How Google's Adsense has Innocently enabled Scams and Fraud
One of the unintended consequences of Google's wildly popular adsense program is that a number of websites sincerely aimed at providing consumer protection now carry google ads for scams. How do these webmasters explain why they allow such ads. Here are some sample justifications from these webmasters.
Webmaster 1: In answer to my questions about enabling fraud.
My Question: Given that this site, among others, attempts to educate, warn and advise individuals of bogus opportunities, how appropriate to have Ads byGoooooogle on the site which may lead to bogus, fraud or scams?Reply: That's why I didn't do it for so long... then I decided to put a warning in plain sight and stop throwing money away. (It's the first time in my life I've put making my mortgage payment ahead of my obsessive-compulsive "value system" and I think I've been a fool for too long.)
My Question: The site has credibility, and it is one of the few consumer sites that I have my blog link to, but I worry about the difference between the message and the ads.
Reply: Three people said it best. Like I said, the thread is gone, but this is the gist of their messages:
"You can't be everybody's mother."
"If they read Scams 101 AND the warnings AND the board and they still get scammed, it isn't your problem; if they didn't click on the scam here, they would have clicked on it somewhere else.
"Do you honestly believe that reputable newspapers and magazines worry for one second about whose ads they're carrying?" (No, they don't. Witness the envelope-stuffing schemes that used to fill a page in T.V. Guide.) (my emphasis)
Webmaster 2: From their FAQ.
"Why are there ads on your site?The ads are the only source of revenue our Web site has. Without them, it would not exist. Our site is very large and handles a lot of traffic each day. It is very expensive to maintain. We also spend a lot of time (and money) fighting off companies that try to shut us down, sue us or intimidate us into silence.
One of the things that makes our country great is a free press, supported almost entirely by advertising. In totalitarian countries, the government controls the press. Bad news.
I see ads for companies that are criticized on your site. What's that all about?
We don't control which ads appear on our site. They are placed by outside agencies. A crafty consumer understands that ads are not an endorsement, they are paid propaganda. The fact that an ad appears on our site by no means indicates we approve of the product. Same thing's true for an ad in the newspaper, or on television or radio.
We would suggest that you should be worried about whether we have to kowtow to individual advertisers. This would make it tempting to go easy on those who advertise on our site. With our third-party arrangement, we have no contact whatsoever with the companies advertising on our site and could not care less whether they approve or disapprove of what we say about them.
This seems wrong. How can you take money to advertise products you don't approve of?
It's a free country. Companies, even the ones we don't much like, have as much right to advertise as we do to publish our site, just as we have the right to publish critical comments about them. There are government agencies that can and do prosecute companies who make false advertising claims.
I'd rather depend on a government agency for my news.
Fine. We're not the only game in town and don't want to be. Keep in mind that governments publish an "official" version of the news, which tends to be mostly about what a great job the government has done for you today. If you want to believe that, be our guest.
Why don't you get rid of the ads and raise money from foundations and corporations?
Foundations, especially those backed by big companies, want to control the content of Web sites and publications they underwrite. We have sat at tables where big drug companies dictated, line for line, what a not-for-profit agency would say in a publication financed by a supposed "unrestricted educational grant" from the foundation. This goes on every day. We don't trust anything any big not-for-profit organization says. Most of it is corporate propaganda disguised as unbiased truth. This is much worse than advertising, which is at least clearly identified as such.
service. We're not set up to handle written or telephone complaints. We forward the written complaints to the lawyers for their review but at the moment, that's as far as it goes. It would be too labor-intensive and expensive to type them into the database or actually print out a response and mail it. Sorry". (my emphasis)
Webmaster 3: In response to my question.
It hit us on Day 1, when the very first ad that came up in AdSense was a Pure Trust scam. So, we moved the AdSense ads off the front page and to some back pages where at least people would have time to read the warnings before seeing the advertisement, and then we try to make sure they understand that it is an advertisement.The best that this site can do is to educate and try to teach people what a scam is or isn't. At the end of the day, they will have to choose. I can't tell you how many e-mails we get per week the have the tenor of "I saw your site before I invested, and wished that I had listened to you earlier."
For a financially very small non-profit like [true sponsers of site], raising even minimal money is difficult and AdSense seems to be an easy way to do it. But people are still going to have to look out for themselves, hopefully just a little smarter after reading some of our warnings.
Any ideas or suggestions appreciated; please don't think that we haven't given this any thought. (my emphasis)
Is it futile to complain about scams, frauds and business opportunities when you are indirectly enabling them? And why are there adsense ads on www.bizop.ca?
Very simple.I want you to click on ads which look like scams or frauds, and report them.
Just that simple.
Click and report. Click and report, repeat until the scam ads vanish from the internet.
