Why aren't advertisers (Microsoft, Facebook, Google) held responsible for allowing scammy adverts?
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.
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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.
“Knowing who General Electric is” is not how verification is done. Small businesses can authorize a credit card, provide an official ID, submit their LLC info… these aren’t rocket science and scammers won’t do any of them. Do you know how many fields operate with licensing in place? Do you think inly GE-sized companies do plumbing, for example?
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.
Woudl you like to buy Doctor Binsemanns Bevertail extract? It cures cancer, aids, std's, headaches, stupid and much much more! Its even cheaper than insulin! Only $59.99 per 50ml
You mean like that? Been there, seen that, I know why I pay for kagi and YT Premium and have adblockers everywhere else.
That’s… not how due diligence works.
Spending more money on more staff for checking the validity of advertisements can affect small businesses more because they have less money.
You got turned around somewhere, we're talking about small businesses advertising through major platforms like google. Theres no "small business" online advertising platforms
Ahh ok. I guess I kinda got lost in the thread somewhere. Thanks for letting me know. Ignore my previous comment.
It's not just time and resources, they too are being lied to. If the scam is good enough that people will fall for it, some advertisers will as well.
Right now there are no regulations, so many don't care at all. That sucks, but the scammers are the problem here. They are the ones trying to rip you off. The ad companies might not care if you get screwed or not, but it's unrealistic for us to expect them to know EXACTLY what every client's intentions are. A business could run legitimately for years and then start running a scam. How long would we give the advertisers to realize that the client has started scamming people? Do they get in trouble because they ran ads for someone who would LATER start scamming people?
I'm all for discussing other ways to control advertising, but shooting the messenger isn't it.
I haven't and likely can't think of a good solution to handling the scenarios you're talking about. They are good questions that someone smarter than me should address. However, to use those scenarios to completely admonish advertising platforms for blatantly obvious scams is asinine. "Well, what if a legitimate business starts scamming people?" should have little relevancy to the question of "Should we accept this ad from a user advertising that they're going to double your money if you give them access to your financial accounts?"
I'm not saying it's simple or quick to solve, but there is very obvious low-hanging fruit that could be dealt with but is somehow not because these platforms aren't held accountable whatsoever. It has to start somewhere.
I agree completely. I just wanted to point out some of the difficulties in doing what was posted.
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.
I believe thats whats being suggested
Yes, I know. I also agree.
The comment I replied to, however, was not that. It asked why the corporations' reason is valid. It's valid because that's what the economic system is designed to promote.
While also complaining its not fair when we protect ourselves from the business they won't protect us from e.g. ad blockers.
Google going so far to invent "Web drm" to ensure we have no choice but allow them to serve us malicious ads that the won't filer themselves
Absolutely. There is an exchange of money involved in the advertising services, so it would be natural to expect a small fee for sanity-checking the advertisement. Facebook are mostly able to check for nudity, porn or gore in the advertisement, so with some additional inspection, it should be possible to weed out a lot of scams.
Well, it hurts the holy profit... also, you sound like a fucking communist!