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.