If you’re an “industry player” in searches for information, disinformation is poison.
I see no problem with paying for searches. (But I’m fine with my taxes also funding libraries, mind.)
But let’s say that is a problem. Is there any rule which would apply to Google that says they have to run false ads? If not, then this isn’t a problem: don’t accept money from folk who threaten the core validity your industry. Pay someone to vet ads for certain keyword groups.
It doesn’t matter if it’s marked as “this is an ad”—that doesn’t magically grant any user with a skeptical toolbox to assess and accept/reject disinformation—even assuming that ads were all false (and not all of them may be—I can easily conceive of a situation where legitimate groups might pay for ads to do some science outreach).
Have you ever argued with a denialist? Those things Google did to how ads are displayed do not work that way. Either by design or incompetence, the disinformation was still effectively delivered. Via Google.
The point is Google plays a role in being disinformative, not that they didn’t do their best to visually set apart and mark things as ads.
I think it’s already happened. But I don’t know what you mean by “scalable”—are we talking about algorithms? If the algorithms are that broken, don’t use them. Use a curated list, employ experts to maintain it, put it at the top, put it first. If Google must accept money from denialists, their ads shouldn’t appear alongside those who do the actual work on climate science.
If they have to, they can make a specially composed page which the user is sent to once certain search terms are invoked. We need to stop pretending algorithms are objective—they are arbitrary and can apparently be gamed.
