YouTube doesn't want to take down scam ads

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

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.

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.

> 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.

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.

That's kinda good it means whatever privacy steps you're taking are working

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"?)

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.

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.

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.

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.)

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.

[delayed]

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.

Viewers are actually feudalistic subjects that are taxed and employed for free or litkle.

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

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?

> (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.

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.

Where? In Europe I haven't heard any scams on radio.

In the US, Florida specifically.

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..."

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.

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.

While I wholeheartedly agree with you, I suspect explaining that to an older judge would be difficult.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Most people believe they themselves cannot be influenced by ads "at all". If they were right, nobody would bother making ads.

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?

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.

between the scam ads and their war on adblock it really seems like Google is scraping for every penny they can

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.

Why do they have to grow, though? Can't they just be profitable? They can just pay out dividends like coca cola, no?

A not terribly uncommon belief is that continuous growth (pick your metric) is the raison d'être 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.

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.

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.

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.

When the Irish Tánaiste (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...

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.

I'm sorry, but this is unparseable to me. Who did what now?

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.

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 Tánaiste 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 Uachtarán (the President).

Tánaiste = Deputy Prime Minister

Taoiseach = Prime Minister

Uachtarán = President

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?

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...

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.

> 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.

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.

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?

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

So basically I'm supposed to pay protection money? Yeah, I don't give into extortion...

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?

Why not both?

-Every corporation in the world.

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

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>

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.

Sure, but that still makes advertising paid YouTube as “ad-free” a lie and a scam.

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.

At least it's not ANOTHER League of Legends ad.

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.

Dude. lol.

Youtube doesn’t stop spying on you just cause you’re paying. In reality, what you’ve actually done is better fuel their spying to become even more of a product on googles other platforms.

Never mind that “pay for no ads” is entirely temporary. You will be getting ads with premium soon enough, as we are seeing on other platforms.

I dislike ads. But when I do see them, I'd prefer they were relevant to my interests. I might order an ADF4377 evaluation board, but I'm not going to be buying any feminine hygiene products or timeshares in Phoenix.

So as far as I'm concerned, they can spy all they want. That horse left the stable years ago anyway. Just don't waste my time with ads on YouTube, and we won't have any beef. So far Google has held up their end of the bargain; we'll see if that remains true going forward.

Nice moving the goalposts! I wasn’t talking about the types of ads you see, I was specifically addressing the absolute bullshit claim that “if you pay, you are no longer the product”, which is 100% demonstrably bullshit.

Secondly, paying for premium doesn’t in any capacity stop you from seeing scam ads in the sharing networks Google powers.

Given that other platforms are already showing ads for their paid tiers, it is not a matter of “if”, but “when” for YouTube.

Nice moving the goalposts! ...

I'll type slowly this time to make it easier to understand: I don't care about ads on other sites, I only care about avoiding them on YouTube, and YouTube Premium currently works fine for that.

It's OK if they "spy" on me to keep the other ads relevant, but that's not the subject of this thread.

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?

You can opt out of that without paying anything

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

In this case, they've already crowdsourced the review labor to their users, who correctly reported the ad!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Ad blocker can block that popup...

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”

Yeah if it is updated chrome plugin which Google of course delayed update on.

He has adblock installed, he disabled it because of the terms of service popup by YouTube.

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."

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

> 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.

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.

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!").

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.

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.

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.

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"

Ease of use is not a technical aspect.

>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

It is really random in the anglosphere. If you type "... full film" you will get the full film sometimes, just not all the time.

Or just S01E02.

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.

You probably could do that just with MySpace money.

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.

But they have cats, thus your words fall upon deaf ears.

When you are an ad company then why would you reject the source of revenue?

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.

You have just a few big advertisers, but millons of scammers. Scammers can outspend big advertisers.

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.

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.

Not sure about Coca Cola specifically, but we are talking more generally about well-known big advertisers.

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.

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.

Taking down individual scammers is almost cost free though, whereas Disney has a lot more to spend

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.

Perhaps then this is really Elon planting these ads after all, to bring advertisers back to Twitter. /s

* 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.

- 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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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

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.

I think it's a great idea, for obvious reasons it will never be implemented.

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" ?

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.

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

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...

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.

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.

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.

It's definitely not by accident, it would be very easy to turn off community notes for tweets flagged as ads.

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.

You realize normalizing this with comments like that is what makes it not shocking? Self fulfilling prophecy

I wouldn't call sarcasm normalization of shitty practices, but ok.

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.

Parent isnt normalizing it’s already the norm and politicians don’t rly care. That’s why we have to change normality ;)

Talk about a great example of David Hume’s “is-ought problem”.

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.

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.

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.

So Google is then knowingly participating in financial scams? Looks like grounds for a lawsuit.

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.

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.

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?

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.

Seems like the only policy is that it makes money. If it does then everything's ok.

The more legitimate reasons for adblockers (such as "I don't want to risk falling for scams."), the worse their anti-adblocker efforts look.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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".

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).

Seems tough. Guess they should stop operating that kind of business if they can’t figure out how to do it without scamming people.

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.

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.

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).

It’s not impossible at all, just hire more people. That may not be as profitable, though.

Same experience for me, reported several clear scam ads and just get a reply from G that they don't violate any policies... :/

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?

One man's "politician doing their job" is another man's "strangling innovation with bureaucratic red tape".

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).

https://reportfraud.ftc.gov/#/

I suppose it would be nice if there were an easy way for everyone to do this.

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.

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.

Only works if you’re in the US presumably.

This isn’t news… Facebook won’t remove any scam ad, post, or account either. They just don’t care.

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.

Arguably that won't cause as much damage as scams. But holy bad taste

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 £3m 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.

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).

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

Herman Cain ran one! And it is hilarious. Recommended.

I’m surprised there is no liability for facilitating scams / fraud on the ad networks given that they’re making money on it.

I don't see how it is not wire fraud. But in this country the FBI only goes after what is politically important.

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.

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

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.

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!

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.

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.

Got a link to the ads?

I don't understand who do people still keep using Google services. What are you expecting from a company like Google?

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?

I wonder about the legality of the ads that say to go to a website to sign up for government money.

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.

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.

Doesn't even have to be a lip-sync, it could've simply been AI

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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?"

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…”

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.

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.

...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.

The amount of fake and useless generated videos exploded after Google removed dislike numbers.

I refuse to believe people think those are good deepfakes. The lipsync is so so so bad. So bad.

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.

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.

Why do you consider such regulation to be heavy handed? They have definitively proven that they are happy to profit by harming others.

My ad blocker defends me from YouTube scams. :)

This isn't about us. This is about the systemic problem and its relation to our industry.

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.

This creates a legitimate reason to use an adblocker.

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...

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."

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.

I've reported fraudulent ads (Ĕlon musk make $1ʘʘʘ/day) directly to a friend who works in safebrowsing team and they get pulled for a day or two before they're back.

looks like Youtube doesnt comply with some of its duties in the EU https://commission.europa.eu/strategy-and-policy/priorities-...

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”

You're expecting too much from poorly trained contractors in India who review these reports (if a human reviews them at all).

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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...

We need more regulations to weaken ads entirely. We've seen the free market of ads and it's total garbage.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

Don't report the Elon ads to google, report them to Elon, then maybe some action will be taken.

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.

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?

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.

google is from capitalist country, as long as they get money they just dont care

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.

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.

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.

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.

I keep getting betting ads which are illegal in my country

Every passing day I lean closer to the position that advertisement contracts should not be enforceable.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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...

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.

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.

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...

But they keep trying to take down the addons we use to protect us against them: ad blockers.

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.

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.

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.