alt Hacker NewsWhy is Google still serving dodgy ads?
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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
Same with Meta. The latter knowingly makes a substantial revenue from those ads. Unless a government steps it to make advertising platforms liable, there will be zero incentive for change
I don’t think they want to nor is it good for them to long term. But I bet they’re institutionally incapable of avoiding it given the KPIs that drive the entire employment ambitions of many managers.
Cloaking.
Google bans people, but mostly the innocent ones. If you're running blackhat, you've built a setup that gives you very good avoidance, and the bans are calculated into your sheets. The reviewer and the system sees something else than the customer clicking the ad. And even if they get banned, they will just burn a cc and domain and then get back to printing after a few hours.
While a legitimate business never suspects it can get banned, and when it does, the process is Kafkaesque.
Our case: a month of back and forth on the appeal, no success. The best we got was a suggestion to read the TOS and check whether we had any "brand affiliations" we don't have in real life. Previous replies were pasted slop. We don't have any affiliations, and we still have no clue what they were talking about. Meanwhile our conversion rate on other ad platforms was decimated by us constantly changing stuff to please the Google reviewer.
No surprise under a republican controlled government, the FCC considers this type of behavior "good for business".
Ohhh, has anybody used AI to generate delicious statistics about how many ads served by various ad networks will get you hacked / violate the ad networks own policies?
Meta knowingly earns 10% of its _overall_ sales from scams. https://www.cnbc.com/2025/11/06/meta-reportedly-projected-10...
This is one reason why you have adblock...
This strikes me as a very silly question?
Because they can. There's no meaningful way to prevent them from doing so.
I've seen suspiciously more malicious ads on older users phone (e.g., click to update Chrome ads) especially in-app ads.
Simple: They don't care.
This is include ads that impersonate google services, e.g. "your google translate has expired, upgrade to a new version". Reporting it to google is like yelling at a wall. Or worse, yelling at a wall after a few million years will slowly erode it due to the air friction.
Still some people don't block ads and people pay for it.
Simple as that.
> I’m a big fan of Hanlon’s razor.
There is a 3rd option: malicious stupidity / aka wilful ignorance.
Google is a collection of individuals, so it's very likely both sides of Hanlon's razor are true: a little malice from those in control, persisting a state of stupidity for those executing the process.
As others have pointed out, there will be resistance to improving a process that negatively impacts their bottom line. Incentives, dictate long term behaviour of organisations; whereas Hanlon's razor works better at an individual level IME.
How weird. I reported this exact ad earlier today.
Same for Facebook posts and comments inciting hatred
Google's ad-serving is dumb as a rock. It seems to be based just on things it thinks you may be interested in, even when it should be 100% obvious that they are not things you are going to buy.
They should let people have more control over what ads they do and don't see.
If Google served me ads on stuff I was interested in (I'd be happy to tell them) rather than women's clothing, they I might buy it. I'm a guy - show me as many skimpily dressed women as you like, but I have no need for women's clothes! Try it once or a hundred times it you must, but maybe after the millionth non-purchase you'd think they might figure it out and use that screen real-estate to serve an ad for something that my purchase history or what they know about me indicates I might have some interest in!
Dumb as a rock.
Because they get paid and can always wait before banning them without fingers pointing at them too hard.
They have always been spivs. Their entire business model is dishonest and predatory.
its so terrible because most of those ads pray on seniors, I swear i see the Tai Chi ad every single day and reported it so many times.
Money is the answer
The answer is in Google's Capex trends:
2023: $32B
2025: $91B
2027: $300B (projected)
2029: $400B (projected)
“I’m happy to go bankrupt rather than lose this race” -Larry Page
Money
> Why is Google still serving dodgy ads?
Because you're using an application which presents those ads to you.
Avoid Google/Alphabet application as much as is possible, and you'll see a lot less / none of this kind of ads.
It looks like you're using their YouTube client. Try NewPipe:
there are no ads with NewPipe.
I suspect this boils down to a cost/benefit tradeoff.
The cost of strictly enforcing stated rules for ads is felt immediately and fully by Google. It is concrete, measurable, and probably non-insignificant; the benefit is essentially goodwill from the narrow sliver of the web that is verbal about this. That is intangible, difficult to measure, even harder to assign a reasonable dollar value to (meaning the ROI could look negative), and the benefit would accrue to parties other than Google who might not even notice.
Sigh.
I reported months ago that Google's continual growth rate in revenues from Ads should be heeded with caution - its not from AI/LLMs.
They are juicing and juicing and juicing their existing assets for all the cash flows they can generate! That's why the revenues keep growing. They did not go to such extremities in the past - and they probably strategically held back.
Meta is facing the same predicament btw - both entities claim the growth is coming from new AI investments. The amount of impersination/Scam ad's I've seen on IG is hilarious. That is a flat out lie its from investments they made pre-LLM hype + efficiency gains.
> However, if you were being uncharitable, you do have to question whether it’s in Google’s interest to remove adverts that get lots of clicks.
That is it. They don't do it because it goes against their interests. Google is a scummy company doing scummy things. There is very little else to it.
Keep up these efforts to name and shame. If Google won’t act on these things because it doesn’t make them money, because they are unregulated, or because they are lazy, they might because it still cuts their credibility and reputation. Especially here on HN where Google is no longer considered such a darling by developers and thinkers.
yall better ba carefull with that ads and shi
I previously noted that the top search result for Claude Code was linking to a spyware website. It's crazy how this stuff is not monitored at all.
Because they make money by that.
Sometimes simple answers are not only elegant, but capture the essence of a problem.
Google gave up, they know they’ve lost Search to ChatGPT
kidnapping ads, scrolling dark patterns, nsfw context ads, fake medicines... i would prefer paywall instead.
> AI is really good at detecting deceptive adverts - why isn’t Google using it?
Because Google is an adCompany. It will not do anything about ads - quite the opposite, it has fought down ublock origin. Everyone sees that.
Money
google once served me an ad for what I'm pretty sure was CP, and i never reported it to anyone out of fear that just by being served a link to that kind of horrible shit I was somehow going to get in trouble over it. Sounds ridiculous, but as a nobody, pissing off a giga-corporation in an era owned by them probably was the better choice for my financial and overall well-being, even if it felt cowardly. Besides, epstein's guests roam free, unimpeded, and continue with impunity, what positive outcome could I have possibly hoped for?
Because google is dodgy.
To Google,
Don't be Evil
Why not?
It's not like they face any consequences for being party to fraud. Laws are for poor people.
"Why is Google still serving dodgy ads?"
more like why company still want to receive money ????? is more correct term
> TLDR: AI is really good at detecting deceptive adverts - why isn’t Google using it?
I have the same question regarding “why is Workday’s resume parser so shit?”
This type of shit is why I refuse to give up my pi-hole, uBlock, and Firefox.
Google (Alphabet) is a corporation. Corporations follow the profit motive. Furthermore it's a publicly traded corporation. These follow the interests of their shareholders.
What does killing dodgy ads do for Google's bottom line? It's removing paying customers and driving down competition for (and therefore value of) ad space. What's the cost of dodgy ads to Google? The sites that use Google Ads will continue using Google Ads if they do nothing about the dodgy ads. The sites that don't use Google Ads won't be swayed to use Google Ads if they do remove the dodgy ads. Google is not held liable for serving dodgy ads so there's no direct risk associated with serving them.
Why should Google remove the dodgy ads? "Don't be evil"? That motto exceeded its shelf life before it was first publicly posted.
Hanlon's razor is nice and all but there's a difference between malice and amoral apathy. Corporations would sell shredded orphans as fuel if it made economical sense to do so.
It simply increases shareholder value more than if they we're removed. It will only ends when companies will be made at least partially responsible for damages they help to facilitate. Don't be evil my ass.
Not just dodgy some are straight up illegal.
They'll act if someone threatens to sue otherwise Google doesn't give a shit as long as they get paid.
a rhetorical question...
:)
"Don't be evil."
Because money?
Ask me another.
Gezus… If you see my mother-in-law cellphone. It is impossible to use <period>. Full of ads crap that she probably installed by following ads… Remember IE toolbars?