VerdigriisI'm starting to really notice that as a society we've decided it's totally OK for scams, grifts and tabloids to advertise on reputable news sites. I just saw this under an Ars Technica article, and I'm completely used to this garbage, but also why is it OK? Some of those are actual scams right? Maybe or maybe not genuinely illegal but certainly even if you're sent a product and don't have your credit card info stollen it absolutely won't be a good product. See exhibit A:
Like take that first ad. That 80s infomercial product is definitely photoshopped onto that guy. From what I know about how this works they probably stole that pic from some dude's Instagram and he knows nothing about it. He probably just shared pics of looking maximally swole while in bodybuilding competition form and some trashy company has just stolen his gym pic and used it to advertise their garbage.
What if we all agreed, as a society, to really tamp down on this obviously scammy stuff? I know shady business practices have been around for as long as business itself. See Ea Nasir's basement collection of customer complaints about his shitty copper.
But it feels like it's gotten significantly more intrusive. "Ad supported" always set up bad incentives for online businesses but the naked "actually you can just pay us to promote scams to our customers" aspect is starting to really bug me.
It's ridiculous that we take it for granted that our online experience is just awash with people trying to trap and exploit us with shitty links wherever we go. Like what if you didn't have to wade through crime adjacent grifts every time you opened a browser?