sponsored / ˈspɒnsəd /
adjective
A fraudulent website or application that appears while using Google services
this post was submitted on 13 Sep 2026
288 points (97.7% liked)
Technology
88015 readers
3394 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
I recommend everyone tonuse an adblock and switch off of big tech products because fuck them
Lacking regulations that are genuinely enforced, they will only put a brick on the gas pedal in response to any resistance.
thought I had read doggy ads for a second
If I were in government, I would make Google liable for any ad they show. They took money for that ad, therefore they are responsible for the content of that ad.
Are any of the ads on social media not dodgy? I opened YT without adblock not so long ago and was immediately served ads for scam product from China. Facebook was also full of ads that were obvious scams.
My mom got served a virus from front page of Google. Living without adblock was always bad, nothing changed.
I've seen my niece and her friends get incredibly sexual ads on their YT before. Taught them both how to install adblock even on an iPhone and managed to make them not see that shit anymore. Mind you, my niece and her friends are FOURTEEN!
I felt like such an adult when they were getting excited that Fandom didn't have ads anymore when I showed them what a DNS sinkhole is. This is what it means to be an adult. To use your wisdom to help the new generation navigate theirs.
load more comments
(4 replies)
Twice I have tried to report this one, here's their response:
Here's what we found
We decided not to take this ad down. **We found that the ad doesn’t go against Google’s policies,** which prohibit certain content and practices that we believe to be harmful to users and the overall online ecosystem.
If it wasn't for youtube and my 20 year old gmail account i wouldn't be using anything from them
I just reported an ad that used a national newspaper name and logo to send you to a fake Amazon page that uses Amazon name and logo. Google's response: "We decided not to take this ad down. We found that the ad doesn’t go against Google’s policies"
They don't change.... I had the same problem some 5 years ago. There was an ad for olive oil using the logo of a famous supermarket around here, and a fairly similar website to the supermarket one. I reported that ad 5 times, got the same "this ad does not violate Google's policies" response each time. Until my mother clicked on it and was scammed out of her money.
I came to the conclusion that the only solution was to be done with google, I started using nextDNS in my entire network, changed all standard search for duckduckgo, and installed ad block all over.
I wish someone would make a website like a wall of shame, "ads we reported to Google and Google tough were fine"
Well yeah , I mean if you consider that Google's policy is "Be Evil", then everything's fine.
Because that makes them money. Next question.
It's for a church. NEXT.
(If you've never seen it)
Always a good read.
In that screenshot alone they had offers for enough space to handle 18 of the 20 people. But they just have to be an asshole about it.
I honestly always believed that it was a church busy body that was doing this. She probably has a small track record of resolving issues like this in the past and it just went straight to her head.
An all-time classic. You can hear the lead clanking in their bloodstream
load more comments
(1 replies)
Correct, it's always that answer for 'why is company x doing'
That was my knee jerk reaction, but then I thought,"Hey, don't be one of those people that only read the headlines and react to the click bait!" So I opened it and read it. Yep, should have just stuck with that first reaction and saved myself 30 seconds. Money. It's always money.
There's a suprisingly large number of people who I have had to tell that Google sells ad space. They're a digital billboard company but with the ability to target and tailor that ad space to the people who's eyes they want to put it in front of. People just don't know or care or both.
Why wouldn't they?
It's not like they face any consequences for being accessory to fraud. Laws are for poor people.
Should we try to coin the term:
"Beer's Razor"
The purpose of a system is what it does...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_what_it_does
Because they're blood soaked assholes who would be facing very uncomfortable consequences if there was justice in the world.
load more comments
(3 replies)
#1 money/greed
#2 ineffective government
With enough money and greed, you can make a very ineffective government.
Google made click money so its still up. It has nothing to do with AI, though thats a nice scapegoat: “ its not the AI! Look what it gave me as a response!”. Meanwhile the ad service AI doesnt give an f what this dude has to say because the money is better and this dude sounds like he pays for their AI so why would they care. He’s now a dissatisfied walking talking google ad.
Growing up you’re told “If it don’t make dollars, it don’t make sense” and I think that sums up the answer to this question.
Was I told that?
Yup. Most definitely not told that.
Two thoughts :
- This particular example of adversarial advertising by Google is directly targeting a flaw in a competitor's (Apple) OS
- The author asks why Google aren't using their AI tools to combat these, which is a fair question. Surely they are using AI, of course, but no chance in hell are they using the same Gemini the public gets. It's going to be tailored to their end goals, not the public-facing model the author screenshotted.
I have personalized ads turned of in YouTube and it seems half the ads are for gambling as of late.
Wow. That really stinks for gambling addicts. It’s like they can’t get away from it. A lot of YouTube channels advertise gambling apps too.
load more comments
(5 replies)
Because Google's corporate philosophy is "Anything for a buck" which is of course quite different from the "Dont Be Evil" they started with...
Google operated by “don’t be evil” right up until they merged with Double Click. That merger itself forcibly removed the “don’t.”
Because like all ad companies, Google gives way less of a shit if the ads are malicious than they do there being lots of ads displayed.
Money. Criminals and immoral people pay good money to show these ads. At least for Facebook, a court case regarding identity fraud has established that they knew quite well which ads were fishy, so they just charged those advertisers more. If I remember correctly, that amounted to about 10% of Facebook's revenue. It will be a similar case for Google, I assume. Sketchy ads pay too well to remove all of them and laws make it so the platform is only liable if they don't take it down after receiving notice of every single sketchy ad. Google, Facebook, and the others are all well near monopoly and built deep moats, so they don't really have to fear losing customers, because there's no simple alternative.
view more: next ›