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.

  • Rhynoplaz@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I’ve always hated advertising, but I hated it even more once I worked in advertising.

    That being said, it’s unfair to advertisers. (ugh, I hate saying that, because it’s a slimy business, but this is the reality) Nobody has the time to thoroughly research EVERY business that wants to buy advertising. Also, there’s a fine line between scams and completely legal yet manipulative business.

    Bill might be starting a legitimate small business and wants to advertise to get his first clients. There’s very little information available online and no reviews because he’s just starting out, but that could look like a fly by night scammer.

    Joe owns a similar small business. He charges too much and he doesn’t do very good work. That’s not illegal, but people who use his services might feel like they got scammed.

    Bob’s a piece of shit. He wants to take your money and give you nothing in return. He knows what an advertiser would look for to verify his legitimacy, and he makes a fake website full of fake reviews.

    In this instance, the advertiser might refuse to sell to Bill, get sued for selling to Joe and spend money and time proving that he’s technically legit, and perhaps not even know that Bob’s a scammer until months after he’s taken the money and run.

    • ante@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Uhhh maybe they should find the time to do that then? How is “we don’t have the time” a valid excuse? Either hire more staff to do so, or sell fewer ads.

          • captainlezbian@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Because you know who General Electric is and it’s easy to verify they’re actually advertising with you and that they’re a legitimate company, Jim-Bob’s Auto Repair, not so much.

            • scarabic@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              “Knowing who General Electric is” is not how verification is done. Small businesses can authorize a credit card, provide an official ID, submit their LLC info… these aren’t rocket science and scammers won’t do any of them. Do you know how many fields operate with licensing in place? Do you think inly GE-sized companies do plumbing, for example?

            • blazera@kbin.social
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              1 year ago

              Oh yeah i see auto repair scam adverts all the time…?

              Wait no, im seeing goddamn miracle cures for aging on youtube. Old guy literally saying itll make you 20 years old again.

              • AstralJaeger@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                Woudl you like to buy Doctor Binsemanns Bevertail extract? It cures cancer, aids, std’s, headaches, stupid and much much more! Its even cheaper than insulin! Only $59.99 per 50ml

                You mean like that? Been there, seen that, I know why I pay for kagi and YT Premium and have adblockers everywhere else.

          • Provoked Gamer@lemmy.ca
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            1 year ago

            Spending more money on more staff for checking the validity of advertisements can affect small businesses more because they have less money.

            • blazera@kbin.social
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              1 year ago

              You got turned around somewhere, we’re talking about small businesses advertising through major platforms like google. Theres no “small business” online advertising platforms

              • Provoked Gamer@lemmy.ca
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                1 year ago

                Ahh ok. I guess I kinda got lost in the thread somewhere. Thanks for letting me know. Ignore my previous comment.

      • Rhynoplaz@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        It’s not just time and resources, they too are being lied to. If the scam is good enough that people will fall for it, some advertisers will as well.

        Right now there are no regulations, so many don’t care at all. That sucks, but the scammers are the problem here. They are the ones trying to rip you off. The ad companies might not care if you get screwed or not, but it’s unrealistic for us to expect them to know EXACTLY what every client’s intentions are. A business could run legitimately for years and then start running a scam. How long would we give the advertisers to realize that the client has started scamming people? Do they get in trouble because they ran ads for someone who would LATER start scamming people?

        I’m all for discussing other ways to control advertising, but shooting the messenger isn’t it.

        • ante@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          I haven’t and likely can’t think of a good solution to handling the scenarios you’re talking about. They are good questions that someone smarter than me should address. However, to use those scenarios to completely admonish advertising platforms for blatantly obvious scams is asinine. “Well, what if a legitimate business starts scamming people?” should have little relevancy to the question of “Should we accept this ad from a user advertising that they’re going to double your money if you give them access to your financial accounts?”

          I’m not saying it’s simple or quick to solve, but there is very obvious low-hanging fruit that could be dealt with but is somehow not because these platforms aren’t held accountable whatsoever. It has to start somewhere.

      • jbrains@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        Businesses exist to make profit, not to take care of you. Corporations will only care about your welfare to the extent that that creates profit for them or the laws require them to.

          • jbrains@sh.itjust.works
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            1 year ago

            Yes, I know. I also agree.

            The comment I replied to, however, was not that. It asked why the corporations’ reason is valid. It’s valid because that’s what the economic system is designed to promote.

        • Z3k3@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          While also complaining its not fair when we protect ourselves from the business they won’t protect us from e.g. ad blockers.

          Google going so far to invent “Web drm” to ensure we have no choice but allow them to serve us malicious ads that the won’t filer themselves

      • dQw4w9WgXcQ@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        Absolutely. There is an exchange of money involved in the advertising services, so it would be natural to expect a small fee for sanity-checking the advertisement. Facebook are mostly able to check for nudity, porn or gore in the advertisement, so with some additional inspection, it should be possible to weed out a lot of scams.

    • BolexForSoup@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      I really try to caution people from accepting these “it’s too much to hold us accountable for” answers. If it’s too much, then cut back. Simple as that. If I am a real estate mogul and my building collapses like in Miami, do you think the local/state/federal agencies involved will shrug it off when I go “Now now now, I have far too many properties. I can’t possibly be expected to be in compliance all the time. A collapse and some deaths once in a while is inevitable”? Of course not, that would be ridiculous. Yet when youtube goes “we simply have too many uploads to screen it all,” we do just that!

      Same goes here. If you’re juggling too many advertisers, why is that our problem? Hire more people, scale back, or figure out some third option. Instead we all just internalized this concept that “there’s nothing that can be done.”

      • gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        Yeah. This is why we have things called regulations.

        When seatbelts and crumple zones and airbags and crash safety ratings became a thing, car manufacturers didn’t want to add any of that crap in, because, you know, it would cut into their profit margins. And then the government said “do it or you’re not allowed to sell cars”. And then all the manufacturers did it.

        Something similar can theoretically be done for advertising. But it probably won’t, because regulatory capture has been normalized.

    • scarabic@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Nobody has the time

      This is a dumb excuse for a profitable business. If you’re making money on it you should be able to subsidize controls. If you can’t operate a business safely and still make a profit, you shouldn’t be in business. It’s that simple.

    • Treczoks@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Nobody has the time to thoroughly research EVERY business that wants to buy advertising.

      Wrong. Nobody wants to spend the money to do that, because they know they will not be held responsible for aiding and abetting fraud.

      Change the responsibility factor, and the money will be there.

      • Rhynoplaz@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Or, instead of finding that money, they find another way to avoid spending it.

        It wouldn’t be long before you only see advertising from large corporations. Love them or hate them, we all know that Walmart is a legit business. A potential, morally superior competitor, that we’ve never heard of may not even get the chance to advertise. The newspaper or TV station doesn’t want to risk getting sued for a scam, so they just refuse service. Walmart keeps playing ads, and nobody ever hears about the store that we never knew we wanted.

        • JokeDeity@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          In the one hand though, if only the big corporations can afford ads, blocking them becomes even easier.

    • I Cast Fist@programming.devOP
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      1 year ago

      Makes sense when you’re dealing with actual services or products, but I’ve yet to see a single “earn 200 per hour” ad that isn’t a scam or “legal” pyramid, those should be easy enough to block and ban, no?

      • Rhynoplaz@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Who decides which legal businesses are allowed to run ads?

        I completely agree that MLMs are a “scam” but they are legitimate businesses in the eyes of the law. You suggested we ban them, so what defines who is allowed to advertise and who isn’t? I’m not comfortable with leaving it as “anything somebody in charge doesn’t like”.

        • I Cast Fist@programming.devOP
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          1 year ago

          Some extra regulation on advertising might at least help somewhat, “Any adverts promising financial gains must clearly demonstrate how said gain is to be achieved”

        • skulblaka@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          I completely agree that MLMs are a “scam” but they are legitimate businesses in the eyes of the law.

          Then they shouldn’t be. Problem solved, next question?

    • GreenMario@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      nobody has time

      Maybe be a good JOB CREATOR and create some motherfucking jobs to handle it. Oh no our bottom line… 😭

      • psud@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        It’d be a terrible shame if advertising became more expensive (because they needed to employ content checkers), and companies could no longer afford to advertise as much

        • Neve8028@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          As much as I don’t love advertising, it’s mainly just the big corporations that wouldn’t care about a bit of a price lift. Small businesses will be hit disproportionately.