Why wouldn't they?
It's not like they face any consequences for being accessory to fraud. Laws are for poor people.
this post was submitted on 13 Sep 2026
320 points (97.6% liked)
Technology
88146 readers
3223 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
Because that makes them money. Next question.
It's for a church. NEXT.
(If you've never seen it)
An all-time classic. You can hear the lead clanking in their bloodstream
Always gets a chuckle out of me
Always a good read.
In that screenshot alone they had offers for enough space to handle 18 of the 20 people. But they just have to be an asshole about it.
load more comments
(1 replies)
That was my knee jerk reaction, but then I thought,"Hey, don't be one of those people that only read the headlines and react to the click bait!" So I opened it and read it. Yep, should have just stuck with that first reaction and saved myself 30 seconds. Money. It's always money.
There's a suprisingly large number of people who I have had to tell that Google sells ad space. They're a digital billboard company but with the ability to target and tailor that ad space to the people who's eyes they want to put it in front of. People just don't know or care or both.
load more comments
(1 replies)
#1 money/greed
#2 ineffective government
With enough money and greed, you can make a very ineffective government.
Because the US refuses to regulate tech
But why won't any other country do it either? Or are these ads only displaying to US IP addresses?
Because the US is aggressive towards countries that try. Also the companies are so large that they can exclude an entire country from their services.
A smaller country can take Facebook to court and might get a settlement but only a us court can truely punish them. With jail, breaking them up, law changes affecting their main customer base etc.
load more comments
(2 replies)
If I were in government, I would make Google liable for any ad they show. They took money for that ad, therefore they are responsible for the content of that ad.
I've seen my niece and her friends get incredibly sexual ads on their YT before. Taught them both how to install adblock even on an iPhone and managed to make them not see that shit anymore. Mind you, my niece and her friends are FOURTEEN!
I felt like such an adult when they were getting excited that Fandom didn't have ads anymore when I showed them what a DNS sinkhole is. This is what it means to be an adult. To use your wisdom to help the new generation navigate theirs.
That's the best kind of praxis, because it will (hopefully) outlive you.
Is it really praxis tho? Like it is just being a good guardian to my niece and her friends. I get it to an extent that 'ads are the price you pay for using a service for free' but to what end? Google is a massive company and should vet the advertisements they allow a lot more.
The fact children are getting highly sexual ads is a failure on their part and I see blocking ads as a fair reprisal to them until they can sort themselves out. It's my civil disobedience as a consumer. Like especially these days with how massively invasive ads have become.
My view is that 15 years ago (maybe longer) “ads are the price you pay” was valid. They weren’t tracking everything you do… yet. They’ve gone too far and until they stop there’s no reason for you play by the rules either.
If it were me in their place I could imagine your actions being impactful, and inspiring further action or thought. At that age I was very interested in going against the grain. It was a different time, but not too long ago. Really no one wants to see ads, for sure, so it's still a win, even if the anti-surveillance ad message is not of interest, you've still helped get rid of not just the annoyance but the malicious vector of a grab bag of random liabilities - modern digital ads.
Growing up you’re told “If it don’t make dollars, it don’t make sense” and I think that sums up the answer to this question.
Money. Criminals and immoral people pay good money to show these ads. At least for Facebook, a court case regarding identity fraud has established that they knew quite well which ads were fishy, so they just charged those advertisers more. If I remember correctly, that amounted to about 10% of Facebook's revenue. It will be a similar case for Google, I assume. Sketchy ads pay too well to remove all of them and laws make it so the platform is only liable if they don't take it down after receiving notice of every single sketchy ad. Google, Facebook, and the others are all well near monopoly and built deep moats, so they don't really have to fear losing customers, because there's no simple alternative.
Because like all ad companies, Google gives way less of a shit if the ads are malicious than they do there being lots of ads displayed.
Because they're blood soaked assholes who would be facing very uncomfortable consequences if there was justice in the world.
PSA: if you see a blood soaked asshole, refer them to a medical specialist as soon as possible.
load more comments
(2 replies)
I have personalized ads turned of in YouTube and it seems half the ads are for gambling as of late.
Wow. That really stinks for gambling addicts. It’s like they can’t get away from it. A lot of YouTube channels advertise gambling apps too.
load more comments
(5 replies)
I just reported an ad that used a national newspaper name and logo to send you to a fake Amazon page that uses Amazon name and logo. Google's response: "We decided not to take this ad down. We found that the ad doesn’t go against Google’s policies"
Well yeah , I mean if you consider that Google's policy is "Be Evil", then everything's fine.
load more comments
(2 replies)
Because Google's corporate philosophy is "Anything for a buck" which is of course quite different from the "Dont Be Evil" they started with...
Google operated by “don’t be evil” right up until they merged with Double Click. That merger itself forcibly removed the “don’t.”
Before I put adblockers on everything, I was served an ad for a stupid mobile shooter game, either on YouTube or Facebook, that started with a real life hunter shooting a coyote in the neck, which made it cry out in pain and tumble down a hill.
Now as a matter of sanity, I block all ads. If they can't keep crap like that from being advertised, then fuck off.
Twice I have tried to report this one, here's their response:
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.
If it wasn't for youtube and my 20 year old gmail account i wouldn't be using anything from them
Are any of the ads on social media not dodgy? I opened YT without adblock not so long ago and was immediately served ads for scam product from China. Facebook was also full of ads that were obvious scams.
My mom got served a virus from front page of Google. Living without adblock was always bad, nothing changed.
Lacking regulations that are genuinely enforced, they will only put a brick on the gas pedal in response to any resistance.
Huh? Not for me. I kicked the big G out with DNS.
Me too, just fuck it all to hell. It’s nice not to have mobile apps tracking me either.
This and also the G sites not being displayed.
Right, but simply staying away from their websites doesn’t really solve the problem. You can ditch Google all you want but you won’t get away from their tracking on just about every third party app and website — they even load scripts on (US) government websites.
Should we try to coin the term:
"Beer's Razor"
The purpose of a system is what it does...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_what_it_does
Two thoughts :
- This particular example of adversarial advertising by Google is directly targeting a flaw in a competitor's (Apple) OS
- The author asks why Google aren't using their AI tools to combat these, which is a fair question. Surely they are using AI, of course, but no chance in hell are they using the same Gemini the public gets. It's going to be tailored to their end goals, not the public-facing model the author screenshotted.
thought I had read doggy ads for a second
sponsored / ˈspɒnsəd /
adjective
A fraudulent website or application that appears while using Google services
view more: next ›