Hacker News Reader

Comment by tgsovlerkhgsel | Hacker News Reader

Not just the networks (although preferably also the networks) but also the publishers.

If a newspaper took money to advertise blatant, obvious scams, I assume a judge would consider them at least partially responsible for restitution, if not an accessory to the crime. Looking away really hard (and delegating the task of looking away really hard) shouldn't get you out of this.

Hold the publisher responsible, they can then hold the platform responsible, thus creating a market for platforms that actually fight scams. Right now, there is limited incentive to fight scams, as the scams still drive revenue. If you take money for it, you should be responsible for it.

View on HN

Given the colour of the text, I just wanted to say that I agree 100% with this:

> If you take money for it, you should be responsible for it.

If they don't want to take responsibility then they should guarantee that the responsible party have provided valid credentials that can result in their being held responsible.

That would clear up the quagmire that is internet advertising pretty darn quick.

I am working on a hobby project to help me manage my Toastmasters clubs and Id love to get it into more hands because its genuinely helpful but more hands means more maintenance and opération costs. I asked Claude if I could charge for it and it basically said that as long as its a hobby project Im safe but once I start charging, then the Toastmasters organization could sue me or issue a cease and desist for using their IP to make money without permission, which makes sense. It did advise me to talk to a lawyer which I haven't done, but assuming it's right, then financial incentives causing other parties "harm" (for some definition of the word) are illegal.

In other words, I think the law wants what you and OP said to be true, but seems like it doesn't apply once you get big enough. Anecdotally, Amazon and Walmart and other big retailers seem to not be held responsible when they sell goods that dont work as advertised or even actively harm people.

This kind of thing has come up before with "murder for hire" advertisements [1]. The publishers were only found liable when the advertisement was very explicit. Seems like the bar is quite high and courts are currently unwilling to impose "undue burden" on publishers.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soldier_of_Fortune_(magazine)#...

There is a conflict between "publishers should be responsible for everything they publish" and "a free press".

If you have to buy a newspaper to publish your info, that is quite a high bar.

At the same time, none of us* want malware scum to use newspaper ads to fleece people.

*OK, some of us write malware scum. I don't count their opinions as valid.

As someone working for a small publisher: The amount of "don’t care" is amazing. We tried 2 different big and popular "programmatic bidding" platforms. The amount of scams and extra-shoddy ads was crazy. And for each we realized after talking to our partner manager that caring about that is not expected. There are no or not enough controls to prevent it.

We managed to get into google ad exchange (via a personal connection as we’d normally be too small to get there directly, it’s essentially adsense with more control and more money), and compared to the other players we saw, they are much better by default already. But then you can also set minimums etc. This will lower your payout, but significantly raise the quality of your ads.

So when a publisher has all those scam ads, it’s either lack of knowledge and care, or a choice.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com