Why is Google still serving dodgy ads?

People still see ads?

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.

Money is the answer

Mere consequences of the "free market". Applying the so-called "Hanlon's razor" to one of the most malicious actors in the planet is borderline delusional (or malicious :P ).

Same for Facebook posts and comments inciting hatred

They have always been spivs. Their entire business model is dishonest and predatory.

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.

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.

> 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.

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

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:

https://newpipe.net/

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.

> 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.

Google gave up, they know they’ve lost Search to ChatGPT

Because google is dodgy.

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

To Google,

Don't be Evil

> 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?”

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.

yall better ba carefull with that ads and shi

a rhetorical question...

:)

"Don't be evil."

Because money?

Ask me another.

because they're greedy capitalist mfs making a lot of money of scams

Has anyone ever actually even purchased anything just because of an ad?

In fact, these days ads have the opposite effect: A repetitive ad turns people off from EVER checking out that product.

imagine if a TV network served scammy ads during prime-time TV.

Youtube's bitcoin doubler scams are a great example of this... they run essentially the same videos over and over again, usually Elon Musk, Michael Saylor, or Steve Wozniak, occasionally Warren Buffet and a few others-- with some ticker or scroll telling people about a special promotion where whatever bitcoin you send them will be sent back doubled.

It takes basically nothing to reliably identify these videos. They're extremely heavily promoted with ads running on other videos. Google does nothing with them when reported. Google does not proactively remove them. And because, contrary to the documentation, youtube doesn't pull the verified flag from a channel when its name is changed, these scams go out on channels that look like official sources for the celebrities in them (they steal some random verified channel then change its name to SpaceX (official) or Microstrategy or whatever).

Google even got sued unsuccessfully by Woz and some of the scam victims-- and their response was pound the "S230 is an absolute shield for externally provided material" table and continue to do nothing about the fraud except rake in money from pedaling it. They haven't even fixed the verified flag issue.

(Shades of the same conduct were seen in the old viacom v. youtube case, -- users were reporting copyright infringements so they took away the button.)

I have sympathy for the S230 shield and consider it very important-- but the law is the absolute worst we're allowed to be. They are free to do better (and the CDA shield was designed to assure they can moderate without picking up liability).

Google's conduct is irresponsible, unethical, and may well cost us this important legal protection because if society's choice is liability for hosts OR the biggest and wealthiest companies do nothing while raking in money from even the most flagrant scams we're going to eventually choose liability with dire consequences for free speech.

It's especially ironic that the smaller sites and forums (like HN) would be hit especially hard by a narrowing of S230, but these forms reliably work hard to remove the worse abuse-- and are seldom the source of anything that truly offends the senses at least not for long. Companies like google that don't are ones that are so wealthy and powerful that they're almost intractable to litigate against even without S230 like protection. Loss of it would hurt them gravely but it would hurt everyone smaller more.

Google doesn't care because they figured out no one will hold them accountable any more.

The US regulatory authorities DGAF ever since Lina Khan exited the picture and the EU regulatory authorities might have the legal basis to hold Big AdTech accountable, but the EU is at the moment busy trying to fend off BS from the Trump admin, they do not have time and risk appetite (aka Trump retaliating on behalf of Big AdTech) left for scam ads.

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