[HN Gopher] Google and Microsoft have opaque and unpredictable a...
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Google and Microsoft have opaque and unpredictable ad moderation
Author : danuker
Score : 156 points
Date : 2021-07-12 17:33 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (dkzlv.medium.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (dkzlv.medium.com)
| jeroenhd wrote:
| Looking at the ad they placed, I'd have considered this ad as a
| scam. Starting an ad with [safe] tells me that the product is
| instead unsafe. Safeapps.io isn't exactly a very convincing
| domain either. The, uh, "design language" the website uses would
| be the final nail in the coffin.
|
| The entire thing just looks like a badly built scam. Every
| individual decision can maybe be explained as a branding or
| design choice, but the end product just doesn't look reliable.
|
| I don't think Google gives a shit about your blog articles about
| how Google is bad, every tech company has written one of those at
| this point. They're also not as much anti-privacy, they're anti-
| anti-anti-privacy. A privacy focused product is fine, a product
| that prevents Google from stalking you not so much.
|
| It'd definitely be a false positive, but the truth is that if I
| saw this ad, I'd definitely click the "report" button.
| smoldesu wrote:
| I'm 100% behind you on this. Worth noting that while the app
| _does_ appear to be open-source, there appears to be no way for
| you to self-host the service at the moment. Regardless of how
| scammy it _actually is_ , funneling every user into a $60/year
| subscription service is one of the biggest scamming tactics
| I've seen on the web.
| dkzlv wrote:
| Is it a scam to charge a price for a product?
|
| We're freemium. You're not forced to get a subscription right
| away. You can even use the product without it at all.
|
| > there appears to be no way for you to self-host the service
| at the moment
|
| We will provide such an option if there will be any demand.
| For now it would just waste a lot of our time without any
| real output. Still, you can do this if you want.
| smoldesu wrote:
| Consider this the beginning of the demand, then: I'm not
| going to use this service unless I can self-host it.
| dkzlv wrote:
| If you're interested in this, please reach me out at
| dan@safeapps.io. I need some more information to move it
| up in the backlog, maybe you could help us with that?
| QuercusMax wrote:
| You're not wrong about the look and feel of that website - I
| would run far far away before I gave money to a website that
| looks that scammy.
|
| (disclaimer: I work for Google, in a division that has nothing
| to do with ads.)
| dkzlv wrote:
| What is it that you don't like about the design? I just tried
| not to follow the common guidelines for the design and make
| the design more... developer friendly?
| wruza wrote:
| I don't find your site murky or scamlike because of design,
| honestly, that would be stupid. And if I wanted to make a
| scam site, I'd just copypaste Stripe or something, and I
| expect that from any intelligent scammer.
|
| There is nothing wrong with it, apart from my usual
| criticism to landing pages like this: I still have no clue
| what is it for, or who I must be to use it, what exact
| problem I have that it could solve. But that's in line with
| virtually everything. Nobody puts a history like "Tired of
| manually entering your invoices? Want automatic
| categorizing of expenses? Your bank formats are illegible
| crap? ..." anymore.
|
| I wonder what critics above think of e.g. curve.fi, which
| is serious enough to eat $1000 per transaction.
|
| Edit: yeah, the app looks more like "modern" "design"
| "thing" to me, but it's just me missing clear UI borders
| and color-cued sidebars and property sheets.
| dkzlv wrote:
| Thanks for your support across the thread. It is kind of
| difficult to oppose to a lot of people screaming "scam"
| into your face :)
|
| > Nobody puts a history like
|
| Yeah, a bunch of people here told me we have a huge
| problem with copy. Will rework it. Storytelling is not my
| feature, but I'll try my best :)
|
| > it's just me missing clear UI borders and color-cued
| sidebars and property sheets
|
| Will think of a better way, thanks!
| QuercusMax wrote:
| I'm not sure what you mean by "developer friendly"
| (monospace font?) but it doesn't look like a financial
| services site I'd trust. The rainbow borders which change
| on hover and that stuff screams "my first time playing with
| CSS", not "you should trust us with your $$".
|
| Also, the name and domain seem like you're compensating for
| something, or trying to trick people. If a bank has big
| signs saying, "No, we won't steal your money, promise" that
| opens up a whole lot of questions. Why do you need to put
| "safe" all over the place? Is there some reason I should
| think it _isn 't_ safe?
| dkzlv wrote:
| > screams "my first time playing with CSS", not "you
| should trust us with your $$".
|
| Lol :) Thanks for your honest feedback! The app looks
| more traditional, btw. (https://imgur.com/a/KabWkNS)
| Based on the feedback here I will probably change the
| landing page to something more traditional.
|
| > Also, the name and domain seem like you're compensating
| for something, or trying to trick people
|
| Wow, that is the opposite thing we were aiming for. There
| are a lot of other apps that provide the same value while
| being completely unsafe to use. We're just emphasizing on
| the core value. Strange to hear that it causes the
| opposite reaction.
| pkghost wrote:
| Part of it is the English-as-a-second-language vibe.
| "Privacy-first money tracker" feels very clumsy to me as a
| native speaker, and I have zero interest in giving my
| financial credentials to an open-source product that... I
| also have to pay for?
|
| Bottom line: financial products require an incredibly high
| degree of trust for most people, and this feels very much
| like the work of a sincere developer working alone and
| without a lot of product design experience. All the little
| issues (copy, design, presentation, unknown solo developer)
| that would be forgivable in a product of any other kind
| become red flags and deal breakers when my finances are
| concerned.
|
| I hope this is helpful feedback! Keep on building!
| ipaddr wrote:
| Maybe I'm in the minority but I loved your design. I'm just
| a developer but I don't think I've seen a nicer looking
| design in a long time.
|
| I'm not sure it's a high converting site because I couldn't
| understand what you were offering but I'll remember the
| design.
| dkzlv wrote:
| Hi there! I'm the founder of this app.
|
| It's very upsetting that you found us scam-alike. It was never
| meant to be this way. If anything, we're trying to be the
| opposite: we open-sourced the whole app, we do not ask for your
| email during sign up, we wrote a post about our security
| measures in details (https://safeapps.io/content/security).
|
| We'll work on our marketing to be more... convincing?
| jeroenhd wrote:
| I don't believe your app is a scam, I think it's just a
| combination of unfortunate design and language decisions.
| Your product seems absolutely fine to me, and I have no
| doubts about the technical measures you've taken.
|
| The first thing that comes to mind for building a better
| reputation is probably your branding. Picking "safe" as a
| software brand gives off a paradoxical feeling of unsafety,
| in the "[safe] free Windows 12 download [open
| source][free!!].dll.bat.exe" kind of way. Adding a tag like
| [safe] or [free] or (recommended) is something spammers and
| scammers do to try to convince their victims to click. I
| don't think you can pull something like that off without
| being a well-known brand first, not with that brand name.
| Matrix.org, for example, has the [Matrix] brackets as a
| brand, but the word "matrix" isn't used for anything dubious.
| Their links also don't use the [brand] marking in their ads.
|
| Because of all this, I think your brand (unintentionally)
| mimics a lot of scam ads, which is why my first thought would
| be "this is a scam, report". Your website, "safeapps.io", has
| a feeling I associate with "securefiles.com" or
| "freewindowsupdatez.net" for much of the same reasons.
|
| Your TLD, .io, is very popular for modern (web) developers
| but when I think about my bank details, the British Indian
| Ocean Territory isn't exactly what comes to mind. Perhaps a
| minor detail few people will fall over, but it's kind of
| ironic to have the TLD of a remote island nation for a
| financial software package :)
|
| Perhaps I'm not your target audience, but I want any service
| I trust with information about my finances to be
| professional. Your website seems inspired by popular, modern,
| energetic branding, the kind I'd expect from a soda brand or
| a kids' commercial. I'd personally much prefer a boring, run-
| of-the-mill Bootstrap theme with some added branding over the
| artsy website you've created. That's just a personal
| preference, of course; maybe you want to show that you're not
| one of those stuffy bankers, and maybe I'm just too boring to
| get that. Modern marketing has shown that this strategy
| definitely attracts some people.
|
| In the end, I'm just a random voice on the Internet. I'm no
| marketeer, I've never met any investors, and I don't run paid
| service of my own. You probably shouldn't base your entire
| marketing campaign on my ramblings.
|
| I do think you should think about your branding, though,
| especially the way you present it in ads, and consider
| picking a brand name that's not as easy to confuse with a
| link that'll install malware. Besides, you can probably use a
| more recognisable brand name than "safe money". "[SOTANY]" or
| many other words from thisworddoesnotexist.com probably work
| a lot better for a software brand than "[safe]"!
| dkzlv wrote:
| Your input is invaluable, thanks. Honestly, I appreciate it
|
| I see that your comment got the most upvotes here, so it IS
| what I needed to hear.
|
| At least I won't need to change a lot in the product itself
| as it actually has a rather boring and standard design:
| https://imgur.com/a/KabWkNS
|
| I think we'll go with your idea of changing the brand and
| the landing. Might help.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| I'm glad I could help. Best of luck to you and your
| project!
| crazygringo wrote:
| Seriously. The first couple times I read it, anything about
| "anonymous" "encrypted" "finance" sounds like this is either
| going to lead to paying for drugs or it's going to steal your
| money. And Google bans certain types of cryptocurrency ads.
|
| After reading it a third time, I realize I guess it's just an
| open-source version of Mint?
|
| But the author provides _zero evidence_ that Google bans ads
| for "privacy-first services". It was probably classified as a
| crypto scam or similar.
|
| Just write a better ad that's clearer about what it's actually
| advertising, for goodness' sake. And make the product's website
| a bit more professional looking too -- it _looks_ like a scam.
| There 's no way I'd trust my finance credentials to _anybody_
| who built a site that looks like... a weirdly updated version
| of a GeoCities page?
| dkzlv wrote:
| Hi there! I'm the founder of this app.
|
| > After reading it a third time, I realize I guess it's just
| an open-source version of Mint?
|
| Well, not a great sigh for us, but at least... you guessed
| right!
|
| > But the author provides zero evidence that Google bans ads
| for "privacy-first services". It was probably classified as a
| crypto scam or similar.
|
| I made this conclusion based on the information provided by
| my friends working in Google and Microsoft. Again, there's no
| way I can reliably say the _real_ reason because all Google
| said was " _Unacceptable Business Practice_ " linking to this
| page. (https://support.google.com/adspolicy/answer/6020955?hl
| =en#36...)
|
| That's actually more or less the point of the article: you
| get banned for life for no apparent reason. Is that how it's
| supposed to be?
|
| > it looks like a scam
|
| What is it that you don't like about the design? I just tried
| not to follow the common guidelines for the design and make
| the design more... developer friendly?
| throwaway3699 wrote:
| If it looks like a scam, then false positives are
| unavoidable. These companies are trying to protect average
| people from being scammed on their services, and I would
| honestly prefer they keep doing this. I do not want to
| spend hours on the phone to the bank with a shaken
| grandparent again (after they get cryptoscammed).
|
| Claiming they are against "privacy-first services" is just
| creating a victim narrative where one does not exist. As
| people keep saying here on this very website, these
| platforms do not owe you a microphone.
|
| Also, just one bit of advice, most developer types will
| have adblockers, so you're really not going to have a great
| time trying to target them with adverts.
| autoexec wrote:
| I don't see anything about the overall design of the site that
| makes it look scammy. It looks pretty clean and even works well
| with JS disabled. If only every open source project had a site
| that nice!
|
| One red flag I did notice was some awkward phrases/english.
|
| "Phones support"
|
| "This is why you need an open community that will point at your
| lies or convinces newcomers this app is safe."
|
| "...if you're not a new kid in the block"
| jeroenhd wrote:
| It could just be my phone, but the style choice and website
| design reminds me of a scrapbook. The fonts are all over the
| place, the colour blobs are distracting, there's a lot of
| focus on how the product is free to try out. The text boxes
| are wonky and overlapping each other and there are some lines
| of super small text on the bottom.
|
| This could just be a mobile compatibility issue to be honest,
| but in my eyes this doesn't look like a website that I would
| trust with my financial information. Sure, they say all my
| info is encrypted, but so did Zoom at some point.
|
| If I'm going to throw my financial data at something, I want
| its website to look professional. This website looks more...
| whimsical to me. That's a fine choice for a website
| advertising a text editor or social media client, but money
| is serious business. That first impression is extra important
| with such questionable ads and such a questionable domain
| name.
| oehpr wrote:
| autoexec was downvoted but looking at the site doesn't strike
| me as an obvious scam. https://safeapps.io/
|
| Could someone please elaborate on the aspects you feel are
| deeply obvious to the point of not pointing them out? I seem
| to be missing them as well.
| QuercusMax wrote:
| The graphic design on the page is extremely amateurish.
| Rainbow borders, weird typeface choices, misaligned
| elements - somebody else said it looks like something from
| Geocities, and that's pretty accurate.
|
| Compared to mint.com, which I guess it's competing with, it
| looks unprofessional and something I wouldn't want to trust
| my sensitive data with.
|
| Just imagine if there were a new bank which was decorated
| like... a head shop, or strip club, or something like that.
| Would you want to bank there?
| wruza wrote:
| _Compared to mint.com_
|
| Which greets you with a "please close me" popdown,
| stutters because of a video, which plays below
| transparent text, jumps around at vertical scroll and
| couldn't prevent it on horizontal carousels. _That_ looks
| unprofessional.
|
| Not to mention nauseous light-light-bleached green
| colorscheme. (I guess it ought to resemble mint)
| Bjartr wrote:
| I think it's more how they aren't following the unwritten
| "corporate website" aesthetics playbook and looks way more
| artsy, even fly-by-night (I think that's largely up to the
| use of a monospace font). Which is technically fine.
| However if you're told someone you're about to be shown a
| money management site and show them this you'll get some
| raised eyebrows, similar to how if you told them they're
| about to see a bank teller and you showed them someone in a
| tie-dyed tshirt.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| There's no stock art from Humaaans and it doesn't look like
| a generic BigTechCorp website.
| randy408 wrote:
| This reminds me of Google hiding ProtonMail from their search
| results: https://protonmail.com/blog/search-risk-google/
| andrewnicolalde wrote:
| This is an aside but check out their security page:
|
| https://safeapps.io/content/security
|
| That's what I'd like to see from any security page!
| dkzlv wrote:
| Thanks!
|
| Most of our competitors say they have "strong encryption", but
| when you read the page it actually means they have SSL. Or that
| they use SHA256 for hashing the passwords. That is...
| disappointing.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| I think a reasonable law we could pass in the US is that a
| company of a certain size or larger has to have some way of
| speaking to a human being about conducting business with that
| company.
|
| I also think companies should be able to determine that working
| with another company is too risky, such as what happened here.
|
| Do we really think people are _entitled_ to use Google or
| Microsoft services? If so, shouldn 't those services just be
| nationalized?
| lutorm wrote:
| It's probably more reasonable to invoke antitrust if companies
| have such a dominant position that getting banned from one
| dooms your business.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| I'm not convinced that fits our current antitrust laws, or
| even how you would legislate that.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Antitrust laws address many things, but they tend to focus
| on a firm's, or a group of firms, ability to either control
| prices or exclude competition. I'd argue that this incident
| could be seen as a group of firms preventing another firm
| from competing.
| fighterpilot wrote:
| "If so, shouldn't those services just be nationalized?"
|
| This definitely doesn't (and shouldn't) follow from an entity
| receiving a common carrier-type designation.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| My understanding was that Section 230 is just a legal
| shortcut to shorten how long a case takes to arrive at the,
| "Oh, this is their First Amendment right as a private
| company." conclusion.
|
| Were Section 230 to be revoked, my understanding is that no
| change would actually occur, other than cases related to it
| taking longer.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Section 230 just makes operators of interactive computer
| services not liable for serving user-generated content. It
| applies to all interactive computer services.
|
| It doesn't give companies common carrier-like designations,
| and unless they're telecoms, they don't actually have such
| designations regardless of what Section 230 says, so I'm
| not sure what the GP was getting at.
| PeterisP wrote:
| Were section 230 to be revoked, it would not change the
| platform rights to remove content, but it would enable
| lawsuits to the platform as they may be considered
| responsible for leaving stuff up, especially if there were
| any complaints - so it would push companies to have much
| more trigger-happy ban regimes than now; having a no-appeal
| autoban for the first complaint would become a reasonable
| default strategy.
| ademup wrote:
| I wonder if it has something to do with the brackets. [safe]
| looks wrong to me (like a placeholder, or a word that was auto-
| replaced by a spyware detector).
|
| Because yeah, nothing seems to be amiss in the ad. Sorry to see
| you so poorly treated by the tech giants.
| dkzlv wrote:
| Hi! Author's here.
|
| Hell, it's AN INNOVATION I came up with -- or at least so I
| thought I thought most people would be able to see this name
| instantly BECAUSE of the brackets, lol.
|
| Thanks for your sympathy, I appreciate it.
| api wrote:
| I will pay for a higher quality search engine that respects
| privacy and gives me greater control over the search process with
| advanced search tools.
|
| I don't think I am alone.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| If you're in the US, contact your state's Attorney General, and
| the US AG, offices.
|
| It looks like they're gearing up for antitrust action, and this
| is a good example of how large companies' anticompetitive
| behavior is stifling innovation and destroying small businesses.
| _def wrote:
| I just want to say that I really want a product like this.
|
| About the moderation: it's just like the nightmare with YouTube
| and Content ID.
|
| False positives are better than false negatives when it's about
| scams and such. But, my God, tech giants just give people a way
| to sort this stuff out!
| [deleted]
| tyingq wrote:
| Not that you should have to, but words like "Home Budget and
| Finance Tracking" would make it more clear what it is. Lead with
| that generic terminology. Then sprinkle in the "encryption"
| stuff.
|
| Leading with "Encryption" and "Finance" is probably what caused
| the ban. It got put in the bucket of "shady crypto currency
| stuff" or "internet money laundering".
|
| Though, yes, it's a shame the system doesn't first issue a
| warning, and let you reply with a message to a real human with
| context before a ban happens.
| dkzlv wrote:
| Hi! Author's here.
|
| We submitted multiple appeals, but they were all declines --
| presumably, by real humans. I appreciate your feedback on the
| copy though. I guess, no harm in trying.
| EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote:
| Probably Google AI has decided that "encryption" and "finance" in
| the same sentence means "bitcoin" and banned you automatically.
| bdcravens wrote:
| I personally think the way the ad was written it seems to suggest
| anonymous transactions (not the case of course), but I also would
| look at this statement:
|
| "we do not impersonate other brands"
|
| The domain is safeapps.io. Not only does this name seem very
| similar to other applications, some of which are on the Google
| Play (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.hopeheali
| n...), a service provider (https://safemoney.com/) and even a US
| military domain (https://safe.apps.mil/). Additionally, on the
| page the word "safe" doesn't even show up, suggesting the domain
| name is a squat. I don't believe that it's a squat, but the
| author is jumping to some big conclusions without looking at some
| potential causes.
| armoredkitten wrote:
| Bad design, but if you hold your mouse over the "[] money" logo
| at the top, the word "safe" appears. I don't really understand
| why someone would choose to create a design that actively hides
| their own branding...but the word _is_ there.
| grayhatter wrote:
| You're right, of course... but it would be nice if they didn't
| have to make assumptions, or jump to these conclusions though
| wouldn't it?
| deregulateMed wrote:
| Where would I see a Microsoft ad? My corporate laptop doesn't
| have candy crush on it.
| ydlr wrote:
| I feel bad for the author, but I am perfectly fine with a few
| false positives if it means more scams are blocked. I'd even be
| okay if the number of false positives is higher than the actual
| scams blocked if it meant very very few scams make it through the
| filters.
|
| I think Google should be liable for scams on its network. They
| should either: 1. Figure out a way to better automate scam
| filtering, 2. Hire a massive number of people to review each ad,
| or 3. Downsize their business until they can manage it
| responsibly.
|
| Google is not entitled to their scale. If they cannot responsibly
| run a business at its current size, they should be forced to
| downsize until they can.
| ThePhysicist wrote:
| To be honest, after reading the privacy policy of the service
| (https://safeapps.io/content/privacy) I would not trust them with
| my financial data. No properly registered company is named and
| the policy says things like The personal
| information we collect is stored and/or processed in United
| States, Netherlands, and Russian Federation, or where we or our
| partners, affiliates, and third-party providers maintain
| facilities.
|
| How is that privacy-first or even legal? That clause alone is in
| direct violation of GDPR and CCPA. So I'm not surprised that this
| got banned.
| freeone3000 wrote:
| A reasonable assumption would be that EU data is processed in
| the Netherlands, Russian data is processed in the Russian
| Federation, and that Rest-of-World data is processed in the US.
| This complies with all of the listed regulations, but it would
| be nice to have this explicitly broken down.
| dkzlv wrote:
| Author's here.
|
| It is a standard privacy policy generated by getterms.io.
|
| We have no data on you. You can read about our security model
| here (https://safeapps.io/content/security) and walk through
| our source code here (https://github.com/safeapps-io). TL;DR:
| every bit of data you create within the product is encrypted in
| the browser. The server only sees a blob of encrypted bits,
| that's all. You can sign up without an email. But if you do, we
| use Sparkpost for sending emails, which is a EU-based ISP. We
| do not have any third-party scripts or cookies across all the
| site at all. No Google Analytics, no Facebook Pixel, no
| Intercom support chat. We use German hosting and I'm personally
| from Russia.
|
| So no, we do not violate GDPR (but we do violate Russian laws
| because we do not have any servers in Russia). And we do take
| privacy seriously.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| How does this violate GDPR?
| ThePhysicist wrote:
| You can't store EU resident's data in the Russian Federation
| as the laws there do not provide an adequate level of data
| protection. Likewise you can't store it in the US in
| principle, although the situation is more complicated there
| legally. The CCPA has similar requirements regarding data
| residency for data belonging to US citizens as far as I know
| (not an expert on that though).
|
| Also, the website does not name a data protection
| representative in the EU. In fact, I couldn't find any
| information about the country that the company is based in (I
| assume Russia), or if there even is a registered company to
| begin with, which is another no-go. If you want to operate a
| privacy-first service you should at least make sure the basic
| formalities are met, and that includes naming who exactly is
| processing your data for which purposes.
| _Nat_ wrote:
| You might want to get some feedback on ads before posting them.
| Some of the advice you got seems reasonable. Personally, if I had
| to make an ad for a similar product, I might try to get a good
| picture of the software graphing something, with a concise,
| title-like summary of what it does.
|
| Miscellaneous opinions:
|
| 1. The ad started with " _[safe] money_ ". I imagine most people
| would instantly disregard it as a scam and not bother reading
| further.
|
| 2. The ad references crypto. While crypto can be awesome, it's
| also great for scammers and the like. So if your ad is already
| at-risk for looking scam-y, stressing an association with a safe-
| haven for scammers might not do any favors.
|
| 3. The ad has a sentence start with " _Tracking_ ", then a line-
| break. People who want privacy generally don't want to be
| tracked, so that might be a poor happenstance.
|
| 4. It's not immediately clear how the app is end-to-end
| encrypted. That claim usually makes more sense if it's like a
| messaging-service, where end-to-end crypto implies security
| against the server. But if clients are just contacting the
| server, then " _end-to-end_ " would seem misleading.
|
| 5. The ad said " _100% open source_ ". Unlike most of the stuff
| in it, that part does inspire more confidence. So much so that,
| personally, I might lead with it before even saying what the
| product is, or else immediately afterward.
| tlogan wrote:
| And I would also suggest to change website name. safeapps.io is
| similar to safe.apps.mil. Also safeapps.io does not convey what
| the app is actually doing. Maybe Open-source-money-manager.com,
| yet-another-money-manager.com,... Because this app is a money
| manager - correct?
| dkzlv wrote:
| Hi! I'm the author.
|
| 1. it's hard to judge about that right away. It would be cool
| to see the ads data beforehand. If I saw the ad performs poorly
| I would change it obviously. "[safe] money" is our brand, so it
| would be strange not to start with it.
|
| 2. the ad does not reference crypto. We had a mention of it on
| the landing page, that is all. We allow people to pay with
| crypto along with banking cards -- so it's kind of your
| decision to go one way or another.
|
| 4. its more or less the same. You can be e2ee if you, say, have
| an encrypted version of Google Drive. e2ee in this case means
| that even though there's a server (which we also have) it
| cannot read the data in any way. We're mostly the same.
|
| 5. ok, we'll think about it, thanks!
|
| Thanks for your detailed feedback.
| paxys wrote:
| The article alleges multiple times that they were banned because
| they are a privacy-first service, but that is definitely
| incorrect. Many similar companies run ads on Google all the time
| - VPN providers, alternative browsers, browser extensions, secure
| email, encrypted messaging. I have seen ads mentioning the exact
| terms (crypto, blockchain, encryption) they the author alleges
| are banned.
|
| The simpler explanation is that their site got caught by some
| spam/scam filter.
| dkzlv wrote:
| Hi, I'm the author.
|
| That was my first thought, but the problem is that the site was
| moderated by actual human beings and all the appeals were still
| denied.
|
| > Many similar companies run ads on Google all the time
|
| Like I said in the end of the article, it's a thing that is
| allowed for established companies, because I too run into such
| ads all the time. I made this conclusion based on the
| information provided by my friends working in Google and
| Microsoft. Again, there's no way I can reliably say the _real_
| reason because all Google said was "*Unacceptable Business
| Practice*" linking to this page. (https://support.google.com/ad
| spolicy/answer/6020955?hl=en#36...)
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Google gets lots is shit for having opaque customer support, the
| problem is I have never seen any suggestions that wouldn't
| actually create worse problems.
|
| No offense to the poster, but everything about this service, the
| ad, the copy, etc. make me think "major scam". If you are
| offering a legitimate service, it looks like you're trying as
| hard as possible to be confused as a scam.
|
| So, from Google's perspective, when they see this, they respond
| with some generic "this looks like a scam" response, but
| obviously if they gave enough detail on every little thing to fix
| it would make scammers' lives much easier.
|
| So while I've seen other cases where accounts have been frozen,
| etc. with little recourse, and I have a ton of sympathy, in this
| case I'm ok with Google making it hard to sign up if something
| looks this much like a scam.
| grayhatter wrote:
| I agree nearly everything from the site looks shady. But I'm
| not convinced that being opaque about why something was
| rejected is what's preventing scammers from making stuff that
| doesn't look like a scam. Scams look like trash because the
| effort to reward has to match. If you're gonna spend hours and
| hours perfecting some scam site, you might as well just provide
| the service. Obviously there are some tradeoffs but hell, even
| a generic link to a user support group would prevent small,
| inexperienced people from getting crushed by the cogs like
| this.
| autoexec wrote:
| I don't understand what "looks like scam" means here. How is
| the ad substantively different than other non-scam-looking ads
| for financial services?
|
| My view on this is somewhat skewed since I rarely see ads at
| all, I tend to view every ad I do see as suspect, and consider
| anything to do with money/finances to be especially suspicious.
| [deleted]
| CogitoCogito wrote:
| I'm really confused by your whole argument. Is it a scam? If it
| is not a scam, why does it matter that their ad looks like a
| scam? Should companies be banned for poor ad design?
|
| edit: It would nice if the downvoters could explain their
| thoughts.
| crazygringo wrote:
| I'll explain. Some scams are actually more effective when
| they _appear_ like scams, see [1] for the classic example of
| why Nigerian Prince e-mail scams have intentional bad grammar
| etc.
|
| Any business that is sophisticated enough to build a genuine
| product is also usually sophisticated enough to realize that
| "the message is the medium", that a professional non-scammy
| appearance is required for most customers to even consider
| trusting it, and so invest in professional graphic design.
| This goes _doubly or triply_ so for anything finance-related
| or that takes your finance credentials -- that requires _huge
| trust_.
|
| So on those two principles, when something _looks_ like a
| scam, it much more likely _is_ -- because for certain
| categories of scams, scammers want it to look that way, and
| non-scammers don 't. "Scammy apperance" is a genuinely
| meaningful signal in practice.
|
| But if you don't believe that, then there's this bridge I'm
| selling... ;)
|
| [1] https://www.businessinsider.com/why-nigerian-scam-emails-
| are...
| wruza wrote:
| _Any business that is sophisticated enough to build a
| genuine product is also usually sophisticated enough to
| realize that "the message is the medium", that a
| professional non-scammy appearance is required for most
| customers to even consider trusting it, and so invest in
| professional graphic design_
|
| This is so middle-age stereotypical that I'm not even sure
| if it's worth opposing. The first thing you see in _every_
| financial app is how much unprofessional it really is with
| regards to UI, and it only gets worse with time. It doesn't
| take a ph.d. to understand that this "trust theater" is
| just that, and it's beyond me how people trust someone with
| their money based on some CSS (which is presumably fubar in
| the source view).
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| Yes, companies should be banned for scammy-looking ad design.
|
| It's not the job of an ad service to go "well, you look
| really scammy, but digging deeper it turns out you might be
| OK, so go ahead". Scammy ads make advertising worse for
| everyone, even if they just _look_ scammy. That 's leaving
| aside that "looks scammy" is a reasonable signal for "is
| scammy".
|
| I'm in the "all ads are bad" camp, but I can also observe
| that scammy ads contribute to more widespread perceptions of
| ads being bad, even among people who might otherwise
| intentionally click on some ads.
| jonnycomputer wrote:
| For me, all of this just screams: they are too big, break them
| up.
|
| - can't do business because one business says no? ==> too big,
| break them up.
|
| - too big to give small businesses the time of day, or straight
| answers? ==> too big, break them up.
| CogitoCogito wrote:
| > There's no bad intent here -- nobody targets me personally, who
| even cares about me. It's a constant error in the processes that
| came, probably, from a good place -- but it's no better for me.
| Nobody will fix this error.
|
| This is the truth and it's very depressing. I would personally
| support either legislation forcing Google to be more transparent
| of these bans or legislation ripping the company apart so that
| they don't own the ad exchange, as well as sell ads themselves,
| as well as everything else they have integrated. One can only
| dream...
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| I think it's _bad business_ to be this opaque and to not point
| to a specific policy detail. There 's also a case to be made
| for whether the outsized impact of such refusals is evidence in
| favor of a company being a harmful monopoly; I think it's
| certainly supporting evidence in that direction. On the other
| hand, this post talks about having a similar response from
| Microsoft, and those companies didn't collude; they just have
| similar policies, likely for similar reasons. This may have
| been a false positive, or on the other hand, it might be a
| _true_ positive; we don 't know much about this business or why
| they were declined, but for instance the mention of "get out of
| debt" in this context sounds shady, and "sounds shady" is not
| an unreasonable threshold for denying an ad.
|
| I also think "we reserve the right to refuse service to anyone"
| applies no matter who you are. I don't support the idea of
| legislation that _forces_ giving detailed policy responses, or
| any responses at all.
|
| Google (and others) have formed a business around having
| policies so automated that half the people involved might not
| even know what the policy is, just "computer says no" or
| "computer flagged it and someone somewhere in the review
| process said no". I don't think that practice should be
| _banned_ ; on the contrary, it should be possible to try the
| approach of using automation to be able to scale.
|
| And that's a potential opportunity for other competitors; one
| demonstrated path to success in competing with a company like
| Google is providing better support and real human interaction.
|
| If it turns out that a company is succeeding _in spite of_
| awful service, it might be because their product is _just that
| good_ to overcome that deficiency, or it might also be because
| their monopoly prevents people from competing with them even
| with a better product. That 's worth examining. But I don't
| think that's an argument that people should be _forced_ to
| explain why they don 't want to do business with someone; I
| think that's an argument that we should make sure that it's
| possible to compete fairly and offer _better_ service to people
| who want better service.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > I also think "we reserve the right to refuse service to
| anyone" applies no matter who you are.
|
| It should never apply to monopolies. Governments should
| always go to all extent into making sure a market is
| competitive, or make sure things like that do not happen. The
| preference should obviously be the first one.
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| I agree; my argument is that that means we should consider
| if there's a monopoly issue. We shouldn't write new
| universal rules to address behaviors that only work if
| you're a monopoly; we should determine if there's abuse of
| a monopoly going on, and if so, treat the monopoly as the
| problem to fix. Doing otherwise risks saying "well, the
| monopoly is OK, as long as you fix this specific thing",
| and even entrenching those monopolies _further_. (For
| instance, even _if_ you believe that it 's acceptable to
| mandate explaining every refusal to do business with
| someone, taking the time to explain policies to everyone is
| something that may in some cases be easier for a large
| company but prohibitively hard for a smaller one.)
|
| If you're abusing a monopoly in a way that prevents other
| people from coming in and doing better than you, _that 's_
| the issue, not the specific manifestation of how you're
| abusing it.
| dkzlv wrote:
| Hi! Author's here.
|
| > On the other hand, this post talks about having a similar
| response from Microsoft, and those companies didn't collude
|
| As I wrote, I got the ban from Microsoft minutes after Google
| even before I created an ad or told them what site I planned
| to advertise. So my guess is that they do exchange data about
| potential fraudsters.
|
| > applies no matter who you are
|
| In this case we're talking about a monopoly that is the
| internet's gatekeeper. If they decide they can refuse their
| service to us, we die, no guesses. Is that the right way?
| metalliqaz wrote:
| I find the writing style of this article very difficult to read.
|
| What we are seeing here is just one result of the Internet being
| dominated by a small handful of companies. Ad networks, social
| media, app stores, search ranks... it all stems from the same
| root cause.
| [deleted]
| turnerc wrote:
| > None of my friends could tell me the specific reasons why I was
| banned. It's mostly because they do not understand their own
| rules
|
| It's because policies are in place to prevent them from doing so,
| you won't get special treatment or they will be out of a job.
|
| Without seeing the Ad data it's hard to say but Financial
| products have a lot of policy in place and it's not enough to be
| ready to provide certification, in some instances you must do
| this beforehand.
| trentnix wrote:
| Who watches the Watchmen?
| xnyan wrote:
| In the case of a company offering a paid service? Nobody. Why
| should the government force you to publish ads you don't want
| to host on your own private servers?
| trentnix wrote:
| Who said anything about forcing them to run any ads?
|
| While the policies that prevent even insiders from finding
| out why some ad or another was banned to avoid _special
| treatment_ , they also have the side-effect of being opaque
| to conceal arbitrary, malicious, or insidious motivations.
| After all, I'd assume if there are good, clear, generally
| agreed-to reasons why some ad (or even some account) should
| not have access to Google services, transparency would
| justify as much. But without transparency, it's inevitable
| that there will be abuse.
|
| Odds are, there already has been. And Google benefits
| keeping that behind the curtain.
| treeman79 wrote:
| My first quick impression of the Ad. Oh it's for laundering
| money.
|
| I had to reread it a few times to realize that's not what is
| meant.
| KingMachiavelli wrote:
| Instead of "finance tracker" maybe just call it "accounting
| software"? Since that's what it is?
|
| The "[safe]" is confusing since it make's me think there is an
| not-safe version but this link is to the "safe" version. Like how
| HN put's [pdf] in URLs that link to PDFs.
| oehpr wrote:
| This may seem tangential, but reply all did a story about scummy
| locksmiths falsely reporting locations to google.
| https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/o2ho87
|
| This is relevant because they interview a moderator and they talk
| about how insufferable these companies are, and how they have a
| private set of guidelines that they can't reveal that these scam
| locksmiths are in an never ending battle to subvert.
|
| Under this lens, and looking at the ad [safe] provided, I have to
| agree with other peoples take, it's likely [safe] tripped over a
| bunch of private moderation rules about crypto and ponzi schemes,
| and nothing to do with privacy.
| PebblesRox wrote:
| That wedding ring story at the end of the podcast is amazing!
| trentnix wrote:
| _> There's no bad intent here -- nobody targets me personally,
| who even cares about me. It's a constant error in the processes
| that came, probably, from a good place -- but it's no better for
| me._
|
| You got crushed all the same. The fact that it wasn't malicious
| just makes sure nobody will suffer any consequences for it.
| Except you, of course.
|
| And even if it was malicious, the veil of "processes" and
| "policy" will be sufficient to smother any investigation.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| I actually think it's a real problem not only for advertising but
| all over the place where tech companies act as middle me like
| this. Some of my favourite YT creators have been banned for no
| reason, banned for impersonating themselves etc. I'd like to see
| a requirement to improve this process.
|
| I don't think it's about privacy though. I think Google have to
| deal with 100,000,000 ad customers. They have to have guidelines
| for PR reasons and they need to do all of this for fractions of a
| penny per impression. So they do it badly.
| jonnycomputer wrote:
| Maybe if their customerbase is too big for them to do the right
| thing, then maybe its time to break them up.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| The issue is the margins are too thin. 2 hemi-googles would
| have the exact same issue. You can't spend 100USD vetting and
| giving feedback on a 10usds worth of ad. That's true whether
| you're doing it for 1 customer or 100m. Unless competition
| means half these sites close and ad prices go way way up...
|
| This is the core issue under a lot of big tech complaints.
| The same basic logic applies to fake news on social media,
| counterfeit products on amazon, even scam calls on land line
| networks.
|
| I would like to see a lot less of this "moderation". But that
| means people have to accept there might be more ads for scams
| or gambling or alcohol. Instead they want more moderation.
| And that means more expense AND more mistakes and
| unresponsive mega corps.
| throwaways885 wrote:
| Okay, I'll bite. How do you break up a website? Whichever
| Baby G ends up with Search will create it's own Ads
| department, and things will be back to the status quo in no
| time. The best I can imagine is breaking it by country lines,
| but realistically, the US will never agree to that.
| cortesoft wrote:
| I won't comment about the other parts of the post, but I will say
| that I hate using examples of things that make it through the
| filter to complain about things that get blocked by a filter.
|
| All filters are going to have false positives and false
| negatives. The fact that they missed some things that they likely
| meant to block doesn't really say anything about the stuff they
| block that they meant to let through.
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