Why is Google still serving dodgy ads?

Adsense has been a nightmare for us.

They have been putting thousands of scam adverts on our website for some time. Think "you have been looking at xxx and must pay a $100 fine" type popup nonsense. Hosted on the following websites:

azurestaticapps.net

azurewebsites.net

herokuapp.com

ondigitalocean.app

digitaloceanspaces.com

netlify.app

Google doesn't allow you to block these domains, because they consider them "TLDs" (the scammers use a new subdomain every day eg abcdefg.herokuapp.com). The scammers get banned and return the next day with a new account and subdomain (repeat every day). Therefore we cannot stop them. It's bizarre and baffling. But Google Adsense had to go.

Someone who has spent $100M+ on Google Ads explained to me that Google is doing everything possible to juice their revenue right now, in ways they've never seen before.

Seems like two things 1) Google is losing at AI and Sundar wants to mask this 2) AI is going to destroy their ad business and they want to get while the getting is good.

We need strict liability on this front. Google is complicit. No newspaper or equivalent publication in the days before web ads would allow ads that are down at the level of scam that seemingly make up the modus operandi of Google today (and even the ads back then that did bend the truth a bit, overpromised, or showed products that didn't actually have any legitimate use, shouldn't really have been legal back then either. They just weren't big enough of a problem to worry about).

Every YouTube ad I see now is an AI-generated scam ad hawking everything from free electricity to anti-aging products to birdhouses hand-carved by an AI-generated senior citizen. I've seen some multiple times, days or weeks apart. Their advertising standards are a complete joke.

I have two guesses why Google does this:

1) Google wants the most money, so they don't care to let dodgy ads thru.

2) There are more ads going out then can be reviewed, so they would rather have people report them, then they automatically reject the report until enough people report it, then an actual person may review it.

As to why Google doesn't use AI to review them? Google would rather use the AI in a way that makes them more money, than review ads and if AI decides to take them down then that's less money for Google.

(To be clear: I don't work for Google in any way, these are just my guesses)

This is one major reason why blocking ads is now a safety issue. If you have a family member who, for whatever reason, might be fooled by this sort of ad, install an effective adblocker on all their browsers and uninstall/disable browsers that don't support an effective adblocker.

If you are reliant on ad revenue, you should be expressing your displeasure to google right now.

Google can reply and confirm whether or not a report did anything?

I’ve never seen that. I report ads on YouTube all the time. I’ve reported ads for illegal drugs, illegal firearms, pornography, and all sorts of various scams. I’ve seen similar advertising to the example in this article, mimicking the phone’s UI. Ive reported them. I’ve never once seen Google reply to any of my reports to confirm what happened. I’ve always wondered, and since I continue to see the ads I just assume my reports go straight into a trash bin.

The illegal firearm ad I saw (more than a year ago, now) I was so shocked that I took screenshots and reported it multiple times. The ad advertised that the weapon was “easy to sneak through security” and “didn’t require an id to purchase” I saw the ad several times across multiple weeks. I reported it every time. I don’t think Google ever did anything about it. If they did, it took them weeks

It's interesting that in the beginning Google would prominently display "Ads by Google" [1] which they've since hidden behind the "info" icon because they don't want their name associated with these scam ads.

[1]: https://malcontentcomics.com/systemsboy/2009/09/the-google-a...

Because serving dodgy ads pays them a lot of money. The pivot is complete.

90% of the ads I see on YouTube are obvious scams. Many from untraceable shady overseas organizations.

You can see the data if you report them. It's always some unheard of outfit out of Hong Kong or Brazil. I want to know who is funding this.

You don't need to be Kreskin to figure this one out.

A lot of questions being raised today can be answered by the recently inverted power balance between users/customers and corporations. People have not yet internalized that old assumptions about how corporations fear losing customers are no longer valid. Consumers have become entirely docile and passive. Open hostility to consumers is now a norm. (Obviously regulation is also less powerful and less feared as well.)

Money. They make so much money from malvertisement that it doesn't make sense to remediate them. It's corporate greed and they've known about this since the 2010s, various campaigns have sprung up and have caused untold X amount of dollars in damages in breaches, and nothing changes. I've heard at least one FBI agent who had investigated cases related to malvertisement put Google up there with some of the worst ad networks.

I assume it is the same reason Facebook serves dodgy ads: it makes them money and they have had no liability for the material they choose to serve to users. There are a handful of types of content that could generate bad press (some sexual or racist content, for example), so they police those. But ordinary scams generate engagement and make them money, and since they are generally immune from liability for content under Section 230, there's no downside for them. I've always thought there might be an end-run around Section 230 where the algorithm is tuned to preferentially present fraudulent content, thereby implicating the company in the advertiser's fraud. But as far as I know, no one has tested that approach.

Not just dodgy but downright malware links. It's insane. had one with a full screen mcafee level scam. Dropping the ball Google.

We had to hire a full time person to monitor and block click-trick "Continue" / "Download" scam ads on Google Ad Manager. With the amount of human training we did blocking these ads, google could absolutely solve this problem instantly. The ad creatives are nearly identical. We were seeing new ad accounts targeting our specific domain daily (ad account names like {sitename}339, {sitename}340, etc)

When we asked our reps, they dance around the question by saying they would "escalate to engineering" or some bs like that.

Google just makes far too much money to stop. My guess is that its >40% of AdX display revenue, based on the % of scam ads that come through ad manager.

Context: our site did ~$5m AdX revenue annually, mostly US audience. High CPM niche. This was ~7 years ago till 2 years ago when we sold the business, I would guess it's still happening based on ads I see browsing the internet.

My opinion is that someone somewhere is paying for those ads and Google needs to get positive identification of a human being for any ad. Google has a near monopoly so there is no reason Google can't force this requirement arbitrarily. Once you have positive identification, suspend them pending further investigation if they serve any dodgy ad. I will be genuinely surprised if Google makes any money off of these dodgy ads. How? Like how does this money flow? Where does it come from?

There has to be a way to enforce positive identification, right?

Google already does this for Google play developers. I can't use a US credit card to pay for the USD 25 fee for a student on Bangladesh for example because I understand the payment method is one of the signals they use to make sure the student developer is a real person.

Is this something Google won't do on its own without being forced to act?

I don't think it is fair to pin this on Google - I get the worst ads on X. But something about how the X ad network works means that even when I report the ad, block the ad poster, etc. there is this army of alternate ad accounts that all show the same ad.

I was feeling very guilty last night as I was watching YouTube and getting 30s+ unskippable ad blocks every 10 minutes in some video. And the repetition and low quality were grating on me. I thought: being rich is never having to watch another ad. Why am I letting these ads own spaced repetition slots in my brain that could be filled with knowledge? Instead of learning, my mental energy is being taken up by psychological manipulation to purchase? The relentless repetition of the mind-numbing ad interspersed throughout otherwise educational content.

Being rich is owning the real-estate of my own mind. I sometimes feel like a digital serf in my own head.

As usual, "Google" here means the two individual human beings who together have a controlling interest in Google, Page and Brin. It may also mean some other people, but it certainly means them. To be clear, that's not to suggest that everything dubious about Google can be put on their shoulders. Some Google issues are genuinely hard to solve; some are deep enough in the weeds that they may plausibly never have heard of them or not have time for them. AdSense being a sewer doesn't seem to be one of those.

There is a well known problem in the Netherlands where scammers will set up fake museum websites, like “vangoghtickets.co”. They don’t even collect the money - your card details are instantly stolen and used for some odd looking purchases in south east asia or something.

I’ve reported these multiple times. They always get to the top of search results via paid placement, and Google always responds to the reports saying they found nothing wrong with them, even when provided with detailed evidence of the fraud.

My father saw a similar ad and got worried. The ad said you need to update your pdf version immediately. He uninstalled the YouTube because he knew it was irregular and thought his phone was hacked.

Funny how AI is AGI and yet ad companies don't use AI to scan for scam ads but they might lock you out of your account via automated review

Don't be evil -> What does "evil" really mean, anyway? -> Judgements about good and evil don't belong in business -> Evil is pretty profitable, actually

Facebook too. There are so many scams being promoted on FB, which is strange because both Facebook and Google ads used to be really strict about what they approved.

Now, it seems like they just approve anything.

I think the obvious answer is they aren't held to account by regulators. If a few execs were sent to prison for defrauding their users (and investors for taking on so much risk) things would change overnight.

These days almost all Google search results return nothing but links to stuff that you can buy instead of useful information you were looking for. They do this because they think they can get away with it, they're the only game in town.

To me this signals a huge opportunity for other companies to dive into. If a new internet search company appeared that returned actual useful search results and clearly delineated ads (like Google used to) I would switch to it almost immediately.

The only way these companies are ever going to change their game is when people vote with their feet!

Google itself serves similar ads for its own services in all its properties. I've been “critically low” on google storage space for several years now, and every google app prompts and notifies and nags about it on every launch.

I think the answer is, that's always been Google's business and not much has really changed. Advertising accounts for about 78% of their total revenue.

They don't have liability for dodgy ads, but they are paid to run them. POSIWID.

Man, Google is catching strays from all directions. I recently posted an article about their bot behaviour [0], only to be drowned in other more pressing issues.

To comment on this one: as long as there is no backlash from their real customers (those that buy ads) nothing will change.

[0] https://blog.miloslavhomer.cz/how-google-sees-your-site/

Because that’s how they make money. Same reason Meta doesn’t flag fake news/information and actually even amplifies and serves it in echo chambers. It’s a business model. They do it because they can. No one is stopping them. Why would they leave the money on the table?

I have a website with some adsense ads (that pay for the server).

I try blocking the most obvious scams by blocking the announcers but it's basically impossible because the same dodgy ones keep coming back with a new name.

Also hard because they're not always in a language you understand.

I don't think I should do all this work instead of the biggest ad company in the world just to earn 5€ per day, but I'm also not aware of any better alternative.

Here's another one for you. If you search for any popular book on Google Play Books, you get a whole bunch of fake knock-offs alongside the real book. Sometimes, it is nearly impossible to tell which one is real.

And they, apparently, won't do anything about it.

A couple months ago I went searching for the book "Regime Change" by Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, an NYT bestseller. The top search result at the time used the exact official cover art and author names, and was otherwise in every way indistinguishable from the real book.

I foolishly bought it and started reading. I quickly noticed that the text seemed like more of a mediocre college paper than a bestselling book. After a few pages I was like... wtf is this. Jumped to the end of the book and found an "Abort the author" section naming a fellow named Marcus Whitfield as the author.

I dutifully opened a ticket with Google suggesting that they should really remove this book. They refunded me, but told me they couldn't remove the book because their policy states that only the true copyright holder could request a take down, and I am not that.

WTF? I wasn't even claiming a copyright issue. I was claiming false advertising and fraud. I was claiming that Google Play's store was listing an obviously, maliciously fake book, selling it for real money, and that they should stop doing that. They take a 30% cut! How are they not doing even the most basic vetting of these listings? A human could trivially identify it as fake in 30 seconds and an AI even faster.

It appears that since then, the actual real book has risen to #1 in the search results (I think; it's hard to tell), and the exact listing that got me is gone, but there are still a whole lot of obvious fakes after it:

https://play.google.com/store/search?q=%22regime%20change%22...

And if you search for any other popular book, you get the same thing.

(Of course, no real publisher actually cares about Google Play Books, because nobody uses it, so nobody files takedown requests, presumably. Also presumably no engineers work on it, and that's why it's a wasteland. What I don't get is why haven't they shut it down?)

Well, as others have said money. As far as I know ads are the domain of the FTC and FCC. Who's going to stop them from serving scammy ads? Not Carr, not the FTC commissioners.

As much as I personally disliked Susan Wojcicki, she kinda sort kept Youtube shenanigans in check. Yes, there were baity, inappropriate ads, but after she left it has gotten out of control.

Google signaled with "Lake America" they are playing along, and I don't think any real consquences will come of it as long as they keep pulling in billions and the QoQ keeps going.

This one is not complicated…Because dodgy companies spend a lot of money on ads.

Google's abandoning of 'do no evil' has hastened their becoming dodgy themselves, not just the ads they serve up, but the way they serve you and your data up.

I’d love to know how much Google has made from accidental clicks since it started. I used to see my mum make a couple of mistaken clicks here and there on her computer; now on mobile it’s easily 10x worse. Sometimes because she doesn’t realize they’re ads, other times she tries to tap the X and it opens… It’s insane

My understanding is, it's a multi-party cat-and-mouse game that never stops evolving.

The publishers (websites or apps owners) that provide free content to users need a way to support the free content, and typically it's either donation (like wikimedia) or ads. To most publishers, ads revenue is far more predictable. By right most publishers also would like the ads to be reliable and relevant to the users consuming their content, but that's usually a secondary concern, compared to the revenue.

The users viewing the content are often annoyed by the ads, but as long as the ads are not too intrusive, they usually tolerate the ads. If the users occasionally find ads are actually useful, that's great, but most of the time in my experience, when I click into an ad it's usually a mis-click, not because I'm genuinely interested in this ad.

The advertisers need a way to reach more potential customers. Most advertisers are honest players in the game with real products or services to offer to users, trying to find ways to maximize the impression, click-through and conversion rate by optimizing their creatives, targeting, and bidding strategies etc. But there are always scammers that try to cheat the game, showing dodgy ads to rip off users whenever possible.

Google as an ad-tech platform sits between these 3 parties, trying to show the most relevant ad from advertisers in a publisher's ad-slot to the user. But the system has evolved into a complex maze over the years that likely nobody knows the full picture any more. New legal requirements and regulatory policies and industry landscape shifts keep pushing the system to extremes. There are teams to fight ad spams, but there are also business goals to make more money to fund the AI initiatives. The scammers keep finding new loopholes in the system, and the teams fighting the scammers are often steps behind, due to limited resource and budget. End result is many dodgy ads keep slipping through the policy filters.

In an ideal world, ad-tech platforms should optimize for satisfying all 3 parties at the same time: publishers, advertisers, and end users, in addition to making money for themselves. But that's probably hard to achieve, given the dynamic nature of the world. AI can help fight scams, but AI can also help finding loopholes in the scam-fighting system. It's a sad state of the world.

Spam/Scam filtering should have been the perfect place to show case SOTA AI. Why Google & Meta have not been able to do so?

Relatedly, DMCA should be expanded to harmful ads content.

Because they get paid ?

Apple News does this too. In some ways it's actually worse. It's a real problem, and those who are less technologically ept are inevitably going to be scammed. I expect a lot more from Apple than I do from Google, so it's surprising that it's been going on for so long.

LOL because they're greedy and they want the maximum profits for their shareholders and the board. The same explanation applies to every big (greedy) corporation :-( Have you seen what is happeing with Facebook marketplace? with Twitter ads? (no, it's not called X, it's still Twitter for some of us) have you seen apps on Play store and Apple? All soulless, big, greedy companies do this and they don't care about us anymore :-(

Because nobody is prosecuted for scam and malicious ads.

People at Alphabet and all website owners which use AdSense and showed scam and malicious ads must be arrested, prosecuted and sentenced jail time in order to stop this mess.

But it looks like all the countries are busy age restricting Internet instead. By age restricting, it means private information gathering which fuel ad companies more.

Do platform holders have a say in this?

I'm sure if I submitted an app that on the iOS app store that mimicked a system warning that tried to scare people into giving me access, it would not pass the review process.

If instead I decided to embed a WebView and later changed the html to do the same I would likely get booted from the app store (afair Apple's very particular about serving remote content in PWAs, and changing said content, even under benign circumstances).

iOS seems to have less scareware and shady apps than Android anyways.

I was irritated by this exact same misleading ad a few weeks ago and tweeted about it into the void. Kudos for the author for trying to do something about it.

My father installed an adware through one of the google ads. Just straight out of nowhere displays fullscreen ads whatever you're doing.

Based on prior FBI recommendations to use ad blockers to keep yourself safe from scams[0], it seems that the various methods of blocking/avoiding Youtube ads should also be recommended. Use as many of the tools as possible to escape the suck of the scam-hole that Google has made the Internet:

Firefox + uBlock Origin: https://ublockorigin.com/

Brave Browser

Invidious: https://invidious.io/

Revanced: https://revanced.app/

SkyTube: https://f-droid.org/en/packages/free.rm.skytube.oss/

Clipious (app client for Invidious instances): https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.github.lamarios.clipious...

I've said this before, elsewhere, with this kind of thing plus the LG / Smart TV surveillance, it feels as if we're living in the paperclip maximiser world, except it's "advertising" instead of paperclips.

[0]: https://www.securityweek.com/fbi-recommends-ad-blockers-cybe...

Edited to add: Remember when 'piracy funds terrorism' was a thing? Surely Google is providing material assistance in funding organised crime and / or terrorism in their reckless indifference to what they allow their platform to promote?

Because they are a dodgy company?

Until they are held legally liable they will do the minimum necessary to keep the money flowing and avoid litigation.

Frankly speaking, because no-one is forcing them to stop serving them.

That's the biggest 'trick' companies like Google have pulled here. They've somehow tricked the regulators into thinking that because they're big companies serving a lot of customers over the internet, that any sort of fraud or product liability laws are irrelevant to them.

Because any other company doing this would get sued into oblivion, shut down and the executives criminally charged. If a brick and mortar business let blatant scammers and criminals advertise in their physical stores, that would be seen as a serious crime.

Same with a retailer that sold dangerous or counterfeit products, or one that turned their stores into surveillance panopticons where customer data was collected illegally and sold to the highest bidder.

Google, Amazon, Meta etc are doing things that would get a normal business owner sent to prison.

The solution isn't just technical, it's about being willing to enforce the law for internet businesses the same way we do for offline ones. If Sundar Pichai and the board were looking at 10-20 years in prison for fraud or cyber offences, then Google would fix those dodgy ads real quick...

Extension to Hanlon's: never attribute to stupidity what can be attributed to apathy and greed.

This strikes me as a very silly question?

Because they can. There's no meaningful way to prevent them from doing so.