already exist?
- JohnTHaller 13y ago
  I've considered it, but you'd have to manually update your domains list and you're limited to only 500 total.
cabalamat 13y ago
> the top link for a Google search for Firefox is a Google ad for an advertiser that will deliver Firefox via a downloader along with 8 different spyware/adware apps Is it? I get http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/new/ http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/new/
- JohnTHaller 13y ago
  It is here: http://imgur.com/gallery/NeSbeBM http://imgur.com/gallery/NeSbeBM