Ask HN: What should I do?

2 points

11 years ago

I am from Nepal. My question is about website owners who are confusing their visitors and violating Google's TOS to force higher CTRs. I have been reporting most of the cases of violations that I have seen until now; not only to Google but to all online services I use regularly.

I am in dilemma right now. All this time I thought I am being a "good guy", but I'm now worried because with every reports and banned website and frozen Adsense accounts, I am snatching those dollars from Nepalese.

1. Should I keep reporting because they violate the TOS of a company?

2. Should I stop reporting it because they are bringing in $$$ to Nepal at this state of crisis (aftermath of recent earthquake). Earnings by Nepalese website owners don't really matter to Google, I guess.

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Explanation in detail + screenshots of a similar website I found today:

Persuading the visitors to click on ads, using misguided text and forcing users to click- all these activities are against their terms of service. We can report violation of such terms to Google; I have done it myself several times. I usually report violation of terms on all of the online services that I use regularly.

My concern now is websites run by Nepalese "online workers" who push the limits of fraud to earn from Google Adsense. Here's a typical scenario:

1. Create Facebook pages and blogs with lucrative titles, related to Nepal. 2. Link those blogs in their page, sponsor the post, targeting Nepalese working abroad. 3. Tell them to explicitly click on ads, which look like a video player, to watch video.

They seem to keep repeating this, in a larger scale as they keep earning more and more, keeping the difference from what they pay to Facebook and what Google pays them.

Example screenshots: 1. Actual webpage content: http://i.imgur.com/QmhLRaB.jpg 2. Translation of content: http://i.imgur.com/zQyXEZK.png

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