There’s this: [All Online Data Lost After Internet Crash | The Onion](https://youtu.be/lvpuT3aoypE?si=UI8wTzkNXdEKMO4x) which is pretty funny but doesn’t contain the idea of moving the internet into the trash bin… I feel like I remember that from somewhere too though

This, Jen...is The Internet.

Peter's Computer - Desktop Cleanup https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_XaJdDqQA0

No disagreement here! My point is more that the bar for what's enough to be a safety issue in ads is actually extraordinarily low, which is exactly why I don't have any qualms about using the strictest measures possible to block all ads even as someone who, at least in my own perception, is pretty tech savvy.

In my mind, the entire ad industry is basically not worth enabling. I'm not nearly as concerned with the hypotheticals of "what if literally everyone started using ad blockers and ad-supported content disappeared?"; that's firmly in the "I don't know, but it's a problem I'd definitely prefer to have to what we have right now" bucket.

Not at all evident from the story I told, but she had a stroke a few years ago and then only survived another year after that. She lived a long and from what I could tell happy and fulfilled life though, and to the end seemed far more concerned about how others were doing than herself (during my last conversation with her, the first thing she wanted to know about was how my then-girlfriend-now-wife was doing because she had developed an autoimmune issue out of nowhere around the time that they had met a few months prior).

On the whole, she was actually pretty admirable in how gracefully she aged. In her 80s she decided on her own to move into an elder living community not because she actually was having any issue doing things on her own, but because she knew that it was inevitable that she would start needing help and wanted to make sure she was somewhere that was equipped to handle it when it happened. She also decided on her own to surrender her license because she didn't think she should be allowed to drive anymore and took advantage of the community's shuttle buses when she needed to go places. I think she would have been the first one to say that she did not think she should not be the one trusted to make sure that she could use her computer safely and that systems that required people like her to know what to click are unethical!

Given the colour of the text, I just wanted to say that I agree 100% with this:

> If you take money for it, you should be responsible for it.

If they don't want to take responsibility then they should guarantee that the responsible party have provided valid credentials that can result in their being held responsible.

That would clear up the quagmire that is internet advertising pretty darn quick.

This kind of thing has come up before with "murder for hire" advertisements [1]. The publishers were only found liable when the advertisement was very explicit. Seems like the bar is quite high and courts are currently unwilling to impose "undue burden" on publishers.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soldier_of_Fortune_(magazine)#...

As someone working for a small publisher: The amount of "don’t care" is amazing. We tried 2 different big and popular "programmatic bidding" platforms. The amount of scams and extra-shoddy ads was crazy. And for each we realized after talking to our partner manager that caring about that is not expected. There are no or not enough controls to prevent it.

We managed to get into google ad exchange (via a personal connection as we’d normally be too small to get there directly, it’s essentially adsense with more control and more money), and compared to the other players we saw, they are much better by default already. But then you can also set minimums etc. This will lower your payout, but significantly raise the quality of your ads.

So when a publisher has all those scam ads, it’s either lack of knowledge and care, or a choice.

But … it really should

But they don’t. Google and others do vet ads, but when they don’t host them, the ads can change based on who is looking (clean ads for Google! Not for you!).

Google didn’t have this issue until they bought DoubleClick (text ads and they hosted). And they had pretty good privacy as they didn’t want to share shit.

After DC it all went to hell.

Define "validate". App Review is really only good at catching things that make Apple uncomfortable for financial reasons, or make their attorneys worried (trademarks, copyright, etc.) The sandboxing is what makes the App Store pretty unsuitable for distributing actual malware (the kind that can do stuff to your device without you knowing).

Well if they cannot technically differentiate malicious, then they should drop that business niche. They receive money for that, similar as selling stolen goods.

Cause that would cut into their profit margins, and section 230 absolves them of liability

Newspapers and magazines didn't sell ad space to obvious crooks back in the day. Scammers didn't have tv ads. Obviously there was somebody watching them. The trashy scams were reserved for the real scummy publishers: comic books.

At this point, breaking them up into smaller companies. Then start fining the individual companies so the balance sheets feel the fine more. Increase the fines exponentially for each violation.

> There isn't.

Not with this attitude.

If a scam ad is found, at the very least, require them to disclose business records to show how much money the scam ad made (revenue, not profit), and make them repay it. Leave it up to the platform whether to recoup the paid-out share from the publisher or not.

If they are caught doing it repeatedly without taking adequate measures to stop it, treat them as an accessory to the crime.

Put execs in jail for enabling fraud

Start with $1 and double it every time they do it again.

> How would one hold Google accountable? By fining them $1bn? $10bn? $100bn? To them it is just the cost of doing business.

Percentage of global gross revenue like the EU's GDPR does seems to work effectively enough for a scare tactic.

If you're asking socially, you don't, that's the benefit of writing laws instead of programs.

If you're asking technically, well, google made over 400 billion dollars last year, they can spend some of that to figure it out.

Or stop serving ads. Just because it's difficult to do safely doesn't mean you get to just do it anyways because there's profit involved.

"At scale" sounds like an assumption that costs must decrease as income increases.

That's not required. Google could employ proportionality as many people reviewing what they advertise as, say, National Geographic Magazine.

Do the words "at scale" magically remove all responsibility and reliability?

You start with the obvious cases of sending you to a domain that serves malware, sure there will be instance of fraud that will slip trough, but lets not let best be the enemy of good

In Japan, the identity verification is quite strict to subscribe to a voice/text capable phone line. Still yet to get robocalls or spam texts. I'm sure they exist, but despite handing out my phone number to city hall and countless private businesses, I have yet to receive one.

On the other hand, enabling my Verizon eSIM is a surefire way to receive hourly "Potential Spam" calls, despite giving nobody outside of direct family my US phone number. Thankfully, I've convinced enough of my family to use Signal and we call/text through there instead.

Nowadays, I only turn on the Verizon line if I have to receive an SMS one-time code or call my broker.

Don't think the U.S. will ever solve this problem; people will just say something about privacy, the country's "too big" to combat spam at scale, etc. It's also too easy to get a phone number anonymously. A frequent phenomenon I've witnessed is that when someone blocks a phone number, the same caller contacts them again from a different number with the same area code.

You can stop junk mail for $8: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47619939

Sorry, no solution for spam calls/texts.

There are levels to this though.

You wouldn't hold a landlord accountable if it was a surprise that a crime took place, but if they were aware that some of their tenants were committing crimes and just "choosing not to ask about it," they could reasonably be called "accountable."

Telcos are regularly asked to give up information regarding crimes committed by their customers, see the Patriot Act for details - in some sense, we as a country have decided to hold them accountable for this (though, not spam).

Meta have been involved in a whole list of litigation that is at minimum adjacent to stalking/harassment, if not directly involving those things. I would need to look up to be more specific, though.

I know what you're trying to say, but you're saying it terribly.

If Ad Platforms don't want to be held responsible for the fraud that their platform literally delivered to the victim, then they should have KYC for all of their Customers that pay them money to deliver advertising to their victims. That way, shock fucking horror, someone or something might actually be able to be held responsible.

And if the argument is that there are many ways that scapegoats can be used and shell companies setup to avoid actual responsibility, then we'll know more about the next layer of regulation that's required.

Or we just give up and say that fraud is OK (which, I believe, is the current thinking in the US).

Try generalizing the argument without changing it substantially, then we'll talk.

A user-agent spoofer like Chrome Mask is helpful here:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/chrome-mask/

It's off by default and has to be turned on per site, but will automatically stay on for subsequent visits. Test the site with it to be sure it works for your mom. Most sites that insist on enforcing Chrome-only user-agents run just fine on Firefox. I've encountered a few that run even better on Firefox than they do on Chrome.

You can try Brave, it's Chromium under the hood so it's usually accepted and has built in ad blocking, and a one click way to turn it off for a specific site if you have an issue.

Did you try spoofing the User-Agent?

It's not age; it's apathy.

Why do we need to throw AI at everything? It's a huge waste of resources for a problem that is/was easily solved by uBlock Lite (and other alternatives).

No it wouldn't.

Your bank, school, doctor, and government would all still have websites. Companies would still sell things online. Video calls and chat systems would be there. All the websites run by donation or self-funding would be unchanged. Without ads, the worst parts of the internet might stop existing though.

> It's not just Google, the Internet stops existing.

Uh? No?

The internet existed before being overrun by corporate presence. It still does. Advertising pays a lot, but take the ad money away and let it scale accordingly.

Every now and then I hear advice to the effect that saying even a single word to a robocaller will get your number flagged for more, so you should just answer silently and hang-up. Whenever I follow that advice, I get more and more calls. Then I start engaging with callers to waste their time and resources. I press numbers, try to get to speak to a human, and then generally mess with them if I do get a human. That usually takes care of the calls for a while.

Mine is actually all letters, it's G U L L I B L E. If you're having trouble remembering, I heard it's written on your ceiling right above you.

Instead of getting a local locksmith, it's a "lead gen" service which charges the locksmith $100 or something to get your info. They're placed on the map, but aren't actually there.

The only thing that should come up is actual local locksmiths.

To give my example, if you search for locksmiths or plumbers or any sorts of trades you'll land on a page for "small family locksmith in your small suburb name". Except the site has thousands of urls with the same exact content and pictures, one for every suburb in Australia. Gary the small business owner does not live in my street.

As far as I can tell its a national company with an overseas call center, the scam is that it looks like a local company - at least they can sell a lead gen to someone that can open my lock.

They send out someone in an unmarked van who doesn't have a locksmith license (at least in CA these are a legal requirement and they are required to show it to you). When you ask to see it they tell you they keep it at the office for "safety". That was the extent of my personal experience.

I've read that if you let them work on your property, they will claim your bog-standard lock is unpickable, and charge you an exorbitant amount to drill it (destroying the lock) and replace it.

Almost everyone who calls a locksmith is in a hurry, dealing with something unfamiliar, so people are susceptible to this.

I've had this happen to me personally on vacation - we were locked out of our rental car, asked a person at the nearby place to call a locksmith to get me back in, and they didn't quote price over the phone. When they got there, they popped the lock and then wanted $200, cash only so you couldn't chargeback, which I learned after the fact is completely outrageous for that service. They had a lot of fake Google reviews that were glowing, overshadowed by the real ones calling out the scam.

I've heard worse happening in other cases where they drill locks and then quote much higher than $200 after they do it, it's sadly common.

Specifically? Because it’s something people search for. Because it’s something people pay for. If the scammer can get you to pay for “a visit“ upfront, and never show up, they’ve made money.

Viruses were common on FTP sites and BBSs. They weren't all benign. DOS in particular had zero protections against damaging code. Bot armies hadn't been developed yet so malicious destruction was just as likely an outcome.

Right that's why I qualified that with "things they didn't used to fall for".

Right but an age-related illness that affects cognition is generally just called dementia.