I’ve “Had It” with Google Ads! Again.
I ripped the ads out of the True site many years ago. Now I’ve also banned them from the Honorary Unsubscribe site. Here’s why.
First, they’re absolutely disgusting at times, as you’ll see below. Second, their overbearing frequency make for a terrible reader experience.
Google has long lectured site owners about our need to provide a good user experience. Examples (emphasis added):
- 2013: “Making your own site faster is something you can act on today and one of the best ways to improve user experience.”
- 2015: They urge us to provide “mobile-friendly” sites “where text is readable without tapping or zooming, tap targets are spaced appropriately, and the page avoids unplayable content or horizontal scrolling.”
- 2019: “We encourage all webmasters to optimize their sites’ user experience.”
- 2020: “We will introduce a new signal that combines Core Web Vitals with our existing signals for page experience to provide a holistic picture of the quality of a user’s experience on a web page.“
![Close-up of a persons nose with three illustrated dust mites crawling on a woman's nose and around her nostrils. Text above reads, 'Most people don’t know this trick keeps dust mites away, but did you know... [more]'](https://thisistrue.com/storage/gross.jpg)
(I’ve made the photo very tiny so it’s not so in-your-face, as it were. Click to see larger, if you dare: it’s absolutely disgusting.)
Of course, “practice what you preach” has long been a google shortcoming, as evidenced by giving this site negative points for talking about real-life news stories discussing sexual topics while, at the same time, putting sexist and exploitive ads featuring near-nude women on this site, which is why I kicked them to the curb the first time (many examples in my post from 2016, as also linked from the top).
Plus, text isn’t “readable” when the page is so heavily dominated by ads that readers are forced to skip around to find the next words of a sentence.
Alerted by a Reader
Thanks to alerts from Premium reader Jordan in California, who sent the screencap of the facial bugs above, I’ve since learned just how bad the ads there are. I had no idea, even though I tried to monitor the site closely.
Jordan also alerted me to some scammy-looking ads, such as I.Q. “tests” that are well known as a place to gather up user information under the guise of a test.
Back years ago when I had access to a google ads rep, he said such ads are within their Terms & Conditions, even if they then subsequently sell user information to spammers, since they were clearly stating that they were collecting information for marketing.
Yeah: it’s fine for google to ruin user experience, but it’ll ding site owners for doing the same thing that makes them billions. Their “Don’t be evil” slogan is long, long gone.
Yet they lecture us about quality.
All Under Google Control
At their strong urging, I allowed google to control the ads on the Honorary Unsubscribe site. They take it from there, deciding where ads should go, and how many appear. I’m on that site all the time, and it rarely showed me any ads, even when I look in an “incognito window” (read: not logged in to the site, and not logged in to Google) to see what readers see.
Luckily that’s the only site I was trying that tactic on.
I also do not use an ad blocker. While I do use tracker blockers [uBlock Origin Lite and EFF’s Privacy Badger], I specifically turn them off for my own sites so I can see what readers see.
I was not seeing what readers see.
In discussions with Jordan, I asked him to send me his feedback.
“This is from my iPad, which seems to have the most ads shown at once,” he replied with a screencap. “The crop today are not as gross as the crop the other day. My iPhone is worse in some ways — it only has one ad per screen, but it has one EVERY screen.”
What’s On His iPad
Now that I know, I don’t care how much money the ads bring in: it’s not enough to make up for causing my readers to barf on their keyboards.
Google’s ads are now banned from the site, and as I have time I’ll be revisiting what they’re doing to other sites I run.
Reader Supported
This is True is nearly 100% reader supported. Almost without exception, they’re not specifically supporting this site, but they support True’s operations with Premium subscriptions, occasionally choosing to pay multi-hundred-dollar-per year subscription fees, and/or one-time financial contributions.
It’s enough that it covers this site as well as the newsletter.
So today I’ve also added an option for readers to volunteer to support the Honorary Unsubscribe site to help make up for the lost revenue stream. It’s a “pay what you want” affair (with a $10 minimum so not too big a percentage is eaten up by processing fees) with a special optional bonus: if you want, I’ll add you to an automated mailing list that lets you know when a new Honorary Unsubscribe is published.
Yes, typically the Premium edition comes out soon after they’re published, and maybe you’ll get Premium before the notification, but IMO the H.U. is better read on the web anyway, and it’s an extra option for any who wants the notification as well as wants to support the site.
Set that up here with your contribution.
NOTE that the contribution is automatically renewed annually, but it’s fine with me if you cancel it immediately: you still get to stay on the notification list for as long as you like. Just be sure to read the entire setup page for some conditions to that. But, of course, I hope you choose to let your contribution renew for some time — as long as it’s worth it to you.
Thanks much for your support.
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To really support This is True, you’re invited to sign up for a subscription to the much-expanded “Premium” edition:
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I view web site ads as “the cost” of getting great content. In general I’m fine with that as sites need to pay for hosting (and their time) somehow. Some sites are crazy-congested with ads, and at times I have decided the “cost” is too high, and stop going there. H.U. was not quite to that level in my experience, but you are right: some of the ads have been hugely distasteful.
Thank you for your principled stand, and for sparing our stomachs.
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Thank you for your support with a Premium subscription. -rc
Got to agree with Gary. Some sites that might otherwise be worthwhile are unusable because of ads, especially on a phone, such as those promoted by the otherwise delightful George Takei.
Google, too, has been enshittified.
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It’s amazing how entrenched enshittification (as a descriptive term) has become, considering it was only coined in late 2022. But it is amazingly well defined, and really describes the process that repeatedly wrecks companies (and end-user experience). -rc
Kudos to giving “the man” the finger, Randy. I don’t shock easily, but sometimes the Google ads surprise me at how low they can go. Thanks for taking a stand!!
Some people say its the greatest Honorary Unsubscribe site ever…
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Aye. And the worst. -rc
I do run an ad blocker — Adblock Pro in firefox — and the reason that I do is that as best I can tell, all three of the times in 40 years that I’ve gotten bit by a virus… it came in attached to a third party ad embedded in a website. Solution: don’t pull those ads.
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Another good example: Google must do much more to police ads. Happens all the time. -rc
I don’t understand modern advertising — the whole point is to make people WANT to check out your goods and services, then buy them. Offending your potential customers seems like a great way to lose money. Yes, there are some sites that get on my case about having an adblocker, “because that’s how WE make money!!!!!!!!!!” but I have decided that I don’t really need to use their content if they are going to pester me with gross scams.
One humor site that I used to visit on a daily basis just reposts stuff from Facebook, Instagram, X/Twitter, and Reddit. This humor site is a really big crybaby about it. They also censor every other word, because someone “might get triggered!” and you spend most of your time trying to figure out exactly what you are reading. Most of the commenters are unabashed in their scorn, “Seriously? You’re censoring d*****b now?”
Thank you for taking a stand, Randy. I will HAPPILY support True via my Premium subscription.
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Thank you, m’lady. -rc
My wife made a similar comment years ago concerning the graphic artist who created the “Coppertone Kid”. The ads for Victoria Secret style of ads were counter to the honor you were trying to accord to the lady (I do regret forgetting her name — I tend to remember people as concepts rather than their labels).
I just reread John Grisham’s “The Last Juror”, where the local newspaper was known for its outstanding obituaries. In like manner, you give people your best rendition of their lives.
Keep up the good work!
Some sites are really pushing ads all the time, especially on mobile. I do run AdBlocker. Thank you, Randy.
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You’re welcome. Such ads make people not want to come back. Can’t blame them! But I can fix it. It’s not worth what they were paying me. -rc
Oh my God! Those were terrible and disgusting.
I didn’t see those ads, probably because I’m in Japan AND I use Firefox with ad blockers. Frankly, nowadays, Firefox is the only browser where I seem to be able to avoid the worst of it. Unfortunately, not all web pages work on it.
Everything else has become a fork of Chrome … Which is Google… And brings us back to the complaints you made.
Got pretty suspicious when they removed “Don’t be evil.” All those suspicions seem to have been on point.
It’s a terrible shame. They could have done so much better.
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Just so. -rc
I read on my phone using Safari. It has an option to Hide Distracting Items as well as using the Reader. I frequently hide ads with moving displays, videos, videos that jump down the page when I scroll down, and disgusting stuff like the ads you showed.
An added benefit: using one or both of those options frequently goes around paywalls (but you didn’t hear that from me.)
Google ads are based on user interactions. If you don’t allow most ads, block cookies, keep off sites which are questionable, and regularly delete your browser history then most objectionable content is very limited.
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That’s certainly one technique, but it requires a lot of extra attention and time that not many feel the luxury of spending. It’s no wonder there’s a war going on between blockers (to save one from intrusive and disgusting ads) and site owners (trying to block blockers, or shame visitors for using them, which I refuse to do). It’s not a healthy state of affairs either way. -rc
Ad blockers are theft of services.
I know that’s blunt, but ads **are** how the publisher makes money, and agreeing to be exposed to those ads is how you are paying for the service.
If you aren’t willing to pay that price, then don’t use the service.
I disagree with the previous poster that ad blockers constitute a theft of service. I believe the unwanted ads themselves are where the theft takes place: The advertiser is using the bandwidth which I pay for, and the computer which I paid for, and the monitor which I paid for, and the electricity which I pay for, to send me something I don’t want. The ad blocker is like the lock on my front door. I pay for it as well, to keep unwelcome traffic out of my living room.
Randy, congratulations on your decision. It was a good one.
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I’m in-between both of you. Is it “theft” when you’re watching the news on TV, because the ad is being played on the TV you paid for, powered by your electricity? I view ad-blockers as defense because unlike TV ads, online ads are barely policed by the organizations that carry them (e.g., Google) — they are known malware vectors causing true damage. If Google doesn’t police them, then they are fair game to be blocked, even though it does deprive sites of the revenue they depend on to survive. Unfortunately, ad blockers also block legitimate, useful ads, aka a casualty of war. -rc
So, you turned on your computer, and these ads started popping up in your web browser, without you doing anything?
No… you deliberately visited the site. You wanted the content. Part of the price that you pay for getting that content is allowing them to use your bandwidth, your CPU, your display space, and your electricity to show the ads. If you really want the content, put up with the ads. If that price is too high… you didn’t really want the content. Just because the price is higher than you want to pay doesn’t mean that you’re entitled to get the content for a price that you *are* willing to pay.
Do you really expect the service to spend their human time, their electricity, their computer capacity, and their bandwidth to provide content for you, for free?
Randy’s right, that there are security concerns. But… there are security concerns with all web sites and all software. If the site isn’t safe enough for you, then you didn’t want the content enough to balance out the security risk. By all means deny them your business because their product is shoddy, but don’t steal from them.
Maybe Google ads need their own “Dishonorable Unsubscribed” entry. Thanks for making HU even more readable.