Remix.run Logo
Jskewel 2 hours ago

Adsense has been a nightmare for us.

They have been putting thousands of scam adverts on our website for some time. Think "you have been looking at xxx and must pay a $100 fine" type popup nonsense. Hosted on the following websites:

azurestaticapps.net

azurewebsites.net

herokuapp.com

ondigitalocean.app

digitaloceanspaces.com

netlify.app

Google doesn't allow you to block these domains, because they consider them "TLDs" (the scammers use a new subdomain every day eg abcdefg.herokuapp.com). The scammers get banned and return the next day with a new account and subdomain (repeat every day). Therefore we cannot stop them. It's bizarre and baffling. But Google Adsense had to go.

2 hours ago | parent | next [-]
[deleted]
2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]
[deleted]
guelo 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

The problem is the scummy adsense ads don't hurt Google's reputation. Outside the techie crowd people don't know the ads are from Google.

bmandale an hour ago | parent | next [-]

It doesn't practically matter whether the ads are from google. They're shown on a third party site, not using google won't get rid of them, only not using that site will (or installing an adblocker...). Users very reasonably blame the site, who have direct agency to remove the ads.

bobthepanda 7 minutes ago | parent [-]

IIRC this dilemma was one of the things that was driving the Google antitrust case that unfortunately will not result in divorcing search from ads.

MASNeo 13 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Calls from law enforcement is laud and clear: BigTech is not doing enough to fight fraud, war and other crimes, they make money from criminals.

Nobody’s yet cared enough to sue them, or their managers at ICC yet. However, eventually an ambitious lawyer will try to make the case, especially if fraud and human trafficking continues to grow like it is.

hansvm an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

That seems fixable. When people include this JS garbage, have a header/title/etc stating that this is Google's professional opinion. Bake it into a library offering enough other features that a large number of people are inclined to use it.

sysguest an hour ago | parent [-]

hmm could you explain more?

hansvm 22 minutes ago | parent [-]

- The big problem is that malicious ads are being displayed without appropriate attribution

- Add that attribution -- blame Google (or, supposing the ads are good, credit Google; a good header goes a long way toward swaying people's opinions)

- But it doesn't matter if a single website appropriately attributes Google's highest/lowest-quality ads. The last step (speculative and hand-wavy) is to incorporate that behaviour in some sort of software more people want to use. If you're fighting alone then you'll lose. If you can convince more people that appropriately crediting Google's advertising successes and blaming their malicious failures is advantageous, you'll (by definition) have more traction in the anti-megacorp-endorsed scams and other life-altering consequences.