alt Hacker NewsWent to watch the Youtube intro [1] for Penguin Mail and was greeted by the most egregious scam video. Didn't click the ad, but simply went to the domain (usbest1.com) and it's just chock full of AI generated content hoping to scam you out of your money. Going through the checkout flow, it even asks you if you want to tip your driver (presumably for delivery).
Sorry for the off-topic, but Google (and all ad networks) should be legally required to vet their advertisers. That's gotta be the worst I've seen.
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Interestingly, one of Poland’s wealthiest individuals (who has been the target of scams ranging from malicious to macabre) is now engaged in an openly declared war with Meta[1][2]. There is an entire foundation dedicated to tracking ads and identifying scams; they calculate the profits generated from these schemes and lobby for regulations that would mandate the vetting of advertisers, recently on an EU level.
[^1]: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-08-27/-locker-k... [^2]: https://www.aa.com.tr/en/europe/polish-minister-accuses-meta...
Protect yourself and your family. Use an adblocker.
I went through a phase of reporting them (to YouTube, there's a button while playing to do so) and did get automated reply that a lot were removed. Some took several reports, others they continued to insist didn't violate their policies, but they will remove them.
YouTube has some seriously scammy ads. To an extent that these ads have motivated me to buy premium for my parents as they tend to fall into the trap of fake dialog boxes shown in ads warning a PDF app needing an update.
Ublock origin
Especially now these scam videos can be made on an industrial scale.
Amazed anyone here isnt using an ad blocker for youtube tbh, it feel like the first thing you'd want to avoid the mess.
Ublock is still a thing. Or use Brave as thats got baked in ad blocking which can be combined with ublock to make it even more effective. Then adguard or pihole on your local network so no analytics/tracking data is still being pushed out.