i agree

'Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 ... exempted online media from responsibilities that every other medium is subject to. In essence it told platforms they could publish virtually anything they wanted without liability. It was unprecedented in the history of the nation.

The fiction that 230 created was that online platforms were not publishers (in fact, they are the largest publishers in the world.) But the fiction has allowed them to accumulate trillions of dollars by publishing lies, porn, deep fakes, hate material, violent material, libels, and mountains of despicable trash without any responsibility or liability.

The judge in Germany ruled that by using their AI systems to produce new content, Google was no longer protected by 230 and were clearly publishers. The court said that displaying third-party links is "search," but having  AI systems create and rewrite information creates new content, and that makes Google legally a publisher.'

Bob Hoffman in his Ad Contrarian Newsletter June 21, 2026.

I've been - happily - with Gmail from the very beginning [when it was Google mail], but getting these ads over my inbox every time I open it up is turning me against it.

 

according to ai ... it's shorter coming back

The result of two searches on Google, both asking how far it is from one place to another but each search being in a different direction.

it's funny 'cos it's true

 

Know your subject

 I find this frustrating. The folk writing this stuff should know that ‘marketing’ and ‘advertising’ are NOT the same thing.

aiding and abetting false advertising?

I was listening to a podcast sponsored by Shopify, and part of the introduction 'ad' the voice over said that - amongst many other things - the service "enhances product photography". I hope they just mean they improve the quality of pictures, because enhancing the product in a picture is illegal.

Just sayin' ...

Google's main income comes from advertising.

Amazon's main income comes from advertising.

and now ...

When Uber started 'Uber Advertising' the company went from a $1.8bn loss to a profit of $1.1bn.

why bother?

I'm not sure where to start with this email 'advert'. 

1 I'm of an age that my own father is long gone.

2 I'm not a father. Furthermore, it might be upsetting for a father who has lost a child - or a man who wanted, but couldn't have, a child.

3 The prices are in dollars. It is a US company, but I bought a product in pounds from the company's UK outlet.

4 The products being sold are firmly in the 'one-off' category of purchase. How many motorhomes does the average person have? Even if the answer is not 'none' - few [any?] has more than one, so why buy two reversing cameras?

do you agree?

This is from the U.S. ... are the numbers the same for your country?  One thing that is not in doubt is that 'mostly online' is the lowest in all categories.

it's funny 'cos it's true ...

 

a reminder ...

Microsoft's official terms and conditions say that 'Copilot is for entertainment purposes only' 

Are you using it for anything else? 

Is your boss insisting you use it at work?

Just sayin'.

and your job is ... ?

It would appear that [too?] many ANA members don't understand advertising. Just in case you're not aware, ANA stands for 'Association of National Advertisers'.

really?

All grok can offer is a list of generic problems that cars have. Google's ai once advised me that a common problem with my van was the spark plugs. The make/model of van I own has only diesel engines [in case you don't know, diesels don't have spark plugs].

oh dear 2 ...

 

Oh dear ...