Why aren't advertisers (Microsoft, Facebook, Google) held responsible for allowing scammy adverts?
I know they allow scam adverts because it’s easy money, but why aren’t they held responsible for facilitating obvious scams? You open Edge, there’s 3 “Earn money quick” adverts. On Instagram, every 5 ads, one is a scam.
Forget ads, Microsofts “free trial” wasn’t free or a trial. You’d be charged for a product that would show up on your bank statement as free. Short answer; no one in a position of power gives a fuck.
It is the law’s job to prevent and stop scams not of the platform that provides the advertising
If I had a printing shop (not sure how is it called in English) should I be the one who checks that what is written on the handouts is legit? Heck no, I don’t have the means for that.
It’s not just that, there are laws preventing a lot of stuff (not that it’s not commonly happening anyways). For instance a huge thing was never copying anything with Disney characters in it. It’s not like Disney has a special rule only for them, it’s just that Office Depot knows they’re the ones to sue your ass into dust if you get caught. It’s the same for any copyrighted material if it’s going to be distributed, but OD ignores it for the minor stuff because it’s low risk. We just need to laws to protect us from these malicious practices and then we need them to be enforced.
You can’t print whole books if your costumer asks you to without having permission to do so, you would be a distributor. If you ask the question “if I do something illegal or harmful to someone, should I be taken responsibility?” you can get a better answer. You don’t need a third party to take ethical decisions for you. That’s the point of the thread, ad companies have knowledge about harmful ads and refuse to take them down.
Any service you offer professionally should absolutely be reviewed for legality. If you didn’t have the means to comply with laws and regulations you shouldn’t be in business.
And in the case of lots of these ads with malware, it would be like you printing poison ink on handouts, and saying you aren’t to blame.
I know dungeons who works as a fraud support site a bank. An incredibly high percentage of people getting scammed come from Facebook. Either they believed an ad about investing in crypto (the bank blocks the first transaction automatically and they have to talk to the client), or they have been contacted by… Zuckerberg, or Elon Musk, who told them they needed investors for an experiment that will be extremely lucrative… I can’t believe people fall for that one.
I reported a scam ad to YouTube (it said it was a 1000 dollar giveaway to the first I don’t know how many people that signed up). When I googled it the top results were all about how it was a scam. Got feedback a few days later: we don’t see a problem, the ad is staying up. So they are even knowingly making the choice to show these scams to their users…
Because citizens of many countries are not pressuring their elected officials to change advertising laws such that there is accountability, but companies are most certainly constantly lobbying for relaxed regulations.
It's not often you can look to Brasil for policy guidance, so São Paulo's ban on billboards/outside advertising is pretty remarkable in a number of ways. If they can rid a city of outdoor advertising, surely the world can get a few advertising oversight laws?
The downside is that you can't just throw up your hands and say "Someone else should fix this! Why haven't they?" and walk off. It's a chore that takes time and energy from an already time and energy poor population, and I respect that there is a lot of broken shit in this world that needs fixing.
One best side effects of that “clean city” law is that building are clean to be used as canvases for artists to paint giant murals on them and now the city is know for its incredible street art.
The websites (or at least Google & Facebook - not sure about Microsoft, it could just be low value ad space that nobody really wants?) you’ve described are known as “walled gardens” in advertising, meaning the DSP (demand side platform, where people who run ad campaigns manage those campaigns), SSP (supply-side platform, where websites & apps with available add space list that space) and at times the website itself are all part of the same company.
This creates a conflict of interest - essentially DSPs want to place as few ads as reasonable as they only want to advertise to people the ads will have an impact on. SSPs want to show as many ads as possible so they get paid more. This results in walled gardens, like Google & Facebook, showing ads more than they should be resulting in overcharging as a result compared to an optimally run campaign. Many reputable companies and ad agencies are aware of this and so advertise less with the walled gardens, resulting in proportionally higher scam ads, as no agency would run a campaign for them.
There’s also the fact that they have no relationships to maintain. If a DSP is constantly showing scam ads in the ad spaces they buy, then they’ll get blacklisted by the SSP. Same the other way around if the SSP keeps selling misrepresented ad spaces that will never be seen or will be resold every 5 seconds to the DSP, or otherwise not being a trustworthy partner to work with. As the walled gardens don’t need to maintain this relationship and there’s no risk of being blacklisted, they can effectively advertise whatever and put ads wherever on their website - they’re generally powerful enough that people will use their product anyway, so there’s no downside for them to accepting scam ads if they’re paying.
According to the law you are required to remove it as soon as you know it is there, but if you are not the original uploader you are not going to be held responsible
It is the law’s job to prevent and stop scams not of the platform that provides the advertising
If I had a printing shop (not sure how is it called in English) should I be the one who checks that what is written on the handouts is legit? Heck no, I don’t have the means for that.
In this case the company selling ad space isn’t the print shop they are the man handing out those handouts. They receive money from the scammers for directing people to these scam websites, money that is the profits of those scams.
(People will understand what you mean if you say printing shop. As a native English speaker I normally hear it said as just print shop, but printing shop works.)
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