[HN Gopher] Google has a secret deal with FB called "Jedi Blue" ...
___________________________________________________________________
Google has a secret deal with FB called "Jedi Blue" that they knew
was illegal
Author : ColinWright
Score : 1131 points
Date : 2021-10-24 10:12 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (twitter.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com)
| cryptica wrote:
| Wow I just saw a headline to a far less interesting article about
| Google and Facebook conspiring together to bypass some
| restrictions of the Apple App Store... I thought this 'Jedi Blue'
| was the same thing so I almost did not click it... But this is a
| whole different beast. If they're willing to distract people with
| fake whistleblowers and boring articles in order to suppress this
| much more interesting information, it must be very bad. Will be
| interesting to see how deep it goes. Google or Facebook ads never
| seemed to work for me, I wonder if this is because of the
| manipulation. If this is true, it is outright fraud. They have
| defrauded millions of paying customers over decades.
|
| Also, I believe some Facebook marketing directors resigned not
| long ago... I wonder if this is related? This has the hallmarks
| of a news story which keeps on giving...
| karaterobot wrote:
| This is a list of accusations, right? This is all pre-trial, so a
| journalist would want to put the word "alleged" in front of this
| rather than writing it up as though they'd discovered the
| undisputed truth? Just checking, I know it's not going to make a
| difference. Not a fan of Google at all, but I do like to pretend
| there's a process.
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| They don't respect due process with illegal mass spying or
| bazooka dmca on youtube. They just do it, and you can't appeal.
|
| So at this point, even if none of that ended up being true
| (unlikely), I still hope it will hurt their reputation badly.
| hoffs wrote:
| What mass spying and you can appeal DMCA on YouTube
| formerly_proven wrote:
| Youtube appeals processes for all (alleged) infractions are
| bullshit.
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| Google was part of PRISM, and appeals on youtube are a joke
| here to pretend you can.
| Negitivefrags wrote:
| Ah yes, the old "Truth doesn't matter because we are fighting
| the bad guys" argument.
|
| Unfortunately a growing sentiment in this day and age.
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| Oh it does matter. I hope the cops and judges will follow
| it, I think it's good for democracy. But if they didn't I
| would not bat an eye in this case. Why spend energy for
| that ? It's like seing a duchbag slipping on a banana.
| There is pleasure in watching.
| checkyoursudo wrote:
| Only a journalist who is worried about the possibility of being
| sued for defamation really needs to consider using _alleged_ in
| reporting. The truth is an absolute defense to defamation. If
| you are confident in your reporting, and especially if you have
| good lawyers, then you don 't need to hedge. (Source: was a
| lawyer who used to do some of this work at one time in my life)
|
| Edit: If you are just reporting second-hand on someone else's
| work and haven't done the investigating yourself, then you
| might indeed want to say alleged whatevers.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| > The truth is an absolute defense to defamation.
|
| Sure, if you discount 100% the cost of defamation litigation.
| alborzb wrote:
| It doesn't matter how strongly you believe in your work.
|
| The law (at least in the United States) is "innocent until
| proven guilty". Until it goes to court, they are presummed
| innocent.
|
| The phrase "alleged" is put in to all reputable journalists
| work because they follow the law.
| kixiQu wrote:
| "Presumed innocent" refers to the government not being
| supposed to punish an unconvicted defendant beyond what's
| practically necessary for safety (though reading up on pre-
| trial detention is... illuminating). It does not mean if we
| look at Jason Voorhees covered in blood that we all have to
| say "well, he's not yet gone to trial, so it's really only
| an allegation of murder."
| hkt wrote:
| Innocent until proven guilty is more of a criminal trials
| thing. Balance of probabilities applies for libel.
|
| I'm not in the US, but suspect it is similar to the UK
| where reporters will use "alleged" if they're using the
| legal defence of "qualified privilege" - which allows them
| to repeat potentially libellous allegations without
| themselves being sued for libel. In the case of reporting
| on documents (especially those made public in legal
| filings) the documents themselves are subject to privilege,
| so the journalists don't need to use qualified privilege.
|
| Source: passed my media law exams in the UK.
| alborzb wrote:
| Thank you for explaining this in an easy to understand
| way, my understanding all this time up until now (I'm
| also in the UK) was that until allegations get proven in
| court, they are only allegations! I guess there are
| different standards for criminal and libel trials
| swiftcoder wrote:
| Burden of proof is not identical between a journalist and a
| judge (or a jury of your peers). A journalist who has verified
| something to be true to the best of their ability is within
| their remit to report it as fact.
| notatoad wrote:
| in this case, the journalist is reporting on the contents of
| a lawsuit. the journalist is not making any claim to have
| verified the truth of the allegations, only the existence of
| the allegations.
| swiftcoder wrote:
| They are reporting on documents released in the course of
| the lawsuit. Unless the authenticity of the documents
| themselves is in doubt, that's no different than documents
| obtained from a source within the company.
| Ajedi32 wrote:
| The "document" in this case is just the complaint filed
| by the plaintiffs in the lawsuit[1]. "List of
| accusations" seems like an accurate description.
|
| [1]: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts
| .nysd.56...
| vehemenz wrote:
| They're not all accusations.
|
| One of the tweets is about Chrome forcing logins to Google
| products (and vice versa), which has officially been a thing
| for like 5 years, at least.
|
| This anti-feature is very well known and is why many of us
| switched to Firefox.
| hoffs wrote:
| > Many of us What is this us?
| vehemenz wrote:
| The average HN user is more likely to use Firefox and have
| 2+ Google accounts than the average person. Very
| straightforward stuff.
| MikusR wrote:
| Source?
| hamilyon2 wrote:
| I sometimes wonder, what if there was a universal governing
| principle, that was simple to enforce, obvious, formulated in few
| words, so that everyone understands it.
|
| All those priveleges which every of theese corporations enjoy,
| some simple, like not publishing schematic for 1000$+ device,
| some complex, like making backroom deals harming millions of
| people in a some insignificant and obscure way daily, like
| showing certain ads to certain people. Some other evade taxes
| using laws in ways laws were never intended to be used.
|
| To enumerate and prevent every abuse possible is not optimal
| spending of time.
|
| What if there were no hard rules, but instead the whole playing
| filed was in favour of little men. What would be the the main
| idea behind such system? Maybe some kind of radical transparency?
|
| This idea, principle should apply to every company and reward
| those who play not only by the rules, but to the common end:
| sustainable, transparent, non-abusive, respecting sosiety.
|
| If only existed some simple rule that reward this behaviour.
| ganzuul wrote:
| Reputation.
| tata71 wrote:
| Merit-based society.
| webmaven wrote:
| Meritocracy sounds pretty good in principle, until you
| realize that 'merit' is usually defined by whoever happens
| to be in power, and thus often ends up entrenching and
| perpetuating existing power structures.
|
| It is convenient to be thought of as having attained your
| position by merit, and also to be able to define the
| criteria by which others must seek to displace or succeed
| you.
| goldenkey wrote:
| A world of B-corps?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benefit_corporation
|
| Unfortunately, just like with non-profits, these designations
| just end up being gamed.
|
| You can't rule out evil because evil thwarts rules. Sometimes
| evil even makes rules to rule out good. It's a nice thought
| though.
| webmaven wrote:
| _> You can 't rule out evil because evil thwarts rules._
|
| Nice turn of phrase! I'm stealing it.
| multiplegeorges wrote:
| Currently, companies have to put the needs of shareholders
| first above all else.
|
| It could be changed through legislation that companies need to
| put the needs of all *stake*holders first.
|
| This would mean chemical companies would have to take into
| account pollution past what is allowed by regulation, this
| would mean that Google would have to at least consider the
| well-being of web users as a whole when making decisions.
|
| And, I believe, this would give people the basis on which to
| sue a company if they didn't take all stakeholders' interests
| into account, like creating a program like Jedi Blue.
| leetcrew wrote:
| in reality the "needs of shareholders" can be interpreted
| pretty flexibly. leaving a lot of money on the table in the
| short term to avoid a substantial loss of trust in the long
| term is not a breach of fiduciary duty.
| spaced-out wrote:
| >It could be changed through legislation that companies need
| to put the needs of all _stake_ holders first.
|
| The problem is that it's the shareholders who sign off on the
| CEO, upper management, and their salaries and bonuses. I
| don't see how you can incentivize people to not put the needs
| of those who control their paychecks above all else under
| this model.
| avaldes wrote:
| I got it: "don't be evil"
| coliveira wrote:
| Of course this exists, it is called socialism. But our society
| is so deep into consumerist propaganda that it has lost the
| ways to evaluate anything that doesn't presume capitalism.
| thow-01187 wrote:
| I suspect that worshiping "The Rule of Law" as an
| unadulterated good is responsible for a lot of the corporate
| overreach we observe in the past few decades. When we
| construct a social fiction that state is just one among many
| actors, and must be bound by rigid rules and justify its
| actions, that Bermuda is basically an equal partner to the
| US, it just naturally leads other entities to malignant
| behavior
|
| Of course the corporations will reverse engineer the legal
| code to get away with as much as they can. Of course they
| will evade taxes. Of course there will be a slow creep, where
| previously borderline illegal behavior is now the best
| practice adopted by everyone, and therefore unenforceable
|
| If there's a sovereign on top of the hierarchy that doesn't
| have to answer to anyone, the corporations are way more
| docile, as seen in China or FDR-era USA, and proactively
| align their goals with the goals of the society
| crawfordcomeaux wrote:
| Meets all needs while denying none.
|
| Establish a category theory based foundation of human needs,
| which will necessarily include the environment and its needs,
| and all legislation must show how it meets the fundamental
| needs and all of their compositions, (eg. every need composes
| with the need for learning to result in the need to learn how
| to identify and meet any given need).
| salawat wrote:
| Needs of whom? How are mutually exclusive needs reconciled?
|
| It's not anywhere as easy or free of potential villainy as
| you think.
| ElevenFingers wrote:
| Oh nice.
| Woodi wrote:
| So, they (juries, sanators, others busy with wrong things
| peoples) will finlly do something or we can just discuss it for
| next 8-9 years and on 10 + 1 day all goes to history ?
| actually_a_dog wrote:
| My guess: this wends through the system long enough that the
| details end up getting forgotten and confused in the retelling,
| finally ending in some trivial (relative to these companies'
| profits) being issued, and the public forgets about it in
| another year or two.
|
| In other words, this is likely to be the Experian data breach
| all over again. You remember, right? When the credit files of
| virtually every working adult in America got released and...
| nothing happened?
| GregFellin wrote:
| Be good is better than don't be evil. When was it again that
| google dropped the tagline "don't be evil"?
| shp0ngle wrote:
| Those are claims of an attorney general, right. Not something
| swore by oath from Google/Facebook.
|
| Claims from AGs strictly from conservative states.
| JeremyNT wrote:
| Your insinuation that this is politically motivated seems
| plausible, but even so that doesn't mean the assertions are
| wrong.
|
| Sometimes when you go on a fishing expedition you actually reel
| in a big one.
| shp0ngle wrote:
| It obviously is motivated politically. Let's wait and see if
| it's actually true.
| flenserboy wrote:
| Your accusation can be turned around: Interesting, isn't it,
| that those most likely to engage in collusion with G/FB are
| silent on the matter?
| JasonFruit wrote:
| Don't try to use political division to redirect people's anger
| at each other. I'm to the point where I'm deeply suspicious of
| the motives of anyone who deploys a novel way to recast an
| issue as partisan. I hope others are equally suspicious.
| lazide wrote:
| Doesn't seem particularly novel - rather pointing out that it
| seems rather explicitly partisan already?
| shp0ngle wrote:
| No, I just want to make sure what am I looking at.
| crawfordcomeaux wrote:
| You live in an uncertain universe. This "sure" thing you
| want is already you grasping for a lie.
|
| You don't need to believe anything. You can learn to reason
| about things with uncertainty. There's even logics to help
| with it.
| _dain_ wrote:
| Funny how we learned precisely none of this from that so-called
| "Facebook whistleblower" two weeks ago. Looking at her Twitter,
| she doesn't seem to have anything to say about it. How strange!
| Instead, she's just shilling against encryption:
|
| https://nitter.net/FrancesHaugen/status/1452362024856559616
| HatchedLake721 wrote:
| A single person doesn't know everything that happens at 60,000
| employee company. More at 10
| nathanvanfleet wrote:
| But it doesn't sound like she would be involved in a specific
| business deal between FB and Google while she was working
| there?
| TazeTSchnitzel wrote:
| Perhaps Facebook is a very large corporation and different
| former employees would have different knowledge?
| ma2rten wrote:
| This was already known since at least January.
| luxuryballs wrote:
| Anyone want to take a guess as to why they chose "Blue" and
| "Jedi", a fictional order that uses invisible powers to
| manipulate their opponents?
| salawat wrote:
| These aren't the thoughts you should be thinking.
| literallyaduck wrote:
| Here is how to contact your state Attorney General in the US:
|
| https://www.usa.gov/state-attorney-general
|
| If everyone asks them to do everything in their power to
| investigate the the illegal activities and prosecute all parties
| involved, we might have a chance at one biting.
|
| Sending a message beyond an offensively small fine is crucial.
|
| If you are in the EU or other locations please post similar
| information so it can be a global effort.
| moffkalast wrote:
| I'm sure a global effort will increase the offensively small
| fine to a medium sized fine.
|
| Google: "This is fine."
|
| They print money at an astonishing rate with AdSense.
| TechBro8615 wrote:
| I think the goal of this lawsuit is probably more than just a
| fine. There will be a push to break up the companies into
| independent silos so google can't frontrun its own ad
| exchange.
| m0zg wrote:
| Man, as much as I'd like to see it, it really cracks me up
| when people think this has a snowball's chance in hell of
| happening. Google and FB are _required_ to win elections
| now, have been since 2012. This golden population control
| goose will not be killed. Instead it'll be taken care of
| and fattened up.
| aasasd wrote:
| > _Re: forced Chrome logins. Don 't need cookies if you own the
| browser!_
|
| (https://twitter.com/fasterthanlime/status/145209451374118912...)
|
| The swindle with FLOC was pretty obviously tied in this, but
| people still went in circles discussing whether it's private or
| not, and downvoting those who said FLOC is a trap.
|
| Let's consult the plan, nothing is even secret about this:
|
| - Google disables third-party cookies, crippling competitors to
| its Analytics, and thus their data for ads.
|
| - Google throws them the FLOC bone to avoid being sued, dressing
| it up as a privacy measure. Meanwhile FLOC is controlled by
| Google's code in the browser.
|
| - Google itself continues to vacuum up users' stats for all sites
| through the browser, never needing the cookies or FLOC.
|
| So, if this is not a case of Google using its monopoly on web
| services (email and video) and the monopoly on the browser to
| prop up its monopoly on web ads, then I don't know what is.
|
| The baffling part, really, is: with Goog already being ahead of
| the rest of the planet by having surveillance in _The Browser_ ,
| why don't they chill the hell out and stop right there. It's
| almost like someone inside decided to set up a multibillion-
| dollar morality performance and demonstrate what happens when a
| company is being _too_ greedy.
|
| Also, we probably need to remember that even if Goog is told off
| and has to dial its appetites back, it still sits on a database
| of surveillance data on people through the web, the browser, the
| services and Android. Which database, for example, is used by the
| US police for location->people requests, of which folks by
| definition only some are potential subjects of investigation (see
| e.g. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/13/technology/google-
| sensorv...).
| ksec wrote:
| >The baffling part.....
|
| _The baffling part_ is 99.9% of the internet inclusive but not
| limited to HN were sold as they "Do No Evil". Even after they
| drop it.
|
| None of these is new. The strategic thinking of Google has been
| clear since Day 1. And now revealed in multiple email shown in
| court, both in terms of Chrome browser during Firefox era and
| Ads. ( And possibly Google Earth ? )
|
| While it is nice to see sentiment finally changing after nearly
| _20 years_. For some strange reason I just feel rather sad
| about it.
| [deleted]
| braveyellowtoad wrote:
| Woah, so if a user is logged into chrome, Google has permission
| / is able to track all web activity for that user?
| lmkg wrote:
| The feature is called "Google Signals." Here are
| documentation links to how it's use in Google Ads & Google
| Analytics.
|
| Ads:
| https://support.google.com/ads/answer/2662856#zippy=,when-
| yo...
|
| Analytics: https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/944534
| 5?hl=en&re...
|
| tl;dr If logged in to Chrome, your Google Account can be used
| as an "identity signal" in place of a first-party cookie.
| This allows cross-domain and cross-device tracking.
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| Yes, they also probably have also an AI collecting what makes
| your activity a unique profile even if you are not logged in.
| Thanks to google search, map, analytics, android, dns, amp,
| google fonts and the like, you almost always load something
| from a google server if you browse the web.
| aikinai wrote:
| There's a setting (Web and App Activity) to let Google
| collect activity on Google properties to use for
| personalization features.
|
| I'm pretty sure it does not track any activity on non-Google
| properties.
| moffkalast wrote:
| Or they only let you turn off tracking for google products,
| because those track you internally anyway and it makes no
| difference, while there's no way to turn off 3rd party
| tracking...
| ramraj07 wrote:
| I'll believe with at best 70% confidence.
| RNCTX wrote:
| You're more generous than me
| tata71 wrote:
| Is this a real question? Hopefully no.
| ec109685 wrote:
| Yes, if you have this option enabled, "Automatically send
| usage statistics and crash reports to Google"
| vasachi wrote:
| Doesn't chrome have browsing history sync?
| aasasd wrote:
| Uh uh! While I'm obviously no fan of Google and Chrome,
| afaik the synced data is encrypted, or at least Goog says
| so. I.e. it's used just for syncing.
|
| Can't remember, though, if it's always encrypted, or just
| _optionally_ encrypted.
| milankragujevic wrote:
| Optionally encrypted, if you provide your own sync
| passphrase.
| nonbirithm wrote:
| Last time I checked, they also removed the "identity
| consistency between browser and cookie jar" flag that
| controlled automatically signing into Chrome if you signed
| into a Google service like YouTube. It is no longer possible
| to turn it off.
| aasasd wrote:
| Frankly, I'm not sure about the current state of things,
| seeing as it likely has changed several times in the past few
| years. However, a) I'm not sure why Goog would want to bother
| with browser accounts otherwise, and b) my use of Chrome
| ceased soonish after I had the following experience in the
| early 2010s:
|
| - set up a new empty site, listed absolutely nowhere, on
| quite dedicated hosting.
|
| - open it in Chrome.
|
| - a couple minutes later, observe Googlebot appearing in the
| visitor logs of the site.
|
| Lastly, if you go to the 'My activity' settings on Google,
| you can see: "Include Chrome history and activity from sites,
| apps, and devices that use Google services", which I guess
| can still be dissected further. And I have some website
| visits from 2016 listed there: including Wikipedia, which
| doesn't seem to use Google Analytics currently (not sure
| about 2016)--though these could be visits through Google
| search.
|
| Also, text in the linked tweet directly says that Google
| tracks users on third-party sites through Chrome.
| faster wrote:
| I expect bots on a new unadvertised site within minutes.
| I've seen it many times. Bots are always scanning, along
| with script kiddies.
| batch12 wrote:
| Seems testable by setting up randomized subdomains
| hosting http and visiting with different browsers. Also,
| make sure you aren't using Google's DNS services to
| resolve or managing your domain's DNS through their
| registrar.
| indymike wrote:
| It is far more likely that Google found the new site from
| telemetry from Chrome than it is a random bot, owned by
| Google scanned the site within seconds.
| monkeybutton wrote:
| Google also runs their own public DNS servers which afaik
| Chrome defaults to. They can just sit server side waiting
| for DNS lookups of domains they've never seen before and
| queue them up for the Google bot. No browser telemetry
| needed.
| aix1 wrote:
| > Google also runs their own public DNS servers which
| afaik Chrome defaults to.
|
| The statement that Chrome does not honour the networking
| stack's DNS settings does not agree with my observational
| data. I run pi-hole DNS and Chrome absolutely fails to
| load domains blacklisted there.
| ev1 wrote:
| This is configurable, the default is to use the default
| network stack.
|
| Settings > search for Use secure DNS for DNS-over-TLS.
| mysterydip wrote:
| Why does chrome need to use DNS other than what I have
| set up through my IP stack? How does that work for
| inranet sites?
| monkeybutton wrote:
| Because they see their solution as more secure. Intranet
| sites still work because Chrome only prefers their DNS
| first, it will still use your system settings if it
| doesn't work.
| panarky wrote:
| Registered domain names are public information.
| adriancr wrote:
| This could also be via dns records if you published some
| they would get scanned
| TechBro8615 wrote:
| Cert transparency logs will show new subdomains too.
| selfhoster11 wrote:
| Not for wildcard certs, fortunately.
| samstave wrote:
| Also, doesnt chrome hijack DNS to point to googles DNS
| servers?
| eptcyka wrote:
| Unless you've enabled DoH, it shouldn't.
| djbusby wrote:
| This whole thread is about Google doing things they
| shouldn't.
| Taywee wrote:
| Yes, and claims still require evidence. I'm quite anti-
| Google but I'm not going to just start believing in
| random theorizing of evil things they could conceivably
| be doing without evidence.
| Drdrdrq wrote:
| Otoh, why even bother with Chrome, when you have Firefox,
| Brave and others to choose from? It's not like there is
| any substantial difference between them. At this point we
| don't need (extra) evidence of wrongdoing, the incentives
| mismatch is enough to not trust them.
| notjustanymike wrote:
| Well they dropped the "don't be evil" motto a while back.
| jrmg wrote:
| That's actually a myth. Check out the last line here:
| https://abc.xyz/investor/other/google-code-of-conduct/
| fartcannon wrote:
| This was actually an act of kindness. They removed the motto
| to let us know to abandon them. I believe it was a canary
| clause.
|
| Of course most people don't care, so here we are.
| lamontcg wrote:
| Everyone reading this on Chrome should switch their browser
| today. Get off of Gmail while you're at it. There is no perfect
| alternative, but all those reasons why you think you can't
| switch don't add up to anything a fraction as bad as what
| Google is doing.
| stackbutterflow wrote:
| What's a good alternative to gmail? Fastmail? Protonmail?
| Other? I don't mind paying a small subscription.
| kolme wrote:
| I recommend Posteo!
|
| https://posteo.de/en
| markmiro wrote:
| I use hey.com
|
| You have to get used to their system but now I prefer it
| compared to Gmail
| ladberg wrote:
| I use Gmail but never use the web interface (or log in with
| it at all for the most part). I just use the built in mail
| clients for iOS/macOS but any app will do. They can still
| see your mail but can't do much with it as I use DDG for
| the most part and am logged into a different account for
| stuff like YouTube.
| tmccrary55 wrote:
| I have a paid protonmail account but haven't fully switched
| because the search feature is abysmal.
| addingnumbers wrote:
| Their spam detection is true garbage. One year in I had
| zero actual spams blocked and hundreds of false
| positives.
|
| Unsolicited mail from a direct mailer in India for an SEO
| webinar, straight to the inbox. Every message from your
| bank, straight to the spam folder.
|
| Am I sure it didn't catch some spam and age it out before
| I saw it? Yes, because I had to go in every 2-3 weeks to
| pull my banking messages and other false positives out. A
| process which invariably went "Open Junk folder, Look for
| spam, Find none, Check All, Move to Inbox."
|
| Here's the kicker, there's no option to even turn spam
| filtering off. It took me five cycles with the support
| team to get them to offer an inscrutable sieve filter
| that would disable filtering if I pasted it exactly right
| in an unvalidated free text field.
|
| (The second-to-last agent told me there is a way to do it
| with sieve filters and then closed the ticket without
| saying how, so I had to open another ticket asking if
| they would kindly share the solution they coyly hinted
| at.)
| Drdrdrq wrote:
| So what you are saying is that they are very good at
| filtering spam, they just got inbox and junk folders
| mixed up? ;)
| slig wrote:
| Gmail was behaving exactly like that for me for a couple
| of months. There was a huge HN thread of people with the
| same issue and that might have made someone at Google to
| fix finally the issue.
| mikem170 wrote:
| I'm very happy with gandi.net, $16.49 per year for a .com
| domain name and two email accounts (accessible via web,
| imap, etc), plus aliases. Been around for twenty years.
| They have a "no bullshit" promise.
| danieldk wrote:
| I have been using Fastmail for many years. My wife also
| switched a couple of years ago. The web interface is fast,
| they have great IMAP support, contribute to open standards
| (JMAP). They can also be the DNS server for your domain.
|
| When I contacted support a few years ago about a keyboard
| shortcut issue in their webmail, they were very friendly
| and rolled out a fixed to their beta version very quickly.
| lamontcg wrote:
| I mean at this point hotmail, outlook or icloud would be
| preferable.
| pportela wrote:
| Personally I liked disroot, not only does their email fits
| me well (most of the time), but so does their calendar. For
| some reason though, sometimes some emails take a bit longer
| to reach you, but that's quite rare.
| Gene_Parmesan wrote:
| Seriously. Anyone who cares at all about privacy should never
| have touched Chrome in the first place. The reasons for its
| existence were obvious from the outset.
| pier25 wrote:
| I have close to 15 years of emails stored in Gmail.
|
| Is there an easy way to download that or move it to another
| provider?
| marmaduke wrote:
| They have a service called Takeout which will generate mbox
| file of your Gmail account. You can then import to
| Thunderbird or elsewhere to do as you like.
| mietek wrote:
| Yes, you can easily import it to Fastmail.
|
| https://www.fastmail.help/hc/en-
| us/articles/360058753594-Imp...
| nobody9999 wrote:
| >I have close to 15 years of emails stored in Gmail.
|
| >Is there an easy way to download that or move it to
| another provider?
|
| You can set up pop3 access[0] to your gmail account,
| download your emails (with any of a variety of clients[1])
| and have the client delete them from your google account.
|
| I'm sure there are other ways to do so as well.
|
| [0] https://support.google.com/mail/answer/7104828?hl=en
|
| [1] https://www.getmailbird.com/pop3-email-
| account/#Top_Mail_Cli...
| cmeacham98 wrote:
| Gmail still offers IMAP, right? Use your favorite mail
| client (if you don't have one, Thunderbird is FLOSS and
| pretty good) that has an archiving feature.
| arthur_sav wrote:
| Personally, i don't think there's anything wrong with holding a
| monopoly as long as it stems from merit.
|
| However, we are proven time after time that power corrupts.
| Unless there's a regulatory body to watch their every move it
| seems they'll abuse their dominance to maximize profits.
| guerrilla wrote:
| Even if a monopoly were achieved on merit (I don't
| necessarily agree that it was in this case), the incentive to
| maintain that merit disappears once the power is obtained.
| Even if that weren't true (i.e. if power didn't corrupt) they
| could simply degrade naturally while the bar for entry would
| remain too high due to economies of scale and other reasons.
| And don't forget the incentives against downsizing: layoffs
| hurt labor, reduced consumption hurts suppliers while
| withdrawal of products and services hurts customers and the
| brand simultaneously. People have made better arguments than
| I have but my point is even a moments thought should make you
| reconsider your position.
| comeonseriously wrote:
| Probably because of a spreadsheet. If they made the right
| deals, etc. the numbers they report and the returns to the
| investors increase.
|
| Any time you ask, "why?", the answer is money for the
| investors.
| nojito wrote:
| So AMP for quicker load times was a bold faced lie
|
| https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FCbGxnYWYAcyzq3?format=png&name=...
| lgrialn wrote:
| bald-faced
| corporateshil1 wrote:
| Expect some 'cosmetic' change and back to the norm. The personal
| data hoarded is too valuable to the surveillance apparatus for us
| to stop it now. You wouldn't want a Chinese/Russian company
| taking over these industries, and the West seems capable of only
| one flavor, the current status quo. Seems like FAAMG is here to
| stay, they are probably already one with the government, it will
| be spelled out more obvious in the future, since we need a judge
| to give us truth, but honest judges aren't in demand
| smegger001 wrote:
| I don't think i understand how this was supposed to benefit
| Google? just making facebook bid like everyone else would surely
| have just raised the floor as everyone had to compete with them,
| where this way google makes less on the ads sold to facebook.
| alfalfasprout wrote:
| The point was to kill header bidding altogether forcing people
| onto google's exchange. Or some portion of the time, facebook's
| exchange.
|
| Basically Google and Facebook wanted to create a walled garden
| where you're more or less forced to bid on their ad exchanges.
| Since they control the ad exchange they can front-run everyone
| and bid using insider info.
|
| By eliminating all other competitors Google and FB can
| basically collude to split the pie.
| DSingularity wrote:
| It's interesting that only republican states are holding google
| accountable on all this.
| setpatchaddress wrote:
| Specifically, activist GOP states; some of the most corrupt
| politicians on the planet. I'm sure there's actionable
| antitrust against Google, but this particular lawsuit is
| probably hot air.
| blast wrote:
| We need each corrupt side to fight the other's corruption.
| luxuryballs wrote:
| The other ones are welcoming the help of the blue Jedi...
| that's how they "saved" the 2020 election.
| billylindeman wrote:
| "wE cAnT eVeR lEt tHis HaPpEn AgAiN"
| enumjorge wrote:
| That's not quite true. The specific lawsuit from which these
| documents originate (related to ad tech) was filed by
| Republican states but the Justice Department's antitrust
| division, led by a Biden appointment attorney, is involved and
| is preparing a second lawsuit. One of Biden's stated goals is
| to tighten antitrust violations in tech.
|
| There is also the other antitrust lawsuit related to the
| Playstore that were filed by blue and red states.
| slater wrote:
| Isn't that part of the whole "we're being silenced!!11~~"
| nonsense they've got going on?
| kory wrote:
| It is nonsense?
|
| Just a few months ago, facebook was banning people for the
| "lab leak theory," and now it's a widely accepted
| possibility.
|
| Facebook bans people now for writing about vaccine side
| effects.
| RNCTX wrote:
| Is it nonsense? For a tech company to tell the news press
| that it isn't allowed to talk about a pres candidate's
| crackhead son two weeks before an election? When crackhead
| son mysteriously had a 400k/yr job from a foreign
| corporation? When there's video of said pres candidate
| bragging about getting a prosecutor fired in that country
| where his crackhead son is paid 400k/yr?
|
| What's your definition of nonsense?
|
| Perhaps it's just nonsense that the supposed news press
| rolled over and played along because they didn't want to lose
| their friends in the DoD and CIA?
| dschuetz wrote:
| Welp, it's time to de-google my networks then. Facebook traffic
| is already blocked, now I wonder how much Web content I will lose
| when I block all google traffic.
| jraph wrote:
| Not much except websites blocked by reCAPTCHA. Which are quite
| numerous unfortunately, including free software based services
| like element.io.
| lvs wrote:
| The purpose of AMP was completely obvious, and you all consented
| to buying into it anyway for the traffic. It couldn't have been
| successful without your help!
| gvv wrote:
| Cost of doing business. If the penalty costs less than the profit
| they make they will keep doing it.
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| Even if the penalty costs more than the profit in the cases
| where they get caught, they'll keep doing it if they don't
| always get caught.
|
| Or if it allows them to build a hard-to-break market position
| (see e.g. how Intel destroyed AMD, the fines couldn't undo
| that).
| kzrdude wrote:
| This argument I don't understand
| https://twitter.com/fasterthanlime/status/145206648791366451...
|
| Using the median page load time is one of the best tools for
| analyzing effective load speedups. Sounds legit to me, and
| they're just trying to speak to the jury.
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| In my subjective perception, most of the improvements from AMP
| came from the fact that all the abusive technology that
| publishers had amassed on their primary web sites over the past
| decade or so got temporarily dropped in the forced rewrite.
|
| A non-AMP site could be just as fast as an AMP site (minus the
| initial prefetching) or even faster by not requiring all the
| AMP-specific stuff, but in practice, the AMP sites were a
| minimal rewrite of the full site, leaving behind the popups,
| autoplaying videos, 40 different trackers, ads from 5 different
| companies, etc.
|
| AMP overcame the inertia of just leaving all the crap in and
| incrementally adding more by forcing the rewrite. Over time, as
| the publishers had more time to crappify the AMP versions too,
| they became worse.
| lostdog wrote:
| Yeah, for this whole case we have to choose whether Google or
| the Texas AG is being more honest.
| bellyfullofbac wrote:
| I remember in 2nd grade, a kid brought a note from his parent
| which was written in a few dozen tiny Post-It notes. The teacher
| was furious about the improperness of the format of the message.
|
| That just came to mind seeing yet another too-fucking-long
| Twitter thread.
| [deleted]
| thrwyoilarticle wrote:
| This comment is in _every_ thread that links to a Twitter
| thread. Please don 't do another one. If it was really such an
| ineffective method of communication, it wouldn't be on the
| front page.
| draw_down wrote:
| Come on
| aspenmayer wrote:
| Your vapid comment is even lower effort than this canned
| response.
| beeboop wrote:
| im not sure you know what vapid means
| mileycyrusXOXO wrote:
| Not every discussion needs to be held in a formal context. It's
| okay to have casual conversations
| JustFinishedBSG wrote:
| The most "surprising" thing for me as a mathematician is that
| Google publishes a lot of top notch research on bidding and
| pricing theory.
|
| But it's all rigged in the end.
|
| So Google pushed the perverseness as far as basically creating a
| fake research lab to cover it all.
| inshadows wrote:
| I'm interested in game theory, bargaining, bidding, and
| auctions. Would you be so kind and link some research worth
| reading? Thanks!
| SimeVidas wrote:
| Maybe Google's researchers are kept out of the loop.
| swiftcoder wrote:
| I tend to doubt that a team of top-notch economics
| researchers is entirely unable to notice that the market they
| are studying is being manipulated (even if they are in the
| dark about specifics of the manipulation)
| JustFinishedBSG wrote:
| Well I imagine so. But it still means google management
| decided to fund (relatively expensive) top notch research
| just to act as a front for their criminal operation.
| rossdavidh wrote:
| One might want top-notch research, in case it reveals to
| you some way to maximize your own revenue that doesn't have
| the legal risk (which this very Twitter thread is related
| to). So they might have a true interest in the research,
| even if that's not how they're running things right now.
|
| Also, many large corporations are best thought of as
| multiple personalities, with different parts of the
| organization acting in different ways.
| atleta wrote:
| People think all the time that whatever turns out to be bad
| for them (or the society) has been planned from the
| beginning. Despite that you basically never see it
| happening around yourself.
|
| A lot more likely explanation is that they did setup the
| research lab with 100% honest intentions (i.e. they
| expected that it would produce value _to them_ ) but then
| it turned out that the results didn't meet their
| expectations and/or they slowly figured out that they don't
| have to adhere to all the rules and principles they set out
| for themselves earlier.
| goldenkey wrote:
| They have hundreds of billions of dollars of ad money
| coming in. A research lab and even a dozen PHDs is like you
| or me tossing pennies.
| Digit-Al wrote:
| Does anyone else wonder if Page and Brin feel any pangs of guilt
| over how their company went from "Don't be evil" to such corrupt
| practises? It really is a classic case study in the journey from
| apparent idealism to a complete moral vacuum.
| credittw2021 wrote:
| Based on my experiences with sociopaths, they are more than
| happy to Lie. "Don't be evil" is the sort of motto you'd expect
| a batman villan to have for their front organization.
| crawfordcomeaux wrote:
| I'll second this. "Evil" is a subjective judgment, so using
| it clouds people's emotions.
|
| The non-villain org I want to start is dedicated to "Meeting
| all needs while denying none." I'd love for people to parse
| it for hidden villainy.
| dang wrote:
| Please don't do internet psychiatric diagnosis on HN or
| glibly call names like sociopath. That's already one circle
| of internet hell and it points deeper in. We want the
| opposite vector here.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
|
| https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&type=comment&dateRange=a.
| ..
| dqpb wrote:
| With about $100b net worth each, I'm going to guess they feel
| just fine.
| stackbutterflow wrote:
| That's the thing though. They don't need more money. So why
| not try to make the world a better place for once? I know
| they donate to charity but they're uniquely well positioned
| to influence one of the biggest, and most dangerous, tech
| company on the planet.
|
| I wonder. Do they care? Do they have personal problems that
| makes the rest seem insignificant? Or do they believe they're
| truly making the world better?
| mdoms wrote:
| That's not how rich people think. Very high levels of
| wealth and influence literally rewires the brain. They are
| simply bad people and always will be.
| klyrs wrote:
| I've always considered "don't be evil" to be a huge
| difference from "be good."
| garciasn wrote:
| No, they don't care. If they did, their relatively paltry
| donations to charity would be closer to 95% of their net
| worth at any given moment. They are wholly incapable of
| spending their current ~$100b, growing at insane rates YoY,
| in their lifetimes.
| [deleted]
| will4274 wrote:
| They think they'd decide what the money should be spent on
| better than you. So being corrupt and taking huge amounts
| of money in and then spending it on their chosen causes is
| a net good. It's narcissism
| [deleted]
| robryan wrote:
| This seems to be common once a company goes public and
| finds success. New execs inside the company and investors
| outside the company are all incentivized to have the
| company make as much as possible. Probably hard to fight
| the inertia even if they wanted to.
| jqpabc123 wrote:
| Hello advertisers. You are being manipulated and abused just like
| the consumers you are targeting.
|
| There is very little evidence to show that invasive digital
| advertising is actually effective. When was the last time you
| clicked on one of these ads and actually made a purchase?
|
| Bad for consumers and bad for advertisers. Why continue with this
| opaque, profit sucking charade that mainly enriches those selling
| the ads?
| drunkpotato wrote:
| What we found at a previous employer through extensive testing:
| advertising on Facebook works pretty well, but the highest
| return on ad spend was to not use any of the demographic tools
| at all. Also, weirdly, having an attractive product and
| displaying it well in photo and video ads did very well. Almost
| as if there is no real magic trick of effectiveness at all.
| secondaryacct wrote:
| For us google ads was insane. I d encourage Google to keep
| record on everyone and everything after having seen how
| incredible their client to business matching is: as a small
| company, in a niche b2b product (waste management software),
| we got big name random calls days after starting to pay
| Google.
|
| In another company we spent millions on Facebook and got
| relatively little out of it (predatory lending marketing), we
| had again more success just reducing friction, simplifying
| the message and putting it on Google with massive keyword
| spam. The least we protected users, the more they paid us.
| dylan604 wrote:
| You brag about having success advertising a predatory
| lending product?
| corobo wrote:
| Not even country based? When I tried without targeting I got
| a load of bots that tanked my page reach
|
| I paid to destroy my page haha. Fuckin Facebook
| drunkpotato wrote:
| Hmm, it may be that shopify blocked some bot traffic
| automatically.
| [deleted]
| phonebucket wrote:
| > Hello advertisers. You are being manipulated and abused just
| like the consumers you are targeting.
|
| Do you have much evidence for this?
|
| Advertisers don't spend big bucks blindly. Many companies have
| significant data science teams that keep an extremely close
| watch on ad spend return on investment.
| criddell wrote:
| The Freakonomics podcast did a short series on advertising
| and it turns out advertisers often do spend big bucks
| blindly.
| merrywhether wrote:
| That doesn't mean they aren't all being price-gouged (per the
| AG's complaint) for instance. Paying protection to the mob
| also strongly correlates with your store not burning down in
| the middle of the night. We just don't know how different
| things could be without this level of monopolistic distortion
| (which I admit could mean that without Google things _could_
| be worse?)
| rrix2 wrote:
| > Do you have much evidence for this?
|
| Read the complaint in TFA... you can spend big bucks and even
| actually come out ahead in that, while being manipulated and
| filched by Google and Facebook.
|
| Both of these things can be possible while one of them is
| illegal behavior (engaging in price-fixing cartels) and one
| is simply immoral to many of this forum
| [deleted]
| Verdex wrote:
| The only advertising that advertisers have to do that actually
| makes a difference is advertising their services to their
| customers (and this would include an in house advertising
| division convincing the rest of the company that they're
| sufficient effective).
|
| If they can actually show the effectiveness of an advertisement
| then good. If not they you fallback on "mindshare".
|
| Really the people we need to be reaching are product owners et
| al.
| Dma54rhs wrote:
| You're tricked if you think so yourself, all the small
| businesses measure it and that is why FB and Google are so
| rich. Its like saying you're been tricked to think computers
| are useful for your productivity, it's insanity. You can argue
| if big corps spending just to keep coca cola on in front of
| your eyes is useful or not. To what extent but that's entirely
| different conversation.
|
| When was the last time you died? Death still exists.
| kbos87 wrote:
| Agree completely. The sentiment that this is all a shell game
| and advertisers are being completely manipulated always seems
| to come from people who don't have much domain expertise.
|
| I'd be quick to throw digital advertising to the wolves but
| the reality is that it's extremely effective. Is there a
| level of opacity? Yes. Are there tranches of junk traffic and
| ineffective tools put forth by the ad networks? Absolutely.
| But these are problems at the margins, and don't invalidate
| the fact that advertising on Google and Facebook in
| particular are very effective, and measurable to enough of an
| extent that it makes sense to keep doing it and growing your
| level of investment.
|
| The majority of advertisers both large and small get that
| they can't let the quest for perfection in advertising
| attribution be the enemy of progress.
| merrywhether wrote:
| > You are being manipulated and abused just like the
| consumers you are targeting
|
| Their first sentence was more correct: consumers are also
| getting value and the question is more whether the true
| cost is worth the benefit. For some people it definitely
| is, especially those who are skeptical and thus
| learn/measure/etc themselves. For others they give away far
| more than they get. For society/humanity as a whole it's an
| open question, even more so once you start to include the
| second-order effects (in both directions, good and bad).
| mdoms wrote:
| No one is saying "advertising doesn't work". We're saying
| that massively targeted invasive advertising is not
| significantly more effective than content based
| advertising. There's plenty of evidence for this assertion.
| jstummbillig wrote:
| > There is very little evidence to show that invasive digital
| advertising is actually effective.
|
| Ignoring the "invasive" (being a matter of definition) there is
| an absolute mountain of irrefutable evidence for google-type
| digital advertising being "effective", in the sense that an
| advertiser can spend 1$ to make 2$, measurably.
|
| > When was the last time you clicked on one of these ads and
| actually made a purchase?
|
| The answer is: It doesn't matter. Ads being clicked and thus
| stuff being sold is not a matter of personal opinion or
| observation. Spending and tracking online ad money works. Of
| course, on an individual level you can still lose money while
| advertising for a myriad of reasons.
|
| By the way, this is by no means an argument for advertisements
| (online/offline, "invasive" or otherwise). Advertisement as an
| industry does not create value. It's steering attention while
| sucking up money and there is also no reason to assume that it
| provides an inherent bias towards better products (the opposite
| likely being true).
|
| Also Google/FB could be defrauding their ad customers to an
| absolutely mind boggling degree. Being the deliverer, and also
| reporting on deliveries, it's insane that they can operate
| basically unregulated.
| lordnacho wrote:
| I don't know, I dabbled in ecommerce and while it wasn't a
| roaring success, people definitely did click the ads and buy
| the product, and I made a tiny bit of money. My guess is if
| someone actually knew a few more things than me they could make
| it work properly.
| croes wrote:
| It's not about effectiveness of ads but if it's more
| effective as previous methods and are the huge data
| collections necessary for the effect.
| sokoloff wrote:
| For a lot of small businesses starting out in digital
| advertising, the only previous method they had experience
| with was buying a website or Shopify store and
| waiting/hoping. We shouldn't discount "this is a lot easier
| and actually reaches people" as being valueless.
| lazide wrote:
| Having done this before? It is clearly, measurably more
| effective for most types of businesses (but not all).
|
| It's easy to spend massive amounts of money on print and
| other ads with literally zero actual sales coming from it,
| and everyone you talk to on the print side knows it - but
| won't tell you and will happily take your money.
|
| At least with online ads you can test, tune, get your own
| data, which while not perfect is miles and miles better
| than you'll get from other types of ads.
| y4mi wrote:
| I'm pretty sure that most previous methods have had their
| effectiveness significantly reduced by how our society
| works nowadays.
|
| Most non-IT workers still don't use an AdBlocker, so you're
| actually getting your ads in front of the majority of the
| population.
|
| If you did the same with TV or even worse magazine ads
| you'd reach only a tiny segment of people, as the quantity
| of people consuming this kind of content has been
| drastically reduced.
| saimiam wrote:
| While technically you're right that most people don't use
| as blockers, I was surprised to see that it's as high as
| 42.7% that this link seems to claim -
| https://backlinko.com/ad-blockers-users
| y4mi wrote:
| > _42.7% of internet users worldwide (16-64 years old)
| use ad blocking tools at least once a month._
|
| That statistic is incredibly misleading. The amount of
| page views without adblocks is much higher then the
| insinuated 58%, because they're counting everyone as
| "using AdBlock" if they've used any device with an
| AdBlocker installed at any time within a month
|
| And a lot use AdBlock Plus, which also sells your usage
| statistics and only blocks ads from corps that didn't pay
| them.
| saimiam wrote:
| Did you, by chance, mistake ad blocking for AdBlock - the
| browser extension?
|
| 42.7% of users globally use ad blockers while Adblock has
| 65 million users. Surely, 42.7% of users is > than 65
| million.
|
| Also, I don't understand why you compared page views to
| users. It's probably very uncommon for a user to install
| an ad blocker but also choose to enable or disable it on
| specific page views.
| y4mi wrote:
| no, i didn't. nor can i comprehend how you got that idea.
|
| we were talking about how many people see internet
| adverts. you then linked a statistic implying that 42.7%
| of people wouldn't be reached because they're using
| adblockers.
|
| this is false, because most of these people will still be
| reached, as they're only occasionally using adblockers
| saimiam wrote:
| > occasionally using adblockers
|
| I don't think this is a common way people use adblockers.
| Do you have any way to back this up?
|
| > nor can I comprehend
|
| In your first comment, you mentioned AdBlock, the
| extension, in the context of 42.7% users using ad
| blocking technology. To me, it read like you thought that
| the backlinko url was saying 42.7% of internet users use
| AdBlock specifically.
| y4mi wrote:
| you only have one internet-capable device you use each
| month?
|
| i got a phone, two tablets, two laptops, a desktop and a
| TV.
|
| my phone uses Blockada and firefox with ublock origin,
| they both block some ads, but some still get through.
|
| one of the tablets is an ipad, which only has the buildin
| adblock. a lot of ads go through that. the other is a
| kindle paperwhite, thankfully without any ads.
|
| the laptops and desktop pc are all using chrome/firefox
| with ublock origin. most ads are blocked, but some go
| through just as with my phone.
|
| the TV has several devices connected to it:
| - xbox series x: unblockable ads - nintendo
| switch: unblockable ads - nvidia shield:
| unblockable ads.
|
| for a while i tried to use Pihole for DNS-level
| adblocking, but it didn't really decrease the amount of
| ads i saw per day, so i eventually gave up on that.
|
| so yes, i do everything i can to remove adverts from my
| life, and am nonetheless unable to remove them entirely.
| as such internet adverts will still influence me and few
| people invest as much time into blocking them as i do,
| which makes them generally more effective.
|
| the reason i pointed out AdBlock Plus specifically was
| because of how many people use it. most of these people
| still see ads, because that specific adblocker only
| blocks advertisements from advertisers which _haven 't_
| paid eyeo (the corp behind that extension) money.
| https://adblockplus.org/en/about#monetization
| salawat wrote:
| Last I heard, Nvidia Shield may have hardcoded DNS
| endpoints embedded via raw IP address. Your conventional
| PiHole setup won't work. You'll have to blackhole the ad
| DNS traffic entirely by blocking the Nvidia Shield's IP
| traffic to anywhere outside your network. Honestly, it's
| pretty sad the lengths we're having to go to for privacy,
| but... There it is.
| lordnacho wrote:
| What previous methods do you mean? As for data, I guess I
| can't really see it all, it's inside Facebook. But spending
| money on the wrong target groups seems to not work,
| according to my experience. So it does seem like FB
| collects useful data for targeting ads.
| Closi wrote:
| > When was the last time you clicked on one of these ads and
| actually made a purchase?
|
| Also how often are the metrics inflated by people who were
| going to purchase anyway? I was booking a holiday yesterday and
| knew the company I wanted to book from - I typed in their name
| and clicked on the top result as that was the company I wanted.
|
| When I clicked back I noticed that they had the top two results
| - the first was an ad and the second was the organic link.
|
| I wonder if things like this really inflate the calculations
| companies do on how many acquisitions they get through the ad
| and their spend on the ad. I went back and clicked on the
| organic link instead and then checked out - but still wonder if
| somehow that counted as a "sale" from an "advert" in google
| analytics rather than me just wanting to find the company and
| book through them.
| cyborgx7 wrote:
| I read a lot of companies buy advertising specifically for
| their own name, because if they don't, a competitor will, and
| will appear first when someone googles the company name.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| Surely that's fraud.
| cyborgx7 wrote:
| They don't pretend to be the other company. They just
| make sure an ad for their company appears when you search
| for the other company.
| adamcharnock wrote:
| There was a freakanomics podcast 2-part episode on
| advertising which discussed this, and many other things.
|
| At least in one case (eBay?) they discovered this kind of
| brand advertising had essentially zero effect. Turns out if
| people search for eBay, they are going to click the result
| for eBay, whether it is first or not.
| kzrdude wrote:
| Makes sense, we use Google for both _summon_ and
| _search_.
| Closi wrote:
| You are right - That's another practice is morally dubious
| (And imo should be outlawed!)
|
| (Not on the purchasing companies side, but on google
| selling keywords for someone's brandname which effectively
| forces companies into bidding for their own name)
| sharemywin wrote:
| But don't consumers have a right to see options. To me
| it's like a competitor buy a billboard or the location
| next store
| Closi wrote:
| Eh, I see it as different to a billboard - a lot of
| people use google as the only way to find your site where
| they type in a brand name to find your business (ie lots
| of people don't use urls).
|
| This is putting a step inbetween someone trying to access
| your website where they HAVE to read about a competitor
| (because they have to read to see if it's your site or
| not). Your competitor can even choose the wording of
| their link and description, while you are stuck with
| something google has arbitrarily chosen.
|
| It's more akin to hiring people to stand outside the
| entrance of your competitors store, and when they see
| people going in they go up and try to convince the people
| to your store rather than the competitors.
| yokem55 wrote:
| > You are right - That's another practice is morally
| dubious (And imo should be outlawed!)
|
| Where this gets tricky is when a business has a name
| along the lines of [city name] [generic product
| category].
|
| If this was outlawed, a competitor to a business named
| Foo-town Yard Care would be effectively blocked from
| advertising on Google.
| criddell wrote:
| Can you get a trademark for Foo-town Yard Care?
| mbreese wrote:
| Why wouldn't you be able to?
|
| Specific-word plus generic word(s) seems to be a good
| formula for trademarks.
|
| $mycity lawn care would be just fine. But it would make
| it difficult to let's others advertise for lawn care in
| $mycity.
| Closi wrote:
| That would be classed as a descriptive mark and is
| unlikely to be granted registration.
|
| > Descriptive marks are a type of trademark that are
| usually composed of a word or words that merely describe
| a product or that identify the characteristics of a
| product and are generally considered weak marks. In other
| words, these are descriptions that could be attributed to
| the goods or services offered by a business. Generally,
| such marks are unlikely to be granted registration or
| protection under trademark law. However, descriptive
| words may be registered and protected by the law if they
| acquire "secondary meaning." This happens when the
| original or primary meaning of the descriptive words
| becomes exclusively associated with a particular
| business.
|
| Source: https://www.kirkpatricklawpc.com/blog/what-
| descriptive-trade...
| beeboop wrote:
| my fiance has bought several things that she saw constantly on
| instagram ads
| slavik81 wrote:
| My mother bought water bottles with cat ears that were
| advertised on Facebook.
|
| My wife bought a Mandalorian carpet advertised on Instagram.
|
| I bought custom-printed Canadian postage stamps advertised on
| Google in wedding card-related searches. They're sold
| directly from Canada Post.
| goldenkey wrote:
| Most of these products are leaded or toxic. I had a
| Mandalorian mug gifted to me by a dumb gen-Z friend of mine
| and it came with an Amazon return receipt showing it came
| from a 3rd party seller despite the availability of the
| same official LucasFilm mug being sold by Amazon.com. I
| don't trust products from random sellers so I scratched off
| some of the glaze and tested it for lead, and what do you
| know..it was leaded. Buying from random sellers is a recipe
| for allergic reactions, toxicity, bad airdoor air quality
| from off-gassing, ad infinitum. If you have pets, toddlers,
| or care about yourself, you should be very careful what
| objects you put around your home. A shady pillow or carpet
| could be destroying your air quality with VOC dyes. I gave
| the friend a stern talk but it's doubtful I changed the
| habits of an uninformed consumer.
|
| When shady manufacturers are willing to do this kind of
| substitution on pet food [1] and medical supplies [2], one
| should expect any kind of safety regulations for fabrics,
| dyes, paints, etc to be ignored as well.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_pet_food_recalls
|
| [2] https://www.cnn.com/2021/10/24/health/medical-gloves-
| us-thai...
| slavik81 wrote:
| I'm not a very trusting person. The custom stamps I
| purchased were ordered directly from the government's
| official website. I simply didn't know the product
| existed before I saw the advertisement.
|
| The rug was from ruggable.com (which seems fine) and the
| water bottle was ZOQQ (which looks questionable no matter
| what store it's purchased from).
|
| I can't control the behaviour of others, but it's
| somewhat beside the point. I was giving examples of when
| the advertising worked. Whether it should or not is a
| whole different topic.
| goldenkey wrote:
| Same here. I see. I suppose my comment was just to convey
| how a lot of people end up buying toxic stuff through ads
| because they just click and buy without regard to where
| they are or going on the web.
|
| It seems like you know exactly what to do with regard to
| authenticity, no knock on you.
|
| Yeah, unfortunately we can't control the masses, let
| alone even friends and family, so these ads and products
| will thrive.
|
| It's a bit sad because products used to come from trusted
| local vendors.
|
| Now, a whole host of health problems and diseases are
| gonna be cropping up in people due to e-commerce. I
| wonder if we can already see that with the prevalence
| statistics.
| beefield wrote:
| I dipped my toes to google ads the first time a few months ago.
| I am definitely not sure I understood it correctly, but I gave
| up very quickly as I got following impression[1]:
|
| 1. Google seems to define what are "relevant ads" for a given
| search term and if they are not deemed relevant, you are pretty
| much out of luck.
|
| 2. Google defines a minimum price for the auction, and won't
| show your ads below that _even if there are no other ads shown_
|
| 3. Google _very_ aggressively pushes for me letting them define
| my bids for the ads. Like... _What_? Who and why in their right
| minds would let them do that? Like me going to buy a phone and
| the sales clerk told me that okay, give me your wallet, I 'll
| tell you afterwards what you want to buy and how much you want
| to pay for it.
|
| [1]Also I admit, online ads were not that important for the
| business case, it was more curiosity than real need
| prepend wrote:
| > 2. Google defines a minimum price for the auction, and
| won't show your ads below that even if there are no other ads
| shown
|
| This is the most frustrating one for me. It's like if eBay
| enforced a minimum bid and wouldn't list items.
|
| It's not a true auction because of these minimum prices. It
| just doesn't seem fair and transparent.
|
| Of course, it's Google's site so they can choose what they
| like. Unless they start breaking laws.
|
| For now, it's just the annoyance of them not using "digital
| principles" by sticking to real world rules that they can
| make more money by adding friction rather than having an
| automated auction.
| lazide wrote:
| Google only wants to show ads that people will want to click
| on and are relevant, or they are wasting their own revenue by
| wasting the display slot.
|
| And one (but definitely not the most important one per your
| point #1) is how much someone is willing to pay for the slot.
|
| If you're paying $100/click, but no one ever clicks on it
| because it isn't relevant (like trying to sell real estate to
| someone trying to find used computer parts or whatever),
| they'll still not show the ad.
| jollybean wrote:
| This kind of rhetoric is problematically naive.
|
| Advertising effectiveness is often vague, but it also works
| well in many circumstances.
|
| It takes a certain kind of hubris to suggest that all these
| companies spending $500B on advertising have no idea what they
| are doing, and that if only they listened to HN/Reddit they
| could save so much money and make the world a better place.
|
| The issue here is to what extent G has manipulated their own
| auctions for their own benefit, and what kind of anti-
| competitive actions the relationship with FB amounts to.
| thrwyoilarticle wrote:
| >It takes a certain kind of hubris to suggest that all these
| companies spending $500B on advertising have no idea what
| they are doing
|
| And yet they don't.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28724806
| jollybean wrote:
| Oh gosh, please understand that none of this is new to
| anyone who works in the industry.
|
| Everyone knows how fuzzy it is. Everyone knows the scheming
| from the VP Marketing, to the Agencies, to the Exchanges
| etc..
|
| But we also know when it works, and when it works well. The
| more experienced marketers have an intuition for how all
| the various different marketing activities combine to form
| a synergy. And how it gets disproportionaly harder to do in
| a low cost way, to the extent that large, fat, profits
| exist that can be extracted.
|
| But that's no different than any other part of a company.
| P&G could drop 1/2 of their White Collar workers and
| probably figure out how to get along just as well. Union
| workers in Auto Plants have benefits that put them way
| ahead of what they'd have otherwise, but they have the
| power to extract it. Governments pay out to 'no bid
| contracts' - and especially lawyers - considerably more
| than they have to.
|
| Every sector of every industry is making sausage, the issue
| is to highlight the actually illegal stuff, and put some
| legal parameters around it.
|
| Google bidding on it's own auctions is a problem.
|
| Google's control over adjacent parts of the value chain is
| a problem.
|
| Google's metrics, if they were fabricated, that's a
| problem.
|
| But bad marketers that spend too much on ineffective
| campaigns, that's not a legal problem.
| jeromegv wrote:
| In every discussion about advertising you typically get a
| comment similar near the top that tells us that advertising
| never actually works.
|
| For a lot of us working in a related field, we know it to be
| false, there's plenty of online business that rely on online
| ads and are profitable.
|
| Yes they are invasive to your privacy. Yes some of them fake
| their effectiveness. Yes to all of that. But saying that
| advertising online doesn't work at all and we all bought into
| a giant scam is just not rooted in reality.
| jqpabc123 wrote:
| Please show evidence that Google's global privacy invading
| data collection network justifies their 3-4X premium in
| advertising cost over simple non-invasive alternatives.
| "Problematically naive" is assuming the cost is justified
| without any such evidence.
|
| Amazon's ad business is currently growing at a 70% annual
| rate by simply displaying ads based on search words ---
| probably because searching on their site is an overt
| expression of interest in making a purchase.
| webmaven wrote:
| _> Please show evidence that Google 's global privacy
| invading data collection network justifies their 3-4X
| premium in advertising cost over simple non-invasive
| alternatives_
|
| It really isn't. You can (maybe) justify a 2X premium on th
| basis of higher ad effectiveness due to superior
| performance. The rest of that margin comes from having the
| largest (by far) marketplace, which forces more buyers to
| bid against each other (raising ad costs), and more sellers
| to undercut each other (lowering publishers' ad revenues),
| in order to participate.
| floatingatoll wrote:
| I happen to to agree with you, but this demand for proof is
| untenable and doesn't promote good discussion. Any such
| proof would be guaranteed insufficient, as macroeconomics
| are by definition reductive and summary in nature, and the
| last thing we need is to nitpick econ to death in this
| thread.
| dragonelite wrote:
| The thing is people assume everybody that is browsing is like
| your average hackernews user. But my mom for example
| continuously clicks on those ads on Facebook. I my self
| sometimes click on ads that shows some tooling usually I then
| go to Alibaba and find the unlabeled tool for like 1/3 the
| price drop shippers or asking.
| wildrhythms wrote:
| I agree, reading these comments I get a sense of tunnel
| vision among tech-literate people. I used to work in IT and
| it is not hyperbole to say that average content consumers
| click on almost every even vaguely appealing ad put in front
| of them.
| corobo wrote:
| > There is very little evidence to show that invasive digital
| advertising is actually effective
|
| Wish.com would heavily disagree with you I'm sure. Almost
| everyone I know has ordered at least one thing off them, some
| use it more than Amazon these days for their overpriced useless
| junk needs
| criddell wrote:
| Where do they advertise? I've never heard of them...
|
| When I go to the website I can't see anything without logging
| in. What do they sell?
| cletus wrote:
| F Twitter threads. Seriously... just... stop.
|
| It's worth noting with all the revelations in the last couple of
| days, that at least some of them aren't new. For example:
|
| - "Jedi Blue: A Scandal That Highlights, Yet Again, The Need To
| Regulate Big Tech" (19 Jan 2021) [1]
|
| - "Facebook and Google allegedly cut a deal that reduced ad
| competition" (17 Jan 2021) [2]
|
| - "Google acknowledges it foresaw possibility of probe of 'Jedi
| Blue' advertising deal with Facebook" (7 Apr 2021) [3]
|
| I mean this is all fruit of the same tree, the states' suit, but
| it seems there's some revisionism here. What is new is parts of
| the suit that were redacted were recently unredacted.
|
| To be clear, these are fairly damning allegations and
| revelations.
|
| Personally, I find the most troubling allegations to be about AMP
| and ad market price-fixing.
|
| [1]: https://www.forbes.com/sites/enriquedans/2021/01/19/jedi-
| blu...
|
| [2]: https://www.engadget.com/facebook-google-jedi-blue-ad-
| deal-1...
|
| [3]: https://mlexmarketinsight.com/news-hub/editors-picks/area-
| of...
| dylan604 wrote:
| It's quite simple why people do Twitter threads. It's all about
| the stats for themselves. Everyone wants to be internet famous
| Ar-Curunir wrote:
| Lol so much armchair psychology going on here. According to
| your logic people publishing anything on the internet are
| doing it to become "internet famous"
| blowski wrote:
| I imagine you're probably right. But I still don't understand
| - why not have a single Tweet, with a summary of a blog post
| running on your own domain? Wouldn't that make you even more
| internet famous?
| gfodor wrote:
| Unlikely. Things which can be fit into Twitter threads
| generally are going to be more widely read and interacted
| with than if the same content were pushed to a blog.
| slimsag wrote:
| All people will do is switch over to Medium.
| qzx_pierri wrote:
| The "why do ANYTHING online if it's not monetized?"
| attitude is such a pernicious trend. The internet will
| only become more censored and more homogenized if people
| only ever use services that will silence any
| thoughts/opinions that aren't 'Advertiser Friendly'.
|
| Sure you could have ads pulled from your OWN website if
| you piss off an ad agency, but there are multiple ad
| agencies that exist. You can always switch providers.
|
| When you go to a private company like Medium, anything
| you say will get you de-monetized, AND there's no other
| way to earn again. Some people face this situation and
| then create their own website to build back up their
| buzz, but why not start at that point initially?
|
| I suspect this has something to do with the fact that the
| average 13-16 year old rarely opens their mobile web
| browser. To compete in 2021, you need an app. Something
| needs to change.
| dylan604 wrote:
| How many people actually click on links from Twitter vs
| just continue to scroll on past? Maybe "s/internet
| famous/twitter famous/"
| gfodor wrote:
| "Internet famous" russell conjugates to "having what you say
| be heard."
| [deleted]
| dls2016 wrote:
| Twitter threads are like powerpoint for people even dumber than
| powerpoint is for.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| I think they're fine if you have lots of information to
| digest and you want to see tidbits about something else.
|
| I came across this thread on my Twitter, was interested, so
| read parts of the linked complaint myself. I don't see what
| is bad about that?
|
| Now, linking to the thread on HN seems dumb, I'd prefer
| something long form.
| dls2016 wrote:
| > I think they're fine
|
| Perhaps if they weren't on twitter.com. The site is
| impossible to use if you're not signed in, especially on
| mobile. This is probably 85% of the problem, IMO.
|
| > I'd prefer something long form
|
| Yeah, except not too long and not on Medium, either...
| haha. I like the _idea_ of the constraints of a tweet and
| that a tweet thread (like a powerpoint) forces an economy
| of words. The tweet threads on HN are usually from high
| quality writers, so it 's not actually that terrible to
| read them. But you're still stuck in the same "cognitive
| style" as powerpoint.
|
| Maybe I'm simply old and my belief that "microblogging is
| an oxymoron" is wrong.
| dang wrote:
| Please don't do the Twitter thread complaint cliche thing on
| HN. It passed tedious a long time ago, and reliably generates
| terrible repetitive discussion.
|
| It's basically covered (as in excluded) by this site guideline:
| " _Please don 't complain about website formatting, back-button
| breakage, and similar annoyances. They're too common to be
| interesting._"
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| > - "Facebook and Google allegedly cut a deal that reduced ad
| competition" (17 Jan 2021) [2]
|
| something, something, cartel...
| echelon wrote:
| When can we send the leadership to federal prison instead of
| slapping them on the wrist with paltry fines?
|
| This has been used to inflate and extort advertising dollars. It
| has utterly trashed the web, gutted Mozilla, created a corporate
| tech monoculture controlled by platform giants, and led our
| social media engagement crisis.
|
| Break up these companies and send the leaders that approved of
| this to jail.
| csee wrote:
| Yep, jail sentences.
|
| Fines are good but don't work that well, even if they're large,
| because of agency conflict of interest. It's mostly the
| shareholders who are paying the price. The execs already saw
| their call option paid off with their 10 years of comp while
| they were running this scam (among others).
| sokoloff wrote:
| The shareholders reaped a lot of benefit along the way. It
| doesn't seem outrageous to have the company (the shareholders
| in aggregate) pay fines related to the behavior.
| csee wrote:
| That's part of the reason why I said fines were good.
| They're good both because it recovers some of the ill-
| gotten gains of shareholders (your point), but also because
| it incentives better governance.
|
| But due to agency problems, jail should be also be added on
| top for the most egregious violations. As an example, the
| HSBC execs that banked cartels should have gotten jail
| sentences.
| lazide wrote:
| The challenge historically was in making fines actually
| large enough to disincentivize doing it in the future. If G
| made $100 billion because of this, would the gov't be
| successful in getting a $200 billion fine? What if they got
| $100 billion in revenue, but an additional $400 billion in
| market cap? Is a $800 billion fine doable?
|
| Historically, it seems like the answers to those are solid
| no's, and after lawyers have argued it for a decade, the
| fines look more like $1 billion. Which skews things a lot.
| csee wrote:
| Small fines probably even help them in the long run since
| they tame popular anger. I'd almost prefer no fines (in
| contrast to small fines) so people can transparently see
| how unaccountable they are. Ideally we can get big fines,
| though.
| yawaworht1978 wrote:
| I agree, even a hefty personal financial fine which pushes
| people to the verge of bankruptcy will not impress these
| people. They will get a new high paying job eventually. The
| only adequate punishment is a long prison sentence and it
| would deter other people from doing the same. Btw, also send
| the "reports" IE management who enforces the project straight
| to prison with the bosses.
|
| Sounds radical, maybe, but all the other laissez-faire and
| self regulation approaches have not worked.
|
| A prison sentence also means not employable in the same
| salary segment ever again.
|
| These people hide behind large legal teams and always remind
| everyone about their large responsibilities. But when it
| comes to be responsible and liable to bad things, nothing
| much happens.
|
| Just prison, not like in china, where some executives have
| simply been executed.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| > Sounds radical, maybe, but all the other laissez-faire
| and self regulation approaches have not worked.
|
| Doesn't sound radical to me; "Give em all long prison
| sentences" sounds rather authoritarian.
| csee wrote:
| Agreed, and you'd only have to put a small handful of execs
| in prison to create a massive deterrence effect. Social
| climbers and the managerial class are a paranoid, highly
| socially ovservent, news attentive and risk averse bunch,
| petrified of reputational ruin.
| devnull3 wrote:
| > When can we send the leadership to federal prison
|
| Yeah, these companies make employees read & sign code-of-
| conduct, ethics etc. Hell, I was made to attend sessions
| explaining "values" of the company.
|
| The sheer hypocrisy ... only if execs walk the talk, the world
| would be a better place
| freen wrote:
| Well, if Starcom and Omnicom actually represented their
| clients, they would both sue and file criminal charges for
| fraud.
|
| They don't. So they won't. I wonder, to what degree the big
| agencies are complicit?
|
| If I spent any dollars at all on ads on either Facebook or
| google I would be filing criminal charges.
| matt123456789 wrote:
| Isn't this price fixing? That's a criminal federal offense.
| The US Government would have to bring the criminal charges,
| although you (and likely the FTC) could bring charges for
| damages.
| [deleted]
| tonetheman wrote:
| Can we finally get rid of AMP as part of all of this?
| tartoran wrote:
| Been using duckduckgo for the past year and AMP doesn't exist
| for me.
| wly_cdgr wrote:
| I don't think it's possible for something to have less sex appeal
| than an online advertising scam named after a star wars character
| DaveExeter wrote:
| Do code names have to be sexy?
|
| I think they were riffing off 'Have Blue'.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Have_Blue
| wly_cdgr wrote:
| Yes, but also, I'm talking about the thing as a whole, not so
| much the codename. The codename just makes it even worse,
| like calling a frontend developer a ninja makes the fact that
| you're wasting the best years of your life building forms and
| brochures even more depressing
| Havoc wrote:
| >The parties agreed up front on when and how often Facebook would
| bid in auctions, and when and how often Facebook would ultimately
| win.
|
| That sounds rather cartel-like
| kevinthew wrote:
| This sounds exactly like the LIBOR rigging scam, various
| commodity market scandals. People rightfully go to jail for
| this stuff -- meanwhile we see the big tech companies bid rig
| qnsi wrote:
| What can we as people in top 1% with 1) information about big
| tech abuses 2) skills to fix this do?
|
| Individually we can use browsers like firefox or brave and
| probably donate time or money to them, but I think it's not
| enough.
|
| I think we would need something like a movement against those
| abuses, but probably the biggest win would be a business model
| that could win with them in the free market.
|
| Is this possible? Has anyone tried something like this?
| jareklupinski wrote:
| individually we need to stop working for unethical companies
|
| we are the ones building these tools, reading these articles /
| comments sections, and talking with our colleagues and friends
| working on developing these products
|
| we just have to accept that our takehome might not be as large
| at the end of the pay-cycle. feels better spending it tho :)
| pixl97 wrote:
| Individually it doesn't work. Unethical behavior is generally
| profitable, more so then the ethical behavior it is 'out
| competing'. The Unethical groups then use this profit to buy
| out and corner the market.
| agumonkey wrote:
| and on a larger scale, a different social model with less
| consumerism, thus less ads and less big corps trying to
| ensure more profits by any means. The more we delegate the
| less we see. I don't like to transfer web to real world but a
| more peer to peer life could help. Sorry for the fuzzy
| comment but with the advent of advanced robotics and
| ubiquitous computing, we'll probably have no choice but to
| rethink daily lives.
| freen wrote:
| If you have spent money on google ads, contact your local
| attorney general.
|
| They may have defrauded you.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| I tell everyone about Firefox and uBlock Origin. Blocking
| YouTube ads is enough of an argument to convince anyone to at
| least try it out. I've never seen someone who didn't love the
| ad-free web experience. It's actually safe to just install this
| software on random computers: people's quality of life will be
| invisibly yet thoroughly improved, they will notice that things
| are just better even if they can't explain why. They'll be a
| lot safer from malware too.
|
| The objective is to reduce the return on investment of
| advertisers as much as possible. This will only happen in
| significant enough numbers once a significant portion of the
| population is blocking ads. It's our moral imperative to spread
| ad blocking technology far and wide.
| fidesomnes wrote:
| that is way obsolete by now. you need to be using Brave with
| ublock origin, this dns service https://github.com/Ultimate-
| Hosts-Blacklist/Ultimate.Hosts.B... ClearURL's, HTTPS
| Everywhere, and Random User Agent. I also use whoogle for a
| local privacy enhancing filter of google data with all ad
| elements stripped out (and that is if I even use google I
| usually use ddg).
| A__Account wrote:
| Firefox barely runs though. I've had to start opening up Edge
| just to get Reddit to load because FF slows to such a crawl.
| hdjjhhvvhga wrote:
| There might be something wrong on your system. I switched a
| long time ago but sometimes run chrome to compare
| performance, and it's on a par.
|
| If you come across a site where the performance is
| noticeably worse than in Chrome, it may be worth notifying
| the owner. The alternative is to live in a Google-
| controlled dystopia.
| Drdrdrq wrote:
| > If you come across a site where the performance is
| noticeably worse than in Chrome, it may be worth
| notifying the owner.
|
| There is an exception to this - G sites routinely run
| slower on FF, but this is very likely how Google wants it
| to be.
| lapinot wrote:
| > It's actually safe to just install this software on random
| computers
|
| +1, i actually did this a couple times on some friends
| computer when i noticed they hadn't any blocker installed
| (although i did tell them afterwards).
|
| Let's run a crowdfunding to rent some maleware on shady forum
| to install ublock origin without consent :)
| bqmjjx0kac wrote:
| Huh, I think it's really critical to understand that the ad
| blocker is there, so you can turn it off sometimes. I run
| across forms all the time that silently fail to submit until
| I turn off the ad blocker.
| klyrs wrote:
| Protecting the top %.01 appears to be just about the only thing
| that both parties can agree on.
| MomoXenosaga wrote:
| Don't vote Republican.
|
| But they decrease my taxes! Too bad pay up.
| cryptonym wrote:
| Install Firefox and ublock on every single device of friends
| and family, including mobiles. Reject walled garden not
| allowing blocking ads.
| tjpnz wrote:
| That combination works but it doesn't solve the issue for
| apps and smart devices. At that point your only real options
| are PiHole or a VPN with builtin ad filtration.
| 323 wrote:
| How ironic...
|
| If you browse HN from 10 years ago, you'll see exactly the
| same advice, except instead of "replace Chrome with Firefox"
| it was "replace IE with Chrome".
| [deleted]
| rvense wrote:
| Of course. Google are every bit as bad for society as
| Microsoft are (and ever were).
| ilaksh wrote:
| The solution to the technopolies is decentralized technologies.
| I used to write full explanations of how that would work, but
| my comments about it always get buried. So I don't bother
| really explaining anymore.
| Zenax wrote:
| Data intermediaries - our data is placed there, like our cash
| in a bank - and Fuckerberg and Co have to pay us for access.
| Like the banks pay us interest for giving them cash. Point
| being Google, FB, Twitter et al pay out more and get less and
| therefore are less exploitative douchebags whose activities and
| unintended consequences at scale are also less.
|
| Well explained here - https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Np5ri-KktNs
| salawat wrote:
| Poison pill. You're assuming and entrenching the practice of
| gathering such heaps of data and tracking behavior are okay
| to do in the first place. Remember, the money is a symptom of
| the root problem. A microcosm of humanity has built a
| surveillance infrastructure to monitor the rest with no
| consent. That's the problem.
| boudin wrote:
| Can a campaign like Mozilla did to promote firefox when ie6 was
| a monopoly work?
|
| Promote a different browser when someone uses chrome with the
| possibility to get explanations about it. Contacting admins of
| sites that only works in chrome, this kind of thing.
|
| Could this information be used to try to push chromium based
| browser like brave and edge to switch to another engine,
| lowering the influence of google on the web?
|
| This will not adress the whole google service spectrum but
| chrome is the trojan horse for a lot of google strategies.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| > Can a campaign like Mozilla did to promote firefox when ie6
| was a monopoly work?
|
| Yes; it worked. somehow, they blew the goodwill away.
|
| /me still a Firefox user. I'll fly away if something better
| comes along - FF is very much a compromise.
| swiftcoder wrote:
| > a business model that could win with them in the free market.
|
| The entire point here is that the market is not, at least in
| this particular instance, "free". When a market is very
| explicitly being manipulated by a cartel who jointly hold a
| monopoly position over said market... they are in a position to
| prevent effective competition permanently.
| Fervicus wrote:
| I am very much interested in furthering this discussion. Every
| so often there is something big like this in the news, we talk
| about it for a few days and then forget about it. Nothing
| substantially changes. No big consequences for the guilty. How
| do we fix this?
| dcow wrote:
| Stop using their junk. Delete your facebook, switch to
| fastmail or protonmail. Join patreaon and support content
| creators directly. There are plenty of things you can do you
| just have to start doing them.
| Fervicus wrote:
| Me, and I am sure, several other people on here do several
| of these things. It makes a difference, but it's not
| enough. We need some action at a much bigger scale.
| jqpabc123 wrote:
| _... the biggest win would be a business model that could win
| with them in the free market._
|
| The alternative business model is so simple and is already in
| place --- simply advertise based on expressed interest.
|
| This is what DuckDuckGo is doing very effectively. Show ads
| based on search words. No global, privacy invading network
| required. Amazon is doing the same quite effectively. Their ad
| business is growing by leaps and bounds simply by showing ads
| based on search terms.
| beambot wrote:
| I'm not sure if include Amazon in the list of privacy
| conscious providers:
|
| https://nypost.com/2021/10/19/i-found-an-amazon-folder-
| with-...
| S04dKHzrKT wrote:
| Agreed. I have recruiters reaching out to me on one of my
| older spam email addresses (in addition to my personal
| address). They are clearly doing some sort
| tracking/correlation.
| dzonga wrote:
| stop working at those companies. but a good number of people
| around these parts have already decided going through fb/google
| hazing is worth it for the paycheck. screw ethics. you already
| know, once a company reaches monopoly position, a lot of
| corners have been cut and it has been unethical. that's a
| discussion HN at large is not ready to have atm.
| yobbo wrote:
| How would anyone compete with a scam business model? Ad buyers
| don't care if it's effective. Or rather they need convincing-
| looking gibberish to convince their bosses that they're
| worthwhile. Bosses don't want to seem stupid and are afraid of
| missing out, so they let it continue.
|
| I suppose a free-speech distributed search service could make a
| difference if it was actually better than google. Imagine with
| distributed hosting similar to mail/dns-servers, where ISP:s
| could redirect their traffic to local mirrors.
|
| _Really slick_ alternatives to walled-garden apps as
| interfaces to standard protocol services like imap /matrix/etc,
| and make sure the servers are reliable and painless to set up.
| jollybean wrote:
| "Ad buyers don't care if it's effective." Yes, they
| definitely do.
| RNCTX wrote:
| That in itself requires clarification. There have been
| years in which Facebook is caught lying about as metrics in
| all 12 months.
|
| Do ad agencies care if x number of units sell, or do they
| care that a report cause the commission check to clear? I
| say the latter, more typically.
| jl6 wrote:
| You could refuse to hire anyone who has worked for ad-tech in
| recent history.
| yosito wrote:
| How does forcing people who recently made a bad judgement
| call to continue making a bad judgement call achieve anything
| positive?
| singron wrote:
| Maybe the people leaving ad-tech are the people you should
| hire? FB and Google pay top compensation, so anyone who
| doesn't work there anymore probably decided to eschew money
| for some other purpose.
|
| E.g. I didn't know how gross ad-tech was until I saw how the
| sausage was made.
| alexashka wrote:
| > What can we as people in top 1% with 1) information about big
| tech abuses 2) skills to fix this do?
|
| Go into politics.
|
| Yes, that simple. Easy? No. Simple? Yes.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| >What can we as people in top 1% with 1) information about big
| tech abuses 2) skills to fix this do?
|
| support politicians and lobbyists with your money / influence
| that are in favor of bringing robust anti-trust legislation to
| bear on the companies in question. The free market mythology is
| just one of the reasons we are in this situation to begin with.
| crawfordcomeaux wrote:
| How about killing debt? Removing the gates we've built around
| resources for human needs? A computer virus to promote a
| culture of interdependence?
| monopoledance wrote:
| Incentivize the economy to not overproduce bullshit ad nauseam.
| Vote with your wallet, and push for it culturally, or
| spiritually - offer alternative experiences and goals to
| consumerism. Stop working for companies producing products
| nobody asked for, which are made for "economic growth" as a
| goal in it self. (If your factual constraints allow for it.)
|
| As long as there is this enormous pressure to sell you ever
| more things, nothing will change for the better... just change:
| More influencers, more product placements and sponsor guided
| "content", more MLM type bullshit all around. Someone will
| figure out how to recruit your friends and family to explicitly
| advertise the next innovation in problem creation inside your
| last domain of unquestioned trust and honesty - mark my words!
| How about a gamified "hit" on your friends? Getting big-data
| intelligence briefings and some psychological guidance on
| someone you used to care about, and some shitty internet points
| as reward for their conversion: "Agent 1337biz, your next
| target is your colleague John Doe. The file is transmitted as
| we speak. Further our influence, your loyalty will be rewarded!
| Hail, Hydra".
| cacois wrote:
| You aren't addressing the question. The poster asked what
| specifically tech workers could do. You are giving examples
| of things _anyone_ could so to help fix the situation, aside
| from "just stop working for them".
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Platitudes.
|
| > Stop working for companies producing products nobody asked
| for
|
| What is this in reference to? Nobody asked for Google to
| create their ad marketplace? No, there is huge demand for and
| complicity with targeted ads among millions of small
| businesses.
| monopoledance wrote:
| Working for Google and Facebook has other ethical
| implications.... but that's not what I was referring to.
|
| > huge demand
|
| That's my point.
|
| Stop working for those small and big businesses in need of
| pushing solutions to problems they invented.
|
| Tho, you seem to imply an ideological/apologetical take on
| the economy, which isn't exactly helpful, in any case. The
| tautology "it exists because it exists" can comfortably
| offer absolution for anything and anyone, because no one is
| in control, no one has responsibility. I get the appeal for
| coping, but it's a self-fulfilling-prophecy at best,
| religious glorification of apathy at worst. It is not,
| however, the inherent nature of things.
| Angostura wrote:
| > Stop working for those small and big businesses in need
| of pushing solutions to problems they invented.
|
| I've been trying to think of examples, but it's
| difficult.
|
| Google originally thrived because its Search engine
| pushed a solution for a well-established problem. It's ad
| business solved a problem for advertisers - and site
| operators who wanted things simplified. Even Facebook
| offered a way for people to keep in touch using a medium
| more convenient than e-mail.
| monopoledance wrote:
| I don't believe you.
|
| Landfills rapidly filling with last year's "innovation"
| and people getting increasingly dissatisfied with their
| jobs, because they lost touch with the actual product
| they are allegedly working on, should be an indication on
| a larger scale...
|
| Apart from all those wonders of petrol-chemistry, like
| fast-fashion: Short smartphone cycles with minuscule
| improvements; Uber and food delivery services offering
| nothing, but minor convenience in exchange for a race to
| the bottom in worker exploitation (very genius. such
| innovation.); e-scooter sharing services disposing LiPo
| batteries in every larger city's water bodies; X as a
| service; everyone having advice for sale; every fart
| commercially exploited...
|
| Sorry, I really don't believe you, if you tell me you
| haven't noticed the economy getting high on its own
| supply. C'mon, whole sectors are "content creation" and
| engagement manufacturing for the sake of selling ads, or
| creating yet another f2p mobile game optimized for
| getting the kidz addicted.
|
| I mean, just turn off adblock and see for yourself.
| Someone made all that shit!
| cianmm wrote:
| I think more whistleblowers and legal ramifications for C-level
| execs (prison time preferably since they can happily pay any
| fine thrown at them) is the only real way to do it at this
| point.
| agumonkey wrote:
| The few experiences I had with whistleblowers is that it's
| way too sensitive and may never be handled officially by any
| system/government. They would have done it already :).
| specto wrote:
| I suppose it's true most people here (not me) is part of the 1%
| but man it seems strange no one questions this.
| thr0w72594 wrote:
| The big tech companies (and more) act as a cartel, doing things
| for each other to kick out smaller rivals or just censor and
| deplatform people and groups they don't like. This is just
| evidence that it's more than wink-and-nod deals, which I think
| most of us suspected anyway.
|
| Social media, search, payment processors, hosting sites... they
| all work in lockstep for the benefit of the cartel. We lose
| privacy, opportunity, and freedom and these companies gain more
| power.
|
| There needs to be a bigger crackdown on the power that these
| companies hold, and not just when some documents happen to leak.
| America is in the best position to do this theoretically, but
| neither head of the American uniparty even pretends like they're
| going to do anything about it.
| intricatedetail wrote:
| Google and Facebook are the biggest threat to democracy by the
| influence they have. I think such influence should be regulated
| and controlled.
| 323 wrote:
| Let's not blame a whole company for what some small part of it
| did.
|
| Google does a lot of good in this world. They were the first
| "ethical" tech company, the first tech company with "hacker
| values" at heart. "do no evil" is still a core value there.
| dotancohen wrote:
| One bad apple does spoil an entire bunch.
| dralley wrote:
| > Let's not blame a whole company for what some small part of
| it did.
|
| I think it's clear that it wasn't just one small part of
| Google. Multiple teams were involved in different projects
| aimed towards the same general goal.
|
| And to the extent that it was a "small part", it's because
| there was an active effort to try to prevent it from leaking.
| That hardly counts in their favor.
| anonymousab wrote:
| > Let's not blame a whole company for what some small part of
| it did.
|
| Let's absolutely blame them. Titanic power requires titanic
| responsibility, and requires titanic consequences for shirking
| or betraying that responsibility.
|
| These companies make a tradeoff, playing fast and loose in
| order to move faster at their scale. But the consequence of
| that tradeoff is that, when they do stumble, when they do
| commit evil, the hammer must come down all the fiercer. Because
| they knowingly choose a structure and a way of operating that
| was prone to such outcomes.
| djsbs wrote:
| I disagree with everything you say, but:
|
| " They were the first "ethical" tech company,"
|
| What does that even mean? Unless you equate "ethical" with
| manipulating their dominant social position to shove a
| worldview you happen to agree with.
|
| Which is a very... narrow understanding of ethics. As well as
| convenient, and, historically, trite (socially advantaged
| person agrees w/ the worldview a social institution imposes
| that reinforces and explains their privilege)
| 323 wrote:
| > What does that even mean?
|
| Read HN from 10 years ago. Posters were gushing about how
| cool and amazing Google is, how much good they are doing to
| the tech industry, how more companies should be like than and
| do ethical things like they do, for example support open
| standards and source instead of proprietary systems.
|
| They were saying that Google is a company run by techies who
| value hacking ethics ideals and not by business men who only
| care about money.
| djsbs wrote:
| I first joined HN ten years ago.
|
| So that was sarcasm? Wow that went over my head. Makes
| sense though.
| vehemenz wrote:
| If you're suggesting Google is the same company from ten
| years ago, I think your position is in trouble.
| tartoran wrote:
| No, google is not what it started off as. They dropped the do
| no evil moto long time ago
| greenyoda wrote:
| Big discussion of the original source (the 173-page antitrust
| complaint that's referenced in this tweet):
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28975222
|
| A full article on Jedi Blue:
|
| _" Google acknowledges it foresaw possibility of probe of 'Jedi
| Blue' advertising deal with Facebook"_
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28975782
|
| A big discussion of an article on "Project NERA":
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28974798
| ColinWright wrote:
| Brilliant ... thanks for the cross-references.
| dang wrote:
| Also related:
|
| _An enormous thread on alleged Google Facebook collusion_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28965949 - Oct 2021 (335
| comments)
| aronpye wrote:
| TTDR
| mabbo wrote:
| It takes two things for programs like "Jedi Blue" to happen.
|
| First, you need sociopaths in leadership positions who champion
| this 'great idea' they've figured out. These people often rise up
| in large companies because they are willing to do this sort of
| thing without any remorse.
|
| But second, you need developers to build it. A large number of
| them, usually, for a big project like this.
|
| Dozens of people like us knew they were building a piece of
| software that was obviously illegal. Oh sure, management had
| probably told them some version of "but you see, it's legal
| because...". At a company that spent decades claiming they only
| hire the smartest people in the world, that doesn't pass the test
| for me- they had to know.
|
| Which means that the people who built this fall into two
| categories, in my mind. Those who understand they're doing
| something illegal, but don't care- future sociopath leaders
| themselves. And those who know it's illegal but are too cowardly
| to walk away, to whistle blow, to do something about it.
| vadfa wrote:
| What you are saying is that morals and laws are the same thing,
| which they are not. Laws can very well be immoral, and sense of
| morality depends entirely on each one of us.
| JasonFruit wrote:
| That's a smooth attempt to make this an argument about
| semantics.
| mabbo wrote:
| No, I'm not saying that. I'm saying that ethics should matter
| when choosing where you work and on what you work more than
| laws.
|
| I'm saying anyone willing to work on an obvious unethical or
| illegal project is either an accomplice or a coward.
| vadfa wrote:
| First, you edited your comment and removed all references
| to "law"/"illegal" you had made.
|
| Also, I'm saying that your sense of ethics is not
| universal.
| [deleted]
| meibo wrote:
| I believe financial crime like this is far easier to be "on
| terms" with, if you're already in a system/team that condones
| it, since it has no direct victims. X Bank and AdTech startup Y
| might hurt, but there's no real impact.
|
| There's also the fact that by the time you notice that
| something's off, you might already have implicated yourself in
| the crime and are afraid of getting in trouble. Probably not
| what happened in this case, but it does happen.
| Jiro wrote:
| Blaming the developers is blaming the guys in the trenches.
| Developers are not lawyers, and the law is so complicated and
| so divorced from any sort of common sense that I don't think if
| I were in the position of one of those developers, I would have
| been able to tell that it was illegal. There is no such thing
| as software that is "obviously illegal" outside of cases like
| DMCA circumvention or cryptography export laws, and maybe not
| even then.
| breakingcups wrote:
| Developers aren't drafted soldiers with no choice but to
| defend their country either.
| mcrae wrote:
| All this presupposes that what the AG has written is correct,
| and that what happened was actually illegal. Generally a court
| of law decides that.
|
| Since none of this has been proven, maybe it would be prudent
| not to throw all of the folks who work there under the
| sociopath or coward bus?
|
| A cursory reading belies the authors don't fully understand the
| mechanics of the industry (eg, the broken analogy comparing an
| ad exchange to a stock exchange), so I'll reserve judgement
| personally.
| tomjen3 wrote:
| Why would they care? Write this code that will make us more
| money and cost the advertisers some. Don't tell anyone.
|
| I don't now when this goes from being illegal to being just
| aggressive business. As long as I am not in trouble, I can also
| sleep well at night, even if some advertisers make less than
| they otherwise would have.
|
| In fact, I can sleep very, very well.
| coliveira wrote:
| You are assuming that developers really know the implications
| of what they're doing. The reality is that, apart from a few
| that made the effort to understand the whole situation, most
| are kept on the dark about the real implications of each piece
| they're building. That's the "genius" of modern management, and
| why they want to make each software engineer a little cog in
| their machine.
| mavhc wrote:
| If no one wrote DRM software we wouldn't have DRM.
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