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How do?

So this is a pet peeve of mine. And as you’ve almost certainly guessed, it’s about deliberately misleading, and even fraudulent/illegal ads.

Not for me, I know how to use an ad-blocker, and am happy to do so. Rather, my peeve comes from members of the public being suckered in.

You’ll know the ones “Celebrity X made squillions with this simple trick” type stuff. Or “lose weight by drinking this tea it does work honest and isn’t even slightly poisonous or without a shred of actual evidence”.

These pop up everywhere. Many lead to Bitcoin Scams, or Foreign Exchange Trading. They’ll make claims that their product attracted heavy investment from shows like Dragons Den/Shark Tank, when even a cursory search shows that to be utter nonsense.

For me in particular, it’s the Bitcoin and Forex stuff that irritates. There are rules and laws in the U.K. about promoting investments. And as these are extremely high risk (especially Forex, where you can lose more than you invested) and should not be promoted to anyone, except extremely experienced investors. Making these ads fundamentally illegal, notwithstanding their obvious utter BS content, promising wild returns. And a decent number are just straight up scams. They take your money, show a pretty graphic with lots of profit, until the second you decide to make a withdrawal. Then, mysteriously and inexplicably?



Because there was never any investment happening. They’re literally just taken your cash, and blown smoke up your bum.

And they’re appearing on otherwise reputable websites, in great numbers.

Who is responsible for internet advertising oversight? Any tips? Because that stuff needs shutting down completely.

My exceptionally limited understanding is that its an issue with volume. Rather like moderating on massive site like Facebook and Youtube. Basically its all done by computer, which means scammers can learn tricks to fool the system and get through. It then takes considerable time it seems, to shut them down, but they pop up again very fast (because they expect to be taken down).


Heck I keep seeing those "puzzle game" ads everywhere for a fake game that is nothing like the trailer (they solved that by putting "not all video shows actual gameplay").

They are straight up scams/false advertising, but there's clearly issues with curation and sites like google.



I think another issue is that there are ways to report them, but they aren't obvious and its another hoop and most who hate ads will use an ad blocker. So another coin might be that they dont' get reported enough. Heck I know sites that use google ads that aim at younger generations have issues with things like gambling and such getting past the filters.




You see the same problems when companies don't curate content directly. Steam has had huge issues with Greenlight and their new "pay to list" systems with scammers getting hundreds of games on the system for cheap to scam things like steam cards to make money. As soon as you remove human curation you open yourself up to a much bigger user market, but you also open up to a lot of scammers and dross.

Another example, Bedethsa's attempts at paid mods in Skyrim. With no curation it took moments for thousands of rubbish mods to make it onto the system, bloating it beyond use.

Short answer: not really.

There are plenty of things you can do, or at least try to do - like reporting the ad to the site displaying it, to bodies like Trading Standards or the Fraud agency (whose actual name I forget).
But given the people and companies running these ads are likely halfway across the world, and operating on an all but untouchable - and probably invisible too - level to our authorities? All you'll accomplish is getting one or two ads taken down, shortly to be replaced by another ten from the exact same people, now running under a different shell company name.

The real answer is to educate people not to fall for them in the first place.

So who is it that provides ads to websites? As they strike me as the root cause due to sloppy or non-existent standards?

Simple answer: Don't click on ads. Ever.

Oh I don’t, but I deal with issues where people have, and lose anything from a hundred to several hundred of thousand of pounds.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
So who is it that provides ads to websites? As they strike me as the root cause due to sloppy or non-existent standards?

"Reputable" ads will usually be provided by a digital marketing company. The truly dodgy clickbait ones will either be a less scrupulous marketing company or the dodgy company themselves. Getting ads onto website is a simple matter of setting yourself up as an advertiser on Google, Facebook etc. There's no central authority viewing and certifying them like there is for TV.

Well that seems something in dire need of being addressed and sorted?

Genuinely going to email my MP about. Because we can’t have a Wild West of advertising out there.

Can we just sic the more computer-literate elements on Anonymous on this sort of thing?

 Dysartes wrote:
Can we just sic the more computer-literate elements on Anonymous on this sort of thing?

Wouldn't they be on the list of suspects?

Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:You’ll know the ones “Celebrity X made squillions with this simple trick” type stuff. Or “lose weight by drinking this tea it does work honest and isn’t even slightly poisonous or without a shred of actual evidence”.

One can easily block these with ublock origin or umatrix (this one's really good but won't get updates anymore).

There's not much internet advertisement oversight as an international thing. That stuff happens on the national level. For example, streamers and youtube personalities have to work within local laws and within the rule of the service they use (twitch/youtube/…).

Same goes for those advertisers. They probably stay within the laws of wherever they operate from. Sites use an ad system that gets ads from some sources and you end up with a cascade of responsibilities where everybody says that they are not responsible (while your browser is loading megabytes in tracking javascript), they got the stuff from over there and those people said they comply with the law and the contract they signed means they are not at fault. So any company you can easily bombard with lawyers ends up safe while you'd have to hunt for the responsible party a few layers deep (and probably with little effect).

Something that you can do: If ad blockers work for you and you don't want to mess with your relatives configuration then a pi hole might work for them (if you configure it): https://pi-hole.net/ It even work on an Raspberry Pi (so you'd not need to mess with their machine, just configure it and put it between the internet and their box), for more info try: https://www.reddit.com/r/pihole/

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Genuinely going to email my MP about. Because we can’t have a Wild West of advertising out there.

...I really can't comment on this in detail without breaking the "no politics" rule. All I'll say here is - this would not bring about the desired result.

 Super Ready wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Genuinely going to email my MP about. Because we can’t have a Wild West of advertising out there.

...I really can't comment on this in detail without breaking the "no politics" rule. All I'll say here is - this would not bring about the desired result.

Pretty much.

Get adblock or any kind of tools.
Cant even go on youtube anymore without certain nice types of ads showing up...

There's also a whole subset of moble gaming ads that show clearly a whole other game

Voss wrote:

 Dysartes wrote:
Can we just sic the more computer-literate elements on Anonymous on this sort of thing?

Wouldn't they be on the list of suspects?

I'd lean towards no - they generally seem more white hat than black hat, but I may be missing stories about their activities.

 Super Ready wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Genuinely going to email my MP about. Because we can’t have a Wild West of advertising out there.

...I really can't comment on this in detail without breaking the "no politics" rule. All I'll say here is - this would not bring about the desired result.

I can understand that, assuming we’re thinking the same thought.

And yeah, I can see how well meaning concern is open to other agencies and agendas.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Oh I don’t, but I deal with issues where people have, and lose anything from a hundred to several hundred of thousand of pounds.

I agree it's a terrible, terrible thing.

What can be done, short of having the government vett every single link - assuming they had the resources to do so, which they do not, and assuming you want the government to do it, which no sensible person does.

I was more thinking making ad agencies carry the can. They’re the ones ultimately providing the service, so it doesn’t strike me as inherently unfair to hold the, responsible.

I mean, let’s consider FB. They make a chunk of their money via adverts. Yet it seems (I may be wrong, hence only seems) they do no vetting at all. Rather my impression is they take the cash and publish away, relying on their users to flag spam, scam and illegal ads.

That’s not good enough, surely? I mean, when I’m on the phones and get a new call about someone losing all their money (even going into heavy debt to do so) to Bitcoin or Forex, i always ask “who recommended this to you”.

And the answer is commonly “I saw an ad on Facebook”.

If there was greater emphasis on larger websites to ensure their ads are clear and not misleading? That starts to reduce the reach of scammers. Because as I said, I’m seeing these ads pop up on legitimate news websites. Worse, the layout ensures click bait drivel is mixed in with links to other stories - adding to the false impression they’re legitimate.

Now, someone is providing that website template service thing, yes? So why is there seemingly no responsibility on them to vet their own content? If they’re offering advertising services, surely they’re the ones to do that?

 Vulcan wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Oh I don’t, but I deal with issues where people have, and lose anything from a hundred to several hundred of thousand of pounds.

I agree it's a terrible, terrible thing.

What can be done, short of having the government vett every single link - assuming they had the resources to do so, which they do not, and assuming you want the government to do it, which no sensible person does.

Best case scenario, hold the plattforms accountable for the adds.
But considering how averse Facebook , google and consorts seem to actually hire a human component for reviewing that is capable , because man hours cost £$CHF , i doubt anything will change.

Which then leads back to, ad blockers beeing not just a pesky handy little tool but actually needed for your online Hygiene.

I had an update tom Opera which meant my ad blocker no longer worked as it had previously. It still blocks ads but I have to actively skip them rather than never see them. I dont know how to get back to the shangri-la of never seeing the ads in the first place.

My main problem is email spam. Normally I am only getting light spam but I signed up for a newslatter with Asda, no small fly by night company, and got immediately coated with spam at a rate of 20 emails a day initially then swiftly jumping to about ten times that as 'Asda partners cascaded onto other partners etc etc. Asda should know better.
I unsubscribed and wrote a complaint email which got ignored, and it took a goodf few months for my ad blockers to catch up.

So opening the door to spam can take place even with companies one really ought to be able to trust. Thankfully my email subscription to Games Workshop, Mantic and numberous small gaming companies and retailers generate no noticable spam, and Games Workshop excepted they shaould all have IT departments a fraction the size of Asda.

Ads are harmless.

The only legal action you should take is if someone violates your rights in some way through actual physical (financial) harm.

You have every right to advertise "Date this chick today for X dollars!" Just like the person who takes you up on you ad should take you to court when you defraud him and cause him harm in some way.

Facebook having this kind of crap is no suprise to me, they've gotten in a fair bit of trouble of late due to their poor.... quality standards.

IMHO the easiest solution would be to make internet hosts criminally responsable for ads played on their website.

Facebook runs ads for a scam, they are considered to be a participant in said scam it'd ensure they vet every advertisement VERY carefully

 BuFFo wrote:
Ads are harmless.

Heavy caveat - legitimate ads are harmless (and frankly I question even that, when you consider the long-term effects of gambling, the effect on spending habits and so on).
There are a lot of ads out there whose only purpose is to direct the audience to a scam.

 BuFFo wrote:
Ads are harmless.

The only legal action you should take is if someone violates your rights in some way through actual physical (financial) harm.

You have every right to advertise "Date this chick today for X dollars!" Just like the person who takes you up on you ad should take you to court when you defraud him and cause him harm in some way.

Adverts which are subject to a relatively easily enforceable code of ethics, such as not making misleading or false claims are harmless. Especially when the business placing the ads are held financially and legally responsible for pushing nonsense.

I can of course only speak for the U.K., as that’s where I live. But we have the Advertising Standards Agency to oversee such things. Hence, though I don’t really watch live TV, I can be reasonably sure that any ad I see on telly or catch up service isn’t just a load of unverifiable claims.

BrianDavion wrote:
Facebook having this kind of crap is no suprise to me, they've gotten in a fair bit of trouble of late due to their poor.... quality standards.

IMHO the easiest solution would be to make internet hosts criminally responsable for ads played on their website.

Facebook runs ads for a scam, they are considered to be a participant in said scam it'd ensure they vet every advertisement VERY carefully

I'd lean towards making the advertising platform liable, not the individual website - the latter should have no idea what you're seeing if they've marked out space X for an advert via Google's service, for example, but Google should be aware of (and verifying, ideally) all the content they're servicing up to other sites.

N.B. - I have not particular issue with Google's ads, off-hand, but I know they're a big player in the digital advertising space.

Unrelated point - the ad blocker services really need to update their code to include some form of ad blocker blocker blocker, so all these sites that seem to think I should have to look at 305 adverts to read one news story can get in the bin...

 Dysartes wrote:
I'd lean towards making the advertising platform liable, not the individual website - the latter should have no idea what you're seeing if they've marked out space X for an advert via Google's service, for example, but Google should be aware of (and verifying, ideally) all the content they're servicing up to other sites.

The issue with this approach is that it already doesn't work. The marketing platform might not be liable, but legitimate providers do have the very real concern of losing customers if their adverts cause complaints. They're not the issue here.
The problem is that the scammers often are the marketing platform as well. And by the time a site discovers this and drops them like a stone, they've already made some cash and run off to create a different platform to trick people with.