alt Hacker NewsThe better thing would be to hold Google directly accountable for every malicious ad they allow through their network. If they cannot do that, they should not be in business selling ads then.
Yes, that means amending the law (in the US). But the law as it is written facilitates crime.
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Agreed
It's not just malicious software ads, they also sell ads to entities mitming every government service.
Not just the networks (although preferably also the networks) but also the publishers.
If a newspaper took money to advertise blatant, obvious scams, I assume a judge would consider them at least partially responsible for restitution, if not an accessory to the crime. Looking away really hard (and delegating the task of looking away really hard) shouldn't get you out of this.
Hold the publisher responsible, they can then hold the platform responsible, thus creating a market for platforms that actually fight scams. Right now, there is limited incentive to fight scams, as the scams still drive revenue. If you take money for it, you should be responsible for it.
How do you figure out what is a malicious ad? That seems really difficult at scale.
Idk if apple can validate each and every apps before publishing to appstore, why can't google and facebook validate each and every ads?
This is bad enough for Americans, but things are a bit worse for those who aren't.
If my government tries to regulate, tax, or otherwise annoy one of these corporations, their billionaire owner will deposit a few million into the right campaign fund and the Big Cheeto will tariff us, threaten to invade us, swear at us, send us ambassadors who swear at us, or start trying to rename bodies of water. (He'll probably do that anyways.) In general, it's bad enough for our business that we usually just let these companies do what they want and hope that, someday, the U.S. will regulate them properly. That's unlikely to happen anytime soon. (Note: Even Democrats get nasty when their campaign funding is threatened.)
In the meantime, look out for the people you care about and support anything that pries your data out of American fingers.
all of this seems a little like second-level nonsense.
it's like ... "when my vacuum cleaner takes pictures of my wife naked, it should use HTTPS when uploading the pictures to the cloud"
I mean, maybe we can try going after the scammers.. but we can’t even stop scam callers and junk mail
How would one hold Google accountable? By fining them $1bn? $10bn? $100bn? To them it is just the cost of doing business.
We're beyond holding huge companies accountable. The only way they could be held accountable is if there was personal risk involved for the CEOs. There isn't.
Generalize this.
Every landlord should be directly accountable for all crimes committed by their tenants.
Every telco should be directly accountable for all crimes committed by their customers.
Meta should pay damages when their users stalk and harass people.
This. There should be no intermediary liability protections for any paid or monetised content: as soon as a platform is either charging for placement or paying the creator, they should be treated as a publisher and held responsible.