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

Re: Banned from Google Ads for Using Apple Card

#171

Post by wolco » Fri, Aug 30, 2019, 10:50 PM UTC

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #4

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…

> 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.

At one time I felt like I was going to be one of those people but very glad I decided to keep working as additional income because a few years later it slowly declined when google decided big brand were more important search results.

I feel like if you get your traffic from a source and also sell on that platform at some point the company sees you are successful and cuts you out. We see it with google search result taking content and presenting it at the top. Or Amazon scanning for profitable niches on the platform and pushing their own product.

Re: Banned from Google Ads for Using Apple Card

#172

Post by pvg » Fri, Aug 30, 2019, 10:55 PM UTC

6gvONxR4sf7o wrote: post #155

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…

When these things happen, the pattern is always 1) shit happens, 2) company is unhelpful in resolving 3) victim writes it up and it ends up getting some publicity (e.g. front page of HN) 4) company says they're sorry and fixes the problem. As I read OP, I wondered what I'd do. I guess I'd have to write it up on my mostly empty, pretty much dead blog. It would look weird and out of place on my mostly empty blog. Then…

That's not the pattern 'always'. There are lots of such cases where the writer's account turns out to be inaccurate in key details. Sometimes inadvertently, sometimes less so. And companies don't always swoop in to apologize and resolve the issue.

Re: Banned from Google Ads for Using Apple Card

#173

Post by Gibbon1 » Fri, Aug 30, 2019, 10:57 PM UTC

jacekm wrote: post #118

bauerd wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

I feel like people are slowly learning that one shouldn't use google for anything important unless there is no other option. Hardware equivalent is Intel for anything but PC and laptop microprocessors. Intel acts the same way google does. And people in the hardware business avoid Intel products when alternatives exist.

Re: Banned from Google Ads for Using Apple Card

#174

Post by awinter-py » Fri, Aug 30, 2019, 11:05 PM UTC

traditional credit card companies waged contractual war with merchants for decades to ban cash discounts

new payment tech will have a similar uphill battle to get people to treat them equally

Re: Banned from Google Ads for Using Apple Card

#175

Post by microtherion » Fri, Aug 30, 2019, 11:05 PM UTC

wrs wrote: post #150

microtherion wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But as I've argued above, maybe the deterrent effect is a feature , as long as it's the use of virtual cards that is deterred and not the use of Google products.

Wouldn't you say that banning you from using Google products forever is a pretty darn effective way of deterring you from using those products?

That would be one way of looking at it. But the OP took the opposite conclusion, that one should avoid using Apple Card. So we have one user who is using neither Apple Card nor Google products, and a number of his readers, who are deterred from using Apple Card.

Re: Banned from Google Ads for Using Apple Card

#176

Post by mcbits » Fri, Aug 30, 2019, 11:10 PM UTC

If indeed they're banning accounts for using virtual cards, I see a parallel with the early days of Gmail. You couldn't use a Gmail account to sign up for a lot of sites because short-sighted admins categorically prohibited all free webmail accounts. In their minds, the only "real" email addresses were at AOL, Earthlink, employers, universities, etc. Never mind that Gmail was invite-only and probably a much stronger indicator of a legitimate person at the time. The victim grows up to become the bully.

Re: Banned from Google Ads for Using Apple Card

#177

Post by Gibbon1 » Fri, Aug 30, 2019, 11:18 PM UTC

GeekyBear wrote: post #80

AceJohnny2 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Read on for the salient part. > This Senior Agent #2 was not as supportive as the first, and gave me information that contradicted Senior Agent #1: “Your account has been permanently disabled,” he said. “There is nothing else you can do, there is no escalation path.” > When I asked for an explanation as to why, all he would say is, “See the terms and conditions.” Ultimately, the author was able to get out of that dea…

The salient fact is that the user was easily able to contact customer support, find out exactly what the issue was, provide documentation showing what had happened, and appeal an adverse decision all the way to the top. This is significantly different than "we won't tell you what the issue is and we won't even accept communications from you".

All this stuff reminds me of an article I read 35 years ago about the dispossessed in the Soviet Union. People whose records had been lost by the system. And so officially to the state they didn't exist. What out that they couldn't get jobs or housing. Their only hope was to appeal to a bureaucrat with enough power to re-instate them.

Re: Banned from Google Ads for Using Apple Card

#178

Post by scarface74 » Fri, Aug 30, 2019, 11:22 PM UTC

I'm writing this to warn anyone else that intended to use the card online that you may experience... difficulties. And if you're planning on using the Apple Card for anything important, think again.

Isn’t the better conclusion after almost a decade of people dealing with Google’s customer “service” and reading about how non responsive they are is not to base your livelihood on anything Google related?

If your business plan is at all depending on Google, it’s probably a bad one.

Re: Banned from Google Ads for Using Apple Card

#179

Post by scarface74 » Fri, Aug 30, 2019, 11:24 PM UTC

quanticle wrote: post #71

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…

I think an application of Hanlon's Razor ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor ) is applicable here. Google is in an oligopolistic position (along with Facebook) in the online ads space. Therefore, they face zero consequence for having extraordinarily poor customer service. As a result, they optimize their customer "service" to minimize work for themselves. I ran into a very similar situation with my gas c…

“Google is in an oligopolistic position (along with Facebook)”

The real issue is that too many people are depending on advertising to support their business plan instead of the tried and true - making a product that people are willing to give you money for.

Re: Banned from Google Ads for Using Apple Card

#180

Post by iamben » Fri, Aug 30, 2019, 11:25 PM UTC

xoa wrote: post #164

iamben wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I kinda get the virtual card thing - it's pretty hard to get a credit card. Assuming you can create infinite virtual numbers you could, theoretically (and I appreciate it's probably not the case here as the poster has account history), switch/cloak/whatever a whole bunch of high converting against policy stuff until the account is banned, at which point you set up a new ad account, new virtual number and start again.…

> I kinda get the virtual card thing - it's pretty hard to get a credit card. I'm not sure you do? Because virtual cards are credit cards, afaik they're exclusively credit card linked, or at least bank account linked through a debit card type system. You need to have a standard card/account to get one (and at least in America getting a credit card is utterly trivial though it may not be a good one granted) and have i…

> I'm not sure you do?

As in, I get why Google might want to not allow them, I'm not arguing the concept of them in general. As for the pain side - it's comparatively hard to get an actual, physical credit card with a new number if you're burning through one every week by getting your ad account blocked.

> Virtual credit cards are still linked to you.

No, not necessarily. Google "anonymous virtual credit card" - takes about 10 seconds to find one offering "Any name, any address, NO ID Virtual credit card". I'm not arguing there's zero trail - but if you wanted to run a bunch of shady ads, this would be a pretty good starting point.

> But literally everyone does have something to hide

Definitely not arguing this, I completely agree. I'm not saying Google are right, I'm not saying the system isn't stupid. And as someone who's had their card cloned multiple times, I understand how much it sucks and how nice it would have been to have had a virtual number.

The point in my original post was simply that I'd guess a whole bunch of the ad fraud / spam ads / cloaked ads come from virtual credit card numbers. Again, I have absolutely no idea, but I imagine thats a big and painful problem for Google. Prior to the Apple Card, I think it's safe to say the bulk of credit card users weren't using virtual numbers. I'm guessing someone in an office at Google said "if we ban accounts using virtual CCs we'll cut fraud by X%" and the small amount of false positives probably make that worth it - how many of their large spenders use virtual card? And if they do they probably have their own rep. Hence the problem in the original article.