[HN Gopher] YouTube doesn't want to take down scam ads
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YouTube doesn't want to take down scam ads
Author : Jakob-G
Score : 541 points
Date : 2023-12-12 12:47 UTC (10 hours ago)
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(TXT) w3m dump (old.reddit.com)
| marbu wrote:
| I reported about 5 such ads just this moth, all clear financial
| scams impersonating well known people and companies in Czech
| republic (where I live), only to be told that youtube checked my
| claim and that the add in question doesn't break any youtube
| policy.
|
| Obviously nothing is forcing Google to deal with this in any way.
| But I wonder how could that work out for Google in the long run.
| omega1 wrote:
| The same thing happened to me. Ads from Kazakhstan
| impersonating a Czech state-owned energy company etc. And
| almost every day there is an article in the news about how
| older people have been caught and lost their savings.
| zigzag312 wrote:
| So Google is then knowingly participating in financial scams?
| Looks like grounds for a lawsuit.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| Google is not alone in promoting such scams and being
| complicit of crime. The law doesn't apply to big companies
| though, so they can keep doing so and profiting off it.
| zigzag312 wrote:
| DMCA takedowns are proof that law applies to big companies
| too. Unfortunately, they only respond to lawsuits it seems.
|
| Victims of these scams should sue Google, Meta and any
| other big company knowingly participating in these kind of
| scams.
| YurgenJurgensen wrote:
| The more legitimate reasons for adblockers (such as "I don't
| want to risk falling for scams."), the worse their anti-
| adblocker efforts look.
| bitcharmer wrote:
| Seems like the only policy is that it makes money. If it does
| then everything's ok.
| throw310822 wrote:
| > Obviously nothing is forcing Google to deal with this in any
| way
|
| Really? I mean, they're getting paid by a scammer who uses
| provably fake and deceptive content to prey on its victims;
| they have been alerted to the situation, they claim they
| reviewed it, and that they think it's fine. What could go
| wrong?
| sys_64738 wrote:
| When you are an ad company then why would you reject the source
| of revenue?
| bArray wrote:
| Because your mega advertisers (Coca Cola, Disney, et al) are
| being played next to scam ads.
|
| Also I think this should be a two way street. If content
| creators need to moderate their content lest they be slapped to
| death by Youtube to help the advertisers, advertisers also have
| a responsibility to ensure their advertisements do not cause
| issue for content creators and/or viewers.
|
| It's unclear who currently runs Youtube, but they have been
| making bad decision after bad decision. Youtube is now
| extremely hostile which goes against the values it once held
| when it first grew.
| mc32 wrote:
| Yeah, I want to see them stop advertising on YouTube as a
| protest. I doubt it will happen. They only care about money
| and image, if image damages their money.
| ipython wrote:
| Perhaps then this is really Elon planting these ads after
| all, to bring advertisers back to Twitter. /s
| Euphorbium wrote:
| You have just a few big advertisers, but millons of scammers.
| Scammers can outspend big advertisers.
| bratwurst3000 wrote:
| That's a good question, does someone know what the
| percentage of big advertiser revenue to little advertiser
| revenue is with google services?
|
| Big advertiser beeing a top company like Coca Cola.
| bluGill wrote:
| Does big Cola advertise on youtube? I haven't seen their
| ads at all (but since I don't drink soda maybe their
| profiles worked and coke isn't wasting adds on me?). Most
| of the big advertising plays elsewhere don't seem to be
| on youtube.
| Ekaros wrote:
| I have working adblock so can't say, but this should
| certainly be the season for their traditional connection
| and image marketing... So if ads were to appear it should
| be now.
| bArray wrote:
| Not sure about Coca Cola specifically, but we are talking
| more generally about well-known big advertisers.
| bluGill wrote:
| Both. You can't listen to traditional radio for more than
| 20 minutes without hearing a McDonalds ad (at breakfast
| time). Drinks (both soft and hard), and cars are also big
| spenders on advertisements.
|
| I have seen a few ads for those things on YouTube, but it
| isn't as constant as other forms of media.
| notahacker wrote:
| Taking down individual scammers is almost cost free though,
| whereas Disney has _a_ lot more to spend
| michaelt wrote:
| * Risk of popular support for ad-blocking, because of all the
| scams.
|
| * Risk of regulators taking an interest, because it shows the
| ad industry can't self-regulate.
|
| * Risk of regulators taking an interest, because their voters
| are getting scammed.
|
| * Risk of regulators taking an interest, because celebrities
| complain.
|
| * Risk of regulators taking an interest, because deepfakes.
| octacat wrote:
| - ad-blocking - they are working on disabling ad-blockers,
| give it some time. You cannot block ads in the official apps.
| - regulators are slow, you can make money now. Probably even
| with regulations they would still make money from the scam
| ads.
| waysa wrote:
| Reputable companies generally don't want to advertise in an
| environment that could be damaging to their brands. This is why
| Google/YouTube created the "advertiser-friendly content
| guidelines". For the same reason a number of big brands pulled
| their X.com/Twitter ad campaigns.
| rchaud wrote:
| Ad companies usually don't own the broadcast network too.
|
| Garbage ads damage a brand. Google doesn't do anything because
| they think Youtube's goodwill will last forever. It won't.
| They've already ratcheted up the ads to a level where regular
| users are complaining.
| throw310822 wrote:
| Because it makes you an accomplice in a crime? I mean, it's not
| like these things slipped through the system: you were alerted
| to them, you took an action, you claim you reviewed them, and
| that you are fine with them. That is basically a statement that
| you are fine with being complicit in a scam.
| passwordoops wrote:
| They're all like that. A whole back I reported an obvious real
| estate scam using Wayne Gretzky and some Blue Jays player (I'm in
| Canada). The reply was it didn't break any policy.
|
| When ads are the primary source of revenue, there's zero
| incentive to police the platform
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| _> (I 'm in Canada) The reply was it didn't break any policy.
| When ads are the primary source of revenue, there's zero
| incentive to police the platform_
|
| TL;DR:
|
| If you're a major on-line ad distributor like Google/Meta, and
| broadcast malicious ads to consumers, then you should be liable
| for them according to local laws just how TV and radio
| broadcasters are liable for the same thing.
|
| Long argument:
|
| Sure those ads don't break Youtube/Google's own internal policy
| (why would they, they're an ad company reporting to their
| shareholders), but what about breaking the nation's/Canada's
| policy on ads? I bet there might be some fines there to be
| handed out. Hear me out.
|
| If such scams aren't legally allowed on licensed national TV
| and radio channels or printed media, otherwise the broadcasters
| and publishers would face crippling fines, then why do we as
| government agencies allow Youtube to get away with broadcasting
| these scams to its viewers?
|
| Sure, Youtube is not a licensed TV broadcaster but maybe we
| should start regulating them partly as such, similarly how the
| EU's Digital Markets Act aims to fix current major digital
| gatekeepers and make them as compliant as physical markets.
|
| I mean, one of the main reasons big-tech has reaped such insane
| profits is that the same regulations that apply to traditional
| physical businesses like brick and mortar markets and media
| broadcasters, did not apply to them because they operated on
| the unregulated Wild West that was the internet, while also
| extracting all the global profits that come from operating on
| such a global scale except with none of the costs assigned to
| local legal regulatory compliance that operating physical
| business have.
|
| So now it's time to patch these digital loopholes and have big-
| tech operating in the ad space just as accountable as the rest
| of the businesses, considering their size, outreach and
| therefore influence on the gen-pop. Google's not a scrappy
| start-up anymore, they can definitely afford to police the ads
| they serve according to the local laws, considering their size,
| workforce, ML tech and profits. Same with Meta and their ad
| network.
| cool_dude85 wrote:
| For what it's worth, I've noticed a proliferation of scam ads
| on the radio over the past few years. Go to this website and
| get free cash now kind of stuff.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| Where? In Europe I haven't heard any scams on radio.
| cool_dude85 wrote:
| In the US, Florida specifically.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| While I don't live in the US, my experience with
| advertising there while visiting Miami was pretty crazy
| to say the least.
|
| I heard it before when playing GTA Vice City on the in
| game radio and thought it's just satire, but no, it's
| actually pretty accurate. "Ask your doctor..."
| rolph wrote:
| this could just as easily been pirate, or legitimate
| broadcast. that would be a new take on scams, to use SDR to
| spoof a station, and broadcast scam materials as the big
| end of the funnel to a scam url.
| vannevar wrote:
| _If you 're a major on-line ad distributor like Google/Meta,
| and broadcast malicious ads to consumers..._
|
| It's actually worse than that. If they were neutrally
| broadcasting, they'd at least have the argument that they
| were conceptually just a common carrier providing a neutral
| conduit between advertisers and consumers. But they are
| actively selecting which ads to present to which consumers---
| with respect to scam ads, they are preferentially sending
| scams to the people they believe are most likely to fall for
| them, and profiting as a result. They are not neutral
| conduits, but active participants in the underlying fraud.
|
| Note that Section 230 only means they are not treated as a
| publisher or speaker of the fraudulent offer. That does not
| mean that they could not be held liable for an independent
| act in furtherance of the fraud, such as identifying
| vulnerable targets in collusion with the scammers and
| preferentially presenting the fraud to those targets.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| Indeed, you're right, I missed that. Big-tech's targeted
| advertising tech makes their scam ads way more dangerous to
| the targeted individuals, than similar scams broadcasted
| blindly to gen-pop on radio and TV.
|
| It's kind of like the difference between a WW2-era dumb
| bomb and a modern GPS & laser-guided smart bomb. Way more
| deadly at the same payload.
| epgui wrote:
| While I wholeheartedly agree with you, I suspect explaining
| that to an older judge would be difficult.
| MarkusQ wrote:
| Why? There are lots of examples of people who knowingly
| do things to aid and abet a primary criminal offense
| getting charged as accessories. Fences, bookies, pimps,
| pushers, shills, etc. This isn't a new pattern, and
| certainly wouldn't be a new idea to an older judge.
| ren_engineer wrote:
| between the scam ads and their war on adblock it really seems
| like Google is scraping for every penny they can
| ploum wrote:
| Well, that's the definition of a private company, isn't it?
|
| It would be naive to think a company could behave otherwise
| in the long term.
| iteratethis wrote:
| Yep, it's a high interest rate phenomenon. Investors want to
| see profitability.
|
| But it's also a problem unique to trillion dollar companies:
| finding growth. If you have a money printer of $280B per
| year, how do you find growth that moves the needle?
|
| For new product development, you'd need to launch a product
| that brings in revenue of say $20B, otherwise it's just not
| that interesting.
|
| Imagine how hard it is to launch a new product like that? If
| you'd have a billion users (which is absurdly hard for a new
| product), you'd then need to monetize them for $20 per year
| per user. In a saturated competitive environment where users
| don't want to pay.
|
| Hence, the more common strategy is to turn some dials on the
| existing money printer. Just increase ads.
|
| That's why FB's Metaverse bet wasn't crazy at all. You make
| $100B+, social media is stagnating, and you need a huge new
| revenue stream. They don't really exist. You have to go crazy
| on big bets.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > it's a high interest rate phenomenon
|
| Well, it's more of an interest rate change phenomenon.
|
| All companies are currently overvalued by absurd amounts,
| but the computer-related ones have it dialed a few dozen
| notches above "absurd". Things became this way because of
| the zero interest rate (and the expectation that it was
| permanent), but it's not sustainable anymore.
| vkou wrote:
| > All companies are currently overvalued by absurd
| amounts, but the computer-related ones have it dialed a
| few dozen notches above "absurd".
|
| Google's P/E is 25.6
|
| S&P 500 is at 24.59
|
| DJIA is at 26.35
|
| There are exactly 4 'computer' companies among the 30
| companies that make up the DJIA.
|
| If you're looking for overvalued, that would be Tesla at
| 70.3, or Amazon (Who reinvests aggressively) at 75.6.
| mr_mitm wrote:
| Why do they have to grow, though? Can't they just be
| profitable? They can just pay out dividends like coca cola,
| no?
| anonymousab wrote:
| A not terribly uncommon belief is that continuous growth
| (pick your metric) is the raison d'etre of all entities
| operating in a capitalist society, and so achieving and
| maintaining some high level of profitability and then
| staying there means that you and your company are failing
| to do their job.
|
| But "growth" is a moving and indulgent target. For some,
| increasing profits isn't the growth that matters. Rather,
| increasing the rate at which profits are increasing is
| the true metric. So even vastly increased profits can
| still be a form of failure that requires more actions be
| taken to wring more money out of the platform and its
| users.
| PeterisP wrote:
| A stable company that pays out their profits as dividends
| is reasonably valued at some x _profits.
|
| A company that reinvests these profits in things which
| investors believe will result in growth is valued
| x_future_profits, which is much larger - so if the
| leadership of a 'growth company' would announce that
| they're now a 'stable company' just paying out dividends,
| they would destroy most of the stock value of their
| investors, and would be considered an absolute failure of
| that leadership, since everyone involved has a strong
| incentive to replace them with someone who can make it
| (at least in the eyes of public) a 'growth company'
| again, doubling or tripling its value for the same
| revenue.
| bluGill wrote:
| There is incentive, but they don't realize it. I know that
| online ads are often enough scams, so I won't buy anything from
| those ads. I do have to take effort to ensure that they don't
| effect me anyway (hint from basic psychology: they do, but I
| can make that effect less). If they did some work to ensure ads
| were not scams - I've seen ads for a number of interesting
| things that I intentionally did not buy because odds it was a
| scam was too high.
| Takennickname wrote:
| You are almost irrelevant to the conversation. The scammers
| only need 100 people to believe them from the potentially
| millions of people who view their ad to make it profitable.
|
| You are not grasping the scale of the matter.
| ivanbakel wrote:
| You're missing the GP's point. They're claiming that scam
| ads pollute the ad marketplace and drive away engagement.
| Why click on an ad, or even pay attention to it, if there's
| a good chance it's a scam? And why would advertisers pay
| for ads if consumers are not engaging with them?
|
| Thus, Google has an incentive to keep the ad space free of
| scams - it makes Google users more valuable to advertisers.
| onion2k wrote:
| Maybe the fact Google doesn't police Ads is a signal that
| advertising isn't as lucrative as it once was...
| TremendousJudge wrote:
| GPs argument is the opposite of this: it's not about the
| scammers, but about the legit brands. The same way Pepsi
| doesn't want to get their ads shown over somebody
| discussing STDs or something of the sort, they probably
| also don't want to get their ads shown next to scams, since
| it makes the product kinda seem like a scam by association.
| IggleSniggle wrote:
| It also increases the cost of the ad, though, by
| introducing more buyer competition for the available
| slot. And a higher cost per available slot is good for
| the seller AND for the middlemen involved in the
| transaction.
| bluGill wrote:
| Does it increase the cost of the ad? Or does it decrease
| the cost of ads because the larger number of legitimate
| products don't want to be there and so are not buying ads
| at all.
| IggleSniggle wrote:
| It increases the cost in the short term, and potentially
| decreases the cost in the longer term.
| InsomniacL wrote:
| > I know that online ads are often enough scams, so I won't
| buy anything from those ads.
|
| I'm exactly the same. I will try to go directly to websites
| instead of clicking on adds from search results to avoid the
| PPC charge too.
| staunton wrote:
| Most people believe they themselves cannot be influenced by
| ads "at all". If they were right, nobody would bother making
| ads.
| tremon wrote:
| And you can prove this, how?
|
| If the people making ads can be influenced by ads, why
| would they ever stop making them? It works for them,
| doesn't it?
| AshamedCaptain wrote:
| Supposedly all these metrics like "conversions" measure
| the amount of people convinced by ads.
|
| But there's also the rumor floating around that all of
| these metrics are just hugely inflated, that these modern
| ads have in truth rates so miserable that a plain old
| billboard in the middle of nowhere would serve
| advertisers better, and that therefore the "modern WWW"
| is built on a foundation of lies, exagerations, and fake
| statistics.
|
| Choose your poison.
| bluGill wrote:
| Conversion is a great metric if an immediate purchase
| your goal, but that is only rarely the correct goal. When
| something else is the goal it is much harder to measure.
|
| Most ads are about a future purchase. They need to
| measure not did you buy now from this ad, but did all the
| ads you saw across all platforms (YouTube, Facebook,
| radio, tv, billboards) make enough of a difference in
| your buying habits when you finally buy. This is hard to
| measure, but it is more important. Most people are not
| buying now from an ad, they are buying in the future.
|
| Sometimes ads are about an image. Even if you cannot
| afford some luxury good, they may want to advertise so
| that you recognize it on someone else and think "that is
| a rich person".
| sumtechguy wrote:
| My brain still has advertising campaigns from 40+ years go
| in my head. That junk sticks.
| bluGill wrote:
| which is why I said I take steps to avoid the influence,
| but not that I'm not influenced.
| cardosof wrote:
| >The reply was it didn't break any policy.
|
| What is the policy, as long as you pay and don't do anything
| outright offensive, it's all fair game?
| sligor wrote:
| The problem is that big companies don't want to broadcast
| their serious ad along scam ads1. That is a serious treat for
| Youtube revenues.
|
| 1 At least I wouldn't if I was doing ad campaigns of a big
| company, but maybe I'm naive...
| bluGill wrote:
| The scams are a risk for some lawyer in some country suing
| YouTube. They bring in a lot of money now so YouTube is not
| interesting in policing them, but they are a risk that they
| will suddenly go away for legal reasons. which is why I
| don't understand why YouTube doesn't police them now -
| between the potential loss in court and the big companies
| staying away there is a lot of risk to YouTube.
|
| Note too that if YouTube would police scam ads better they
| would have a better message to various countries that laws
| and legal action is not needed at all. Right now I'm
| shocked the EU hasn't put in place harsh laws about ads -
| if YouTube would police their own ads they could have a
| slightly less harsh policy in place and thus make it not
| worth while for the EU to pass the harsh law they don't
| like.
| ForkMeOnTinder wrote:
| It's even worse: the incentive is to police the creators, not
| the advertisers. Youtube will bend over backwards for
| advertisers whose "brand safety" team doesn't want their
| product to appear next to a swear word, and
| demonetize/strike/etc those creators. But the ad content itself
| isn't policed nearly as relentlessly.
| TazeTSchnitzel wrote:
| You'd think that creators making people want to use the site
| would be important, but unfortunately YouTube is a monopoly
| and is addictive, so content is more or less fungible from
| Google's perspective. If you aren't viewing ads on creator
| A's content, you'll probably be viewing them on creator B's
| content instead. It's not like other streaming services where
| there is real competition and losing particular content would
| make people go to competitors.
| dspillett wrote:
| _> You 'd think that creators making people want to use the
| site would be important_
|
| YouTube's audience size and advertising metrics have long
| since gone through the point where individual creators or
| groups of them matter little. If a creator walks off the
| platform there are more who will fill the place, in search
| of potential monetisation, so youtube will still have
| somewhere to hang adverts off. An advertiser leaving is
| harder to replace than a content provider.
|
| eBay has a similar flip some years ago: they realised that
| there was more value caring for buyers needs than sellers:
| sellers swarm in attracted by the number of buyers and are
| difficult to put off for long as there are often few other
| options, buyers need to feel safe to hand around.
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| It's quite obvious they either have advertiser problems
| or their ad serving algorithm sucks.
|
| I get so many repeats in stuff I'm not interested in at
| all, and completely unrelated to what I watch.
|
| I don't know if it's a matter of those ads bidding the
| highest or what. But YouTube's ability to show something
| I'm interested in is worse than even what the daytime TV
| ads were back in the day.
| mikrotikker wrote:
| That's kinda good it means whatever privacy steps you're
| taking are working
| ben_w wrote:
| I wouldn't buy ads on any of the major platforms.
|
| Twitter (when I downloaded my info, they were still
| called that) classified me as speaking three languages I
| know zero words of, and as having interests in several
| sports (I care for none); my YouTube ad experience is
| like yours; my Facebook experience today was about
| renouncing my US citizenship (I'm a British national);
| the Instagram ads are only marginally less bad -- I do
| find myself liking them, _but I have no idea what they
| 're selling because what I get shown are all uplifting
| landscapes or cute animals with no sales pitch_.
|
| Edit: also, a friend of mine was just playing a game,
| advert popped up in a language neither of us could read.
| I had to open Google Translate just to find out it was
| Romanian and which button was "close" (and also to
| discover that it was an ad for "easy and fast
| international payments"?)
| bambax wrote:
| > _YouTube is a monopoly and is addictive_
|
| Youtube is indeed a monopoly -- but it's not actually
| addictive. Since they started this war against adblockers I
| have found that I can perfectly live without it.
|
| When I absolutely would like to watch an informative video
| (for example, about how to fix something on my bike, etc.),
| I first try to open the video in a private window (with
| ublock on); if that also doesn't work I try to use yt-dlp.
|
| But I have completely stopped mindlessly watching videos
| that are not the result of a search.
|
| There's nothing necessary about youtube.
| KMnO4 wrote:
| > _but it 's not actually addictive_
|
| Youtube is definitely addictive to a large population of
| people. If you can live without it, the only thing we can
| infer is that it's not addictive _to you_.
| BobaFloutist wrote:
| Maybe it's habit-forming but not addictive?
| reactordev wrote:
| This is a more scientifically accurate description. It's
| not addictive in the sense that your brain craves it's
| chemicals but it definitely is habit-forming, watching
| video after video after video on electric motors and
| their construction has sent me down rabbit holes.
| Software topics, talks, how to's, engineering channels,
| gaming drivel, it's definitely a habit.
| rurp wrote:
| Being addictive doesn't mean that that literally everyone
| who uses it will become addicted. Most people who use
| alcohol, or pain killers, or gamble can stop without much
| trouble; that doesn't mean that there aren't a subset of
| users who get dangerously addicted.
|
| It's great that you're in the majority of people who
| aren't addicted to Youtube, but that doesn't mean
| everyone has the same experience that you do.
| bambax wrote:
| > _Being addictive doesn 't mean that that literally
| everyone who uses it will become addicted_
|
| Not everyone, sure, but a majority. People can get
| addicted to anything; yet we don't just call any activity
| addictive -- only those where most people have a hard
| time controlling their behavior.
|
| I don't think watching youtube qualifies (not just being
| on your phone, or watching tv).
| vkou wrote:
| > You'd think that creators making people want to use the
| site would be important,
|
| The economics of supply and demand disagree with you.
|
| A lot more people want to be creators, than there is money
| in the ecosystem to support them.
|
| If you want to hold platforms responsible for scams being
| advertised on them, you're going to need to rewrite a _lot_
| of law.
| fallingknife wrote:
| In the Youtube economic model the advertisers are the
| customer and the creators are the vendors (the viewer is the
| product), so that actually makes sense and isn't really any
| different from any other business. The customer is king, and
| if a vendor pisses off a customer, that vendor is gone.
| anticensor wrote:
| Viewers are actually feudalistic subjects that are taxed
| and employed for free or litkle.
| mrweasel wrote:
| I do wonder, clearly there is a perverse incentive for
| YouTube to be less strict with ads, but is it also a question
| of availability? I've been paying for YouTube Premium, so
| haven't seen ads in a while, but before that I noticed that
| there was almost no variety in the ads. You just got the same
| three or four ads on repeat.
|
| What I'm wondering is: Does YouTube not have enough quality
| advertisers? You'd think they'd turn away the scammers,
| because actual business doesn't want to be on the same
| platform as some shady "buy/sell gold" or similar. If they
| don't, is that because there's no money, or not enough honest
| business buying ads in a sufficient amount? Or is it that
| YouTube just makes more on the scams?
| rollcat wrote:
| True, and it's so ironic when the situation reverses...
|
| Of the ads that recently slipped through my adblockers, one
| was a xenophobic piece of Hungarian propaganda against
| illegal immigrants. It was shown in the middle of a Minecraft
| video (a game without binary gender); that was made by a
| disabled person; to people living in a city where ~50% of the
| population was born elsewhere. Google _does_ have all of that
| context, and yet this is what their ad selection algorithm
| picks.
|
| This is one among many reasons why I have absolutely zero
| moral reservations about blocking YouTube ads. (inb4 ad
| money: I do support creators directly, as my budget allows.)
| kmeisthax wrote:
| Google doesn't care about the context, they care about who
| pays the most for the ad. Hungarian fascists have deep
| pockets[0] and are willing to spend shittons of money to
| make you watch lies about immigrants[1]. Most of that money
| _is_ wasted, but if they can radicalize even one out of a
| million viewers, they won. So they pay loads for it.
|
| Yes, this is the same math that scammers run on - because
| fascism is a scam category, alongside advanced-fee fraud,
| refund scammers, and fake tech support companies. Your
| grandpa thinks the immigrants are invading the country for
| the same reason he thinks he needs to wire $10,000 to the
| 'bank' of a Nigerian 'prince'.
|
| also
|
| > It was shown in the middle of a Minecraft video (a game
| without binary gender)
|
| For the same reasons as above, the creator of Minecraft
| went from "I don't want gender in my game" to "all women
| are evil", because he isolated himself in an LA mansion and
| read nothing but Twitter. He also had a girlfriend he broke
| up with. This makes you vulnerable to being fed bullshit
| that agrees with you - in the same way that expecting a UPS
| package might make you vulnerable to clicking a fake UPS
| text that steals your login info. Either that, or Notch was
| a trans inclusive radical misogynist[2] the whole time!
|
| Now, let's say you're a scammer. Your 1-in-a-million odds
| _suck_ - but what if you could pay more money to find more
| vulnerable people to send texts to? Like, even if you went
| from paying $1 CPM[3] for 1-in-a-million odds to $10 CPM
| for 1-in-ten-thousand, which is mathematically identical,
| you still get an advantage because less people can see what
| you 're trying to steal. Targeted advertising lets you do
| this[4], and for unrelated reasons, legitimate advertisers
| will pay more to target their ads to a smaller but more
| lucrative cohort as well. So Google inherently makes more
| money the more they build out tools for scammers to do
| their scamming.
|
| You are perfectly in the right to block ads. I pay for
| YouTube Premium but I won't yell at anyone who uses uBlock
| Origin.
|
| [0] To be clear, we don't know exactly where the money
| comes from, though I can guess either Russia or Saudi
| Arabia
|
| [1] The core irony of fascism is that the most efficient
| way to demonize the other is to point out that the other
| also has a fascist wing. e.g. in America, Christofascists
| yell and scream that we need a Muslim ban to keep
| Islamofascist terrorists out.
|
| [2] See also: James Somerton
|
| [3] Cost per French thousand
|
| [4] If you read between the lines I'm accusing Google for
| the last decade of democratic backsliding.
| kazinator wrote:
| Youtube puts ads for investment funds in the middle of
| videos for three-year-olds.
| phatskat wrote:
| A channel I follow does ad reads in the middle of the show,
| and as such had to say "Say-bay-Day" when advertising a CBD
| product because YT would demonetize the video if they just
| pronounced it as one would pronounce "See-Bee-Dee".
|
| It's wild that they couldn't advertise a sponsor but YT
| allows scam ads to roll before their videos
| dspillett wrote:
| _> They 're all like that._
|
| Yep. I stopped bothering to report obvious scams on Facebook as
| any response I got was they didn't breach any standards (for
| others I got no response at all), yet I've had a comment
| removed because calling someone a numbskull was unduly
| rude/aggressive/whatever (I forget the exact complaint given).
|
| For a while I added comments details why it was so obvious the
| scam posts were scams, but this has little effect as my comment
| would be quickly drowned out by the many "I got mine OK!" and
| "thanks!" comments that are presumably placed by compromised
| accounts. It also backfires: commenting, even to point out the
| scammyness, is interaction - that interaction tells the
| recommendation algorithms that I might want to see more of that
| sort of thing or worse that my friends/family would also.
| mavamaarten wrote:
| For Facebook though, I understand why they want the scammers
| to continue using their platform. Every scammer that uses
| facebook is an active user, which is a KPI they very much
| want to keep high.
| mywacaday wrote:
| When the Irish Tanaiste (US VP equivalent) and former Taoiseach
| (President equivalent) has to go to court and looses when he
| tries to find out from google who is advertising using his
| identity you know the whole think is a sham that has to be
| protected at all costs, https://www.irishtimes.com/crime-
| law/courts/2023/12/06/tanai...
| klvino wrote:
| In contrast. A third party created a bogus profile of a
| global brand and began releasing unfavorable content as
| though they were the brand. The global brand leveraged their
| relationship with Google to shutdown the profile (which could
| be labeled as satirical). Google went on to provide the
| private account and contact info of the third party posting.
| It was discovered the third-party was a subcontractor/vendor
| to the global brand. The global brand shut down all work with
| the party and had them black-balled in their industry.
|
| The Irish gov't wasn't spending enough ad dollars for Google
| to care.
| smcin wrote:
| Does either of you have a link, or screenshot? Hard to tell
| otherwise whether it was a scam ad promoting financial
| products online, or satire (that sounds dubious), or both.
| tremon wrote:
| I'm sorry, but this is unparseable to me. Who did what now?
| idlephysicist wrote:
| > has to go to court and looses[sic] when he tries to find
| out from google who is advertising using his identity
|
| I believe from the article that you linked that the case is
| still before the High Court and so he has not lost yet.
|
| I wonder would the case have been better made as an instance
| of identity theft?
|
| Also while you are accurate in saying that the Tanaiste is
| equivalent to the Vice President in U.S. terms, because they
| are the deputy head of government. The same being true with
| respect to Taoiseach. I would like to point out that they are
| not the same positions. While the U.S. President is commander
| in chief of the U.S. military, the Taoiseach is not the
| command in chief in Ireland - that falls to the Uachtaran
| (the President).
|
| Tanaiste = Deputy Prime Minister
|
| Taoiseach = Prime Minister
|
| Uachtaran = President
| lp0_on_fire wrote:
| > When ads are the primary source of revenue, there's zero
| incentive to police the platform
|
| And with the promise of impressions (or whatever the equivalent
| of eyeballs is nowadays) there's little incentive to police the
| platform for bots.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| But then, it there is no incentive to police the platform,
| there should be sexual content in ads, and yet, I don't even
| remember seeing ads for vibrators or other "soft" adult stuff.
| I don't remember seeing ads for weapons either. There are
| scams, but not many obvious counterfeits.
|
| To be fair, I block ads, so I don't see many, but the few times
| I don't have them blocked, they are usually the kind you see on
| TV: big brand products, blockbuster video games, etc... with
| the very occasional scam and maybe a few of these fake games.
| But nothing like what you get on shady sites like porn,
| torrents, etc... and email spam.
| BobaFloutist wrote:
| There are ads for sports betting though, which is absolutely
| "adult", it's just less likely to trigger culture-war
| arguments.
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| There was a time before people called websites "platforms". A
| time before gigantic websites full of thousands of other
| people's uploaded files, where the websites are used for
| surveillance and advertising delivery. The operators of these
| mega websites, posing as so-called "tech" companies, argue they
| are providing a valuable "service" to web users, valued at a
| price of zero dollars. Truly they are only interested in
| providing a service to advertisers. If advertisers stop paying,
| the operators will be forced to scale back the surveillance as
| it's too expensive to host peoples' files for free. If people
| are paying for their own hosting, like they pay for internet
| access, then third party websites cannot claim ownership to
| access logs for peoples' files and other metadata that is
| useful for advertising.
| ChadNauseam wrote:
| If they were only providing a service to the advertisers, why
| would non-advertisers use their site, and even sit through
| ads?
| Wool2662 wrote:
| Because they have enough money and data now to just
| obliterate any kind of serious competition. They only need
| to keep providing minimal value to actual users. That's
| why.
| givemeethekeys wrote:
| They definitely police the platform. They make sure that anyone
| who uploads content that threatens ad revenue is appropriately
| disciplined.
| themaninthedark wrote:
| I wonder about the legality of the ads that say to go to a
| website to sign up for government money.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| I remember seeing some ads that looked really scammy about
| getting free medical equipment from Medicare on OTA television
| for years.
|
| Years later, it turned out I was right.
|
| If you called those folks they'd patch you through to a
| dishonest doctor who would write you a prescription for
| something like a back brace, even if you didn't need it. If you
| did need some kind of medical equipment later you might find
| you couldn't get it paid for because you already got the
| benefit.
|
| I wonder if ubiquitous exposure to that kind of crap has
| political implications.
|
| That is, you see a scam on TV several times a day that is
| clearly a scam but the people who run the TV station don't see
| it is a scam, bureaucrats don't see it is a scam, politicians
| don't see a scam. Politicians seem out so out of it that they
| launch their campaign with something that sounds just like a
| spam phone call.
|
| OTA stations in most dayparts in Syracuse almost exclusively
| run ads for things you don't pay for with your own money:
| personal injury lawyers, prescription drugs, and things you can
| get with government benefits. You do see an ad for a car dealer
| from time to time because if nobody bought cars you couldn't
| get hit by a car to call William Matar.
|
| I wonder if watching that crap turns people into Republicans.
| DeathArrow wrote:
| My ad blocker defends me from YouTube scams. :)
| ebiester wrote:
| This isn't about us. This is about the systemic problem and its
| relation to our industry.
| l33tman wrote:
| Same experience for me, reported several clear scam ads and just
| get a reply from G that they don't violate any policies... :/
| bluGill wrote:
| Next step is your local attorney general. (or whatever the
| equivalent position is in your company). They should be able to
| find plenty of things that have long been illegal about
| promoting scams. Of course will they do their job?
| rchaud wrote:
| One man's "politician doing their job" is another man's
| "strangling innovation with bureaucratic red tape".
| mandmandam wrote:
| Fifty families' "politician doing their job" is one man's
| "strangling innovation with bureaucratic red tape", and
| even that one man knows he's full of shit.
|
| But when that one man represent a hundred-billion dollar
| company, attorneys general seem to get very confused as to
| where their loyalty lies. It's unfortunate for the fifty
| families (and quite lucrative for the AGs and GGLs).
| sonicanatidae wrote:
| Wait...a Corporation, who's entire revenue stream is generated
| from ads, doesn't care who their ads harm, as long as they make
| money.
|
| Shocking.. truly shocking.
| darkerside wrote:
| You realize normalizing this with comments like that is what
| makes it not shocking? Self fulfilling prophecy
| bratwurst3000 wrote:
| Parent isnt normalizing it's already the norm and politicians
| don't rly care. That's why we have to change normality ;)
| sonicanatidae wrote:
| I wouldn't call sarcasm normalization of shitty practices,
| but ok.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| Sarcasm is just a way of phrasing things. Sarcastic
| comments can make almost all the same arguments that non-
| sarcastic comments can.
|
| If sarcasm makes fun of not expecting something, then it's
| normalizing that thing.
| epgui wrote:
| Talk about a great example of David Hume's "is-ought problem".
| sonicanatidae wrote:
| We're really delving into sophistry now?
|
| Hume argued the fine lines between logical vs analytical
| derivatives and while he had a firm stance, others didn't and
| still don't agree wholly.
|
| Let's take his claim that reason does not stir emotions
| enough to cause moral actions. That's great and arguable, but
| why then would he immediately move to, reason can only excite
| our emotions if it informs us about the world. That's a
| blatant and obvious contradiction.
|
| His thinking leads to scenarios like his example of willful
| murder. According to him, the sole reason it's bad is our
| personal disapproval of it.
| epgui wrote:
| The point I'm making is that evidence of "how the world is"
| has no bearing on "how the world should be".
|
| Facts don't give rise to values, the two are independent.
| realusername wrote:
| That's the truth Google doesn't want you to say because it hurts
| their business, less than half of the ads I see on YouTube are
| legal. They know about this and just keep the money.
|
| And that's just the straight up illegal ones, if we also count
| the questionable ones, the share is higher.
| bschne wrote:
| Ironically Twitter/X, for all its recent criticism, comes out
| ahead on this stuff: at least there they get community notes
| saying it's a scam fairly quickly
| albedoa wrote:
| You cannot be serious. It is a daily meme that Twitter ads are
| all scams now because all of the legitimate advertisers are
| leaving. That's why it is an _interesting_ , news-worthy event
| when a community note is attached to an ad.
| bschne wrote:
| I am serious! In an ideal world, Twitter/X would have more
| legitimate advertisers to keep the platform running, and also
| would have adequate content moderation that quickly got rid
| of the scams, through some combination of tech and human
| oversight. They are, and I am not debating that, doing pretty
| badly at that currently -- I get a few of the scam ads daily,
| ranging from misleading freemium games (sketchy) to sites
| faking local news publications and public figures to
| advertise financial scams (downright criminal fraud wherever
| you decide to draw that line).
|
| But, looked at separately, allowing users to put notes under
| paid-for (!) ads pointing out issues with them is pretty
| remarkable. Tech gets a lot of flak for bowing to advertisers
| in the name of $$$, but here it is the users who have some
| power to set misleading ads straight, with zero influence by
| the advertiser in question. That is laudable, even if in an
| ideal world this would be unnecessary, or at least less load-
| bearing in terms of preventing fraud!
| epstein wrote:
| google is from capitalist country, as long as they get money they
| just dont care
| NietTim wrote:
| Youtube just doesn't care. It took them over 3 months to take
| down ads that used video of forced confessions of Belarusian
| protestors.
|
| Money, money, money.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| There's not just the scam ads but also fake livestreams,
| sometimes on hijacked channels with large numbers of subscribers.
| Earlier this year there was a big wave of fake "Tesla" channels
| prompting people to scan a QR code that led them to some malware
| infested site trying to steal crypto from them. It went on for
| weeks.
|
| There needs to be accountability for platforms at some point.
| It's ludicrous that a company with the resources of Youtube can
| just ignore that much literal fraud.
| petee wrote:
| Of the maybe 300 ads I've reported, I've only been confident that
| the one selling the real ghostgun was taken down, but the rest I
| usually see again in short order
| anilakar wrote:
| ...nor scammy AI generated videos. This morning I came across a
| bit clickbaity and alarmist netsec video in my feed. Watched it
| for a minute before I started to wonder why the otherwise
| completely natural voice said "asterisk" between all sentences.
| Then I realized it was narrating a markdown bullet list.
| neop1x wrote:
| The amount of fake and useless generated videos exploded after
| Google removed dislike numbers.
| calmworm wrote:
| This isn't news... Facebook won't remove any scam ad, post, or
| account either. They just don't care.
| supermatt wrote:
| A while ago I reported a video of a cat being blended in a
| blender on Facebook. Apparently that didn't go against their
| policy either.
| cultureswitch wrote:
| Arguably that won't cause as much damage as scams. But holy
| bad taste
| notahacker wrote:
| IIRC the worst example of this was Facebook declining to remove
| a reported scam ad featuring Martin Lewis (a well-known
| consumer advice guru in the UK, and an honest one) who had
| already launched a lawsuit against them for permitting scam ads
| using his image and secured a settlement where Facebook donated
| PS3m to charity and promised to do better.
|
| Which is probably a good example of Hanlon's law, because it's
| really in the interests of Facebook for their vetters dealing
| with reported ads to know who the guy that has the resources
| and inclination to sue them again when his likeness appears in
| ads on their platform, no matter how cynical their general
| policy on ad acceptance is.
| segphault wrote:
| I routinely see ads for fake medical treatments that they refuse
| to take these down when I report them despite the fact that the
| ads obviously violate Google's policies. So many of the ads on
| YouTube are for things that are obviously sketchy that when I see
| a new product I'm not familiar with for the first time in YouTube
| ad I just assume it is a scam.
|
| It's crazy because YouTube has probably more information about
| the sort of products that I actually want to buy than probably
| any other company besides Shopify. About a quarter of what I
| watch are literally just product reviews. They have a ton of
| high-intent purchasing signal for reputable products, and instead
| they are showing me ads for trash. I know it doesn't have to be
| this way, because Instagram somehow manages to show me highly
| relevant ads for stuff that I've actually gone on to purchase
| after discovering there.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| > They have a ton of high-intent purchasing signal for
| reputable products, and instead they are showing me ads for
| trash.
|
| This shouldn't be surprising. Ad placement is based on who pays
| to be placed in front of certain audiences. It doesn't matter
| if you're really into hi-fi amplifiers if no hi-fi company
| placed ads for that audience segment or if the hi-fi companies
| were outspent by boner pill salesmen.
|
| Google is not optimizing for relevance but for revenue.
| I_Am_Nous wrote:
| All the more reason for me to block ads. If relevance were
| the optimizing metric, I might see ads for things I'm truly
| interested in, but if YouTube is only showing me the highest
| paying ads and it doesn't care how relevant those ads are to
| me, they are just noise I need to ignore or block.
|
| Especially when they are mostly scams and trash paying to be
| in front of my eyeballs. I have no desire or obligation to be
| propagandized, tricked, or misled by bad ads just so I can
| watch a video I actually am interested in.
| delecti wrote:
| > despite the fact that the ads obviously violate Google's
| policies
|
| There's no contradiction here. Google's policies exist
| primarily in service of keeping their platforms safe for
| advertisers. The ads aren't placed on _other_ ads though, so
| there 's no reason for them to stress much about maintaining
| the same quality in their ads as the content being monetized.
|
| As for targeting, they're just optimizing for CPM. If
| advertisers for scammy junk pay more than advertisers for
| things you might like to buy, then you get what you see now.
| There's always another mark for the scams.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Your ad could follow another ad which might be scammy. If the
| concerns about an ad appearing next to controversial content
| that they do not want to be associated with is legit, then
| why would that not be a concern for following scammy ads as
| well?
| hotpotamus wrote:
| I literally saw an ad that was telling me than an average penis
| is too small to please my partner. I watched just long enough
| to confirm that was the message because I could not believe it
| was that blatant, so I assume the pitch coming was some sort of
| penis enlargement scam, but I just couldn't watch farther. I
| don't have any real insecurity in that area, but I can imagine
| that in my younger days it could have been effective, and I
| imagine that it can be extremely effective on many men.
|
| Google has come quite a long way from "don't be evil".
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| Product reviews are useless these days. Every single one they
| give a glowing review because there is this fear of alienating
| the manufacturer and not getting future product to review. I
| haven't seen an actual critical review in years probably. They
| are all these ads with a layer of separation to fool you.
| freeAgent wrote:
| Yeah, it used to be bad enough. Now it's terrible. Almost no
| reviews can be trusted now because the market power of
| reviewers has been eroded to the point where producers can
| and do treat any individual reviewer, and all of them in
| aggregate, as extensions of their own marketing departments.
| The powerless "reviewers" let this happen because if they go
| against the grain, they'll be blacklisted and become even
| more irrelevant. I'm extremely selective these days about
| whose advice I place any trust in. I've found that I
| frequently wait on new products until they e been in real
| people's hands for a bit and then search for their
| complaints.
| matteoraso wrote:
| I've gotten a few ones that told me that vision problems have
| nothing to do with your eyes. It said that the problem was
| entirely neurological, and if you keep trying to hide from the
| issue by wearing glasses, your family would put you in a
| nursing home. No, I'm not kidding. The "cure" they were selling
| was some sort of vitamin, which was certainly untested and
| unregulated. Truly awful stuff.
| Sanzig wrote:
| It may be extreme, but I think we need to pass legislation to
| make advertising networks civilly liable for fraud facilitated by
| their services. Google will change its tune quickly when it's
| their wallet on the line. As a bonus, this also provides a
| restitution path for victims (most of these frauds are run
| overseas, so the perpetrators are out of reach of the justice
| system).
| graphe wrote:
| AdBlock tried gently with "acceptable ads".
| https://getadblock.com/en/acceptable-ads-faq/
|
| I don't mind the antagonistic method today since I will NEVER
| accept the idea that an ad is acceptable. The law you propose
| would help weaken advertising and that would make me happy.
| Apple killing targeted ads also made it worst.
|
| Sports gambling also makes the environment worst.
| wredue wrote:
| Google would respond by removing your country from using
| YouTube.
|
| Then it would be up to your country to call their bluff. Who
| know whether they would or not. Google held out for longer than
| I thought they would on the Canada link laws. Ultimately,
| Google would give in and reopen YouTube, but how long would it
| take and would people give up YouTube for several months while
| wait for governments to battle Google facilitating fraud?
| bluGill wrote:
| As importantly, would peertube (or others) grow enough?
| Content is the biggest problem I have with peertube, so if
| Canada was forced out of youtube content providers might jump
| to peertube in large enough numbers that I can as well.
| ak_111 wrote:
| I keep getting an ad which claims to be the "Tesla of heaters" it
| even shows the tesla logo when they say this. If anything I am
| surprised that Elon is not suing them (youtube) just for fun
| (given the problems he is having with ads).
|
| If anything it would be an easy way for him to publicly show that
| scammy ads are a global problem and not just an X issue. Although
| I think it can be solved in a nanosecond if there was enough
| will.
| Arie wrote:
| Got that one as well a bunch of time with 2 fake dutch
| inventors. Reported it, got denied because Youtube thinks it's
| fine to promote a scam like that.
| tivert wrote:
| Got a link to the ads?
| raphman wrote:
| Replied to you elsewhere but this might be a German version
| of the ad: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WorrpfjAYdc
| Arie wrote:
| That's the one
| dilawar wrote:
| Many Google services in India openly promote/advertise
| astrologers and other related scams. This always leaves a bad
| taste in my mouth even if it legal.
| dissident_coder wrote:
| Fake Elon Musk crypto/investment scams are like 60% of the ads I
| get, it's atrocious. I report every single one but it's
| tireing...and YouTube wants me to disable my adblocker? F*ck you!
|
| Or when the Israel/Hamas war broke out, the number of propaganda
| ads from Israel/the IDF was outright disturbing. Most of them
| spewing the nonsense of Israel being "the holy ones" and they are
| fighting the "evil animals". Just repugnant rhetoric.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| A relative who is old and less sharp than they used to be lost a
| few K off of these deepfake scam ads and crypto.
|
| These ads are a tax on the old and low IQ.
| JanneVee wrote:
| As it turns out there is a whole category in YouTubes ad system
| for Get-Rich-Quick schemes, as detailed out in this video
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkhGJUTW3ag&t=1031s (timestamped
| at the relevant time).
|
| Just today I saw my elderly father click on a YouTube ad link for
| a crypto scam copying Swedish televisions web layout he was
| reading it and I saw it at the corner of my eye. He has adblock
| installed, he disabled it because of the terms of service popup
| by YouTube. What is he supposed to do, create a google account
| and get premium instead? How about having safe ads so he doesn't
| have to figure out YouTube premium?
| zerr wrote:
| Ad blocker can block that popup...
| JanneVee wrote:
| Yeah if it is updated chrome plugin which Google of course
| delayed update on.
| alargemoose wrote:
| Yes, but as of the last couple months. YouTube and ad
| blockers have been in a constant cat and mouse game where
| YouTube blocks users with an AD blocker from viewing content
| _at all_ , until your ad blocker updates with new rules to
| circumvent that blocking. Trivial for you and I maybe, but
| less so for someone the GP described as "elderly"
| Balgair wrote:
| > He has adblock installed, he disabled it because of the
| terms of service popup by YouTube.
| verdverm wrote:
| > What is he supposed to do, create a google account and get
| premium instead?
|
| I just put my parents on my family plan, you should consider
| it, it's a very low price for the peace of mind, plus they love
| not having ads
| JanneVee wrote:
| So basically I'm supposed to pay protection money? Yeah, I
| don't give into extortion...
| verdverm wrote:
| You can see it as extortion or...
|
| Paying for a product instead of being the product.
|
| Huge quality of life improvement. How is it different from
| paying for Netflix and similar?
| JanneVee wrote:
| Because YouTube takes money deliberately from criminals
| an ad supported version of Netflix would hardly have Get-
| Rich-Quick schemes advertised which you need to pay to
| avoid. Make no mistake, I've seen criminal scammer ads on
| YouTube.
| mitthrowaway2 wrote:
| Does Netflix try to scam you if you don't subscribe to
| the premium tier?
|
| If it were ads for car insurance and lego, I don't think
| there would be the same concern.
| epgui wrote:
| I mean, you can see it that way, or you can realize that
| paying the mafia protection money actually is a fantastic
| way to keep both of your legs in working order.
| notpachet wrote:
| > Paying for a product instead of being the product.
|
| You're still the product. You think they aren't still
| collecting info on what you watch and associating that
| with your google account for cross-marketing elsewhere on
| the web?
| mgraczyk wrote:
| You can opt out of that without paying anything
| ilovetux wrote:
| You can opt out of the personalized ads, but you cannot
| opt out of the data collection, storage and correlation.
| mgraczyk wrote:
| To the extent that it is relevant to what I was replying
| to, you absolutely can opt out of "collecting info on
| what you watch and associating that with your google
| account for cross-marketing elsewhere on the web".
|
| https://adssettings.google.com/partnerads
| sbarre wrote:
| My ad blocker and Pi hole block that page,
| (un?)ironically.
| sonicanatidae wrote:
| Why not both?
|
| -Every corporation in the world.
| verdverm wrote:
| yup, I don't see YouTube as an outlier in this regard
|
| I do really enjoy my ad free YouTube, 8 years and
| counting, the $20 / month for 5 accounts is very much
| worth it
| sonicanatidae wrote:
| I piggyback on a friend's account, for a small fee, so
| likewise.
|
| I also run pi-hole at home, because while I understand
| the need for ads, I'm done with 23 ads, 15 flyouts, 1
| video that will play in the corner until the end of time
| even though you obviously scrolled past it with zero
| intention of viewing it, 4 animated gifs, a pop-up
| chatbot window, etc. etc. etc.
| callalex wrote:
| We're going to get to the section of this video about ad-
| free YouTube, but first, a message from our sponsor,
| VPNOfTheMonth! <insert some scare mongering directly into
| the video stream that premium doesn't remove>
| sonicanatidae wrote:
| At least it's not ANOTHER League of Legends ad.
| verdverm wrote:
| You can skip past those pretty easily. I let them play
| for creators I actually like, who also tend to pick less
| scummy sponsored ads. Some of them even make the
| sponsored content really funny or personal to them.
|
| You'll find the same quality spectrum. At least I know
| that the creator is seeing more of the ad dollars.
| callalex wrote:
| Sure, but that still makes advertising paid YouTube as
| "ad-free" a lie and a scam.
| verdverm wrote:
| that is a rather cynical and unconstructive perspective
|
| 1. sponsored ads are only in a minority of videos, so
| largely the platform is actually ad-free. I'm paying to
| not have YT ads, I did not expect my subscription to
| eliminate sponsored ads. Where is the lie?
|
| 2. paid YT is categorically a better experience and worth
| every penny, even with the occasional sponsored ad, which
| again, can be skipped
|
| 3. YMMV, it really depends on the content you chose to
| consume. I stay away from the most viewed creators, it's
| typically low quality
|
| 4. Direct payments for a product is a much healthier
| model than the ad supported model, imho.
| simion314 wrote:
| It is also hilarious that the FBI also recommends using
| ad block. I might be sorry for smaller companies but
| Google contributed to this scams and now even the FBI is
| against their scheme.
| callalex wrote:
| You're still the product. YouTube screwed up their
| monetization scheme so badly that any content worth
| watching still inserts its own non-Google ads directly
| into the videos. So I would be paying to remove ads
| and...still see ads.
| throwawayffffas wrote:
| There are two issues.
|
| On youtube the content was uploaded by creators on the
| understanding it would be freely accessible to everyone.
|
| Additionally it's a matter of user control and rights.
| They don't get to tell the user what their user agent
| does and what content it should fetch or display to the
| user or what code it should run.
|
| It's their website, but it's my device.
|
| The next step is for youtube to require you to watch the
| ad and stop playing if you look away.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| > On youtube the content was uploaded by creators on the
| understanding it would be freely accessible to everyone.
|
| A lot of YouTube creators make their content for money.
| YouTube in this case is the layer between creator and
| watcher, making sure they get paid. Wether that is by ad
| money or subscription money. Before that, things were
| much more difficult for video creators.
|
| > The next step is for youtube to require you to watch
| the ad and stop playing if you look away.
|
| The next step for YouTube is hopefully to put the entire
| site behind a login and remove all ads.
| michaelteter wrote:
| The difference here is that the ads are not just neutral
| revenue generators, but they are actively harmful revenue
| generators.
| caskstrength wrote:
| You are not a shopkeeper being extorted for protection
| money, you are a (unwelcome) shop customer demanding things
| you don't want to pay for while being free to go to another
| place.
| JanneVee wrote:
| You haven't followed my argument, so I'll break it down
| for you. There are ads on YouTube that prey on vulnerable
| people as per the original post. I came with a small clip
| in a larger video that YouTube has these categorized so
| creators can opt-out of these most likely predatory ads.
| And on that I had an anecdote of my elderly father having
| ones these predatory ads presented to him, after he was
| asked a while ago to turn off ad-blocking by YouTube. I'm
| not the shop customer here, my elderly father is which he
| has done what was asked of him. I'm simply unwilling to
| pay for a service so I can opt-out predatory ads on
| behalf of my father. YouTube does business with organized
| criminals and is demanding money not to present to the
| predatory lies of organized criminals. I refuse to pay
| and demand that YouTube stops taking the criminals money
| and presenting them as ads.
| alyandon wrote:
| Last I checked (at least here in the US) - the family plan
| requires all family members to be living in the same physical
| household and there is some sort of geolocation check that
| enforces that rule. I'm divorced and my son goes back and
| forth between my and his mother's house so I can't upgrade to
| the family plan and put him on it.
| hotpotamus wrote:
| > What is he supposed to do, create a google account and get
| premium instead?
|
| Yes? I've mostly quit watching YouTube (and really a lot of
| media) because the shear amount of it and the number of
| predatory dark patterns have just gotten to be too much for me
| (it's possible that I'm overly sensitive in some way). But if
| it's important to him, then maybe it's worth paying some money
| for the experience. Personally I'm trying to get back into
| reading/audiobooks.
| JanneVee wrote:
| So I should just give up, have a talk about media habits with
| my parents and if they don't want to change, just hand
| YouTube the money? You freely admit that it is designed to be
| this bad and by giving them money actually just rewards their
| shitty behavior. I gave an example of a video showing how
| creators on YouTube can select which ads to show. Get-Rich-
| Quick is a category, YouTube could just take the decision to
| not carry those ads anymore and enforce violations as harshly
| as copyright strikes.
| yellow_postit wrote:
| Wanted to point out that "Just take the decision to not
| carry those ads" isn't as easy when you're at YT scale. Not
| excusing them but I think we all understand the challenges
| of content moderation at scale for organic content -- now
| amplify that for paid content where the incentives get even
| thornier.
|
| Yes YT should invest more in review and policy work -- but
| it's a forever expanding cost with no silver bullet.
|
| I appreciate there's a least a price and option for ads-
| free.
| mitthrowaway2 wrote:
| In this case, they've _already_ crowdsourced the review
| labor to their users, who correctly reported the ad!
| JanneVee wrote:
| The scale of paid content is much smaller than the
| general youtube scale. And they already have a
| categorization for it. Of course you could lie about the
| categorization of what you pay to YouTube to show
| unsuspecting people, but at least you run the risk of
| giving YouTube money and not getting shown because you
| violated their advertising policy. It would change the
| whole economics of running scams through ads.
| hotpotamus wrote:
| > So I should just give up
|
| I really do try not to be the perpetual downer here, but
| Google has nearly unlimited resources including psych PhDs
| on staff to influence peoples' behavior and I assume
| executives with black holes where their souls would
| normally be who are trying to satisfy that void with money,
| but can never do so.
|
| I guess the best I can say is that it's about picking your
| battles.
| JanneVee wrote:
| Look I know I'm screaming in the wind here. It is a
| comment on the state of YouTube ads. It's not that I have
| an illusion that someone in the hierarchy of Google is
| going to read my comments and take decisions that
| improves the situation. It is a thought and opinion on
| the direction of what Google has become. And personally
| I'm reducing my reliance on google. Next year I'm
| starting move subscriptions and other things from my
| gmail mail account. I've gone back to firefox. Google
| Search has gotten terrible recently so I'm looking for
| alternatives. This is my personal choice and I just want
| to whine on the Internet on my way out.
| hotpotamus wrote:
| You have my sympathy at least, and it's a good reminder
| that I probably need to get off gmail myself.
|
| Famously, this is a place where FAANG employees have some
| representation, so I suspect that the comments do
| occasionally get read by people with at least some
| connection to the products. Increasingly, I wonder how
| they live with themselves; the older I get, the less any
| amount of money could get me to use psychological tricks
| on people in order to scam them.
| j-bos wrote:
| Youtube clearly provides a valuable service one that is
| unique in world (moat or not). If you're concerned about
| rewarding bad behavior (scammy ads) doesn't it also make
| sense to factor rewarding good behavior (videos by anyone*
| on any topic imaginable _)?
|
| _ almost
| Vrondi wrote:
| Install uBlock Origin on Firefox for him. Educate him not to
| click ads. Ever. If you emphasize long enough that clicking an
| ad can lose him his bank account and entire identity, it can
| sink in. I've spent years on this with my parents. "Yes, Dad,
| YouTube is out to get you, because they want money from
| advertisers, and they are happily selling your safety to
| advertisers."
| alacode wrote:
| I'm in my early 60's, I guess when I was young I'd have
| called me elderly. I however, have been a technologist since
| I was around 9 years old, got it from my Dad. I'd say most my
| age even if not into technology aren't averse to it or
| unaware of it. But, there are definitely some elderly who
| really don't get technology at all and there are some in
| their 20's who are the same way. Those individuals need to be
| protected. The onus should be on the corporation more than
| the individual; not solely on the individual.
| TheRealPomax wrote:
| No, the onus should be on the law, because corporations
| will do nothing "for th greater good" if they're not
| _forced_ to do so. The onus is on the individual to help
| other individuals around them that need it, and on the
| individual to petition their law makers to do what needs to
| be done.
|
| Putting the onus on the corporations is the one thing
| that's guaranteed, with a long and storied proven track
| record, of not working.
| abracadaniel wrote:
| Even with adblock, I've had hijacked channels end up as the top
| search result. Most recently with the last SpaceX starship
| launch. Trying to find the livestream, I just searched SpaceX
| and the top hits were all fake channels with lots of
| subscribers, hosting the actual livestream, but with a big QR
| code to a crypto scam overlaid. It happens every time, with the
| same things, and has been reported many times. There's no way
| they don't know about it.
| throwawayffffas wrote:
| > What is he supposed to do, create a google account and get
| premium instead?
|
| Go watch something else, somewhere else, another site, or you
| know tv or something.
| snowpid wrote:
| looks like Youtube doesnt comply with some of its duties in the
| EU https://commission.europa.eu/strategy-and-
| policy/priorities-...
| openthc wrote:
| Really frustrating as folks can advertise that crap but,
| regulated cannabis is blocked. Heck, we can't even mention our
| product/protocols on these $BigCo sites or they'll kick us off
| forever! Trying to publish in the AppStore along side all that
| scam-ware -- nope, sorry can't have that deadly cannabis around
| here.
| cultureswitch wrote:
| Every passing day I lean closer to the position that
| advertisement contracts should not be enforceable.
| bhandziuk wrote:
| I am seeing this post minutes after feeling fed up with all the
| scam ads on YT and finally reporting a bunch of them. Reading all
| these comments makes me feel rather deflated. Like there is no
| hope.
| forshow wrote:
| Allowing ads to be harmful bolsters the new protection racket.
| "It'd be a shame if your parents/grandparents got scammed.. Have
| you heard of YT Premium?"
| wharvle wrote:
| There's precedent: they already run a protection racket on
| search.
|
| "Gee, it'd sure be a shame if your competitors showed up at the
| top of a search for _your exact company or product_. But if you
| pay us for ads on those keywords..."
| Ekaros wrote:
| They don't even have technology or man power to ban exactly same
| discussion threads appearing on financial content. And by same I
| mean word to word... I know it is uphill battle, but how much
| work would it be to throw it at some moderator and have them
| blacklist it...
| GaryNumanVevo wrote:
| Twitter actually has some of the best ad oversight, almost
| entirely by accident too.
|
| Community Notes (formerly Birdwatch) lets users flag tweets that
| are misleading. Since Ads on Twitter are just normal tweets, they
| can be fact checked.
|
| Twitter's average ad quality has plummeted recently, but most of
| the scam ads I see have a massive user-added disclaimer outlining
| how it's a scam. I wonder how this affects the click through rate
| for these ad placements?
| IG_Semmelweiss wrote:
| I've been thinking about this for a while.
|
| I've seen many of these community notes - how exactly do these
| work ?
|
| Is a community note borne out of "most upvoted" replies to a
| particular tweet ? If so, how does it go from a simple upvoted
| reply, to a "community note" ?
| voxic11 wrote:
| Basically if you are in good standing on the platform you can
| apply to be a contributor and if accepted you can submit and
| rate notes. The note which actually appears to everyone is
| selected out of the contributor submitted notes using some
| algorithm which is open source.
|
| > To find notes that are helpful to the broadest possible set
| of people, Community Notes takes into account not only how
| many contributors rated a note as helpful or unhelpful, but
| also whether people who rated it seem to come from different
| perspectives.
|
| https://communitynotes.twitter.com/guide/en/about/introducti.
| ..
| iteratethis wrote:
| You need to sign up to become a community notes contributor.
| Then you can add notes, and if enough people from a diverse
| set of other contributors find it helpful, the community note
| will publicly appear.
|
| It's one of few things at Twitter that work shockingly well
| and reliable. I've never seen an obvious partisan community
| note. Other networks should embrace this.
| cactusplant7374 wrote:
| > It's one of few things at Twitter that work shockingly
| well and reliable.
|
| Elon doesn't think so. I would expect it to change soon.
|
| https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1733882978781053383
| ceroxylon wrote:
| The way he was corrected by a community note on that
| statement... kinda hilarious.
| TheCaptain4815 wrote:
| If twitter survives, community notes could usher in a golden
| era of truth on the internet imo. On a recent podcast w/ lex
| friedman, Elon explained how Community Notes works and it's
| pretty ingenious.
|
| In short, from what I understand, each community notes
| contributor is vector mapped based on their
| biases/contributions. Now, the only way for a community note
| to appear is for contributors who typically disagree with
| each other (based on their vector mapping) to both sign off
| on that note. I'd imagine in the future (or maybe it's
| enabled now), these contributors would be "power ranked" so a
| newbie contributor couldn't community note a member of
| congress or something.
|
| As Elon said, this will lead to hoardes of people leaving
| twitter because they cannot handle community notes.
| nomel wrote:
| Paper explaining it in detail: https://github.com/twitter/com
| munitynotes/blob/main/birdwatc...
|
| It's somewhat adversarial, with the idea that if people who
| have disagreed in the past agree on a note, then it's
| probably true.
| iteratethis wrote:
| I think when an ad is fact-checked and fails that test, it
| should become hidden. Even better would be to block the
| advertiser from the network or even seize their ad spent.
| wongarsu wrote:
| Not everyone agrees with every fact-check, even for
| objectively verifiable facts (which is the minority of all
| things claimed). Even Mythbusters have done things where I
| think they clearly reached the wrong conclusion. Having large
| consequences attached to the result of a fact check sounds
| like a recipe to alienate everyone.
|
| If you say something obviously untrue there are already laws
| against fraud and false advertisement. For anything with less
| burden of proof, a note below your ad that adds context seems
| adequate
| GaryNumanVevo wrote:
| I think it's a great idea, for obvious reasons it will never
| be implemented.
| j-bos wrote:
| Seems like best of both worlds for scam ads with notes to
| still appear. The scammers keep paying the platform, user's
| learn how to spot scams via the notes, and the platform makes
| money.
| berkes wrote:
| > but most of the scam ads I see
|
| So it doesn't work. If it worked, you'd see no, or very little,
| scam ads.
| GaryNumanVevo wrote:
| Yes, that's why I said accidentally. Community Notes wasn't
| intended to be a spam filter for ads. It's not able to get
| tweets/ads taken down, only place a large disclaimer below
| any fraudulent advertisements.
| machdiamonds wrote:
| It's definitely not by accident, it would be very easy to turn
| off community notes for tweets flagged as ads.
| mjcl wrote:
| I think the scammers are starting to get wise. I've seen over
| 50 different accounts running the same ad copy for some car
| solar defrosting gadget. There's just too many ads for any
| single one to get a published note and if one does they can
| delete the individual post.
| mrtksn wrote:
| There's no day I go without a phishing attempt by ad on
| Twitter. The only time I've seen community note on ad is about
| some game that is apparently quite different from what it is on
| the ad. IIRC that game is notorious for this and has become a
| meme.
| thrillgore wrote:
| It works until Elon has to step in.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| We need more regulations to weaken ads entirely. We've seen the
| free market of ads and it's total garbage.
| tiberius_p wrote:
| This creates a legitimate reason to use an adblocker.
| scanr wrote:
| I'm surprised there is no liability for facilitating scams /
| fraud on the ad networks given that they're making money on it.
| macinjosh wrote:
| I don't see how it is not wire fraud. But in this country the
| FBI only goes after what is politically important.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| These platforms control too much of humanity's social fabric
| for any politician to dare go against them in fears of being
| "cancelled" and effectively disappear (in favour of their
| rival). Same for privacy protections, nobody dares do anything
| about it.
| thelittleone wrote:
| I've reported a bunch of scan Elon Musk crypto live streams and
| they've always responded quickly (within an hour) and shut them
| down. That's the only case I've reported.
| amne wrote:
| I refuse to believe people think those are good deepfakes. The
| lipsync is so so so bad. So bad.
| Jakob-G wrote:
| I saw that Deep fake Elon ad on my phone and on a small screen
| i didn't notice the small mismatches. Especially in the first
| 20 seconds it is spot on. I mean i didn't fall for it either,
| but i totally see how other people could fall for these deep
| fakes. Obviously, they do, otherwise these scammers wouldn't
| have the money to run these ads.
| throw_m239339 wrote:
| During the PS5 reveal, Youtube was literally recommending
| multiple scam live feeds offering free PS5 or Bitcoin. Here is an
| example.
|
| https://decrypt.co/32102/scam-sony-playstation-5-reveal-even...
|
| The problem isn't so much that these scams exist, but that
| youtube was actively recommending them to users, adding insult to
| injury, youtube was quicly taking down feeds from gamers
| commenting on the official reveal...
| kosolam wrote:
| Facebook and YouTube are the worst. They should be trialed in
| class action suite as collaborators in all the scams they
| advertise on their platforms. I'm speaking of paid ads only.
| berkes wrote:
| I could easily imagine that a platform can be fined for any
| harm a scam did between being reported by anyone and them
| taking it down.
|
| Maybe not with current regulation, maybe not in the US. But in
| other places: why not?
|
| I report a scam, ads continues being shown is now a risk
| assessment to be taken by the platform. Though, now that I
| think of it, the first thing these platforms will do is to make
| reporting even harder.
| macinjosh wrote:
| If I were one of YouTube's big ad customers who doesn't like my
| ads on videos spreading misinformation why would I be OK with the
| ad before or after mine being misinformation?
| rickreynoldssf wrote:
| You're expecting too much from poorly trained contractors in
| India who review these reports (if a human reviews them at all).
| boxed wrote:
| I reported an ad once. It was crazy difficult. So now I don't
| bother.
|
| If a reporting system is this difficult, one has to make the
| assumption that it's on purpose.
| resters wrote:
| I love Youtube and consider it a major contribution to the modern
| world -- however it would have been "invented" within a few
| months regardless of who built if first and would have grown
| regardless of who acquired it.
|
| It's important to recall that Youtube grew not because of "you"
| -- there was really not any kind of creator ecosystem for the
| first phase of massive growth. Youtube grew because of piracy and
| the posting/distribution of copyrighted content.
|
| Unlike Napster which was blatantly P2P and obviously tried to
| circumvent copyright protections, Youtube had an official way for
| content owners to take steps to remove unauthorized content. In
| the days or weeks that it took to get content removed, it was
| copied and re-posted, and all the while Youtube continued to earn
| ad revenue from it until finally, many dollars later, it would be
| removed and successfully blocked.
|
| In Today's world, Youtube makes money by incentivizing
| generatively created garbage content, much of which is shown to
| kids, and by spamming promoted content into playlists and
| generally always preferring to play content that was promoted
| over non-promoted content.
|
| It's not clear how much of Youtube's revenue comes from quality
| content that people consume intentionally vs content that nobody
| would ever pay for that has managed to hijack the recommendation
| algorithm in some way.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| If I had Facebook money, I'd use Peertube to create a clone of
| Youtube with the Internet Archive as the storage backend of
| last resort ($2/GB for perpetual storage). Trust and Safety
| team to keep the stuff out that could cause you to lose your
| safe harbor. Cloudflare for new, high demand content, serve
| from the datacenter long tail. Plug into ActivityPub,
| Wordpress, Mastodon, etc. Not quite Wikipedia for video, but
| similar governance and operating spirit.
| RajT88 wrote:
| You probably could do that just with MySpace money.
| 83457 wrote:
| I don't know about growth at different stages, but the reason
| it took off initially is that Flash added video capabilities
| and YouTube was built around that ubiquitous plugin.
|
| Before that, you needed a video player installed on your
| computer that then either loaded in-browser or played videos
| after download. You often needed multiple players installed as
| none supported every video format.
| LegitShady wrote:
| This is a bit like saying car use grew because of
| differentials. Cars use differentials but the reason car use
| grew isn't the differential. If it wasn't the differential it
| would be some other mechanism that does the same thing.
|
| Don't attribute user interest (which is what made YouTube
| grow) to the technical aspects of the site. That is almost
| never the case.
| irobeth wrote:
| Back in the day you if you wanted to 'watch internet
| videos' then you needed a video player, you needed codecs,
| you needed to download the videos, you needed to find the
| videos
|
| If you wanted to share videos online, good luck? You needed
| somewhere you could upload them and a lot of forums had
| file size limits, so sometimes you just spread/discovered
| them via p2p services. For the non-technical person, there
| were a few places you could submit videos to or browse
| 'funny internet videos', but most video sites were an
| individual or community's curated collection
|
| Youtube bundled all of that up as "a video repository and
| search engine that provides a streaming player which is
| already supported by your browser", and (in the US anyway)
| that moment coincided with: (a) wide-spread broadband
| access and (b) digital cameras becoming accessible to
| consumers
|
| So in that context, I think it might be a bit like saying
| "interest in reading increased after book printing
| technology made libraries comparatively inexpensive"
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| Ease of use is not a technical aspect.
| kiba wrote:
| I wouldn't be so dismissive of Youtube.
|
| The youtube recommendation algorithm brings up new and cool
| content over long period of time, and I cultivated my
| recommendation feed as such.
|
| It's a destination in itself.
|
| Sure, you could have a video site that just have a top ten
| video and a subscription list, but it wouldn't be as
| compelling.
|
| Now. There are a lot of things that youtube could rightfully be
| criticized for, and perhaps there should be major changes made
| to how youtube works. Better pay for youtube creators and
| payment to small channels for example. More promotion of
| youtube premium, and less advertising.
|
| I assume that youtube is profitable. The question is how much
| service that they can offer but still remain sustainable. If
| they're not profitable, how they could monetize it without
| destroying the value of the platform, ideally adding to the
| value rather than taking it away. I like some of the youtube
| scripted show, and I was disappointed that they canceled a show
| that I want to see continued.
| mandmandam wrote:
| > The youtube recommendation algorithm brings up new and cool
| content
|
| For you.
|
| For kids it brings up amputation videos and seriously
| weird/predatory shit. Should they be cultivating their
| recommendation feed better?
|
| Try searching for '!' on the homepage. You'll get a mix of
| kid videos and fucked up animated softcore furry shit. _It 's
| been like that for fucking years_.
|
| For me it brings up Ben Shapiro and Jordan Peterson shite
| constantly, despite my refusal to engage in such content
| whatsoever. It just figures, hey you like watching video game
| content so you'll love these smarmy shitheads.
|
| It's vastly inferior to TikTok's algorithm by all accounts,
| like it's not even close. And it's been horrendously gamed.
|
| All they have is the network effect and Google's monopoly
| powers. Their algorithm sucks, their ads suck, their policies
| towards creators suck (as you said yourself). Everything
| they've ever brought in that was actually good was cribbed
| from porn sites.
| gambiting wrote:
| >> so you'll love these smarmy shitheads.
|
| I've had success with just blocking these channels, or
| selecting "don't recommend this to me", after a while it
| stops suggesting right wing content to me, it hasn't for
| quite a while in fact.
| ddingus wrote:
| I have a similar problem, and I find "don't recommend" is
| a temporary thing. YT really, really, really wants to
| push that material.
|
| Eventually, it does.
|
| Or, I make one mistake, rando-click on something
| favorable and boom! They are back.
| loudmax wrote:
| I've had mostly the same success, but it's disconcerting
| that I even have to block those guys to begin with.
|
| Also, at this point the suggestion algorithm seems close
| to worthless. My Youtube suggestion feed is either
| channels that I already follow, or whose videos I've
| watched recently, or complete garbage. Any worthwhile new
| channels or videos, I've have to seek out for myself.
| gambiting wrote:
| Well, it could always be worse - it could be Facebook's
| recommendation algorithm! I literally block right
| wing/extremist content on my feed every single day, my
| blocked list must be hundreds if not thousands of items
| long, and it just doesn't get a hint, there's more of
| that stuff every single day. I suspect that Facebook just
| doesn't care because according to their stats it drives
| engagement, even if it's negative user experience(because
| of course I can't stop myself commenting how fucking
| stupid someone posting flat earth content is, so someone
| at facebook goes "look he commented on that post, that
| means he likes it!").
| mandmandam wrote:
| > I suspect that Facebook just doesn't care because
| according to their stats it drives engagement
|
| That's part of it, but I'm _certain_ there 's more to it.
|
| I've seen too many people and pages get their reach cut
| 100 fold over the last 7 or so years. The content was
| very engaging, had lots of likes and comments, then boom,
| they all started going from 5 or 6 figure posts down to 2
| and 3 figures. Marianne Williamson, for example, hit 10%
| support nationally - then her Facebook posts went from 6
| figures to 3 _in a day_.
|
| Take Gaza, and the global calls for a ceasefire. Despite
| huge engagement, and the strong support of the vast
| majority of every countries population (bar Israel
| itself), I've seen virtually nothing about it on
| Facebook. On LinkedIn I've seen 1 single post concerning
| it since October 7th, and it had 0 likes. That's not
| natural. No fucking way.
| vehemenz wrote:
| > For me it brings up Ben Shapiro and Jordan Peterson shite
| constantly, despite my refusal to engage in such content
| whatsoever. It just figures, hey you like watching video
| game content so you'll love these smarmy shitheads.
|
| You can watch "adjacent" content--at least according to
| YouTube--and you'll be fed Ben Shapiro and Jordan Peterson.
|
| Even if you wanted to see that content, maybe that's as far
| as you're willing to go, personally. Too bad! You get even
| more extreme commentators.
| francisofascii wrote:
| Youtube also found a way to allow content owners to monetize
| copyrighted content, so if it was pirated and uploaded, there
| was less incentive to take it down if it could earn some money
| in ads.
| gambiting wrote:
| >>Youtube grew because of piracy and the posting/distribution
| of copyrighted content.
|
| The funny thing is, the second you take a step out of the
| anglosphere it still hosts an absolute tonne of copyrighted
| content that no one cares about. Just search for "full film" in
| Polish and you get lots of full films uploaded as-is and no one
| is taking them down
|
| https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=pe%C5%82ny+film
| PaulHoule wrote:
| It is really random in the anglosphere. If you type "... full
| film" you will get the full film sometimes, just not all the
| time.
| dyingkneepad wrote:
| Or just S01E02.
| tzs wrote:
| I've not searched for full films but have had purported
| full films come up when search for reviews of or reaction
| videos for films I've recently watched.
|
| Most of these were (1) a full film, but not the film the
| title claimed, (2) looked like they were non-HD broadcast
| TV quality, (3) were not in English, and (4) had a URL
| overlaying the video which I would guess was to a site
| where the movie given in the title could be found.
| bbarnett wrote:
| But they have cats, thus your words fall upon deaf ears.
| hiddencost wrote:
| https://reportfraud.ftc.gov/#/
|
| I suppose it would be nice if there were an easy way for everyone
| to do this.
| robin_reala wrote:
| Only works if you're in the US presumably.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| If the reports don't go straight to /dev/null, it would be
| ineffective anyway since the scammers are outside of US
| jurisdiction and operate under fake identities.
| callalex wrote:
| The scammer in this case is YouTube because they are taking
| money and promoting the scam. Now you can even say they are
| knowingly participating because the scam was reported to them
| and they claim to have reviewed the content.
| sys32768 wrote:
| Notice you don't see any scam ads featuring tobacco on YouTube.
|
| If you want to see Google enforce something, try running a
| tobacco ad anywhere on their platforms.
| ddingus wrote:
| Herman Cain ran one! And it is hilarious. Recommended.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| Partially, that is because the production, export, import, sale
| and advertising of tobacco is strictly regulated in most
| countries... there isn't any money to be made for scammers, and
| the illicit actors that do exist (e.g. counterfeiters or
| smugglers) don't want to attract open attention or paper
| trails.
| genocidicbunny wrote:
| But, but, don't you know that you can just pay YouTube a measly
| $14/month for Premium to avoid having them shove these blatant
| scams and grifts down your eyeballs?
| mitthrowaway2 wrote:
| Oh yeah the Elon Musk ad. I reported it to YouTube maybe a month
| ago. I think someone with a similar voice dubbed over a real Musk
| video, with pretty good lip-syncing. It's a pretty dangerous scam
| because it could really convince someone who is gullible.
| zigman1 wrote:
| Doesn't even have to be a lip-sync, it could've simply been AI
| eatbitseveryday wrote:
| My wife fell for a Macys look-alike scam on Facebook. I told her
| that these platforms do not vet the ads they display because it
| brings revenue.
| boeingUH60 wrote:
| It's unfortunate but I think the solution is to just pay for
| YouTube Premium. Since I did that, I'm happy not to get dumb ads.
| everyone wrote:
| Re. ad blockers on youtube...
|
| I will vote with my wallet and never give Google a cent, I feel
| gross enough already even just _using_ any service owned by them.
| They are typical giant corporation who corrupt everything they
| touch. I reckon for every hour of valuable software work that
| makes its way to the public, 50 hours of bullshit managerial
| "work" is done by a sucession of gobshites with increasingly
| inflated salaries.
|
| What actual value do they add? All the features and innovations
| they have made since acquiring youtube have been uniformly
| terrible, the best example is their pathetic attempt to ape
| tiktok with youtube shorts, so now they have two totally
| different systems awkwardly smooshed together on the same
| platform. They also, in classic Google fashion just randomly
| change the UI or randomly remove extremely useful publishing
| features for no reason on a weekly basis. They've pushed more and
| more ads. They've moderated and used the suggested videos
| features to encourage content farm garbage and punish actually
| good original content.
|
| The real value of youtube is the amazing content creators who
| make world beating content for free. The actually good ones are
| mostly demonetized by youtube and either make zero money or only
| make money from Patreon supporters. So the actual value of
| youtube is the content creators, and also the audience who go
| there to watch. Youtube has been around for a long time and is
| basically _the place_ to upload longer videos. Google gained
| control of this value by buying youtube and since then they have
| sat on this communally created value and simply engaged in rent
| seeking behaviour.
| TrackerFF wrote:
| I've noticed a huge uptick in the most obvious scams, when using
| my work PC (no ad-block!).
|
| Typical deepfakes of celebrities, where they've stolen some clip,
| and get the person to promote some crypto scam. It's laughable.
| Imagine being 80, and seeing Warren Buffet or Bill Gates on
| youtube promoting some random crypto brokerage, saying that you
| can create generational wealth TODAY!
|
| Since it's on youtube, it must be legit, right?
|
| EDIT: I believe _one_ way to solve this, is by heavy handed
| regulation where you make the websites (YouTube, etc.)
| financially liable for scams they are facilitating through ads
| etc.
|
| Right now there seems to be zero incentives to removing this kind
| of stuff.
| callalex wrote:
| Why do you consider such regulation to be heavy handed? They
| have definitively proven that they are happy to profit by
| harming others.
| tzfld wrote:
| What if those ads appear on small websites and delivered by ad
| platforms like adsense? Who is liable?
| newsclues wrote:
| I've seen scams ads on YouTube with fake videos of Justin Trudeau
| and Elon Musk and it's clearly a problem that isn't being
| addressed.
| tgtweak wrote:
| I've reported fraudulent ads (Elon musk make $1@@@/day) directly
| to a friend who works in safebrowsing team and they get pulled
| for a day or two before they're back.
| dado3212 wrote:
| YouTube does not have the scale to manually review every time
| someone flags an ad. HN community believes that "oh, but MY
| report is high signal" which may be true, but user reports as a
| whole are not high signal. So instead it's going through some ML
| classifier first.
|
| An automatic answer saying "this doesn't go against policy" does
| not mean that it escalated to YT staff who carefully considered
| the ad and said "actually, this is okay because we really want
| the revenue." It means that whatever ML classifier took a look at
| it thought it was okay (which is probably bugged, given their
| typical speed at taking down fake livestreams in this vein).
| tivert wrote:
| > YouTube does not have the scale to manually review every time
| someone flags an ad. HN community believes that "oh, but MY
| report is high signal" which may be true, but user reports as a
| whole are not high signal. So instead it's going through some
| ML classifier first.
|
| So what? Youtube is trying to do the online equivalent of
| trying to police New York City with only 50 cops and a 911
| answering machine that repeats "computer says no" on a loop.
|
| If New York City chooses to understaff their 911 call center,
| that's _not_ an excuse for them not taking 911 calls.
| ndriscoll wrote:
| Google should be reviewing all ads they show, and should
| absolutely be liable for the content, _especially_ if they 're
| alerted to the fact that it's a scam (which makes them not just
| negligent but an accessory).
| wharvle wrote:
| Seems tough. Guess they should stop operating that kind of
| business if they can't figure out how to do it without scamming
| people.
| octacat wrote:
| You can review them with AI. They have info where link goes,
| who pays for it, who is targeted. Scammers would have to be
| more creative, when you automatically detect 90% of them. But
| currently I can say "Oh, I've seen this scam comment/scam ad
| scheme 100 times". I am pretty sure AI would figure out the
| same.
| callalex wrote:
| It's not impossible at all, just hire more people. That may not
| be as profitable, though.
| tivert wrote:
| I love scam youtube ads. Some of them are so bad, they're good.
|
| I especially like the ones that layer in a totally fake creation
| story, like this one:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRl2aGUlu04.
| raphman wrote:
| Hah, these magic-heater ads seems to be more common than I
| thought. In another comment in this thread, I just linked to a
| different one (in German):
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WorrpfjAYdc
|
| Yours is much more interesting though.
|
| Here's Big Clive doing a teardown on the device in your video:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPnLnk35XsY
| we_love_idf wrote:
| I don't understand who do people still keep using Google
| services. What are you expecting from a company like Google?
| deelly wrote:
| You did not use Android phone, never tried Google search,
| Google Bard, Chrome browser, never ever go to YouTube, never
| opened Google Maps, and refuse to open Google Doc or Google
| Sheet link?
| 8ytecoder wrote:
| I fell for one of these ads on Instagram years ago. The ad was
| for a bike light with an innovative design. The website had a
| clean look and feel. They accepted paypal (again years ago). I'm
| usually very sceptical about scam but back then I naively assumed
| that you can't just create an obvious scam ad like this without
| Facebook and Google catching you. Since you have to have a
| payment method in file I thought that'll be a deterrent as well.
| I was totally fooled.
|
| The scammers even shipped me a super basic bike light to show
| proof that they actually shipped an item. I had to first file a
| claim with PayPal and they refunded me but only after some
| haggling.
|
| I reported the ad to Instagram with all the proof and pictures. I
| used their security/phishing contact to report this. The ad and
| the associated account was still there when I checked months
| later.
|
| I mean I can understand these companies not wanting to care about
| us measly users enough to respond to account related queries. But
| this is their bread and butter. If I don't trust your ads anymore
| why on earth would I ever click or buy anything. If anything it
| makes all good businesses lose as well. That's their real
| customers. I see people here defending YouTube that it's
| understandable that YouTube doesn't have the time to screen ads.
| I call bullshit. This is their core product. Ads. They have to
| care for their own and their customers' (advertisers) sake.
| siproprio wrote:
| In less than two decades, Google went from "Don't be evil" to "We
| censor fart jokes to provide brand safety for scammers using
| deepfake videos to prey on the poor"
| 1116574 wrote:
| Yep, my local city (over 1M residents) mayor was deep faked into
| selling crypto on yt ads. Reporting did nothing, I just got email
| 3 days later that the ad is alright.
|
| The voice was in local language, while subtitles were in English.
| They did not match, possibly to evade detection by the more
| advanced, English, tooling.
| klvino wrote:
| YouTube isn't the only Google property knowingly allowing scams,
| Google Maps has some interesting activity if you dive into it. A
| "policy", regulation, or law only matters if it is enforceable
| and enforced.
|
| The digital platform policies are relatively meaningless,
| subjective enforcement, appeasement measure for advertisers. You
| will not see the needle move on video as fraud until the
| commission model for talent fees and use rights change for
| digital. A talent fee commission model results in industry
| tracking of creative content in order to route talent fees to
| actors and musicians. It is a secondary layer of tracking with
| funds attached that forces a platform to respond when illegal use
| of image and identity is reported.
| neop1x wrote:
| The Google search results are the same. When searching for
| driver's license preparation, ads appear offering the purchase
| of a driver's license without any tests.
| miah_ wrote:
| Facebook has the same problem, see any FB group for endless "duct
| cleaning" or "bad roofs needed, buy our metal roof" spam. A few
| months ago it was "remote jobs at Amazon, follow this google doc
| link". They'll let it fly for months as it "generates activity"
| or some other metric, it will eventually die off when the spam
| campaign changes.
| throw310822 wrote:
| Confirmed. I flagged yesterday the Elon Musk deep fake promoting
| some investment scam, and got this answer after a few hours:
|
| "We're writing to let you know that we reviewed your report (ID
| 1-3XXXXXXXXXX).
|
| Here's what we found
|
| We decided not to take this ad down. We found that the ad doesn't
| go against Google's policies, which prohibit certain content and
| practices that we believe to be harmful to users and the overall
| online ecosystem."
| mschuster91 wrote:
| Same here. The flood of ads I got recently pushing sketchy CFD
| trade platforms is goddamn annoying, and that's not even counting
| all the youtube channels pushing questionable stuff like Athletic
| Greens [2] or similar "quality" supplements and pills.
|
| At least on linear TV, there was _some_ quality assurance in the
| ad buyer departments. Youtube, Google, Meta, the countless
| "chumbox" players (Taboola, Outbrain and others [1]) - they all
| thrive on letting everyone do whatever the f..k they want, with
| barely any human in loop.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chumbox
|
| [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/08/dining/athletic-
| greens.ht...
| lopkeny12ko wrote:
| How is this surprising or newsworthy in the slightest? These
| advertisers are paying Google lots of money; Google has no
| incentive to take them down.
| trynumber9 wrote:
| It's not surprising. It's something we want fixed, however. And
| it's news to me that after being investigated they'd still keep
| this type of ad running. I really, really thought that they'd
| watch it, determine it to be predatory and remove it. Maybe it
| was delusional of me to expect Google to be reasonable when
| given the chance.
| kidsil wrote:
| It's striking how history repeats itself. Just like TV and
| newspapers eventually faced regulations to prevent scam ads, the
| internet has been in a similar bind for at least a decade. The
| principles of law should extend to all mediums, yet it seems
| we're at a stalemate with federal regulations adapting to the
| digital age. This should've been handled back in 2012.
| crowcroft wrote:
| It baffles me how often behaviour that any 'traditional' media
| company would get slapped down for is just common practice in
| 'digital' media.
|
| 'Digital' isn't new anymore, but somehow it avoids growing up.
| amne wrote:
| What do you mean slow to adapt? We have transcended straight to
| cookie banners!
| 1905 wrote:
| While KimDotCom was getting raided in New Zealand for "piracy",
| Youtube knowingly used pirated music and film media to grow its
| site
| Waterluvian wrote:
| I've been seeing YouTube ads for a fake Super Mario game. And it
| isn't even a lookalike, it actually says "Super Mario" in the
| title and uses completely ripped off assets. I've seen a ton of
| this kind of thing lately. Just the absolute toilet-scrapings of
| ad customers. It's almost as bad as Twitter some weeks.
|
| Google's in some serious trouble. They've hit maximum revenue
| stream, but the Jerrys[1] of the company rely on perpetual growth
| for their careers to exist, so they will push, consciously or
| unconsciously, to find more revenue anywhere, even by selling out
| the product's future.
|
| [1]
| https://web.archive.org/web/20230919185431/https://www.justi...
| __failbit wrote:
| I constantly get served a Mr Beast related scam ad that promises
| a gift of 1000$ (I'm not even american!) along with fake mobile
| games that take gameplay footage from AAA games (Usually Demon's
| souls remake for some reason...). In all of my attempts to report
| them from being scams, i usually get an automated response within
| an hour telling that the ad is legitimate.
|
| Google just doesn't care.
| dagurp wrote:
| I keep getting betting ads which are illegal in my country
| celestialcheese wrote:
| It's not just Youtube, it's across all of Google Ads.
|
| We had to hire someone to review ads in Google's ad transparency
| center. Every day they find dozens of new domains, with the same
| creatives - all those fake button "Continue"/"Download" click-
| trick ads.
|
| The same process every ad. Report to google, block on google, and
| send to a third party ad security company. The volume didn't
| start going down until we hired that third party ad security
| company to do blocking post-auction. Google continues to let the
| exact same creatives come through, just with different domains/ad
| accounts. Their models can handle this, they just choose not too.
|
| Seeing the CPMs these scam ads pay, it must make up a big portion
| of a reportable revenue source for google, where blocking would
| hurt their numbers for the quarter.
| DebtDeflation wrote:
| Not just Ads either. Have you used Google Shopping? Huge number
| of fake websites selling stuff. During Covid when you couldn't
| find a bicycle for sale anywhere, Google Shopping would yield
| dozens of sellers with websites that were just created a few
| days prior with tons of bikes for sale at great prices, all a
| complete scam.
| duxup wrote:
| It is amazing that they don't care, it really creates a creepy
| atmosphere on Youtube. It taints the brand.
|
| I get gross out weird ads for what seem to be cleaning supplies
| but hell if I want to click on some weird gross mutant thing to
| figure it out.
|
| All sorts of forms of "Protect yourself from 5g / wi-fi / various
| weird things, brain interference / that induce confusion."
| products ...
|
| There's good content on Youtube, but man I can't help but think
| of it as much as a misinformation / scam platform with what they
| allow for ads.
| rasse wrote:
| I reported one of these Elon deep fake ads. Google's response
| was:
|
| > We decided not to take this ad down. We found that the ad
| doesn't go against Google's policies, which prohibit certain
| content and practices that we believe to be harmful to users and
| the overall online ecosystem.
| TheWoodsy wrote:
| I used to see these exact videos on twitch.tv for months during
| non US peak times. They were number one in viewers for about 15
| minutes until they were reported and nuked. Refresh another five
| minutes later and they'd be back at number one.
|
| Cool side note: If you report on twitch.tv you get an email; If
| they do something about it, you get another email saying they
| actioned it.
| chgfxdfgg wrote:
| IF YOU ARE USING A GOOGLE SERVICE, YOU ARE NOT THE CUSTOMER, YOU
| ARE THE PRODUCT. Advertisers are the customers. Google customer
| service is for the customers, not for you.
|
| Even services that you pay for every month like Drive, they can
| lose all your data and you won't be able to talk to a human about
| it. Photos will build anti-competitive walls around your content
| with no warning. Maps will track your every move and drown you in
| ads. Search and Youtube will profile you and steer you toward
| shallow promoted content. You are the product.
| jrmg wrote:
| We've returned to the days of traveling medicine shows:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medicine_show
|
| YouTube is just full of very obviously fraudulent tech and
| medical/health ads, especially if you've switched off ad
| personalization. Was it this bad on cable TV in the past? Isn't
| the FTC meant to be actively policing things like this?
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Isn't the FTC meant to be actively policing things like this?
|
| No, generally the FTC is not designed, equipped, or funded for
| _actively_ policing advertisements. Its consumer protection
| action is almost entirely complaint-based /reactive, not
| active.
|
| If you want active policing of advertisement by the FTC, you
| need to lobby Congress to vastly expand the FTC's role and
| funding.
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| But they keep trying to take down the addons we use to protect us
| against them: ad blockers.
| lynx23 wrote:
| No surprise. In a sense, I bought my premium because I was fed up
| with scam. I wouldn't mind targeted ads if they are not too
| excessive. But watching a gambling scam tailor-made for my
| (adittably) small country broke the camels back for me.
| Apparently, there is no "with malice intent" clause anywhere,
| otherwise these ads would be illegal everywhere by default.
| joemi wrote:
| Don't report the Elon ads to google, report them to Elon, then
| maybe some action will be taken.
| heisenbit wrote:
| Considering the here documented willful ignorance of Google I
| wonder at what point this crosses over into the criminal domain
| or would be sufficient to give raise to class action suits of
| fraud victims.
| kspacewalk2 wrote:
| >deep fake Elon Musk saying that he has built an AI powered
| trading bot that will allow you to make 1 million dollars in 6
| months risk free and to be honest i can't tell that it is deep
| fake, it looks very real.
|
| I recall seeing this and noting how, while I'm fairly certain
| it's a deep fake, I wouldn't be _that_ shocked if it wasn 't. As
| far as reputations go, Elon Musk really does seem like he'll say
| just about anything these days, and what he won't say he'll re-
| tweet.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| https://reddit.com/r/youtube/comments/18gjiqy/youtube_doesnt...
|
| So much whining from YouTube addicts. Never seen any ad like
| this. And I block ads manually all the time for other more
| 'regular' things. Maybe if you weren't always watching videos
| about Elon and Crypto you wouldn't see these thrown in the mix.
| You're the target!
| gab007 wrote:
| True that! That does not absolve Youtube / Google from
| anything, however.
| victor22 wrote:
| Same for all blatantly obvious scams that I report to Instagram
| or Facebook, all stay on and they say didn't break any
| policies... They're nasty
| sebaz6r wrote:
| I made the same observation:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38555440
| michaelteter wrote:
| There's one ad that sounds like Donald Trump (it's an AI voice
| gen) promoting Donald Trump gold bars. It's not a short ad; I've
| seen it several times, so one of the times I recorded it. At the
| end, there's a brief display which says:
|
| "Disclaimer. This ad and it's entirety is independent and is not
| affiliated with or endorsed by Donald Trump or any political
| party associated with him. The content and views expressed on
| this ad are solely those of the website owner and contributors,
| and they do not represent the opinions or official positions of
| Donald Trump or his party. Any references to individuals,
| organizations, or political figures are used for informational
| purposes only and do not imply endorsement or association. This
| ad also has no affiliation with Donald Trump and his party in any
| way. Additionally, this ad is not endorsed by Donald Trump and
| his party in any capacity. Lastly, the audio used in this ad was
| computer generated. Thank you and enjoy!"
|
| The link goes to "Free Trump Gold -> wewillbegreatagain dot co".
| I didn't bother clicking the link, but I searched and found that
| this scam ad has been in existence for over a year.
|
| I'm no lawyer, but I would be really surprised if this obvious
| attempt to ride on someone's name/(in)fame was legal. Surely
| Trump could sue this person for what they are doing. Surely
| normal people have flagged this ad to YouTube, but it's still up.
|
| When searching for details about this particular ad, I read about
| general frustation people have with the vast number of scam ads
| on Truth Social. But that's a whole other topic...
| raphman wrote:
| > "It's not a short ad; I've seen it several times, so one of
| the times I recorded it."
|
| FWIW, YouTube ads are just normal, unlisted videos. You can get
| their ID by:
|
| - right-clicking on the video while the ad is playing,
|
| - selecting 'Stats for nerds',
|
| - copying the 'Video ID' from the debug info in the top left
| corner,
|
| - appending this ID to 'https://www.youtube.com/watch?v='
|
| This also allows you to see the account associated with the ad
| and how often this ad has been played already.
|
| For example, here's a (German) scam ad promoting a cheap
| ceramic heater as having "effectively no energy costs":
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WorrpfjAYdc
| michaelteter wrote:
| Ahh thanks for the guide.
|
| Also, I've seen the scam heater ad as well. It's obviously
| bogus, but unfortunately a lot of people will fall for it. I
| guess if the ad weren't driving sales, they wouldn't still be
| running versions of it.
| dools wrote:
| ABC Australia's MediaWatch did a good segment on this recently
| (starting 10:09):
|
| https://youtu.be/ziVHNDFxtno?si=6i4JMYHF1YxLvopJ
| mihirnaik wrote:
| I have seen many ads on YouTube, Google Ads, Google Display too.
| There are similar ads on twitter and LinkedIn too. It seems like
| they don't have a handle on the quality of ads nowadays. Looking
| at the advancements in Machine Learning capabilities it's hard to
| believe they are not able to detect these.
| MetaWhirledPeas wrote:
| Ad-free content really is possible, and Amazon is showing us how
| to do it. (Despite the fact that they themselves host ads.)
|
| Amazon (however unlikely) could viably come out with an ad-free
| YouTube competitor, backed by Prime subscription dollars. As long
| as the costs are in order they could let it stew for a decade
| while it slowly pulls users away from other platforms. Heck
| Netflix could do the same thing, although they seem to be drawn
| _towards_ ads, sadly. X.com would probably love to do something
| similar, but they don 't have enough services to match the value
| of Prime.
| jbverschoor wrote:
| Same here fakes using Michael Saylor and Microstrategy. Sometimes
| using livestreams
| calderknight wrote:
| It seems very much more likely that YT has ineffective moderation
| than that it doesn't want to take down scam ads.
| Jakob-G wrote:
| That's kind of the same thing. They don't improve their
| moderation because they don't want to take down scams, so they
| can make as much revenue as possible.
| calderknight wrote:
| [delayed]
| droalf1 wrote:
| Many Scam ads and they ask to pay by Paypal. When you are scammed
| Paypal refuse to refund. This is something that Youtube must be
| knowing and Paypal must be knowing and they are allowing users to
| get scammed.
| kevwil wrote:
| And they're shocked that people want to run ad blockers? LOL
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