It's interesting to imagine how the world would be different, if internet advertising giants were partially liable for scams/malware that they facilitate.
An example is courtcase against Meta for using a Australians mining billionares likeness to promote a crypo investment scam.
https://www.afr.com/technology/dad-it-s-a-fraud-call-that-sp...
I say those words in quotes - they have no intention of shipping you anything, just skimming low-hanging fruit from someone's ideas.
I'm kind of surprised that there haven't been criminal cases.
As soon as a dollar of profit is involved in a content moderation decision, a business should be fully liable for the decisions around content on their platform. If I report an ad to Facebook and Facebook decides to keep it they should be accepting legal responsibility for that ad.
You want to stop scams online, you make the platforms liable and then grant them the ability to recover the losses by going after the advertisers.
When Google has no profile on you, your view is virtually worthless, so it's only bottom feeders that bid on those views.
Average users get Coke and Tide ads. Its usually the most technically adept that get the worst ads, and usually they just turn their ad block back on.
But when they turn off ad-block, to "see what it's like", they are not getting an accurate view. It's usually all crypto and other scammy/vices type ads.
Go look at your mom's browser. Her Google ads are going to be clothes, tissues, and cookware.
Nigerian prince scams cannot outbid Kleenex without breaking the economics of the scam. But they can get loaded when Kleenex no-bids because they don't know who the viewer is.
Trust me, ad-tech is far far beyond 2004 when ad block showed up.
(I'll add that of course there are other less legitimate ad networks, and I'm not counting "snake oil" products, which are essentially scams but customers still swear by them)
I don't understand why you claim that targeting doesn't happen; I see it happening with people I know, who wouldn't even know what adblock is.
But after that you would get dialed in and stop seeing them.
Google's core mission is to figure out what you are going to buy before you buy it so they can have you click through them to make the purchase.
They generally have negative interest in serving scams/malware ads because people generally don't want to buy those things. On the same token though it's a very hard problem to 100% solve, and the people impacted are usually the lowest value users anyway.
1. Takes money from the scammer
2. Tells the scammer how to target people
3. Serves the scam to the consumer, ensuring they see it
4. Takes a cut of the action when the scam is successful
5. Tells the scammer how to optimize their campaign
6. Continues working with scammers after they're reported
The scammer has a fairly small part in the overall operation. The platform is doing almost all of the actual work perpetrating the scam. They're not remotely innocent here.
Your whole chain stops being relevant if you actually persecute criminals with the same gusto as Disney jackboots anyone voilating their IP.
Instead you demand megacorps to start scanning content and censoring people.
For what it's worth, I wasn't demanding anything. I was solely pointing out that the platforms aren't neutral here. They're active participants in perpetuating these scams.
You are also free to call it censorship, but I am not aware of any jurisdiction where fraud is considered protected speech, so as far as I'm concerned, censor away baby.
If they choose to get out of the business of facilitating crime because of that then so be it.