#tech seo

[bigjawdigital]

10 Mistakes to Avoid for a Smooth Landing Page

A landing page has a singular goal: to persuade visitors to take a specific action—whether it’s signing up, downloading something, or making a purchase. To keep visitors from bouncing off your page, watch out for these common mistakes that can sabotage conversions.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

You can’t shop your way out of a monopoly

I'm on tour with my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me in TUCSON (Mar 9-10), then SAN FRANCISCO (Mar 13), Anaheim, and more!

If you're running a business, you can either invest at being good at your business, or good at Google SEO. Choose the former and your customers will love you – but they won't be able to find you, thanks to the people who choose the latter. And if you're going to invest in top-notch SEO, why bother investing in quality at all?

For more than a decade, Google has promised that it would do something about "lead gens" – services that spoof Google into thinking that they are local businesses, pushing down legit firms on both regular search and Google Maps (these downranked businesses invested in quality, not SEO, remember). Search for a roofer, a plumber, an electrician, or a locksmith (especially a locksmith), and most or all of the results will be lead-gens. They'll take your call, pretend to be a local business, and then call up some half-qualified bozo to come out and charge you four times the going rate for substandard work:

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/31/business/fake-online-locksmiths-may-be-out-to-pick-your-pocket-too.html

Some of them just take your money and they "go back to the shop for a tool" and never return:

https://www.riverfronttimes.com/news/when-a-fake-business-used-a-real-st-louis-address-things-got-weird-32087998

Google has been promising to fix this since the late aughts, and to be fair, it's a little better. There was once a time when a map of Manhattan showed more locksmiths than taxis:

https://blumenthals.com/blog/2009/02/18/google-maps-proves-more-locksmiths-in-nyc-than-cabs/

But GMaps is trapped in the enshittification squeeze. On the one hand, the company wants to provide a good and reliable map. On the other hand, the company makes money selling "ads" that are actually payola, where a business can pay to get to the top of the listings or get displayed on the map itself. Zoom out of Google's map of central London and the highlighted landmarks are a hilarious mix of "organic" and paid listings: the British Museum, Buckingham Palace, the Barbican, the London Eye…and a random oral and maxillofacial clinic in the financial district:

https://twitter.com/dylanbeattie/status/1764711667663831455

Hell of a job "organizing the world's information and making it universally accessible and useful," Big G. Doubtless the average Londoner finds the presence of this clinic super helpful in orienting themselves relative to the map on their phone screens, and it's a real service to tourists hoping to hit all the major landmarks.

It's not just Maps users who'd noticed the rampant enshittification. Even the original design team is so horrified they're moved to speak out about the moral injury they experience seeing the product they worked so hard on turned into a giant pile of shit:

https://twitter.com/elizlaraki/status/1727351922254852182

Now, when it comes to locksmiths, I'm lucky. My neighborhood in Burbank includes the wonderful Golden State Lock and Safe, which has been in business since 1942:

https://www.goldenstatelock.com/

But you wouldn't know it from searching GMaps for a locksmith near me. That search turns up a long list of scams:

https://www.google.com/maps/search/locksmith/@34.1750451,-118.369948,14z/data=!3m1!4b1?entry=ttu

It also turns up plenty of Keyme machines – these are private-equity backed, self-serve key-cutting machines placed in grocery stores. Despite Keyme calling itself a "locksmith," it's just a badly secured, overcaptilized, enshittification-bound system for collecting and retaining shapefiles for the keys to millions of homes, cross-referenced with billing information that will make it easy for the eventual hackers to mass-produce keys for all those poor suckers' houses.

(Hilariously, Keyme claims to be an "AI" company):

https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200114005194/en/KeyMe-Raises-35-Million-to-Further-Its-Mission-of-Building-the-Premier-Locksmith-Services-Company-in-the-Nation

But despite the fact that you can literally see the Golden State storefront from Google Streetview, Google Maps claims to have no knowledge of it. Instead, Streetview labels Golden State "Keyme" – and displays a preview showing a locksmith using a tool to break into a jeep (I'd dearly love to know how the gadget next to the Slurpee machine at the 7-Eleven will drive itself to your jeep and unlock the door for you when you lose your keys):

https://www.google.com/maps/place/KeyMe+Locksmiths/@34.1752624,-118.3487531,3a,75y,350.19h,90.21t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1ssHrtqjqvgFir3NBauMy13Q!2e0!7i16384!8i8192!4m15!1m8!3m7!1s0x80c2959cd65dbb1b:0x4b3744cf87492a71!2sBurbank+Blvd+%26+N+Hollywood+Way,+Burbank,+CA+91505!3b1!8m2!3d34.1750025!4d-118.3493484!16s%2Fg%2F11f37_3lq8!3m5!1s0x80c2951cedbf4d39:0xe8ff9fd5872e66e9!8m2!3d34.1755176!4d-118.349!16s%2Fg%2F11mw7nr4fx?entry=ttu

It's pretty clear to me what's going on here. Keyme has hired some SEO creeps and/or paid off Google, flooding the zone with listings for its machines. Meanwhile, Golden State, being merely good at locksmithing, has lost the SEO wars. Perhaps Golden State could shift some of its emphasis from being good at locksmithing in order to get better at SEO, but this is a race that will always be won by the firm that puts the most into SEO, which will always be the firm that puts the least into quality.

Whenever I write about this stuff, people inevitably ask me which search engine they should use, if not Google?

And there's the rub.

Google used predatory pricing and anticompetitive mergers to acquire a 90% search market-share. The company spends more than $26b/year buying default position in every place where you might possibly encounter a new search engine. This created the "kill zone" – the VC's term of art for businesses that no one will invest in, because Google makes sure that no one will ever find out it exists:

https://www.theverge.com/23802382/search-engine-google-neeva-android

That's why the only serious competitor to Google is Bing, another Big Tech company (Bing is also the primary source of results on Duckduckgo, which is why DDG sometimes makes exceptions for Microsoft's privacy-invading tracking):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DuckDuckGo#Controversies

Google tells us that the quid-pro-quo of search monopolization is search excellence. The hundreds of billions it makes every year through monopoly control gives it the resources it needs to fight spammers and maintain search result quality. Anyone who's paid attention recently knows that this is bullshit: Google search quality is in free-fall, across all its products:

https://downloads.webis.de/publications/papers/bevendorff_2024a.pdf

But Google doesn't seem to think it has a problem. Rather than devoting all its available resources to fighting botshit, spam and scams, the company set $80 billion dollars alight last year with a stock buyback that was swiftly followed with 12,000 layoffs, followed by multiple subsequent rounds of layoffs:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/21/im-feeling-unlucky/#not-up-to-the-task

The scams that slip through Google's cracks are sometimes nefarious, but just as often they're decidedly amateurish, the kind of thing that Google could fix by throwing money at the problem, say, to validate that new ads for confirmed Google merchants come from the merchant's registered email addresses and go to the merchant's registered website:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/24/passive-income/#swiss-cheese-security

Search is a capital intensive business, and there are real returns to scale, as the UK Competition and Market Authority's excellent 2020 study describes:

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5fe4957c8fa8f56aeff87c12/Appendix_I_-_search_quality_v.3_WEB_.pdf

But Google doesn't seem to think that its search needs that $80 billion to fight the spamwars. That's the thing about monopolists, they get complacent. As Lily Tomlin's "Ernestine the AT&T operator" used to say, "We don't care, we don't have to, we're the phone company."

That's why I'm so excited about the DOJ Antitrust Division monopolization case against Google. Trusting one company to "organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful," was a failure:

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-sues-google-monopolizing-digital-advertising-technologies

I understand why people want to know which search engine they should use instead of Google, and I get why, "There aren't any good search engines" is such an unsatisfactory answer. I understand why each fresh round of printer-company fuckery prompts people to ask "which printer should I get?" and I understand why "There are only six major printer companies and they're all suffering from end-stage enshittification" isn't what anyone wants to hear.

We want to be able to vote with our wallets, because it's so much faster and more convenient than voting with our ballots. But the vote-with-your-wallet election is rigged for the people with the thickest wallets. Try as hard as you'd like, you just can't shop your way out of a monopoly – that's like trying to recycle your way out of the climate emergency. Systemic problems need systemic solutions – not individual ones.

That's why the new antitrust matters so much. The answer to monopolies is to break up companies, block and unwind mergers, ban deceptive and unfair conduct. "Caveat emptor" is the scammer's motto. You shouldn't have to be an expert on lead gen scams to hire a locksmith without getting ripped off.

There are good products and services out there. Earlier this year, we decided to install a (non-networked) programmable pushbutton lock. I asked Deviant Ollam – whom I know from Defcon's Lockpicking Village – for a recommendation and he suggested the Schlage FE595:

https://www.schlage.com/en/home/products/FE595PLYFFFFLA.html

I liked it so much I bought another one for my office door. Eric from Golden State Lock and Safe installed it while I wrote this blog-post. It's great. I recommend both of 'em – 10/10, would do business again.

Name your price for 18 of my DRM-free ebooks and support the Electronic Frontier Foundation with the Humble Cory Doctorow Bundle.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/05/the-map-is-not-the-territory/#vapor-locksmith

Image: alicia rae (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kehole_Red.jpg

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/deed.en

--

Budhiargomiko (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wasteland.jpg

CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en

[mesugakl]

darkwear bridget

[axishr8]

[wannaeatramyeon]

Hii!! I wanna ask regarding jake and samuel. Are they half brother?? Because I remember reading a chapter where samuel keeps saying gapryong kim is his dad or maybe he's just desperate??!! I just want to know your thought tho

Jake Kim + Samuel Seo: Bro

"Bro why you being like this?"

"Stop following me around."

"Bro cmon."

Samuel whirls round, "STOP calling me bro, I am not your bro."

Hurt creeps over Jake's face, "Maybe not by blood but-"

"Not by anything, now fuck off."

"Bro..."

Brad and Jason watches the two of them. An odd routine they seemed to have picked up ever since their conversation on the pier. Jake trailing after Samuel like a lost puppy and Samuel being pricklier than ever.

"10,000 won on Samuel throwing the first punch?" Brad offers.

"No frickin way," Did this bald idiot take Jason Yoon for a fool? "That's as good as guaranteed."

[nishakrishnan1996]

Learning Digital Marketing: Tips and Resources for Beginners

In the current digital world, it is critical for both individuals and organisations to grasp the art of digital marketing. Entering the world of digital marketing can seem like a difficult trip because of the vast diversity of internet platforms and tactics at our disposal. However, anyone can effectively leverage the transformative power of digital marketing if they have the correct tools and attitude. We'll explore the fundamentals of digital marketing in this in-depth guide, as well as many learning resources and practical advice for success in this ever-changing field. A reputable Top Digital Marketing Course in Coimbatore can provide the knowledge and abilities needed for those aspiring to become industry professionals to successfully traverse this dynamic environment.

Grasping the Core Principles

Embarking on your digital marketing odyssey requires a firm grasp of the foundational principles. Digital marketing encompasses a multifaceted landscape comprising social media marketing, search engine optimization (SEO), content marketing, email marketing, pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, and beyond. Each facet plays a pivotal role in connecting with and engaging your target audience.

Commence your journey by immersing yourself in the essence and utility of each digital marketing channel. For instance, social media marketing serves as a conduit for businesses to forge connections with their audience across platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn, while SEO serves as the bedrock for enhancing a website's visibility in search engine results.

Embracing Online Learning

One of the most potent avenues for acquiring digital marketing prowess lies in online learning platforms. The likes of Coursera, Udemy, and HubSpot Academy offer an extensive array of courses catering to various facets of digital marketing. Whether you're a neophyte or a seasoned practitioner seeking to augment your skill set, there exists a plethora of courses tailored to meet your requirements.

When perusing online courses, seek out those that proffer a structured curriculum, practical exercises, and industry-endorsed certifications. Many courses also afford opportunities for engagement with instructors and fellow learners, facilitating collaborative learning and knowledge exchange.

Keeping Abreast of Industry Trends

The realm of digital marketing is in a perennial state of flux, characterized by the continual emergence of novel trends and technologies. To maintain a competitive edge, it's imperative to remain abreast of the latest industry trends and best practices.

Cultivate a habit of staying attuned to reputable digital marketing blogs, subscribing to industry newsletters, and participating in webinars and conferences. These fountains of wisdom furnish invaluable insights into nascent trends, innovative strategies, and illuminating case studies spotlighting successful digital marketing endeavors. Finding the appropriate abilities is just as vital as selecting the appropriate tactics and methods. It can be very beneficial in this situation to register in the Digital Marketing Online Certification.

Enacting Hands-On Practice

While theoretical knowledge serves as a springboard, the crucible of hands-on experience is indispensable in mastering digital marketing. Establish your own blog or social media platforms to experiment with diverse tactics and strategies. Translate the theoretical underpinnings gleaned from online courses and industry resources into tangible outcomes through real-world projects.

Embrace a spirit of experimentation, and employ analytical tools to scrutinize your endeavors and glean actionable insights. The data-driven nature of digital marketing empowers you to refine your strategies iteratively based on empirical evidence.

Cultivating Specialization

As you traverse the digital marketing landscape, contemplate delving into a specialized niche aligned with your passions and proficiencies. Specialization enables you to delve deeper into a specific facet of digital marketing, be it SEO, social media advertising, email marketing, or content creation.

Becoming a connoisseur in a niche not only demarcates you from the crowd but also engenders myriad opportunities for career advancement. Businesses perpetually seek specialists capable of proffering astute insights and delivering tangible results within their niche domain.

Conclusion

Journeying towards mastery in digital marketing entails a multifaceted expedition characterized by unwavering dedication, perpetual learning, and adaptability. By internalizing the core principles, engaging with online learning platforms, staying abreast of industry trends, enacting hands-on practice, and cultivating specialization, you can forge a path towards proficiency in this dynamic arena.

Remember, digital marketing is an art imbued with nuance and dynamism. Embrace the ethos of experimentation and iteration, and chart a course tailored to your unique objectives and target audience. With perseverance and a strategic approach, you can harness the transformative potential of digital marketing to propel your endeavors to unprecedented heights in the digital realm.

[here-there-were-dragons]

i do not think there are numbers yet invented to measure the amount of psychic damage i took from this advertisement title

[infodailyblog]

Do you know Where I Can Find Happiness?

Navigating the Path to Happiness: A Journey Within

In the hustle and bustle of modern life, the pursuit of happiness has become a universal quest. People often find themselves asking, "Where I can find happiness?" as if it were a tangible destination waiting to be discovered. However, the journey to happiness is more nuanced, often requiring introspection, mindful choices, and a recognition that joy is a subjective and multifaceted experience.

The Illusion of External Fulfillment

In a world driven by materialism and external achievements, it's easy to fall into the trap of seeking happiness in possessions, status, or external validation. Many individuals believe that acquiring more wealth, achieving certain milestones, or gaining societal approval will unlock the door to lasting happiness. However, this pursuit often proves elusive, leaving individuals feeling unfulfilled and yearning for more.

Cultivating Happiness from Within

True happiness, however, often lies within. It involves a journey of self-discovery, where individuals explore their values, passions, and innermost desires. Cultivating a sense of purpose and aligning one's life with personal values can be a powerful foundation for sustainable happiness.

1. Mindfulness and Present Living: Happiness is often found in the present moment. Embracing mindfulness – the practice of being fully present and engaged in the current experience – allows individuals to savor life's simple pleasures, fostering a deeper sense of contentment.

2. Connection and Relationships: Meaningful connections with others contribute significantly to happiness. Building and nurturing positive relationships with friends, family, and the community can provide a sense of belonging and support, enhancing overall well-being.

3. Gratitude Practice: Gratitude is a powerful tool in the pursuit of happiness. Taking time each day to reflect on the positive aspects of life, no matter how small, can shift focus from what's lacking to what is abundant, fostering a more positive mindset.

4. Personal Growth and Learning: Engaging in continuous learning and personal development can bring a sense of accomplishment and fulfillment. Setting and achieving personal goals, no matter how small, contributes to a sense of purpose and progress.

Seeking Joy in the Journey

Rather than viewing happiness as a distant endpoint, it is crucial to recognize that happiness is often found in the journey itself. Life is a series of moments, and finding joy in the process of living can lead to a more fulfilling and satisfying existence.

1. Embracing Imperfections: Accepting that life is imperfect and embracing the ups and downs allows individuals to navigate challenges with resilience. Happiness is not the absence of difficulties but the ability to find joy despite them.

2. Balancing Work and Play: Striking a balance between work and leisure is essential. Overemphasis on professional success without allocating time for personal interests and recreation can lead to burnout and hinder overall happiness.

3. Self-Compassion: Being kind to oneself is a crucial aspect of happiness. Recognizing and accepting one's flaws and imperfections with self-compassion fosters a positive relationship with oneself.

The Ever-Changing Nature of Happiness

It's essential to acknowledge that happiness is not a static state but a dynamic and evolving experience. What brings joy at one stage of life may not necessarily do so in another. Flexibility and adaptability in the pursuit of happiness allow individuals to navigate life's transitions with resilience and openness.

Conclusion: A Personal Odyssey

In answering the question, "Where can I find happiness?" it becomes evident that the journey is deeply personal. It involves self-reflection, intentional choices, and a willingness to explore the rich tapestry of human experiences. True happiness is not a destination but a continuous exploration of the self and the world, guided by authenticity, gratitude, and a commitment to living a life aligned with one's values. As individuals embark on their personal odyssey towards happiness, they may discover that the destination is not a place but a state of being found within the depths of their own hearts and minds.

Read more information to click given link:

[bmpmp3]

aiv2 ryuusei 👍

[vedangkadia]

🚀 Meta's New Ad Tools for Facebook & Instagram Are Here! 🎯

Meta just released exciting updates to its ad platforms, aimed at making your campaigns smarter and more effective. Here's a quick look at what’s new and why it matters:

1️⃣ Smarter Targeting with AI: Meta's AI-powered optimization helps you polish your ad targeting. Whether you're customizing ads for different audiences or adjusting campaigns, these tools are designed to reach the right people more efficiently.

2️⃣ New Incremental Attribution Model: This new attribution setting targets those who are more likely to convert after seeing your ad—customers who wouldn’t have taken action otherwise. Early tests show an average 20% increase in incremental conversions, ensuring your ads have a real impact.

3️⃣ Better Analytics Integration: Meta is simplifying connections with external analytics tools like Google Analytics and Adobe, providing a clearer view of how your campaigns perform across platforms. Now, you can track and understand the full customer journey, from paid social to SEO, all in one place.

✨ Key Features :

- Conversion Value Rules: Prioritize high-value customers without creating separate campaigns. Adjust your bids for different customer actions based on long-term value, so you can place higher bids on customers who offer more value over time—all within the same campaign.

- Incremental Attribution: Focus on “incremental conversions”—customers who wouldn’t have converted without seeing your ad. Early adopters have seen a 20% rise in these valuable conversions.

- Cross-Platform Analytics: Meta’s direct connections with analytics platforms allow you to merge data from different channels, giving you a holistic view of your ad performance. Early tests show a 30% increase in conversions when third-party analytics tools like Google Analytics are used alongside Meta ads.

These updates are about improving the precision and efficiency of your ad campaigns. Meta’s new AI-driven features help you achieve better results, make smarter decisions, and maximize the value of your ad spend.

💡 What to Do Now :

✔️ Review your current Meta ad strategy to ensure you're ready to take advantage of these tools.

✔️ Map out your customer journey to identify where these new features can add the most value.

✔️ Be prepared to test these updates as they roll out—early adopters are already seeing impressive gains.

How do you plan to use these new Meta tools? Share your thoughts in the comments below! 💬

📌Follow us on Social Media📌

📢 LinkedIn — Vedang Kadia — Amazon Associate | LinkedIn

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📢 Medium — Vedang Kadia — Medium

[teccharticle]

Empowering Your Business with Web Development 🌐

In today’s fast-paced digital landscape, your website is more than just a presence—it’s the heart of your brand. It serves as a virtual storefront, a communication hub, and often the first interaction your customers have with your business. A well-designed, user-friendly website can leave a lasting impression and play a key role in driving engagement, conversions, and growth.

Web development is not just about creating a functional site; it’s about building an experience that resonates with your audience and reflects your brand’s unique story. From sleek designs to optimized performance, a well-crafted website can be a powerful tool that sets you apart from the competition.

At KSoft Technologies, we specialize in delivering tailored web development solutions that combine creativity, innovation, and technology. Whether you need a dynamic e-commerce platform, a custom-built application, or a complete website revamp, we’re here to turn your vision into reality. Our approach ensures seamless functionality, mobile responsiveness, and SEO optimization, helping your business shine in the digital space.

💡 Ready to transform your ideas into a standout website? Explore our services and get started today: KSoft Technologies

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Google makes millions on paid abortion disinformation

Google’s search quality has been in steady decline for years, and Google assures us that they’re working on it, though the most visible effort is replacing links to webpages with lengthy, florid paragraphs written by a confident habitual liar chatbot:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/16/tweedledumber/#easily-spooked

The internet is increasingly full of garbage, much of it written by other confident habitual liar chatbots, which are now extruding plausible sentences at enormous scale. Future confident habitual liar chatbots will be trained on the output of these confident liar chatbots, producing Jathan Sadowski’s “Habsburg AI”:

https://twitter.com/jathansadowski/status/1625245803211272194

But the declining quality of Google Search isn’t merely a function of chatbot overload. For many years, Google’s local business listings have been terrible. Anyone who’s tried to find a handyman, a locksmith, an emergency tow, or other small businessperson has discovered that Google is worse than useless for this. Try to search for that locksmith on the corner that you pass every day? You won’t find them — but you will find a fake locksmith service that will dispatch an unqualified, fumble-fingered guy with a drill and a knockoff lock, who will drill out your lock, replace it with one made of bubblegum and spit, and charge you 400% the going rate (and then maybe come back to rob you):

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/31/business/fake-online-locksmiths-may-be-out-to-pick-your-pocket-too.html

Google is clearly losing the fraud/spam wars, which is pretty awful, given that they have spent billions to put every other search engine out of business. They spend $45b every year to secure exclusivity deals that prevent people from discovering or using rivals — that’s like buying a whole Twitter every year, just so they don’t have to compete:

https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/how-a-google-antitrust-case-could/

But there’s an even worse form of fraudulent listing on Google, one they could do something about, but choose not to: ad-fraud. For all the money and energy thrown into “dark SEO” to trick Google into putting your shitty, scammy website at the top of the listings, there’s a much simpler method. All you need to do is pay Google — buy an ad, and your obviously fraudulent site will be right there, at the top of the search results.

There are so many top searches that go to fraud or malware sites. Tech support is a favorite. It’s not uncommon to search for tech support for Google products and be served a fake tech-support website where a scammer will try to trick you into installing a remote-access trojan and then steal everything you have, and/or take blackmail photos of you with your webcam:

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/google-search-ads-infiltrated-again-by-tech-support-scams/

This is true even when Google has a trivial means of reliably detecting fraud. Take the restaurant monster-in-the-middle scam: a scammer clones the menu of a restaurant, marking up their prices by 15%, and then buys the top ad slot for searches for that restaurant. Search for the restaurant, click the top link, and land on a lookalike site. The scammer collects your order, bills your card, then places the same order, in your name, with the restaurant.

The thing is, Google runs these ads even for restaurants that are verified merchants — Google mails the restaurant a postcard with a unique number on it, and the restaurant owner keys that number in to verify that they are who they say they are. It would not be hard for Google to check whether an ad for a business matches one of its verified merchants, and, if so, whether the email address is a different one from the verified one on file. If so, Google could just email the verified address with a “Please confirm that you’re trying to buy an ad for a website other than the one we have on file” message:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/24/passive-income/#swiss-cheese-security

Google doesn’t do this. Instead, they accept — and make a fortune from — paid disinformation, across every category.

But not all categories of paid disinformation are equally bad: it’s one thing to pay a 15% surcharge on a takeout meal, but there’s a whole universe of paid medical disinformation that Google knows about and has an official policy of tolerating.

This paid medical disinformation comes from “crisis pregnancy centers”: these are fake abortion clinics that raise huge sums from religious fanatics to buy ads that show up for people seeking information about procuring an abortion. If they are duped by one of these ads, they are directed to a Big Con-style storefront staffed by people who pretend that they perform abortions, but who bombard their marks with falsehoods about health complications.

These con artists try to trick their marks into consenting to sexual assault — a transvaginal ultrasound. This is a prelude to another fraud, in which the “sporadic electrical impulses” generated by an early fetal structure is a “heartbeat” (early fetuses do not have hearts, so they cannot produce heartbeats):

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/womens-health/heartbeat-bills-called-fetal-heartbeat-six-weeks-pregnancy-rcna24435

If the victim still insists on getting an abortion, the fraudsters will use deceptive tactics to draw out the process until they run out the clock for a legal abortion, procuring a forced birth through deceit.

It is hard to imagine a less ethical course of conduct. Google’s policy of accepting “crisis pregnancy center” ads is the moral equivalent of taking money from fake oncologists who counsel people with cancer to forego chemotherapy in favor of juice-cleanses.

There is no ambiguity here: the purpose of a “crisis prengancy center” is to deceive people seeking abortions into thinking they are dealing with an abortion clinic, and then further deceive them into foregoing the abortion, by means of lies, sexually invasive and unnecessary medical procedures, and delaying tactics.

Now, a new report from the Center for Countering Digital Hate finds that Google made $10m last year on ads from “crisis pregnancy centers”:

https://www.wired.com/story/google-made-millions-from-ads-for-fake-abortion-clinics/

Many of these “crisis pregnancy centers” are also registered 501(c)3 charities, which makes them eligible for Google’s ad grants, which provide free ads to nonprofits. Marketers who cater to “crisis pregnancy center” advertise that they can help their clients qualify for these grants. In 2019, Google was caught giving tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of free ads to “crisis pregnancy centers”:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/may/12/google-advertising-abortion-obria

The keywords that “crisis pregnancy centers” bid up include “Planned Parenthood” — meaning that if actual Planned Parenthood clinics want to appear at the top of the search for “planned parenthood,” they have to outbid the fraudsters seeking to deceive Planned Parenthood patients.

Google has an official policy of requiring customers that pay for ads matching abortion-related search terms to label their ads to state whether or not they provide abortions, but the report documents failures to enforce this policy. The labels themselves are confusing: for example, abortion travel funds have to be labeled as “not providing abortions.”

Google isn’t afraid to ban whole categories of advertising: for example, Google has banned Plan C, a nonprofit that provides information about medication abortions. The company erroneously classes Plan C as an “unauthorized pharmacy.” But Google continues to offer paid disinformation on behalf of forced birth groups that claim there is such a thing as “abortion reversal” (there isn’t — but the “abortion reversal” drug cocktail is potentially lethal).

This is inexcusable, but it’s not unique — and it’s not even that profitable. $10m is a drop in the bucket for a company like Google. When you’re lighting $45b/year on fire just to prevent competition, $10m is chump change. A better way to understand Google’s relationship to paid disinformation can be found by studying Facebook’s own paid disinformation problem.

Facebook has a well-documented problem with paid political disinformation — unambiguous, illegal materials, like paid notices advising people to remember to vote on November 6th (when election day falls on November 5th). The company eventually promised to put political ads in a repository where they could be inspected by all parties to track its progress in blocking paid disinformation.

Facebook did a terrible job at this, with huge slices of its political ads never landing in its transparency portal. We know this because independent researchers at NYU’s engineering school built an independent, crowdsourced tracker called Ad Observer, which scraped all the ads volunteers saw and uploaded them to a portal called Ad Observatory.

Facebook viciously attacked the NYU project, falsely smearing it as a privacy risk (the plugin was open source and was independently audited by Mozilla researchers, who confirmed that it didn’t collect any personal information). When that didn’t work, they sent a stream of legal threats, claiming that NYU was trafficking in a “circumvention device” as defined by Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, a felony carrying a five-year prison sentence and a $500k fine — for a first offense.

Eventually, NYU folded the project. Facebook, meanwhile, has fired or reassigned most of the staff who work on political ad transparency:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/08/06/get-you-coming-and-going/#potemkin-research-program

What are we to make of this? Facebook claims that it doesn’t need or want political ad revenue, which are a drop in the bucket and cause all kinds of headaches. That’s likely true — but Facebook’s aversion to blocking political ads doesn’t extend to spending a lot of money to keep paid political disinfo off the platform.

The company could turn up the sensitivity on its blocking algorithm, which would generate more false positives, in which nonpolitical ads are misidentified and have to be reviewed by humans. This is expensive, and it’s an expense Facebook can avoid if it can suppress information about its failures to block paid political disinformation. It’s cheaper to silence critics than it is to address their criticism.

I don’t think Google gives a shit about the $10m it gets from predatory fake abortion clinics. But I think the company believes that the PR trouble it would get into for blocking them — and the expense it would incur in trying to catch and block fake abortion clinic ads — are real liabilities. In other words, it’s not about the $10m it would lose by blocking the ads — Google wants to avoid the political heat it would take from forced birth fanatics and cost of the human reviewers who would have to double-check rejected ads.

In other words, Google doesn’t abet fraudulent abortion clinics because they share the depraved sadism of the people who run these clinics. Rather, Google teams up with these sadists out of cowardice and greed.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/15/paid-medical-disinformation/#crisis-pregnancy-centers

[Image ID: A ruined streetscene. Atop a pile of rubble sits a dilapidated shack. In front of the shack is a letterboard with the word ABORTIONS set off-center and crooked. In the foreground is a carny barker at a podium, gesturing at the sign and the shack. The barker's head and face have been replaced with the Google logo. Within the barker's podium is a heap of US$100 bills.]

Image: Flying Logos (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Over_$1,000,000_dollars_in_USD_$100_bill_stacks.png

CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en

[afrantechnology]

7 Must-Have WordPress Plugins for 2025

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[softileo]

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