After 20 years I turned off Google Adsense for my websites (2025)

One day, some spambot hit the site and started searching for terms like "mesothelioma". Adsense would see that page with "mesothelioma" in the sidebar, query for it, and served up the ambulance chaser's paid ads, even though there obviously were no matching results.

I didn't realize this was happening for several weeks since this low volume site was earning very little and I never even hit the minimum withdrawal limit. Suddenly I was earning $50 - $100 - per day. This lasted for a few weeks but before I could transfer the earnings, Google locked the AdSense account due to abuse. It might surprise you, but Google support was not helpful and after a series of reviews, they permanently shut down Adsense for this site.

Therefore, I also turned off Google Adsense for my websites.

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If you run a website that serves ads, whitelist it in your adblocker so you can see what your own damned site looks like to people who are still rawdogging the world wide web.

My wife never returned to work, we had kids and she has stayed at home with them. As such the ad has stayed up. Last I checked though it is bringing in something like $36 a month despite traffic being higher than ever. I get a payout from Google every couple months.

I'm considering taking it down just because the payoff is so low. It's honestly barely breaking even with the added expense of complicating my taxes.

As staunchly anti-advertising, I wouldn't include advertising on anything I publish personally, but then I also don't publish anything, so I have no pressure to change my stance. I think I've convinced myself that my opinion doesn't matter to those who may be able to earn a decent stream from advertising (as much as I dislike that, and as much as I dislike my opinion being value-less).

Ethical Ads: https://www.ethicalads.io/

Nowadays it will be a miracle if it passes of US$800 a month.

I think the shift to a more localised audience (NZ), diversion of ad spend to large social networks are responsible. Our traffic is similar in volume but nowhere near as "valuable" apparently.

Since then I've become anti-ad and haven't had any for years. I am sorry for my embarrassing lapse in judgment. :)

She made me take all of my Adsense ads down immediately for the rest of the month and the first couple weeks of the next until we received our first Adsense check.

Then, and only then, did she let me put the ads back up. That first check bought us a freezer. The next paid our rent.

Those were fun times: $50 CPM was not usual 2004-2005.

interesting that someone looking to make some (modest) money with AdSense is blocking ads...

Anyone know what these might be offhand? I think federal trademark law may sting more if used commercially. But what else could he be referring to?

The three problems I see are:

1. People who imagine content moderation prohibitions would be a utopia.

2. People who imagine content moderation should be perfect (of course by which I mean there own practical, acknowledged imperfect measure. Because even if everyone is pro-practicality, if they are pro-practicality in different ways, we still get an impossible demand.)

3. This major problem/disconnect I just don't ever see discussed:

(This would solve harms in a way that the false dichotomy of (1) and (2) do not.)

a) If a company is actively promoting some content over others, for any reason (a free speech exercise, that allows for many motives here), they should be held to a MUCH higher standard for their active choices, vs. neutral providers, with regard to harms.

b) If a company is selectively financially underwriting content creation, i.e paying for content by any metric (again, a free speech exercise, that allows for many motives), they should be held to be a MUCH higher standard, for their financed/rewarded content, vs. content it sources without financial incentive, with regard to harms.

Host harbor protections should be for content made available on a neutral content producer, consumer search/selection basis.

As soon as a company is injecting their own free speech choices (by preferentially selecting content for users, or paying for selected content), much higher responsibilities should be applied.

A neutral content site can still make money many ways. Advertising still works. Pay for content on an even basis, but providing only organic (user driven) discovery, etc. One such a neutral utility basis, safe harbor protection regarding content (assuming some reasonable means of responding to reports of harmful material), makes sense.

Safe harbors do not make sense for services who use their free speech freedoms to actively direct users to service preferred content, or actively financing service preferred content. Independent of preferred (i.e. the responsibility that is applied, should continue to be neutral itself. The nature of the companies free speech choices should not be the issue.)

Imposed selection, selective production => speech => responsibility.

Almost all the systematic harms by major content/social sites, can be traced to perverse incentives actively pursued by the site. This rule should apply: Active Choices => Responsibility for Choices. Vs. Neutrality => Responsible Safe Harbor.

This isn't a polemic against opinionated or hands-on content moderators. We need them. We need to allow them, so we have those rights to. It is a polemic against de-linking free speech utilization, from free speech responsibility. And especially against de-linking that ethical balance at scale.

Using ad blockers is unethical. No one who uses one (probably 99% of people on HN) wants to hear this, but the conclusion is inescapable really.

You may commence your downvoting.

ETA: Why do I claim it's unethical? Every ad-supported page is an implicit contract: If you want the good stuff on this page, you need to pay for that by giving some of your attention to <these shitty ads that we all probably hate>. Nothing more. If the trade-off isn't worth it to you, that's fine: you have the right, and the ability, to reject it -- to cease interacting with the site at all. OTOH, using an ad blocker to access the site without "paying" (with your attention) is violating the contract in the same way that hacking a parking meter downtown to park your car for free is. Running websites isn't free, and even if it was, it's the site owner's prerogative whether and how much ad-attention to "charge". If the fundamental idea of capitalism is sound (and perhaps it isn't -- but then let's discuss that), exorbitant ad burdens attached to desirable content will eventually be outcompeted by other sites offering similar content for free with fewer ads, or for actual cash.

There's a more self-serving argument, too: If everyone used 100% effective ad blockers, Alphabet (minus GCP) and Meta would not exist, and nor would the very large number of free-as-in-beer services that make up a large part of what makes the internet useful to people. Using ad blockers is only "sustainable" in the same way that mafia protection rackets are "sustainable" -- by being a sufficiently small drain on the rest of society.