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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

#71

Post by srndpty »

madacoo wrote: 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…

If no one tries it, no one will ever get it right. Sure, they could do it alongside real support in a simulated way, but that doesn't seem like it fits with their MO.

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

#72

Post by jorams »

input_sh wrote: post #9

I play this game with Google every month or so when the webmaster console reports some mobile experience issues, but when I do a manual scan, there are no issues. So I mark them as resolved and then there are no issues for the next month or so.

I've also seen several Search Console issues that displayed a "Last Crawled" date months or years in the past. They had long since gone outdated. In some cases the entire website had been replaced by that point.

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

#73

Post by benlivengood »

madacoo wrote: 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…

My guess is that it's pretty simple. There are ML models predicting the ad quality score; when the predicted outcomes for a site/account don't match reality it is a strong signal that something is wrong. Other inference models determine what is likely being violated on the site or by the account. A human has no chance of digging through the model to figure out exactly what causes the flagged outcome. The only solution is trying various changes on the site and seeing what the models and clickers/consumers think of it unless you want to try to pay Google to deepdream your site for you with their inference models; good luck with that.

It's not worth it for Google to fix rare edge cases; fixing them manually may even bias the models to cause problems for a greater number of sites. I am sure the models are trained as well as humanly possible; there are millions of dollars on the table at the fringes. Every employee's time is most valuably spent improving the models as a whole and not chasing down one-off edge-cases unless it's for a very high profile client. I am sure there are whitelists (and blocklists).

Accept AdSense for what it is; a highly-profitable-for-Google way to use ML to turn HTTP into $$$. It will not work for every site, only 99.99xx% of them.

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

#74

Post by sandworm101 »

scottrogowski wrote: post #49

A few months ago, I tried experimenting with Google ads to drive some traffic to a side project of mine which was basically a chess-over-videochat website. A little more than 40 impressions later, it was taken down for being "in violation of our Google ad policies". There was never any indication what the violation actually was. I replied and asked several times hoping to get a human to tell me what I had actually do…

>> videochat

Big red flag. If you are connecting random people via video chat you open yourself to all sorts of abuse. I'm not saying that it is happening on your service, just that advertizers (and therefore google) are wary of videochat.

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

#75

Post by jariel »

madacoo wrote: 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…

"I don't understand is why Google continues to try to use algorithmic solutions for content moderation"

That's really easy to understand.

Humans cost money, algorithms are free.

Also, Google is full of the kind of people that 'don't understand humans' and 'understand algorithms very well'.

To Google, the answer to all of life's problems is probably 'an algorithm'.

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

#76

Post by luckylion »

thatguy0900 wrote: post #25
luckylion wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There have been several waves of attacks where somebody posted malicious ads via Adsense that would use JS to redirect visitors to a different page. In the cases I was involved with, they were only targeting mobile traffic and redirected to a scam-site that asked users to download an app to fix a virus etc. We've reported it, never heard back from Google. It went away after a few days each time, and hasn't happened i…

Crazy something like that was even allowed to continue for a few days

My guess is that they ran it on smaller sites only and targeted those. In my case, it was a "entertainment news"-site that pulled in about 3-5k visitors/day back then - enough to get a lot of victims seeing your ad but not enough that they'd have a direct line to Google or have their own IT people.

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

#77

Post by haecceity »

jasonv wrote: post #64
esperent wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know much about adding ads to a website like this. Is there really no alternative to Google?

I've been reviewing self-service ad sales & serving plugins for Wordpress sites and my conclusion would be: no, there isn't.

Bing?

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

#78

Post by bluGill »

I've never understood why media companies don't treat ad sales as a core business. They are in the business of delivering ads to eyeballs, so why are they outsourcing their core business.

I can see outsourcing the ad platform. However sales should be in house, and they should exercise editorial control over who is allowed to advertise.

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

#79

Post by wtracy »

sandworm101 wrote: post #74
scottrogowski wrote: post #49

A few months ago, I tried experimenting with Google ads to drive some traffic to a side project of mine which was basically a chess-over-videochat website. A little more than 40 impressions later, it was taken down for being "in violation of our Google ad policies". There was never any indication what the violation actually was. I replied and asked several times hoping to get a human to tell me what I had actually do…

>> videochat Big red flag. If you are connecting random people via video chat you open yourself to all sorts of abuse. I'm not saying that it is happening on your service, just that advertizers (and therefore google) are wary of videochat.

If that's the reason, it would be nice for Google to come out and say so.

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

#80

Post by nomel »

madacoo wrote: 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…

> One thing I don't understand is why Google continues to try to use algorithmic solutions for content moderation.

I don't mean to sound condescending, but I think the answer to this question would be much clearer to you if you took a moment to try to comprehend the scale that google operates in.

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