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Comment by martin_a | Hacker News Reader

> so they would rather have people report them

I have reported so many of those dodgy, scammy, sexualized ads on YouTube, that YouTube/Google has removed the option to report advertisements from my account.

They don't care as long as they're getting paid and there's no immediate liability for them.

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The funny thing is it used to be that people warned you not to go to dodgy sites as they were full of ads that were trying to steal your money or online identity. It was mostly just scaremongering, but it never hurt to be careful.

Nowadays, Google will serve you those exact ads if you go to any major news outlet.

Google was serving the ads on the dodgy sites. Nothing changed.

I've been on the same crusade, reporting all the scam/fake-ai/misinformation ads as possible, when a couple weeks ago they changed how you report. The ad will still play through as you're reporting it, and once finished reporting it still remains and you may see it again after a few swipes (YTShorts). It feels like they did this so they could get the money before removing it.

The brooklinen ads are mortifying when I'm online in public

Use an adblocker?

That's what I do and why I don't even know what brooklinen is.

The web is becoming very hostile to ad blockers. I use a VPN and I've noticed more and more sites just being obnoxious with their popups and even just crashing the site completely in a loop (looking at you EuroNews)

It doesn't solve everything but the 'full' desktop version of the ublock origin plugin runs just fine in Android on Firefox. I can't even imagine using any other mobile browser now. I don't know what the situation is for iphone platform stuff these days.

and f.e. brave on ios

Try firefox, as chrome puts restrictions on what adblockers can do

If a site doesn’t let me see it with my ad blocking enabled, I just go elsewhere.

This Even skimming the web could take up 1000X the hours I have in a day, and I really should spend more time exercising, and reading books, and with friends and family, and volunteering, and ...

I suspect it's not a real crash you're seeing, but rather a deceptive anti-adblocking script that redirects to a page that fraudulently claims to be a crash.

abp in firefox doesn't really remove them. I've seen and reported multiple scummy popup-like looking ads like tfn and saw it again for weeks...

ABP as in adblock plus?

Don't use that. Use Ublock Origin.

Use ublock origin rather than ABP. ABP was dead the moment they sold out to "responsible" ads.

There may be gaps every now and then in block lists of ad blocking solutions, but besides that, you are using the wrong ad blocker. abp is not to be trusted to reliably block all ads it could. It has a different mission than uBlock Origin.

They sell bedsheets, with sort of a raunchy ad campaign. I had a adblocker but wound up uninstalling it when it became more of a hassle than it was worth.

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