phdoofus t1_ja2hejl wrote on February 26, 2023 at 10:04 AM

Reply to comment by TheTanelornian in Google adverts direct pregnant women to services run by UK anti-abortion groups by Lakerlion

Your argumen would make the old yellow pages a nightmare because it would hold the yellow pages company responsible for vetting every single company that chooses to advertise with it. And continue to monitor and check that every single company is doing exactly what they say they are doing. Now you have to magnify that on a global scale. At what point is there not some responsibility on the user in your model?

TheTanelornian t1_ja3viu0 wrote on February 26, 2023 at 5:30 PM

Yellow Pages is different from Google because there is no targeting of the advert. If there was a Yellow Pages tablet, that showed you ads for/against abortion (choose whichever you disagree with) repeatedly around every trade you looked up (plumber, chiropodist, lawyer, etc), then yes, it would be similar and I’d have a similar problem with it.

It is Google’s praxis of directing ads to targeted groups, coupled with the vulnerability of some of these target groups and the willingness of otherwise-aligned parties (the anti-abortion group, here) to pay Google to do this - all three combined are the problem here. I don’t think Google gets a free pass.

I know they dropped the “Don’t be evil” mantra, presumably the ability to do things like this is why…