Shutup! I heard they pay well. /s Programmers here at HN could stop this behavior in a minute. They do not care about you.
How exactly could programmers stop this?
Work elsewhere.
Google just deleted my nearly 10-year-old free and open-source Android app
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Re: Google just deleted my nearly 10-year-old free and open-source Android app
#22Re: Google just deleted my nearly 10-year-old free and open-source Android app
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
How exactly could programmers stop this?
Work elsewhere.
If all the Google programmers who're here at HN started working elsewhere nothing significant would really happen. Google would continue to operate the same way. Except maybe making it to the front page of HN would stop functioning as an ad hoc appeals process for Google decisions.
Re: Google just deleted my nearly 10-year-old free and open-source Android app
#24Shutup! I heard they pay well. /s Programmers here at HN could stop this behavior in a minute. They do not care about you.
>Programmers here at HN could stop this behavior in a minute.
Thousands of others would replace them next minute, so why do you think it would change anything?
Re: Google just deleted my nearly 10-year-old free and open-source Android app
#25The nasty part with those sudden removal/bans from AppStore’s/ services is that they say:
You’ve violated something.
You’re blocked.
You know why!
Imagine going with that approach to a child...
Without explaining or suggesting the rationale it’s closer to very dark dictatorship instead of providing something closer to a decent legal system where you can appeal and a system that should make justice.
With those companies it’s more like a field trial.
Re: Google just deleted my nearly 10-year-old free and open-source Android app
#26Re: Google just deleted my nearly 10-year-old free and open-source Android app
#27The easiest way to identify a monopoly is to look at how badly a company can treat its customers and still get away with it. My company has a half dozen stories like this about Google in the last year alone. Know what Google is doing to its AdSense partners on a massive scale? They wait until your site has just under the earnings when they have to write you a check, then they terminate your AdSense account for “polic…
I would want any company that is abusing their power to face consequences. However, it wouldn't surprise me one bit to find out that some of these companies complaining about getting banned are legitimately doing something wrong and their only cards to play are hoping for a political reaction, rather than suing Google in court and being exposed for why they were actually banned.
No idea why this comment is getting downvoted. It's like an arms race out there, where every trick in the book is being used to manipulate people and capture their attention.
Few years back I had an option to work on a recommendation system for a large video hosting service used by most media companies. They allowed me to spend two weeks with their engineering and sales teams. It was scary to say the least. The number of companies and layers of infrastructure all just mindlessly optimizing for ad clicks, watching viewers being bought and sold in real time like some kind of mad fish market, targeting of specific groups purely because they are hooked to the content rather than a valid target for the ad etc etc etc. I got out of there as fast as I could.
There is a category of dumb people in the world, who don't have the capacity to understand how dumb they are, nor does humanity yet posses the skills to enlighten them in a timely and effective manner.
Historically this group's stupidity has had localized effects. Today thanks to a global network they are hooked into, the effects of their mindlessness is amplified to levels no one has ever imagined.
At the beginning they do what they are told to do or what people around them are doing. And if they get very good at it and you tell them to stop because its causing issues, they wont. They cant. There is nothing sophisticated, that can be done about them other than cutting access to the network. This will take decades to fix.
When people sit around wondering (and coming up with all kinds of reasons which further obscure things) why they see random, inexplicable events happening all over the world, ask them to take a peak behind the curtain, at the mindless mega machine that is the ad serving ecosystem.
Re: Google just deleted my nearly 10-year-old free and open-source Android app
#28The easiest way to identify a monopoly is to look at how badly a company can treat its customers and still get away with it. My company has a half dozen stories like this about Google in the last year alone. Know what Google is doing to its AdSense partners on a massive scale? They wait until your site has just under the earnings when they have to write you a check, then they terminate your AdSense account for “polic…
I would want any company that is abusing their power to face consequences. However, it wouldn't surprise me one bit to find out that some of these companies complaining about getting banned are legitimately doing something wrong and their only cards to play are hoping for a political reaction, rather than suing Google in court and being exposed for why they were actually banned.
What would that lawsuit allege? Under contract law, companies have a right to terminate their dealings with others, for any or no reason. Maybe it would be good if there was a law restricting that for these platforms, but as far as I know, there isn't. So I don't see how a lawsuit could be successful.
Re: Google just deleted my nearly 10-year-old free and open-source Android app
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
Work elsewhere.
If all the Google programmers who're here at HN started working elsewhere nothing significant would really happen. Google would continue to operate the same way. Except maybe making it to the front page of HN would stop functioning as an ad hoc appeals process for Google decisions.
That's what everyone says about bad places. That's what they always say when asked to do terrible things.
There will be people they could hire, but it wouldn't be anyone that would get invited to conferences, and so on. Nobody that would make Stanford proud.
People who work at Google know they are working for a terrible company doing terrible things (there are plenty of those...) but those programmers, every single one of them, is able to easiliy work somewhere else. It isn't like they are warehouse workers slaving for Amazon.
Re: Google just deleted my nearly 10-year-old free and open-source Android app
#30Shutup! I heard they pay well. /s Programmers here at HN could stop this behavior in a minute. They do not care about you.
Downvotes incoming! Other explanations from Google programmers: "the work is interesting"
Just because the company is doing shitty things doesn't mean that every engineer does.
Plus, imagine how it could work in reality. You finally got your place at Google. You know what the company is doing. And at some point you are asked to work on one of these grey things. What do you say, that it's immoral? If so, where exactly do you draw the line? Who is to decide what's still acceptable and what not? You've known for years that Google is tracking everyone. Moreover, most of it is perfectly legal. In any company, whenever you say "no" to your manager you need to have a solid ground. I can't imagine anyone even starting such a conversation.