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

Re: Banned from Google Ads for Using Apple Card

#211

Post by alanfranz » Sat, Aug 31, 2019, 7:40 AM UTC

vageli wrote: post #93

alanfranz wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> many places, for example, will accept Visa and Mastercard but not Discover. But that's explicit and the same for everybody. If you accepted Discover from somebody and not from somebody else, THAT would be discrimination. Discriminating the credit card somebody is using without telling anybody... well, could still be discrimination. Younger people could be more prone to use an Apple card, couldn't them? Can you demo…

> > many places, for example, will accept Visa and Mastercard but not Discover. > But that's explicit and the same for everybody. If you accepted Discover from somebody and not from somebody else, THAT would be discrimination. > Discriminating the credit card somebody is using without telling anybody... well, could still be discrimination. Younger people could be more prone to use an Apple card, couldn't them? Can yo…

Right. I got a terrible example.

Re: Banned from Google Ads for Using Apple Card

#212

Post by jaclaz » Sat, Aug 31, 2019, 8:01 AM UTC

alanfranz wrote: post #72

weinzierl wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From Google's point of view it's more like: "Sorry, I cannot accept this bill, and since you presented counterfeit money to me once, then you are prevented for the rest of your life to enter these premises again". I'm not saying this is right, but I think it's the more apt analogy.

At least there's a reason AND a felony. If a customer steals at my restaurant, that's a good reason to deny him service forever. But I'll probably contact police about it as well.

Well, but then, even in our not-so-perfect world, there are still some nuances based on the actual (criminal) act.

The customer would be arrested by the police, then he/she would be subject to a trial and IF actually found guilty would be sentenced to - say - six months of jail.

If he/she had actually killed someone, then he/she would probably get thirty years or a life sentence.

But here we are still talking about someone who (BTW presumably in good faith) presented the "wrong" piece of paper (a fake bill that he maybe got as change from another restaurant) at the counter of your restaurant to pay the bill, and that was (again presumably) ready to give you another "good" banknote to pay for the service.

I don't think (actually hope) the restaurant owner would call the police for this.

Re: Banned from Google Ads for Using Apple Card

#213

Post by gambiting » Sat, Aug 31, 2019, 9:16 AM 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…

I wonder why more people don't take Google to court over this. Yes, you'd need extraordinary funds to fight them properly, but on the other hand them sending anyone to court will also cost them extraordinary amount of money - so I imagine before they accept any such legal challenge they would ask the CS department to actually have a look at the case first. Having a lawyer send them a letter saying that you are going to take them to court is comparatively cheap compared to having your entire AdSense account shut down.

Re: Banned from Google Ads for Using Apple Card

#214

Post by blub » Sat, Aug 31, 2019, 9:17 AM UTC

pgcj_poster wrote: post #204

quanticle wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I don't think Hanlon's Razor applies to large companies. Individual humans tend to have reasonably powerful moral compass's, but make a lot of mistakes due to lack of information, focus, and error checking. For humans, it makes sense to assume "stupidity" rather than malice. On the other hand, companies like Google have tons of the smartest people in the world making decisions, but they tend to put profit over morali…

Agreed, but I don't think this sentence is true: "In a sense, they have to, or else they'll be out-competed by someone who does."

No they don't. It would be fine for everyone if instead one of being one of the richest companies in existence they would only make the top 10.

Re: Banned from Google Ads for Using Apple Card

#215

Post by gambiting » Sat, Aug 31, 2019, 9:20 AM UTC

arielm wrote: post #187

raverbashing wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, that's certainly what they want you to think ;) I suppose there are a couple of issues that haven't been tested in court. But besides that, anything you paid and wasn't rendered as services needs to be refunded. It doesn't look like they refund it most times, no?

The problem is that regardless of whether they are or not, getting to a point where a judge looks it over is a process most can’t go through with an opponent like Google.

Again, depends on the jurisdiction, but in the UK filling for a small claims court case would be like £125? And if they don't show up the case will almost certainly be ruled in your favour and Google ordered to pay back whatever they owe you - plus any court costs you incurred. It's really not that difficult. Even paying a lawyer £100 to write and send them a letter "you have 7 days to fix this or we're going to court" would most likely achieve better result than trying to contact their useless customer service.

Re: Banned from Google Ads for Using Apple Card

#216

Post by dragonwriter » Sat, Aug 31, 2019, 9:39 AM UTC

gambiting wrote: post #213

quanticle wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I wonder why more people don't take Google to court over this. Yes, you'd need extraordinary funds to fight them properly, but on the other hand them sending anyone to court will also cost them extraordinary amount of money - so I imagine before they accept any such legal challenge they would ask the CS department to actually have a look at the case first. Having a lawyer send them a letter saying that you are going…

Sure, if you have an actual colorable claim of a violation of a legal right, wave the threat of court action. But also recognize that that escalation can work two ways...

> but on the other hand them sending anyone to court will also cost them extraordinary amount of money

Alphabet has $117 billion cash on hand, they can handle the cost. In fact, they can handle the cost of a scorched earth defense more easily than the cost of getting a reputation for rolling over everytime someone waves the threat of a small claims action.

> so I imagine before they accept any such legal challenge they would ask the CS department to actually have a look at the case first.

More likely, once they get that kind of letter, the legal department will probe the CS records of related to the issue to determine the legal position. They might then suggest just giving you want you want, or they might then send you a nice letter from their attorney about how they are prepared to make a claim for (e.g.) civil fraud for the deceptive action that they were previously willing to leave with an account termination, and that if they do so it will far exceed the small claims limit and they will use that counterclaim to move to transfer your case out of small claims.

Re: Banned from Google Ads for Using Apple Card

#217

Post by howdisposs45 » Sat, Aug 31, 2019, 10:13 AM UTC

kube-system wrote: post #195

howdisposs45 wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

to me, your explanation doesn't really explain how an active development team can ignore that issue. If it were just a handful of users talking about an esoteric corner case I could maybe understand.

Those users aren't paying customers. Besides, it does appear to be a corner case. It has ~200 upvotes. Gmail has 1.5 billion users. That's 1 in 7,500,000. If every single one of them quits using Gmail, and they tell all of their friends, and all of their friends quit using Gmail , Google will still be able to tell their paying customers that those ads reach 1.5 billion users.

There are other threads about it. Plus, it happened to me - so the most likely explanation from my end is that it happens in 100% of cases ;).

http://www.google.com/search?q=mail+stuck+in+outbox+gmail

A single quora answer alone has 20k views. Do you think that's a normal number of views on a quora answer? How many views do you think that quora answer should have for you to think it's a problem? 200k? 2m? 20m? 200m? 2b?

(A single quora answer does not represent everyone who has a problem. Maybe 0.01% of people with a specific problem will end up reading a specific quora answer. So I think that 20k represents 200 million users, or more than 10% of Gmail's userbase. While we're just throwing around made up numbers. Maybe it's 100% of installed gmail for android apps with that problem. (Since not every gmail user uses android, uses the android app, and uses it to send mail.)

Anyway I think up to 100% of the android app users could be affected.

Still, you answered the question: perhaps the development team doesn't feel that 20,000 reports is a priority. Maybe the salt and pepper manufacturer doesn't care that every one of their pepper shakers doesn't let peppers out. 20,000 complaints just don't matter.

Important people use iPhone anyway.

Re: Banned from Google Ads for Using Apple Card

#218

Post by ben_jones » Sat, Aug 31, 2019, 2:32 PM UTC

julianee wrote: post #147

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…

Unfortunately they practice these sorts of policy on the app store as well. We've been saying Google does this, Google does that. The thing is, a company is composed of its people. I am just curious, how does something like this, something most people with reasonable sense of "fairness" would flag as concerning and potentially very wrong, comes to be implemented? Even more so for a large company like Google? (smaller…

I think Google employees view their services as a gift to users who should be grateful and understanding of any deficiencies.

Re: Banned from Google Ads for Using Apple Card

#219

Post by thiht » Sat, Aug 31, 2019, 4:17 PM UTC

zeta0134 wrote: post #8

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…

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…

> new technology like Apple Card

what?

Re: Banned from Google Ads for Using Apple Card

#220

Post by thekyle » Sat, Aug 31, 2019, 4:57 PM UTC

zwerdlds wrote: post #200

mleonhard wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Companies producing Android apps have no choice.

F-Droid is one alternative to the Play Store.

Or even just distribute it via their website like Fortnite.