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by general1726 302 days ago
I mean just try to sumarize ads running on YouTube: Lightsabers ad which is actually a torch - scam. Wooden cutting board as source of microplastics - scam. Muscular old geezer selling Tai-chi - grift and scam. Mobile games advertising a "playthrough" but real game is completely something else - scam. Palestinians having difficult life - propaganda. Israel delivering help to Palestine - counter propaganda.

I have seen so many ads on YouTube and so far it was either scam or propaganda.
2 comments
zahlman 302 days ago
To be fair, the "wooden cutting board" ad is actually trying to tell you (if you listen to the whole thing) that plastic cutting boards are a source of microplastics but wooden cutting boards will instead result in bacterial contamination; thus they're selling you (supposedly) a titanium cutting board. Which of course will command some ungodly price tag both because of the material (supposing for the moment that this is legit) and because you'll supposedly only ever need one.

And I don't think any of these are nearly as bad as the ones trying to sell you on some purported absurdly large arbitrage on crypto markets. I've also seen some for supposedly super-advanced data storage devices that I'm quite confident are scams; and bogus scam ultra-high-capacity USB keys are already all over the place to the point where they'd be a huge problem even if never advertised.

(I usually don't care as much about first-party ads like this because at least the advertiser isn't serving me custom JavaScript. And I do sometimes let these things play if I have the video on in the background.)

It's also really noticeable how you'll keep seeing the same ads for the same few things, regardless of what your "algorithm" is currently doing. I really have to wonder how much YouTube makes off those cutting board guys.

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general1726 302 days ago
> It's also really noticeable how you'll keep seeing the same ads for the same few things, regardless of what your "algorithm" is currently doing. I really have to wonder how much YouTube makes off those cutting board guys.

Oh yes, that's true it has been happening to me as well. Israel/Palestine propaganda fight were biggest offenders. Every 10 minutes one or the other sometimes sprinkled with a scam mobile game ad. And I don't even play mobile games...

Btw cutting on titanium cutting board is the fastest way to have dull knives. So we moved from scam to deception.

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zahlman 302 days ago
> Btw cutting on titanium cutting board is the fastest way to have dull knives

I would have thought so. But the ad explicitly claims that this helps keep them sharp, IIRC. So there might be a legal case there too....

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xeonmc 302 days ago
> Lightsabers ad which is actually a torch - scam.

Aren't they really just confined plasma torches though, lore-wise?

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encrypted_bird 302 days ago
No, a torch has a far shorter "beam", while a lightsaber is a very large "beam" compressed into a cylindrical shape by magnetic fields.

Either that or they meant "torch" as in "flashlight", which I've seen shitty lightsabers be.

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general1726 302 days ago
That would be candle in a flowerpot ad to save on energy bills.
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