Banned from Google Ads for Using Apple Card • Hacker News Board

Re: Banned from Google Ads for Using Apple Card

#111

Post by raverbashing » Fri, Aug 30, 2019, 8:59 PM UTC

Marsymars wrote: post #79

jonknee wrote: post #2

Google's classic canned response of "We've confirmed we're right, we will not tell you why and this is the last reply you'll receive" is one of the most infuriating things I can imagine. I make my income primarily through AdSense and live in fear of that email one day. In this scenario it seems pretty obvious that their automated fraud AI messed up, but the customer service person is probably also automated. They hav…

> Google's classic canned response of "We've confirmed we're right, we will not tell you why and this is the last reply you'll receive" is one of the most infuriating things I can imagine. For non-negligible damages, heading immediately to small claims court (given you live in a sensible jurisdiction) seems to be the easiest thing in that case. Even if Google's ultimately in the right, they typically can't just ignor…

Really, sometimes people forget (and I'm guilty as charged) they live in a society with laws and legal recourses.

It's not as simple as "Google can cut you off no questions asked whenever they feel like it"

Re: Banned from Google Ads for Using Apple Card

#112

Post by Marsymars » Fri, Aug 30, 2019, 8:59 PM UTC

ianferrel wrote: post #108

Marsymars wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google's classic canned response of "We've confirmed we're right, we will not tell you why and this is the last reply you'll receive" is one of the most infuriating things I can imagine. For non-negligible damages, heading immediately to small claims court (given you live in a sensible jurisdiction) seems to be the easiest thing in that case. Even if Google's ultimately in the right, they typically can't just ignor…

What damages can you prove? Google presumably hasn't signed a long-term contract with you to provide any services or continue a business relationship. Is "We don't want to do business with you any more because our algorithm isn't smart enough to differentiate what you're doing for fraud" actionable?

> What damages can you prove?

Well, that really depends on the case and jurisdiction, I can't answer that for you. Really, the key part is to force Google to actually provide reasoning for their actions, as they eventually did in the case I edited in links for.

Re: Banned from Google Ads for Using Apple Card

#113

Post by asdfasgasdgasdg » Fri, Aug 30, 2019, 9:01 PM UTC

lonelappde wrote: post #105

jacekm wrote: post #100

The stories like this can be heard every now and then and I think we all agree that Google's customer support could be vastly improved. But taking a step back, I am finding this particular story slightly suspicious as the site seems a little bit weird to me. The domain is only 4-months old and the entire site is almost empty, it consists of just a couple "reviews" of mostly VPNs and password managers and the author h…

What was the debunking?

It's linked in the top comment. https://www.reddit.com/r/google/comments/8l231x/google_banne... Not so much a debunking as an absolute denial that the circumstances described transpired. It's difficult to prove a negative.

Re: Banned from Google Ads for Using Apple Card

#114

Post by bagacrap » Fri, Aug 30, 2019, 9:02 PM UTC

jxdxbx wrote: post #26

Google's actual policies state that it accepts virtual cards. https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/2375433?hl=en

which makes me think this person was banned for some other violation

Re: Banned from Google Ads for Using Apple Card

#115

Post by benologist » Fri, Aug 30, 2019, 9:05 PM UTC

trollsund wrote: post #76

zeta0134 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This whole practice reeks of being downright fraudulent. Especially with a new technology like Apple Card, which folks will understandably not have a strong familiarity with. I get that Google needs to combat fraud and all that, but they should at least inform the customer of why such a drastic action (a permanent ban! !!) was taken with almost no warning. Really, any respectable company in this situation would simpl…

> Really, any respectable company... Here's the issue. From my perspective, Google used to be a respectable company, but through automation of customer handling and service they've elected to accept negative consequences and impact for customers - which isn't a very respectable position to take in my book.

You say "elected to accept" but I'd like to correct you - they designed their company that way by choice and they continue knowing at worst, one day, one of their lawyers will attend court and be told what new things are required to be compliant. Then, at worst, their lawyers will haggle over the details. Then they will change things within that one jurisdiction.

Re: Banned from Google Ads for Using Apple Card

#116

Post by scohesc » Fri, Aug 30, 2019, 9:05 PM UTC

jonknee wrote: post #2

Google's classic canned response of "We've confirmed we're right, we will not tell you why and this is the last reply you'll receive" is one of the most infuriating things I can imagine. I make my income primarily through AdSense and live in fear of that email one day. In this scenario it seems pretty obvious that their automated fraud AI messed up, but the customer service person is probably also automated. They hav…

It's absolutely fucking mind-boggling how these large, impenetrable silicon valley companies (mainly google here) like to hide behind their "algorithms".

"Oh, sorry your main method of making money was terminated, we won't tell you why or how we came to that conclusion - must have been the algorithm, sorry!"

What's that old saying - "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity"? I'm starting to think that these massive companies aren't stupid and that they're actually designing their algorithms behind this and using it as a scapegoat to push their own agenda.

Re: Banned from Google Ads for Using Apple Card

#117

Post by ineedasername » Fri, Aug 30, 2019, 9:06 PM UTC

Yet another example of how Google "support" seems modeled on the senseless, frustrating, and destructive systems warned of in Kafka. Opaque rules and literally inhuman inflexibility. The problems is Google can suffer any number of these small scale gaffs without consequence, while any truly large account would probably be given the courtesy of outreach before a blind suspension, and real live support afterwards if it went that far. So for now they can do this with impunity. However with the Spectre of Amazon ads on the horizon true competition may arise, and Amazon has decent support. As things stand now, anyone starting out would be well advised to steer clear of relying on any part of Google services for critical needs.

Re: Banned from Google Ads for Using Apple Card

#118

Post by jacekm » Fri, Aug 30, 2019, 9:07 PM UTC

bauerd wrote: post #14

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I make my income primarily through AdSense and live in fear of that email one day. Perhaps you should change this? If you're aware your entire livelihood is a game of Russian roulette, you should maybe work on making it something else.

I second this, recognising my Google account as a giant SPOF made me invest heavily into redundancy. I've gotten closer and closer to the point where I can realistically consider Google services as ephemeral.

I took similar approach a while ago. I don't run google ads and I am not doing any business with them but I have lots of important data on my Google Drive (personal backup) that I really wouldn't want to lose. One day I read a story of a guy who had his account shut down for posting a video (innocent in his own claims) to youtube. As a result he lost access to his gmail and Drive too. This was a wake up call for me as I realised that I could be denied access to my data for whatever reason. I have several additional copies now, both on local hard drives and different cloud providers.

Re: Banned from Google Ads for Using Apple Card

#119

Post by CobrastanJorji » Fri, Aug 30, 2019, 9:10 PM UTC

alanfranz wrote: post #13

Beyond the fact that I don't understand why a virtual card should be a problem, I think that this era of "we can deny you a service and tell you nothing" should stop. It's one of the biggest issues of the modern internet. I understand that laws are different around the world. In Italy, whatever is defined as a "public exercise" - anything offering its services to the anybody, be it a shop, a store, a cafè, a restaura…

> It's one of the biggest issues of the modern internet.

It's one of the biggest issues of the modern Internet that affect us: relatively rich, privileged people engaged in business primarily on the Internet. It's one of the smaller issues for most of the users of the Internet, who have much more significant problems, like governments spying on their Internet use, governments blocking big sections of the Internet, corporate monopolies making only certain parts of the Internet free and others prohibitively expensive, fraud, and all sorts of other problems.

Re: Banned from Google Ads for Using Apple Card

#120

Post by PerilousD » Fri, Aug 30, 2019, 9:13 PM UTC

and yet you're still lining up to use Google? I dropped out of the Google ad system many tears ago when I realized the game was rigged (in their favor) and the only way to "win' was not to play. So when I read stories like yours which pop up frequently for Google - I cant help but think you're probably an intelligent person so "what's your point?"