Posted by iamflimflam1 10 hours ago
Just try to convince Google to remove "MapsQuest Driving Directions", a browser hijacking extension advertiser who clearly impersonates one of Google's competitors: It's an extremely high value scam targeting seniors (the folks who mostly look for MapQuest on... Google) and it makes them way too much money for them to stop it.
When we asked our reps, they dance around the question by saying they would "escalate to engineering" or some bs like that.
Google just makes far too much money to stop. My guess is that its >40% of AdX display revenue, based on the % of scam ads that come through ad manager.
Context: our site did ~$5m AdX revenue annually, mostly US audience. High CPM niche. This was ~7 years ago till 2 years ago when we sold the business, I would guess it's still happening based on ads I see browsing the internet.
There has to be a way to enforce positive identification, right?
Google already does this for Google play developers. I can't use a US credit card to pay for the USD 25 fee for a student on Bangladesh for example because I understand the payment method is one of the signals they use to make sure the student developer is a real person.
Is this something Google won't do on its own without being forced to act?
I was feeling very guilty last night as I was watching YouTube and getting 30s+ unskippable ad blocks every 10 minutes in some video. And the repetition and low quality were grating on me. I thought: being rich is never having to watch another ad. Why am I letting these ads own spaced repetition slots in my brain that could be filled with knowledge? Instead of learning, my mental energy is being taken up by psychological manipulation to purchase? The relentless repetition of the mind-numbing ad interspersed throughout otherwise educational content.
Being rich is owning the real-estate of my own mind. I sometimes feel like a digital serf in my own head.
See the headline of this article for Exhibit (I've actually run out of letters in the alphabet) why adblocking is a moral imperative.
Now, there may be another "why don't you just ..." or "well, actually ..." response you have queued up, maybe some ramblings about a pi hole, or some anti-Apple hate, or some other solutioneering. Go ahead, tell me.
But it is the structure of incentive that forces this. The YouTube creators that make the content do need to get paid. And Google offers an option: Youtube Premium. That give both me and the creator what we want and (for the time being) removes the ads.
So either one is rich in time (doing whatever "why don't you just ..." hoop you expect me to jump through) or rich in money.
I think about libraries and how the world would be if instead of a free public resource, you had to watch ads before you were allowed to take out a book.
It is just the case that in this modern social media world, if you want your ideas to spread you have to put them onto social media. And if I want access to those ideas I have to consume them through social media. There is nothing about that environment that is my choice, it is the environment that I find myself in.
And I have few choices to get around it. I can twist up into a pretzel trying to block the onslaught with more "why don't you just..." advice. Or I could pay to make it go away. Or I could just go off-grid and forego access.
And when you look close at the options, it becomes clear that sovereignty of my own mind has a price. Freedom of mind is not free in this modern world, if it ever really was.
You also have no obligation to watch ads for creators to get paid. They can also set up things like Patreon if they would like. The ads are very lucrative, and that's their choice. But you are free to make choices too, if you would like to.
Nope.
They may get paid, they may not. That's the risk they've chosen. They may also get their Google account banned with no recourse for something minor or even non-existent.
> So either one is rich in time (doing whatever "why don't you just ..." hoop you expect me to jump through) or rich in money.
That's what they want you to think, you've been watching too many ads.
That is an active choice, not forced in any way.
> The YouTube creators that make the content do need to get paid.
There are better ways, and we would all be better off except for the small group of greedheads benefiting from the chaos
The ad supported internet is dying. Good riddance
They're like Dr. Frankenstein, creating a monster and then just letting it roam the countryside. But worse, because they profit (immensely) from the chaos their monster wreaks.
It's not advertising anything, it's just a straight up scam exploit site. It uses exclusively stolen or fake accounts. The links are shown as "amazon.de" or similar but of course do not go there, no doubt just a bug X haven't gotten around to fixing just yet.
This is on the kind of level where if we had actual law enforcement for tech companies, the next time some X executive lands in Europe they would be in cuffs.
You don't have to be rich to avoid getting those ads. You can make them go away for ~$15 a month. If you can't afford that, you have bigger problems in your life than YouTube ads, and your first step towards fixing them is to spend less time watching YouTube.
I’ve reported these multiple times. They always get to the top of search results via paid placement, and Google always responds to the reports saying they found nothing wrong with them, even when provided with detailed evidence of the fraud.