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Why are currently no ads on Techdirt? apparently Google thinks we're dangerous

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Re: Why are currently no ads on Techdirt? apparently Google thinks we're dangerous

#11

For some reason I read the comments... "Someone who hates you is doing this on purpose" reads one. While I have NO IDEA what that's about, it does make me wonder, can people cause trouble for their competition through ad sense by doing things to cause the site to be dropped like this? That comment says it's because someone is leaving bad comments on the site, which seems unlikely, but I've read other stories about DM…

Yes, I can use a programmatic ad exchange such a Google’s to push ads on a site that would result in a negative experience for visitors. The creative review process is pretty lax. I haven’t heard of a documented attack, but it would be easy to grief a small site in such a way.

Re: Why are currently no ads on Techdirt? apparently Google thinks we're dangerous

#12
post #4

It's refreshing to see an assumption of incompetence rather than malice, since I seem to have come across the idea that Google is questionably motivated by ideology rather a lot recently. One thing I don't understand is why Google continues to try to use algorithmic solutions for content moderation. Surely the frequent false positives ends up hurting potential revenue? And would it not be able to hire people to at le…

>It seems one could even argue that Google's focus on algorithmic rather than human solutions is a kind of harmful ideology It's the kind of ideology that you often find in people who think they are smarter than everyone else.

Imagine being plucked from college at 22 and getting payed 200k+ total compensation with an introduction telling you how you're now one of the best at your field working with the smartest people in the world... how you're changing the world before you've even been on-boarded.

Re: Why are currently no ads on Techdirt? apparently Google thinks we're dangerous

#13
post #4

It's refreshing to see an assumption of incompetence rather than malice, since I seem to have come across the idea that Google is questionably motivated by ideology rather a lot recently. One thing I don't understand is why Google continues to try to use algorithmic solutions for content moderation. Surely the frequent false positives ends up hurting potential revenue? And would it not be able to hire people to at le…

After incompetence and malice, there’s a third option, or maybe a blend of two: arrogance and laziness.

They’ve been sitting on top of the world for a while. The results sometimes speak for themselves.

As a case in point, for over a full decade they have been flagging their own emails, that they send, that they know I signed up for, as spam. For a decade. Possibly as long as two decades.

Re: Why are currently no ads on Techdirt? apparently Google thinks we're dangerous

#14
post #4

It's refreshing to see an assumption of incompetence rather than malice, since I seem to have come across the idea that Google is questionably motivated by ideology rather a lot recently. One thing I don't understand is why Google continues to try to use algorithmic solutions for content moderation. Surely the frequent false positives ends up hurting potential revenue? And would it not be able to hire people to at le…

The explanation could be that Google would prefer to use the excuse that "it's our objective algorithm that downranked our competitors, not us!"

And before you say "Aha! There you go assuming malice instead of incompetence" - keep in mind that Google has used this "our algorithm is objective so we don't manipulate what appears on our search pages" for years and years. It's the go-to strategy they use to appear neutral when called upon by governments.

Facebook has also attempted something similar in recent cases.

Re: Why are currently no ads on Techdirt? apparently Google thinks we're dangerous

#15
post #4

It's refreshing to see an assumption of incompetence rather than malice, since I seem to have come across the idea that Google is questionably motivated by ideology rather a lot recently. One thing I don't understand is why Google continues to try to use algorithmic solutions for content moderation. Surely the frequent false positives ends up hurting potential revenue? And would it not be able to hire people to at le…

>It seems one could even argue that Google's focus on algorithmic rather than human solutions is a kind of harmful ideology It's the kind of ideology that you often find in people who think they are smarter than everyone else.

As someone who is in a similar domain / company, no one knows how to do this at planet scale unless you narrow it down to a very short list (which is typically very large sums of money).

My back of napkin math from another comment:

I work in a similar space and it is significantly complex and expensive to do this. Back of the napkin math - * Lets say on average customers contact Google support once a year for each product they use. That's 0.25 tickets per user per quarter. * Consider Google has ~10billion monthly productuser combinations (9 products have 1B+, most have significantly more) That is 2.5M tickets/support requests a quarter. ~28M tickets a day * If we consider an average ticket take ~3 mins to resolve, thats ~155k hours a day * If we take an employee being productive for 7 hours a day, that's 22k employees * If you take a 1:10 ratio, that is 2205,220 and 22 - 1st, 2nd and 3rd line managers. * Take the cost to be an average of 30k,60k,150k and 300k for each of those layers, thats ($661, $132M, $33M, $6.6M) which totals to ~$833M per quarter * The real world costs for this will probably be anywhere between 2X to 3X of this because all of these people come with other costs like infrastructure, tooling, space, etc. So we are looking at ~$1.7B to $2.5B.

One might be tempted to say that money can be saved vs my estimates but keep in mind the challenges of localization, time zones, compliance etc is also significant and will probably mean an even larger expense.

So yeah, it would be ~40% of the quarterly profit.

Sure this is an expense so tax etc can be changed but my argument would be that we are severely underestimating the complexity and challenge at each step.

So yes, I do think it will never make economic sense unless you are on the platform with sufficiently high spend. Just like every single other economic system we have out there.

Re: Why are currently no ads on Techdirt? apparently Google thinks we're dangerous

#16
post #4

It's refreshing to see an assumption of incompetence rather than malice, since I seem to have come across the idea that Google is questionably motivated by ideology rather a lot recently. One thing I don't understand is why Google continues to try to use algorithmic solutions for content moderation. Surely the frequent false positives ends up hurting potential revenue? And would it not be able to hire people to at le…

Because Google has a skin in the game. It is a de-facto monopolist in the online advertisement business, and online search. And it's only the political goodwill that keeps it safe from antitrust scrutiny.

So, it's a kinda wink-wink nudge-nudge pact, that Google politically aligns with the Democrats, and the Democrats turn a blind eye on Google's monopolistic state.

There are plenty of examples, just try searching "Newsom Estate" on Google [0] vs DuckDuckGo [1] and count critical vs. approving articles out of first 10 results.

[0] https://www.google.com/search?q=newsom+estate

[1] https://duckduckgo.com/?q=newsom+estate

Re: Why are currently no ads on Techdirt? apparently Google thinks we're dangerous

#17
post #3

> Sometimes it was "dangerous and derogatory content." Sometimes it was "shocking content." So Google turned the filter sensitivity up to 11 just now huh? I don't get why techdirt insists that that is not about ideology.

Is there something ideological about phishing protections?

Re: Why are currently no ads on Techdirt? apparently Google thinks we're dangerous

#18
Open markets require a fair and impartial judiciary.

I really wish Congress' investigations would put more emphasis on the practical, pragmatic issues. Like lack of accountability, lack of appeal, absence of recourse.

Establishing tort (civil justice), more or less.

Re: Why are currently no ads on Techdirt? apparently Google thinks we're dangerous

#19
I don't know if this is the case with techdirt, but by far the most common reason why sites and domains (for mail) end up getting flagged is because their resources have been hijacked by organized criminals and are being used for crime, unbeknownst to the people who own the domains. So if this ever happens to you your first instinct should be to question your own production security situation, not to assume that Google has gone off the rails.

Re: Why are currently no ads on Techdirt? apparently Google thinks we're dangerous

#20

For some reason I read the comments... "Someone who hates you is doing this on purpose" reads one. While I have NO IDEA what that's about, it does make me wonder, can people cause trouble for their competition through ad sense by doing things to cause the site to be dropped like this? That comment says it's because someone is leaving bad comments on the site, which seems unlikely, but I've read other stories about DM…

Yes, I can use a programmatic ad exchange such a Google’s to push ads on a site that would result in a negative experience for visitors. The creative review process is pretty lax. I haven’t heard of a documented attack, but it would be easy to grief a small site in such a way.

I remember an old blog that was trolled by having homoerotic ads plastered all over it, but looking into the details now they just bribed the server master.
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