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Why is Google still serving dodgy ads?

956 points by iamflimflam1 3d ago

dpkirchner 3d ago
I think the obvious answer is they aren't held to account by regulators. If a few execs were sent to prison for defrauding their users (and investors for taking on so much risk) things would change overnight.
drchaim 3d ago
I’d love to know how much Google has made from accidental clicks since it started. I used to see my mum make a couple of mistaken clicks here and there on her computer; now on mobile it’s easily 10x worse. Sometimes because she doesn’t realize they’re ads, other times she tries to tap the X and it opens… It’s insane
HarHarVeryFunny 3d ago
Google's ad-serving is dumb as a rock. It seems to be based just on things it thinks you may be interested in, even when it should be 100% obvious that they are not things you are going to buy. They should let people have more control over what ads they do and don't see. If Google served me ads on stuff I was interested (I'd be happy to tell them) rather than womens clothing, they I might buy it. I'm a guy - show me as many skimpily dressed women as you like, but I have no need for women's clothes! Try it once or a hundred times it you must, but maybe after the millionth non-purchase you'd think they might figure it out and use that screen real-estate to serve an ad for something that my purchase history or what they know about me indicates I might have some interest in! Dumb as a rock.
8cvor6j844qw_d6 3d ago
I've seen suspiciously more malicious ads on older users phone (e.g., click to update Chrome ads) especially in-app ads.
- hsuduebc2 3d ago
  You can target by specific system or even a version. This is simply google tolerated malicious behavior because it brings them revenue.
dotcoma 3d ago
Because they are a dodgy company?
surcap526 3d ago
[dead]
976157424477 3d ago
Not ‘dodgy’, criminal.
snailmailman 3d ago
Google can reply and confirm whether or not a report did anything? I’ve never seen that. I report ads on YouTube all the time. I’ve reported ads for illegal drugs, illegal firearms, pornography, and all sorts of various scams. I’ve seen similar advertising to the example in this article, mimicking the phone’s UI. Ive reported them. I’ve never once seen Google reply to any of my reports to confirm what happened. I’ve always wondered, and since I continue to see the ads I just assume my reports go straight into a trash bin. The illegal firearm ad I saw (more than a year ago, now) I was so shocked that I took screenshots and reported it multiple times. The ad advertised that the weapon was “easy to sneak through security” and “didn’t require an id to purchase” I saw the ad several times across multiple weeks. I reported it every time. I don’t think Google ever did anything about it. If they did, it took them weeks
- repeekad 3d ago
  There is am extremely pervasive trick where bots repost trending comments rewritten in AI very early in videos and boost their bot comments above the original, then if a bot lands a top comment the profile is suddenly switched to porn/scam links with a female model as the profile picture. It's so common and so clearly reported by many people that I'm left to assume Google likes the engagement the profiles bring and chooses to leave them up.
- vintermann 3d ago
  I can recall one time I got feedback from Google that an ad had indeed been taken down, that was an Ukrainian women dating ad in Gmail which was not subtle at all about offering trafficked women. But that's some time ago.
conradfr 3d ago
I have a website with some adsense ads (that pay for the server). I try blocking the most obvious scams by blocking the announcers but it's basically impossible because the same doggy ones keep coming back with a new name. Also hard because they're not always in a language you understand. I don't think I should do all this work instead of the biggest ad company in the world just to earn 5€ per day, but I'm also not aware of any better alternative.
- dpkirchner 3d ago
  Have you tried reaching out to companies offering relevant products? Sometimes they have referral plans and don't require the same level of tracking.
tomxor 3d ago
> I’m a big fan of Hanlon’s razor. There is a 3rd option: malicious stupidity / aka wilful ignorance. Google is a collection of individuals, so it's very likely both sides of Hanlon's razor are true: a little malice from those in control, persisting a state of stupidity for those executing the process. As others have pointed out, there will be resistance to improving a process that negatively impacts their bottom line. Incentives, dictate long term behaviour of organisations; whereas Hanlon's razor works better at an individual level IME.
rectang 3d ago
Ohhh, has anybody used AI to generate delicious statistics about how many ads served by various ad networks will get you hacked / violate the ad networks own policies?
poisonborz 3d ago
Meta knowingly earns 10% of its _overall_ sales from scams. https://www.cnbc.com/2025/11/06/meta-reportedly-projected-10percent-of-2024-sales-came-from-scam-fraud-ads.html https://www.cnbc.com/2025/11/06/meta-reportedly-projected-10...
- Scoundreller 3d ago
  It's more than that. The 10% is the scam ads that "won" the ad auctions. It doesn't include the effect of scam ads bidding up the market and increasing the price of non-scam ad wins.
  - vintermann 3d ago
    > Could also argue that the scam ad that won the slot for 10 cents would have gone for 9 cents without the scam and Meta's marginal revenue was only 1 cent. They're probably taking that into account in their 10% of profit coming from ads estimate.
expedition32 3d ago
Not just dodgy some are straight up illegal. They'll act if someone threatens to sue otherwise Google doesn't give a shit as long as they get paid.
ArcHound 3d ago
Man, Google is catching strays from all directions. I recently posted an article about their bot behaviour [0], only to be drowned in other more pressing issues. To comment on this one: as long as there is no backlash from their real customers (those that buy ads) nothing will change. [0] https://blog.miloslavhomer.cz/how-google-sees-your-site/ https://blog.miloslavhomer.cz/how-google-sees-your-site/
sippingabonedry 3d ago
Because serving dodgy ads pays them a lot of money. The pivot is complete. 90% of the ads I see on YouTube are obvious scams. Many from untraceable shady overseas organizations. You can see the data if you report them. It's always some unheard of outfit out of Hong Kong or Brazil. I want to know who is funding this. You don't need to be Kreskin to figure this one out.
- vintermann 3d ago
  > You can see the data if you report them. That's at least something. Last I was on a streaming service, they were very fastidious about not revealing who was behind a spammer's rotating "music labels", despite them by law having some kind of payment details for them.
- inknight 3d ago
  > I want to know who is funding this It's a network made by snake-oil salesman. People on Brazil yearns for passive-income, and they get told by a lot of influencers that dropshipping is what will give them their freedom. Then you have thousands of people dumping fake ads about borderline fake products on Meta and Google. It's actually a hive-mind.
torginus 3d ago
Do platform holders have a say in this? I'm sure if I submitted an app that on the iOS app store that mimicked a system warning that tried to scare people into giving me access, it would not pass the review process. If instead I decided to embed a WebView and later changed the html to do the same I would likely get booted from the app store (afair Apple's very particular about serving remote content in PWAs, and changing said content, even under benign circumstances). iOS seems to have less scareware and shady apps than Android anyways.
qwerty_clicks 3d ago
Keep up these efforts to name and shame. If Google won’t act on these things because it doesn’t make them money, because they are unregulated, or because they are lazy, they might because it still cuts their credibility and reputation. Especially here on HN where Google is no longer considered such a darling by developers and thinkers.
anonym29 3d ago
I suspect this boils down to a cost/benefit tradeoff. The cost of strictly enforcing stated rules for ads is felt immediately and fully by Google. It is concrete, measurable, and probably non-insignificant; the benefit is essentially goodwill from the narrow sliver of the web that is verbal about this. That is intangible, difficult to measure, even harder to assign a reasonable dollar value to (meaning the ROI could look negative), and the benefit would accrue to parties other than Google who might not even notice.
andynrkri 3d ago
My father saw a similar ad and got worried. The ad said you need to update your pdf version immediately. He uninstalled the YouTube because he knew it was irregular and thought his phone was hacked.
- LollipopYakuza 3d ago
  If everyone was as cautious as your father, Google would have no choice but to improve the quality of their service.
  - itopaloglu83 3d ago
    Or they would start accepting money for remotely installing apps, just like the bloatware most phones and computers come with.
CqtGLRGcukpy 3d ago
I have two guesses why Google does this: 1) Google wants the most money, so they don't care to let dodgy ads thru. 2) There are more ads going out then can be reviewed, so they would rather have people report them, then they automatically reject the report until enough people report it, then an actual person may review it. As to why Google doesn't use AI to review them? Google would rather use the AI in a way that makes them more money, than review ads and if AI decides to take them down then that's less money for Google. (To be clear: I don't work for Google in any way, these are just my guesses)
- vintermann 3d ago
  > There are more ads going out then can be reviewed, so they would rather have people report them, then they automatically reject the report until enough people report it, then an actual person may review it. If only there was a technology which could automate this... But we all know, AI is only used on users, not customers - and users get the two line perl script "AI" which says "We have reviewed your claim and decided to ignore it".
- excalibur 3d ago
  > (To be clear: I don't work for Google in any way, these are just my guesses) To be ridiculously pedantic for a second: If you don't narrowly define "work" in terms of an employment relationship, the number of people who don't in some way do work that benefits Google becomes vanishingly small.
- NBJack 3d ago
  Their competition isn't really raising the bar either. https://www.reuters.com/investigations/meta-is-earning-fortune-deluge-fraudulent-ads-documents-show-2025-11-06/ https://www.reuters.com/investigations/meta-is-earning-fortu...
- benoau 3d ago
  I think section 230 immunity shielding from from any liability is also very motivating. Google was born into a world where companies had 10,000s of support personnel, today there are companies with over a million employees, they could easily human-review every single ad and they probably would if they weren't able to divert that cost into profits without consequence. AI makes it even easier and cheaper but... why bother? Then there's the profits from scams, Meta is the only one with the stones to admit they like scam ads because they make up 10% of their revenue. I doubt it's a massive coincidence all the other big platforms are overrun with scams they do as little as possible to police.
corranh 3d ago
This one is not complicated…Because dodgy companies spend a lot of money on ads.
michael_j_x 3d ago
imagine if a TV network served scammy ads during prime-time TV.
- operatingthetan 3d ago
  Don't they? Kalshi, crypto stuff, sports betting, random products that lie about what they do.
alpineman 3d ago
Same for Facebook posts and comments inciting hatred
beloch 3d ago
This is one major reason why blocking ads is now a safety issue. If you have a family member who, for whatever reason, might be fooled by this sort of ad, install an effective adblocker on all their browsers and uninstall/disable browsers that don't support an effective adblocker. If you are reliant on ad revenue, you should be expressing your displeasure to google right now.
- snailmailman 3d ago
  When Google broke the original uBlock origin and made people switch to uBlock Lite, I found out about the change because my grandmother called me in a panic. She saw an ad like the one in this article on her Facebook page and clicked it, then it was telling her to call Microsoft support because her computer was infected. Like, Google removing Adblock directly caused that. Facebook allowing the ad caused that. The ad led to malicious page that was also hosted on a Microsoft thing, and I ended up reporting it to them too. Microsoft at least promptly took it down within a half hour after I reported it. But these big companies have almost no incentive to stop this, and some of them directly profit off of these scams happening.
  - worik 3d ago
    > When Google broke the original uBlock origin and made people switch to uBlock Lite Not me. Is that because I stuck with Firefox?
    - Telaneo 3d ago
      [dead]
gdulli 3d ago
A lot of questions being raised today can be answered by the recently inverted power balance between users/customers and corporations. People have not yet internalized that old assumptions about how corporations fear losing customers are no longer valid. Consumers have become entirely docile and passive. Open hostility to consumers is now a norm. (Obviously regulation is also less powerful and less feared as well.)
- smugglerFlynn 3d ago
  Many large modern corporations are third-hand cars. The original owner had a purpose and an emotional investment in owning the car; for the second-hand owner, it became a practical thing; for the third-hand owner, it is often a liability. If you are lucky, your third-hand owner still checks the oil and puts quality tires on it. If you are not, your third-hand owner pours customer relationships down the drain and doubles down on indiscriminate cost-cutting, alienating good people from the organization.
mito88 3d ago
a rhetorical question... :)
hn_submit 3d ago
These days almost all Google search results return nothing but links to stuff that you can buy instead of useful information you were looking for. They do this because they think they can get away with it, they're the only game in town. To me this signals a huge opportunity for other companies to dive into. If a new internet search company appeared that returned actual useful search results and clearly delineated ads (like Google used to) I would switch to it almost immediately. The only way these companies are ever going to change their game is when people vote with their feet!
- cmoski 3d ago
  Kagi is better. You might want to try it.
  - bbor 3d ago
    Kagi is such an amazing team, building a truly next-level product. It's hard to realize what you're missing until you experience a real search engine for the first time in decades. It's wonderful.
hsuduebc2 3d ago
It simply increases shareholder value more than if they we're removed. It will only ends when companies will be made at least partially responsible for damages they help to facilitate. Don't be evil my ass.
hnbad 3d ago
Google (Alphabet) is a corporation. Corporations follow the profit motive. Furthermore it's a publicly traded corporation. These follow the interests of their shareholders. What does killing dodgy ads do for Google's bottom line? It's removing paying customers and driving down competition for (and therefore value of) ad space. What's the cost of dodgy ads to Google? The sites that use Google Ads will continue using Google Ads if they do nothing about the dodgy ads. The sites that don't use Google Ads won't be swayed to use Google Ads if they do remove the dodgy ads. Google is not held liable for serving dodgy ads so there's no direct risk associated with serving them. Why should Google remove the dodgy ads? "Don't be evil"? That motto exceeded its shelf life before it was first publicly posted. Hanlon's razor is nice and all but there's a difference between malice and amoral apathy. Corporations would sell shredded orphans as fuel if it made economical sense to do so.
einpoklum 3d ago
> Why is Google still serving dodgy ads? Because you're using an application which presents those ads to you. Avoid Google/Alphabet application as much as is possible, and you'll see a lot less / none of this kind of ads. It looks like you're using their YouTube client. Try NewPipe: https://newpipe.net/ https://newpipe.net/ there are no ads with NewPipe.
stillpointlab 3d ago
I don't think it is fair to pin this on Google - I get the worst ads on X. But something about how the X ad network works means that even when I report the ad, block the ad poster, etc. there is this army of alternate ad accounts that all show the same ad. I was feeling very guilty last night as I was watching YouTube and getting 30s+ unskippable ad blocks every 10 minutes in some video. And the repetition and low quality were grating on me. I thought: being rich is never having to watch another ad. Why am I letting these ads own spaced repetition slots in my brain that could be filled with knowledge? Instead of learning, my mental energy is being taken up by psychological manipulation to purchase? The relentless repetition of the mind-numbing ad interspersed throughout otherwise educational content. Being rich is owning the real-estate of my own mind. I sometimes feel like a digital serf in my own head.
- hsuduebc2 3d ago
  Somehow I would never assume that X would act "moral". Google on the other hands even few years back was generally acknowledged as a good actor which was once again corporate charade people would fall for. Including myself.
- akersten 3d ago
  Why are you subjecting yourself to that instead of downloading Firefox + uBlock origin? See the headline of this article for Exhibit (I've actually run out of letters in the alphabet) why adblocking is a moral imperative.
  - stillpointlab 3d ago
    As much I love a good old "Why don't you just ..." response that terrifically misses the point - in this particular case I was watching YouTube through their Apple TV app. Now, there may be another "why don't you just ..." or "well, actually ..." response you have queued up, maybe some ramblings about a pi hole, or some anti-Apple hate, or some other solutioneering. Go ahead, tell me. But it is the structure of incentive that forces this. The YouTube creators that make the content do need to get paid. And Google offers an option: Youtube Premium. That give both me and the creator what we want and (for the time being) removes the ads. So either one is rich in time (doing whatever "why don't you just ..." hoop you expect me to jump through) or rich in money.
ossamameta1 3d ago
[flagged]
mschuster91 3d ago
Google doesn't care because they figured out no one will hold them accountable any more. The US regulatory authorities DGAF ever since Lina Khan exited the picture and the EU regulatory authorities might have the legal basis to hold Big AdTech accountable, but the EU is at the moment busy trying to fend off BS from the Trump admin, they do not have time and risk appetite (aka Trump retaliating on behalf of Big AdTech) left for scam ads.
Waterluvian 3d ago
I don’t think they want to nor is it good for them to long term. But I bet they’re institutionally incapable of avoiding it given the KPIs that drive the entire employment ambitions of many managers.
krttherealest 3d ago
yall better ba carefull with that ads and shi
pschastain 3d ago
Money
demibabs 3d ago
> TLDR: AI is really good at detecting deceptive adverts - why isn’t Google using it? I have the same question regarding “why is Workday’s resume parser so shit?”
paulsutter 3d ago
The answer is in Google's Capex trends: 2023: $32B 2025: $91B 2027: $300B (projected) 2029: $400B (projected) “I’m happy to go bankrupt rather than lose this race” -Larry Page
saaaaaam 3d ago
How weird. I reported this exact ad earlier today.
Razengan 3d ago
Has anyone ever actually even purchased anything just because of an ad? In fact, these days ads have the opposite effect: A repetitive ad turns people off from EVER checking out that product. F Grammarly and ClickUp etc. I've never tried those products but I have disgust for them thanks to their ads.
- cmoski 3d ago
  One would assume so. How do you think Google, Meta, etc make all their money?
jacobgold 3d ago
Someone who has spent $100M+ on Google Ads explained to me that Google is doing everything possible to juice their revenue right now, in ways they've never seen before. Seems like two things 1) Google is losing at AI and Sundar wants to mask this 2) AI is going to destroy their ad business and they want to get while the getting is good.
- conception 3d ago
  I think the 3.8 Flash release shows they are doing just fine at AI. Unlike OpenAI and Anthropomorphic, Google doesn’t have to release new models to capture VC sentiment every three months. They have the hardware, data and money. And when they release a model it’s very good. Now their product strategy however…
  - alfalfasprout 3d ago
    very HN take. Reality is 3.8 flash is good at what it does (being fast + cheap)... but that market is becoming very saturated and google is not competing at all at the frontier where major spend lies.
  - jjallen 3d ago
    They can be doing fine at AI models but not so well with AI revenue. Although I am curious if they are not worried and playing the long game confident that their distribution will eventually help them catch up (and worst case they own some of Anthropic). But obviously Anthropic and OpenAI have their own distribution now too.
- ihsw 3d ago
  [dead]
- bbor 3d ago
  I don't think it's related to AI, at least not originally. To me this is about the slow death of display advertising. The arms race of ad blockers and ad blocker blockers and such has created a world where people hate display ads, especially because they require so much creepy data to even work in the first place. AI probably would help their display ad business overall -- they finally just launched a "have Gemini create your ad!" feature, and I imagine having to hire a designer was a common blocker for SMBs.
flerchin 3d ago
They don't have liability for dodgy ads, but they are paid to run them. POSIWID.
boredatoms 3d ago
Google gave up, they know they’ve lost Search to ChatGPT
vannevar 3d ago
I assume it is the same reason Facebook serves dodgy ads: it makes them money and they have had no liability for the material they choose to serve to users. There are a handful of types of content that could generate bad press (some sexual or racist content, for example), so they police those. But ordinary scams generate engagement and make them money, and since they are generally immune from liability for content under Section 230, there's no downside for them. I've always thought there might be an end-run around Section 230 where the algorithm is tuned to preferentially present fraudulent content, thereby implicating the company in the advertiser's fraud. But as far as I know, no one has tested that approach.
rhaff 3d ago
My father installed an adware through one of the google ads. Just straight out of nowhere displays fullscreen ads whatever you're doing.
deleted 3d ago
[deleted]
DarmokTanagra 3d ago
[dead]
codingjoe 3d ago
Same with Meta. The latter knowingly makes a substantial revenue from those ads. Unless a government steps it to make advertising platforms liable, there will be zero incentive for change
gherkinnn 3d ago
> However, if you were being uncharitable, you do have to question whether it’s in Google’s interest to remove adverts that get lots of clicks. That is it. They don't do it because it goes against their interests. Google is a scummy company doing scummy things. There is very little else to it.
driverdan 3d ago
Until they are held legally liable they will do the minimum necessary to keep the money flowing and avoid litigation.
Telaneo 3d ago
We need strict liability on this front. Google is complicit. No newspaper or equivalent publication in the days before web ads would allow ads that are down at the level of scam that seemingly make up the modus operandi of Google today (and even the ads back then that did bend the truth a bit, overpromised, or showed products that didn't actually have any legitimate use, shouldn't really have been legal back then either. They just weren't big enough of a problem to worry about).
- mikestew 3d ago
  The water-injection system for your carburetor that the oil companies don't want you to know about! -- paraphrase of an actual Popular Mechanics ad circa 1978
riazrizvi 3d ago
Because money? Ask me another.
gagan2020 3d ago
To Google, Don't be Evil
tcfhgj 3d ago
Still some people don't block ads and people pay for it. Simple as that.
HomeDeLaPot 3d ago
Every YouTube ad I see now is an AI-generated scam ad hawking everything from free electricity to anti-aging products to birdhouses hand-carved by an AI-generated senior citizen. I've seen some multiple times, days or weeks apart. Their advertising standards are a complete joke.
- johng 3d ago
  This senior citizen doing stuff got me. I bought a pair of cow slippers because I thought he was making them from his farm in Australia. Turns out they use that same "character" to hawk multiple products.
erros 3d ago
Money. They make so much money from malvertisement that it doesn't make sense to remediate them. It's corporate greed and they've known about this since the 2010s, various campaigns have sprung up and have caused untold X amount of dollars in damages in breaches, and nothing changes. I've heard at least one FBI agent who had investigated cases related to malvertisement put Google up there with some of the worst ad networks.

956 points by iamflimflam1 3d ago

I think the obvious answer is they aren't held to account by regulators. If a few execs were sent to prison for defrauding their users (and investors for taking on so much risk) things would change overnight.

drchaim 3d ago

I’d love to know how much Google has made from accidental clicks since it started. I used to see my mum make a couple of mistaken clicks here and there on her computer; now on mobile it’s easily 10x worse. Sometimes because she doesn’t realize they’re ads, other times she tries to tap the X and it opens… It’s insane

HarHarVeryFunny 3d ago

Google's ad-serving is dumb as a rock. It seems to be based just on things it thinks you may be interested in, even when it should be 100% obvious that they are not things you are going to buy. They should let people have more control over what ads they do and don't see. If Google served me ads on stuff I was interested (I'd be happy to tell them) rather than womens clothing, they I might buy it. I'm a guy - show me as many skimpily dressed women as you like, but I have no need for women's clothes! Try it once or a hundred times it you must, but maybe after the millionth non-purchase you'd think they might figure it out and use that screen real-estate to serve an ad for something that my purchase history or what they know about me indicates I might have some interest in! Dumb as a rock.

8cvor6j844qw_d6 3d ago

I've seen suspiciously more malicious ads on older users phone (e.g., click to update Chrome ads) especially in-app ads.

hsuduebc2 3d ago
You can target by specific system or even a version. This is simply google tolerated malicious behavior because it brings them revenue.

dotcoma 3d ago

Because they are a dodgy company?

surcap526 3d ago

[dead]

976157424477 3d ago

Not ‘dodgy’, criminal.

snailmailman 3d ago

Google can reply and confirm whether or not a report did anything? I’ve never seen that. I report ads on YouTube all the time. I’ve reported ads for illegal drugs, illegal firearms, pornography, and all sorts of various scams. I’ve seen similar advertising to the example in this article, mimicking the phone’s UI. Ive reported them. I’ve never once seen Google reply to any of my reports to confirm what happened. I’ve always wondered, and since I continue to see the ads I just assume my reports go straight into a trash bin. The illegal firearm ad I saw (more than a year ago, now) I was so shocked that I took screenshots and reported it multiple times. The ad advertised that the weapon was “easy to sneak through security” and “didn’t require an id to purchase” I saw the ad several times across multiple weeks. I reported it every time. I don’t think Google ever did anything about it. If they did, it took them weeks

repeekad 3d ago
There is am extremely pervasive trick where bots repost trending comments rewritten in AI very early in videos and boost their bot comments above the original, then if a bot lands a top comment the profile is suddenly switched to porn/scam links with a female model as the profile picture. It's so common and so clearly reported by many people that I'm left to assume Google likes the engagement the profiles bring and chooses to leave them up.
vintermann 3d ago
I can recall one time I got feedback from Google that an ad had indeed been taken down, that was an Ukrainian women dating ad in Gmail which was not subtle at all about offering trafficked women. But that's some time ago.

conradfr 3d ago

I have a website with some adsense ads (that pay for the server). I try blocking the most obvious scams by blocking the announcers but it's basically impossible because the same doggy ones keep coming back with a new name. Also hard because they're not always in a language you understand. I don't think I should do all this work instead of the biggest ad company in the world just to earn 5€ per day, but I'm also not aware of any better alternative.

dpkirchner 3d ago
Have you tried reaching out to companies offering relevant products? Sometimes they have referral plans and don't require the same level of tracking.

tomxor 3d ago

> I’m a big fan of Hanlon’s razor. There is a 3rd option: malicious stupidity / aka wilful ignorance. Google is a collection of individuals, so it's very likely both sides of Hanlon's razor are true: a little malice from those in control, persisting a state of stupidity for those executing the process. As others have pointed out, there will be resistance to improving a process that negatively impacts their bottom line. Incentives, dictate long term behaviour of organisations; whereas Hanlon's razor works better at an individual level IME.

rectang 3d ago

Ohhh, has anybody used AI to generate delicious statistics about how many ads served by various ad networks will get you hacked / violate the ad networks own policies?

poisonborz 3d ago

Meta knowingly earns 10% of its _overall_ sales from scams. https://www.cnbc.com/2025/11/06/meta-reportedly-projected-10percent-of-2024-sales-came-from-scam-fraud-ads.html https://www.cnbc.com/2025/11/06/meta-reportedly-projected-10...

Scoundreller 3d ago
It's more than that. The 10% is the scam ads that "won" the ad auctions. It doesn't include the effect of scam ads bidding up the market and increasing the price of non-scam ad wins.
- vintermann 3d ago
  > Could also argue that the scam ad that won the slot for 10 cents would have gone for 9 cents without the scam and Meta's marginal revenue was only 1 cent. They're probably taking that into account in their 10% of profit coming from ads estimate.

expedition32 3d ago

Not just dodgy some are straight up illegal. They'll act if someone threatens to sue otherwise Google doesn't give a shit as long as they get paid.

ArcHound 3d ago

Man, Google is catching strays from all directions. I recently posted an article about their bot behaviour [0], only to be drowned in other more pressing issues. To comment on this one: as long as there is no backlash from their real customers (those that buy ads) nothing will change. [0] https://blog.miloslavhomer.cz/how-google-sees-your-site/ https://blog.miloslavhomer.cz/how-google-sees-your-site/

sippingabonedry 3d ago

Because serving dodgy ads pays them a lot of money. The pivot is complete. 90% of the ads I see on YouTube are obvious scams. Many from untraceable shady overseas organizations. You can see the data if you report them. It's always some unheard of outfit out of Hong Kong or Brazil. I want to know who is funding this. You don't need to be Kreskin to figure this one out.

vintermann 3d ago
> You can see the data if you report them. That's at least something. Last I was on a streaming service, they were very fastidious about not revealing who was behind a spammer's rotating "music labels", despite them by law having some kind of payment details for them.
inknight 3d ago
> I want to know who is funding this It's a network made by snake-oil salesman. People on Brazil yearns for passive-income, and they get told by a lot of influencers that dropshipping is what will give them their freedom. Then you have thousands of people dumping fake ads about borderline fake products on Meta and Google. It's actually a hive-mind.

torginus 3d ago

Do platform holders have a say in this? I'm sure if I submitted an app that on the iOS app store that mimicked a system warning that tried to scare people into giving me access, it would not pass the review process. If instead I decided to embed a WebView and later changed the html to do the same I would likely get booted from the app store (afair Apple's very particular about serving remote content in PWAs, and changing said content, even under benign circumstances). iOS seems to have less scareware and shady apps than Android anyways.

qwerty_clicks 3d ago

Keep up these efforts to name and shame. If Google won’t act on these things because it doesn’t make them money, because they are unregulated, or because they are lazy, they might because it still cuts their credibility and reputation. Especially here on HN where Google is no longer considered such a darling by developers and thinkers.

anonym29 3d ago

I suspect this boils down to a cost/benefit tradeoff. The cost of strictly enforcing stated rules for ads is felt immediately and fully by Google. It is concrete, measurable, and probably non-insignificant; the benefit is essentially goodwill from the narrow sliver of the web that is verbal about this. That is intangible, difficult to measure, even harder to assign a reasonable dollar value to (meaning the ROI could look negative), and the benefit would accrue to parties other than Google who might not even notice.

andynrkri 3d ago

My father saw a similar ad and got worried. The ad said you need to update your pdf version immediately. He uninstalled the YouTube because he knew it was irregular and thought his phone was hacked.

LollipopYakuza 3d ago
If everyone was as cautious as your father, Google would have no choice but to improve the quality of their service.
- itopaloglu83 3d ago
  Or they would start accepting money for remotely installing apps, just like the bloatware most phones and computers come with.

CqtGLRGcukpy 3d ago

I have two guesses why Google does this: 1) Google wants the most money, so they don't care to let dodgy ads thru. 2) There are more ads going out then can be reviewed, so they would rather have people report them, then they automatically reject the report until enough people report it, then an actual person may review it. As to why Google doesn't use AI to review them? Google would rather use the AI in a way that makes them more money, than review ads and if AI decides to take them down then that's less money for Google. (To be clear: I don't work for Google in any way, these are just my guesses)

vintermann 3d ago
> There are more ads going out then can be reviewed, so they would rather have people report them, then they automatically reject the report until enough people report it, then an actual person may review it. If only there was a technology which could automate this... But we all know, AI is only used on users, not customers - and users get the two line perl script "AI" which says "We have reviewed your claim and decided to ignore it".
excalibur 3d ago
> (To be clear: I don't work for Google in any way, these are just my guesses) To be ridiculously pedantic for a second: If you don't narrowly define "work" in terms of an employment relationship, the number of people who don't in some way do work that benefits Google becomes vanishingly small.
NBJack 3d ago
Their competition isn't really raising the bar either. https://www.reuters.com/investigations/meta-is-earning-fortune-deluge-fraudulent-ads-documents-show-2025-11-06/ https://www.reuters.com/investigations/meta-is-earning-fortu...
benoau 3d ago
I think section 230 immunity shielding from from any liability is also very motivating. Google was born into a world where companies had 10,000s of support personnel, today there are companies with over a million employees, they could easily human-review every single ad and they probably would if they weren't able to divert that cost into profits without consequence. AI makes it even easier and cheaper but... why bother? Then there's the profits from scams, Meta is the only one with the stones to admit they like scam ads because they make up 10% of their revenue. I doubt it's a massive coincidence all the other big platforms are overrun with scams they do as little as possible to police.

corranh 3d ago

This one is not complicated…Because dodgy companies spend a lot of money on ads.

michael_j_x 3d ago

imagine if a TV network served scammy ads during prime-time TV.

operatingthetan 3d ago
Don't they? Kalshi, crypto stuff, sports betting, random products that lie about what they do.

alpineman 3d ago

Same for Facebook posts and comments inciting hatred

beloch 3d ago

This is one major reason why blocking ads is now a safety issue. If you have a family member who, for whatever reason, might be fooled by this sort of ad, install an effective adblocker on all their browsers and uninstall/disable browsers that don't support an effective adblocker. If you are reliant on ad revenue, you should be expressing your displeasure to google right now.

snailmailman 3d ago
When Google broke the original uBlock origin and made people switch to uBlock Lite, I found out about the change because my grandmother called me in a panic. She saw an ad like the one in this article on her Facebook page and clicked it, then it was telling her to call Microsoft support because her computer was infected. Like, Google removing Adblock directly caused that. Facebook allowing the ad caused that. The ad led to malicious page that was also hosted on a Microsoft thing, and I ended up reporting it to them too. Microsoft at least promptly took it down within a half hour after I reported it. But these big companies have almost no incentive to stop this, and some of them directly profit off of these scams happening.
- worik 3d ago
  > When Google broke the original uBlock origin and made people switch to uBlock Lite Not me. Is that because I stuck with Firefox?
  - Telaneo 3d ago
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gdulli 3d ago

A lot of questions being raised today can be answered by the recently inverted power balance between users/customers and corporations. People have not yet internalized that old assumptions about how corporations fear losing customers are no longer valid. Consumers have become entirely docile and passive. Open hostility to consumers is now a norm. (Obviously regulation is also less powerful and less feared as well.)

smugglerFlynn 3d ago
Many large modern corporations are third-hand cars. The original owner had a purpose and an emotional investment in owning the car; for the second-hand owner, it became a practical thing; for the third-hand owner, it is often a liability. If you are lucky, your third-hand owner still checks the oil and puts quality tires on it. If you are not, your third-hand owner pours customer relationships down the drain and doubles down on indiscriminate cost-cutting, alienating good people from the organization.

mito88 3d ago

a rhetorical question... :)

hn_submit 3d ago

These days almost all Google search results return nothing but links to stuff that you can buy instead of useful information you were looking for. They do this because they think they can get away with it, they're the only game in town. To me this signals a huge opportunity for other companies to dive into. If a new internet search company appeared that returned actual useful search results and clearly delineated ads (like Google used to) I would switch to it almost immediately. The only way these companies are ever going to change their game is when people vote with their feet!

cmoski 3d ago
Kagi is better. You might want to try it.
- bbor 3d ago
  Kagi is such an amazing team, building a truly next-level product. It's hard to realize what you're missing until you experience a real search engine for the first time in decades. It's wonderful.

hsuduebc2 3d ago

It simply increases shareholder value more than if they we're removed. It will only ends when companies will be made at least partially responsible for damages they help to facilitate. Don't be evil my ass.

hnbad 3d ago

Google (Alphabet) is a corporation. Corporations follow the profit motive. Furthermore it's a publicly traded corporation. These follow the interests of their shareholders. What does killing dodgy ads do for Google's bottom line? It's removing paying customers and driving down competition for (and therefore value of) ad space. What's the cost of dodgy ads to Google? The sites that use Google Ads will continue using Google Ads if they do nothing about the dodgy ads. The sites that don't use Google Ads won't be swayed to use Google Ads if they do remove the dodgy ads. Google is not held liable for serving dodgy ads so there's no direct risk associated with serving them. Why should Google remove the dodgy ads? "Don't be evil"? That motto exceeded its shelf life before it was first publicly posted. Hanlon's razor is nice and all but there's a difference between malice and amoral apathy. Corporations would sell shredded orphans as fuel if it made economical sense to do so.

einpoklum 3d ago

> Why is Google still serving dodgy ads? Because you're using an application which presents those ads to you. Avoid Google/Alphabet application as much as is possible, and you'll see a lot less / none of this kind of ads. It looks like you're using their YouTube client. Try NewPipe: https://newpipe.net/ https://newpipe.net/ there are no ads with NewPipe.

stillpointlab 3d ago

I don't think it is fair to pin this on Google - I get the worst ads on X. But something about how the X ad network works means that even when I report the ad, block the ad poster, etc. there is this army of alternate ad accounts that all show the same ad. I was feeling very guilty last night as I was watching YouTube and getting 30s+ unskippable ad blocks every 10 minutes in some video. And the repetition and low quality were grating on me. I thought: being rich is never having to watch another ad. Why am I letting these ads own spaced repetition slots in my brain that could be filled with knowledge? Instead of learning, my mental energy is being taken up by psychological manipulation to purchase? The relentless repetition of the mind-numbing ad interspersed throughout otherwise educational content. Being rich is owning the real-estate of my own mind. I sometimes feel like a digital serf in my own head.

hsuduebc2 3d ago
Somehow I would never assume that X would act "moral". Google on the other hands even few years back was generally acknowledged as a good actor which was once again corporate charade people would fall for. Including myself.
akersten 3d ago
Why are you subjecting yourself to that instead of downloading Firefox + uBlock origin? See the headline of this article for Exhibit (I've actually run out of letters in the alphabet) why adblocking is a moral imperative.
- stillpointlab 3d ago
  As much I love a good old "Why don't you just ..." response that terrifically misses the point - in this particular case I was watching YouTube through their Apple TV app. Now, there may be another "why don't you just ..." or "well, actually ..." response you have queued up, maybe some ramblings about a pi hole, or some anti-Apple hate, or some other solutioneering. Go ahead, tell me. But it is the structure of incentive that forces this. The YouTube creators that make the content do need to get paid. And Google offers an option: Youtube Premium. That give both me and the creator what we want and (for the time being) removes the ads. So either one is rich in time (doing whatever "why don't you just ..." hoop you expect me to jump through) or rich in money.

ossamameta1 3d ago

[flagged]

mschuster91 3d ago

Google doesn't care because they figured out no one will hold them accountable any more. The US regulatory authorities DGAF ever since Lina Khan exited the picture and the EU regulatory authorities might have the legal basis to hold Big AdTech accountable, but the EU is at the moment busy trying to fend off BS from the Trump admin, they do not have time and risk appetite (aka Trump retaliating on behalf of Big AdTech) left for scam ads.

Waterluvian 3d ago

I don’t think they want to nor is it good for them to long term. But I bet they’re institutionally incapable of avoiding it given the KPIs that drive the entire employment ambitions of many managers.

krttherealest 3d ago

yall better ba carefull with that ads and shi

pschastain 3d ago

Money

demibabs 3d ago

> TLDR: AI is really good at detecting deceptive adverts - why isn’t Google using it? I have the same question regarding “why is Workday’s resume parser so shit?”

paulsutter 3d ago

The answer is in Google's Capex trends: 2023: $32B 2025: $91B 2027: $300B (projected) 2029: $400B (projected) “I’m happy to go bankrupt rather than lose this race” -Larry Page

saaaaaam 3d ago

How weird. I reported this exact ad earlier today.

Razengan 3d ago

Has anyone ever actually even purchased anything just because of an ad? In fact, these days ads have the opposite effect: A repetitive ad turns people off from EVER checking out that product. F Grammarly and ClickUp etc. I've never tried those products but I have disgust for them thanks to their ads.

cmoski 3d ago
One would assume so. How do you think Google, Meta, etc make all their money?

jacobgold 3d ago

Someone who has spent $100M+ on Google Ads explained to me that Google is doing everything possible to juice their revenue right now, in ways they've never seen before. Seems like two things 1) Google is losing at AI and Sundar wants to mask this 2) AI is going to destroy their ad business and they want to get while the getting is good.

conception 3d ago
I think the 3.8 Flash release shows they are doing just fine at AI. Unlike OpenAI and Anthropomorphic, Google doesn’t have to release new models to capture VC sentiment every three months. They have the hardware, data and money. And when they release a model it’s very good. Now their product strategy however…
- alfalfasprout 3d ago
  very HN take. Reality is 3.8 flash is good at what it does (being fast + cheap)... but that market is becoming very saturated and google is not competing at all at the frontier where major spend lies.
- jjallen 3d ago
  They can be doing fine at AI models but not so well with AI revenue. Although I am curious if they are not worried and playing the long game confident that their distribution will eventually help them catch up (and worst case they own some of Anthropic). But obviously Anthropic and OpenAI have their own distribution now too.
ihsw 3d ago
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bbor 3d ago
I don't think it's related to AI, at least not originally. To me this is about the slow death of display advertising. The arms race of ad blockers and ad blocker blockers and such has created a world where people hate display ads, especially because they require so much creepy data to even work in the first place. AI probably would help their display ad business overall -- they finally just launched a "have Gemini create your ad!" feature, and I imagine having to hire a designer was a common blocker for SMBs.

flerchin 3d ago

They don't have liability for dodgy ads, but they are paid to run them. POSIWID.

boredatoms 3d ago

Google gave up, they know they’ve lost Search to ChatGPT

vannevar 3d ago

I assume it is the same reason Facebook serves dodgy ads: it makes them money and they have had no liability for the material they choose to serve to users. There are a handful of types of content that could generate bad press (some sexual or racist content, for example), so they police those. But ordinary scams generate engagement and make them money, and since they are generally immune from liability for content under Section 230, there's no downside for them. I've always thought there might be an end-run around Section 230 where the algorithm is tuned to preferentially present fraudulent content, thereby implicating the company in the advertiser's fraud. But as far as I know, no one has tested that approach.

rhaff 3d ago

My father installed an adware through one of the google ads. Just straight out of nowhere displays fullscreen ads whatever you're doing.

deleted 3d ago

[deleted]

DarmokTanagra 3d ago

[dead]

codingjoe 3d ago

Same with Meta. The latter knowingly makes a substantial revenue from those ads. Unless a government steps it to make advertising platforms liable, there will be zero incentive for change

gherkinnn 3d ago

> However, if you were being uncharitable, you do have to question whether it’s in Google’s interest to remove adverts that get lots of clicks. That is it. They don't do it because it goes against their interests. Google is a scummy company doing scummy things. There is very little else to it.

driverdan 3d ago

Until they are held legally liable they will do the minimum necessary to keep the money flowing and avoid litigation.

Telaneo 3d ago

We need strict liability on this front. Google is complicit. No newspaper or equivalent publication in the days before web ads would allow ads that are down at the level of scam that seemingly make up the modus operandi of Google today (and even the ads back then that did bend the truth a bit, overpromised, or showed products that didn't actually have any legitimate use, shouldn't really have been legal back then either. They just weren't big enough of a problem to worry about).

mikestew 3d ago
The water-injection system for your carburetor that the oil companies don't want you to know about! -- paraphrase of an actual Popular Mechanics ad circa 1978

riazrizvi 3d ago

Because money? Ask me another.

gagan2020 3d ago

To Google, Don't be Evil

tcfhgj 3d ago

Still some people don't block ads and people pay for it. Simple as that.

HomeDeLaPot 3d ago

Every YouTube ad I see now is an AI-generated scam ad hawking everything from free electricity to anti-aging products to birdhouses hand-carved by an AI-generated senior citizen. I've seen some multiple times, days or weeks apart. Their advertising standards are a complete joke.

johng 3d ago
This senior citizen doing stuff got me. I bought a pair of cow slippers because I thought he was making them from his farm in Australia. Turns out they use that same "character" to hawk multiple products.

erros 3d ago

Money. They make so much money from malvertisement that it doesn't make sense to remediate them. It's corporate greed and they've known about this since the 2010s, various campaigns have sprung up and have caused untold X amount of dollars in damages in breaches, and nothing changes. I've heard at least one FBI agent who had investigated cases related to malvertisement put Google up there with some of the worst ad networks.