For example, they may show a copy of stack overflow because it has more ads - for many users they will still click through and deem the copy site sufficient.
Same thing with other SEO sites that blatantly copy other websites
Stack Overflow has its own ads, it doesn’t appear to use Google. Why would they optimise for those clicks?
That’s the point - people are saying google is promoting the SEO sites that copy content from stack overflow and use googles ad system
Do you have any evidence of this? It would be a huge scandal if Google was found to be boosting organic SERP rankings/placement based on the site's use of Google Ads and I have no reason to believe this is true.