I know they allow scam adverts because it’s easy money, but why aren’t they held responsible for facilitating obvious scams? You open Edge, there’s 3 “Earn money quick” adverts. On Instagram, every 5 ads, one is a scam.
I’ve always hated advertising, but I hated it even more once I worked in advertising.
That being said, it’s unfair to advertisers. (ugh, I hate saying that, because it’s a slimy business, but this is the reality) Nobody has the time to thoroughly research EVERY business that wants to buy advertising. Also, there’s a fine line between scams and completely legal yet manipulative business.
Bill might be starting a legitimate small business and wants to advertise to get his first clients. There’s very little information available online and no reviews because he’s just starting out, but that could look like a fly by night scammer.
Joe owns a similar small business. He charges too much and he doesn’t do very good work. That’s not illegal, but people who use his services might feel like they got scammed.
Bob’s a piece of shit. He wants to take your money and give you nothing in return. He knows what an advertiser would look for to verify his legitimacy, and he makes a fake website full of fake reviews.
In this instance, the advertiser might refuse to sell to Bill, get sued for selling to Joe and spend money and time proving that he’s technically legit, and perhaps not even know that Bob’s a scammer until months after he’s taken the money and run.
Uhhh maybe they should find the time to do that then? How is “we don’t have the time” a valid excuse? Either hire more staff to do so, or sell fewer ads.
Unfortunately that would disproportionately impact small local businesses far more than large corporations.
How?
Because you know who General Electric is and it’s easy to verify they’re actually advertising with you and that they’re a legitimate company, Jim-Bob’s Auto Repair, not so much.
Oh yeah i see auto repair scam adverts all the time…?
Wait no, im seeing goddamn miracle cures for aging on youtube. Old guy literally saying itll make you 20 years old again.
Businesses exist to make profit, not to take care of you. Corporations will only care about your welfare to the extent that that creates profit for them or the laws require them to.
or the laws require them to.
I believe thats whats being suggested
Did you take the seconds to read the comment you’re replying to?
What the fuck are you talking about?
Well, it hurts the holy profit… also, you sound like a fucking communist!
Makes sense when you’re dealing with actual services or products, but I’ve yet to see a single “earn 200 per hour” ad that isn’t a scam or “legal” pyramid, those should be easy enough to block and ban, no?
I really try to caution people from accepting these “it’s too much to hold us accountable for” answers. If it’s too much, then cut back. Simple as that. If I am a real estate mogul and my building collapses like in Miami, do you think the local/state/federal agencies involved will shrug it off when I go “Now now now, I have far too many properties. I can’t possibly be expected to be in compliance all the time. A collapse and some deaths once in a while is inevitable”? Of course not, that would be ridiculous. Yet when youtube goes “we simply have too many uploads to screen it all,” we do just that!
Same goes here. If you’re juggling too many advertisers, why is that our problem? Hire more people, scale back, or figure out some third option. Instead we just internalize all this concept that “there’s nothing that can be done.”
Yeah. This is why we have things called regulations.
When seatbelts and crumple zones and airbags and crash safety ratings became a thing, car manufacturers didn’t want to add any of that crap in, because, you know, it would cut into their profit margins. And then the government said “do it or you’re not allowed to sell cars”. And then all the manufacturers did it.
Something similar can theoretically be done for advertising. But it probably won’t, because regulatory capture has been normalized.
nobody has time
Maybe be a good JOB CREATOR and create some motherfucking jobs to handle it. Oh no our bottom line… 😭
It’d be a terrible shame if advertising became more expensive (because they needed to employ connect checkers), and companies could no longer afford to advertise as much
Because citizens of many countries are not pressuring their elected officials to change advertising laws such that there is accountability, but companies are most certainly constantly lobbying for relaxed regulations.
It’s not often you can look to Brasil for policy guidance, so São Paulo’s ban on billboards/outside advertising is pretty remarkable in a number of ways. If they can rid a city of outdoor advertising, surely the world can get a few advertising oversight laws?
The downside is that you can’t just throw up your hands and say “Someone else should fix this! Why haven’t they?” and walk off. It’s a chore that takes time and energy from an already time and energy poor population, and I respect that there is a lot of broken shit in this world that needs fixing.
One best side effects of that “clean city” law is that building are clean to be used as canvases for artists to paint giant murals on them and now the city is know for its incredible street art.
Because they have unfathomably ridiculous amounts of money that they spend on lobbying (read: bribery) so that they stay not responsible.
Because to the tech industry, stuff like “basic accountability”, “selling things people actually want”, and “developing without limitless free capital” are all considered hate crimes.
Nah, the problem OP poses was also a major issue with TV ads, specially the kind of ads with that whole telemarketing, “buy now get 2 free, but wait there’s more, we’ll throw in these accessories all for” vibe. And radio, and magazines. A lot of snake oil and re-branded stuff was sold through it.
The real reason why accountability isn’t given to the platforms is because then the platforms would be less sustainable. And for the older media, that might have been fine still. But not so much the internet, which arguably, barely sustains itself on a gigantic ad-based bubble. It would be a death-throw for 99% of what we build and consume online. We just simply depend on ads THAT much.
I say they should try anyways. Absolutely. I do think the internet could benefit from having a lot more, smaller website, like before. We’re even popularizing the concept of interoperability again, like, man, we’re posting on Lemmy, a platform made to spread platforms. I think we’re closers to kill the ad dependency now than we ever been after the death of usenet.
I really want to set up my own message board, not necessarily a Lemmy instance - something simpler. Just to start dipping my toes in that world. Is there anything you would recommend as the “easiest” path to hosting my own little forum?
Easiest? I’d say WordPress on a Digital Ocean droplet if you’re going super small. Allow people to sign up and vet them, and you have a functional standalone platform pretty much as soon as you can get users. I don’t know that it would take off or have a sustainable userbase though
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Trillion dollar company, multibillion dollar company, trillion dollar company
And all 3 of them will point to the 1st amendment as prohibiting the government from regulating speech outside of a few very narrow circumstances.
One of which is fraud. So yeah, this argument holds no water. The only reason this shit is allowed is money. There’s money to be made by allowing it. And money to be lost in preventing it. The end.
Don’t know, i have an ad blocker and so should you.
“I don’t have a problem with what you presented, you should do what I do and forget about it”
Call me when your apathy solves a problem to someone else
Apathy? He installed a simple solution to the problem and is telling others to do so. That’s proactive lol
The problem: companies profit by advertising shit that’s barely legal
The solution: “install an adblock lol”
Explain to me how that solves the problem
“You don’t see the ads anymore”
Yet the company is still profitting and anyone without adblock still sees it. It’s the equivalent of closing your eyes to a problem.
Ok but realistically, what can you do right now? It’s not like you can only do one thing. In the immediate and personally-focused term, you can do an adblocker. If you want to change the world, you can do that too. But that’s not apathy. You’re just acting like promoting adblockers comes at the expense of meaningful change. That’s ridiculous.
You should’ve lead with that instead of just “use an adblock”, completely skirting the actual problem. The way you first commented was apathetic.
You’re just acting like promoting adblockers comes at the expense of meaningful change.
That would make sense if the discussion wasn’t targeted specifically at the responsible companies. It’s the same thing as saying “use Linux” whenever a complaint about windows shows up.
Just in case it’s not clear, the way you reply makes all the difference in how you’re interpreted. “I use adblock and so should you”
!=“these companies profit off it, it’s why everyone should use an adblock”
I know someone who works as a fraud support team of a bank. An incredibly high percentage of people getting scammed come from Facebook. Either they believed an ad about investing in crypto (the bank blocks the first transaction automatically and they have to talk to the client), or they have been contacted by… Zuckerberg, or Elon Musk, who told them they needed investors for an experiment that will be extremely lucrative… I can’t believe people fall for that one.
You guys see adds?
The websites (or at least Google & Facebook - not sure about Microsoft, it could just be low value ad space that nobody really wants?) you’ve described are known as “walled gardens” in advertising, meaning the DSP (demand side platform, where people who run ad campaigns manage those campaigns), SSP (supply-side platform, where websites & apps with available add space list that space) and at times the website itself are all part of the same company.
This creates a conflict of interest - essentially DSPs want to place as few ads as reasonable as they only want to advertise to people the ads will have an impact on. SSPs want to show as many ads as possible so they get paid more. This results in walled gardens, like Google & Facebook, showing ads more than they should be resulting in overcharging as a result compared to an optimally run campaign. Many reputable companies and ad agencies are aware of this and so advertise less with the walled gardens, resulting in proportionally higher scam ads, as no agency would run a campaign for them.
There’s also the fact that they have no relationships to maintain. If a DSP is constantly showing scam ads in the ad spaces they buy, then they’ll get blacklisted by the SSP. Same the other way around if the SSP keeps selling misrepresented ad spaces that will never be seen or will be resold every 5 seconds to the DSP, or otherwise not being a trustworthy partner to work with. As the walled gardens don’t need to maintain this relationship and there’s no risk of being blacklisted, they can effectively advertise whatever and put ads wherever on their website - they’re generally powerful enough that people will use their product anyway, so there’s no downside for them to accepting scam ads if they’re paying.
