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by INTPenis 2158 days ago
The ads in youtube this past year have been a bit scary. I'm assuming some weird ads are getting past the moderators because I'm in Sweden, and it's not a big ad market maybe.

Either way, I get misspelled ads, or ads that just say "18 YEAR OLD WOMEN" in some shitty 1999 font that is barely legible.

Edit: I'm talking about the clickable ads interspersed between videos in the UI.

3 comments

I have a feeling Google's OCR for Ads (scanning for Ad Guideline violations) requires those types of fonts to get by without being banned too quickly.

Something like this showed up on reddit a couple of months back: https://redd.it/ghmuy7

I've been getting ads for months now that show a devastating natural disaster approaching my location. It was very alarming the first few times I saw it. Reporting it has done nothing.
An ad for "18 YEAR OLD WOMEN" is scary? They don't bite.

It seems generic not really weird.

It sounds like the sort of shady ads you would get on torrent websites or image boards.
All app stores are far shadier thans torrents websites or worse, warez websites of old. App stores come with spyware, adware, and regularly mineware or worden. I visit torrent websites for peace of mind.

But mostly F-droid, which has Newpipe. Both excellent and reliable and shite-free.

I really don't get app stores. How did they convince everyone to install so much spy and adware?

I don't really understand your point, F-Droid is definitely an app store.

I think you must mainly mean the Google Play Store, where the situation seems really bad... As for Apple, they manually review every application. I remember iOS apps for jailbreaking getting removed incredibly quickly.

F droid is an exception. Google, Apple and Microsoft app stores are the best guarantee you're installing spyware. That's what ubiquitous telemetry is after all.
They have a shady vibe to them is what I mean. Like e-mail spam.

Another example is "Generic viking game", like literally. It just says some generic viking game, no brand or recognizable name. It looks just like phishing.