Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Google has a secret deal with FB called “Jedi Blue” that they knew was illegal

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 428 posts

Re: Google has a secret deal with FB called “Jedi Blue” that they knew was illegal

#51

Post by beefield »

jqpabc123 wrote: post #4

Hello advertisers. You are being manipulated and abused just like the consumers you are targeting. There is very little evidence to show that invasive digital advertising is actually effective. When was the last time you clicked on one of these ads and actually made a purchase? Bad for consumers and bad for advertisers. Why continue with this opaque, profit sucking charade that mainly enriches those selling the ads?

I dipped my toes to google ads the first time a few months ago. I am definitely not sure I understood it correctly, but I gave up very quickly as I got following impression[1]:

1. Google seems to define what are "relevant ads" for a given search term and if they are not deemed relevant, you are pretty much out of luck.

2. Google defines a minimum price for the auction, and won't show your ads below that even if there are no other ads shown

3. Google very aggressively pushes for me letting them define my bids for the ads. Like... What? Who and why in their right minds would let them do that? Like me going to buy a phone and the sales clerk told me that okay, give me your wallet, I'll tell you afterwards what you want to buy and how much you want to pay for it.

[1]Also I admit, online ads were not that important for the business case, it was more curiosity than real need

Re: Google has a secret deal with FB called “Jedi Blue” that they knew was illegal

#52

Post by SimeVidas »

JustFinishedBSG wrote: post #50

The most "surprising" thing for me as a mathematician is that Google publishes a lot of top notch research on bidding and pricing theory. But it's all rigged in the end. So Google pushed the perverseness as far as basically creating a fake research lab to cover it all.

Maybe Google’s researchers are kept out of the loop.

Re: Google has a secret deal with FB called “Jedi Blue” that they knew was illegal

#53

Post by cyborgx7 »

Closi wrote: post #48
jqpabc123 wrote: post #4

Hello advertisers. You are being manipulated and abused just like the consumers you are targeting. There is very little evidence to show that invasive digital advertising is actually effective. When was the last time you clicked on one of these ads and actually made a purchase? Bad for consumers and bad for advertisers. Why continue with this opaque, profit sucking charade that mainly enriches those selling the ads?

> When was the last time you clicked on one of these ads and actually made a purchase? Also how often are the metrics inflated by people who were going to purchase anyway? I was booking a holiday yesterday and knew the company I wanted to book from - I typed in their name and clicked on the top result as that was the company I wanted. When I clicked back I noticed that they had the top two results - the first was an…

I read a lot of companies buy advertising specifically for their own name, because if they don't, a competitor will, and will appear first when someone googles the company name.

Re: Google has a secret deal with FB called “Jedi Blue” that they knew was illegal

#54

Post by jollybean »

jqpabc123 wrote: post #4

Hello advertisers. You are being manipulated and abused just like the consumers you are targeting. There is very little evidence to show that invasive digital advertising is actually effective. When was the last time you clicked on one of these ads and actually made a purchase? Bad for consumers and bad for advertisers. Why continue with this opaque, profit sucking charade that mainly enriches those selling the ads?

This kind of rhetoric is problematically naive.

Advertising effectiveness is often vague, but it also works well in many circumstances.

It takes a certain kind of hubris to suggest that all these companies spending $500B on advertising have no idea what they are doing, and that if only they listened to HN/Reddit they could save so much money and make the world a better place.

The issue here is to what extent G has manipulated their own auctions for their own benefit, and what kind of anti-competitive actions the relationship with FB amounts to.

Re: Google has a secret deal with FB called “Jedi Blue” that they knew was illegal

#55

Post by JustFinishedBSG »

SimeVidas wrote: post #52
JustFinishedBSG wrote: post #50

The most "surprising" thing for me as a mathematician is that Google publishes a lot of top notch research on bidding and pricing theory. But it's all rigged in the end. So Google pushed the perverseness as far as basically creating a fake research lab to cover it all.

Maybe Google’s researchers are kept out of the loop.

Well I imagine so. But it still means google management decided to fund (relatively expensive) top notch research just to act as a front for their criminal operation.

Re: Google has a secret deal with FB called “Jedi Blue” that they knew was illegal

#56

Post by aspenmayer »

bellyfullofbac wrote: post #27

I remember in 2nd grade, a kid brought a note from his parent which was written in a few dozen tiny Post-It notes. The teacher was furious about the improperness of the format of the message. That just came to mind seeing yet another too-fucking-long Twitter thread.

Your vapid comment is even lower effort than this canned response.

Re: Google has a secret deal with FB called “Jedi Blue” that they knew was illegal

#57

Post by csee »

sokoloff wrote: post #44
csee wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, jail sentences. Fines are good but don't work that well, even if they're large, because of agency conflict of interest. It's mostly the shareholders who are paying the price. The execs already saw their call option paid off with their 10 years of comp while they were running this scam (among others).

The shareholders reaped a lot of benefit along the way. It doesn’t seem outrageous to have the company (the shareholders in aggregate) pay fines related to the behavior.

That's part of the reason why I said fines were good. They're good both because it recovers some of the ill-gotten gains of shareholders (your point), but also because it incentives better governance.

But due to agency problems, jail should be also be added on top for the most egregious violations. As an example, the HSBC execs that banked cartels should have gotten jail sentences.

Re: Google has a secret deal with FB called “Jedi Blue” that they knew was illegal

#58

Post by Closi »

cyborgx7 wrote: post #53
Closi wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When was the last time you clicked on one of these ads and actually made a purchase? Also how often are the metrics inflated by people who were going to purchase anyway? I was booking a holiday yesterday and knew the company I wanted to book from - I typed in their name and clicked on the top result as that was the company I wanted. When I clicked back I noticed that they had the top two results - the first was an…

I read a lot of companies buy advertising specifically for their own name, because if they don't, a competitor will, and will appear first when someone googles the company name.

You are right - That’s another practice is morally dubious (And imo should be outlawed!)

(Not on the purchasing companies side, but on google selling keywords for someone’s brandname which effectively forces companies into bidding for their own name)

Re: Google has a secret deal with FB called “Jedi Blue” that they knew was illegal

#59

Post by jollybean »

yobbo wrote: post #26
qnsi wrote: post #8

What can we as people in top 1% with 1) information about big tech abuses 2) skills to fix this do? Individually we can use browsers like firefox or brave and probably donate time or money to them, but I think it's not enough. I think we would need something like a movement against those abuses, but probably the biggest win would be a business model that could win with them in the free market. Is this possible? Has a…

How would anyone compete with a scam business model? Ad buyers don't care if it's effective. Or rather they need convincing-looking gibberish to convince their bosses that they're worthwhile. Bosses don't want to seem stupid and are afraid of missing out, so they let it continue. I suppose a free-speech distributed search service could make a difference if it was actually better than google. Imagine with distributed…

"Ad buyers don't care if it's effective." Yes, they definitely do.

Re: Google has a secret deal with FB called “Jedi Blue” that they knew was illegal

#60

Post by thr0w72594 »

The big tech companies (and more) act as a cartel, doing things for each other to kick out smaller rivals or just censor and deplatform people and groups they don't like. This is just evidence that it's more than wink-and-nod deals, which I think most of us suspected anyway.

Social media, search, payment processors, hosting sites... they all work in lockstep for the benefit of the cartel. We lose privacy, opportunity, and freedom and these companies gain more power.

There needs to be a bigger crackdown on the power that these companies hold, and not just when some documents happen to leak. America is in the best position to do this theoretically, but neither head of the American uniparty even pretends like they're going to do anything about it.

Post reply on HN