zlacker

It's legal to advertise real products or services that will take your money and leave you with essentially nothing.

For example:

- gambling, e.g. slot machines, sports betting

- healing crystals

- palm readings

- carnival games

Perhaps the right distinction is whether something is legally a fraud or not. But I kind of agree that most ads are scams and also that ad networks don't have the ability to separate legal scams from fraud. So I just block them all.

>>ants_e+(OP)
Yes, these scams have aleays been there. The distinction was that advertisers like newspapers and magazines had a standards body that would reject ad placements that were insulting to their audience's intelligence.

>>rchaud+9b
I know television is not newspapers and magazines, but they at least had to have some level of standards bodies (I'm fairly sure they at least did in the early 90s), and I remember Psychic Friends Network ads on tv which is clearly in the realm of palm readings. I guess maybe it wasn't insulting to the intelligence of people watching late night TV in the early 90s?