Banned From Making Money, These YouTubers Share Their Stories • Hacker News Board

Re: Banned From Making Money, These YouTubers Share Their Stories

#21

Post by chimi » Mon, Dec 03, 2012, 4:56 PM UTC

jonknee wrote: post #14

chimi wrote: post #3

These stories are getting tired. Google is too big to investigate every single exception to their machine rules. We know. We get it. When you have 100 accounts, you can devote time to every exception. When you have 100,000,000 accounts you can't. You have to automate it and with 100,000,000 accounts there are going to be a lot of exceptions to the rules. Even a failure rate of 0.0001% would be enough to fill that che…

These aren't people who are using a free email service, they are people who are directly generating your company revenue. In many cases a meaningful amount of revenue (Google keeps ~30% so if someone is generating just $1,000 a month that's $3,600 a year directly for Google). If there is ever a case worthy of using company resources, it's for activities that directly affect its bottom line. Google seems to have bad s…

So then why don't you build your own content delivery system and advertising network and create a marketplace with enough advertisers to bring you the same level of income?

If not for Google, you may not have a dime of that money you've earned. I mean, maybe not, right? If so, then you'd have to have gotten that money through someone else doing what Google is doing right? Why not just switch to them if Google does you dirty?

The underlying point here is that you are not Google's customer -- the advertiser is -- and it's in your, Google's, and the advertiser's best interest to treat the advertiser better than they treat you. Otherwise, the customer is going to go to another network that doesn't let fraudsters game them out of click fees.

How many articles have we seen about Facebook doing exactly that? That's much worse IMO. If I'm giving you money, you better be taking it legitimately. If I'm taking your money, the onus is on me to prove I have taken it honestly. If not, I'd totally expect Google to keep the money -- and they don't keep the money -- they give it back to the advertiser or never charge them to begin with.

If you or the other people around here were to keep the money an advertiser gave you and then complained about being fraudulent -- even if it wasn't -- then you'd soon be faced with tons of articles saying "They kept my money even though bots were clicking!!"

And you'd soon be out of business because no one would give you any money.

Google is making the right decisions here. Face it.

Re: Banned From Making Money, These YouTubers Share Their Stories

#22

Post by Vivtek » Mon, Dec 03, 2012, 4:57 PM UTC

chimi wrote: post #3

These stories are getting tired. Google is too big to investigate every single exception to their machine rules. We know. We get it. When you have 100 accounts, you can devote time to every exception. When you have 100,000,000 accounts you can't. You have to automate it and with 100,000,000 accounts there are going to be a lot of exceptions to the rules. Even a failure rate of 0.0001% would be enough to fill that che…

Spoken like someone who's never dealt with Google's lack of customer service. And where did you get that magical number?

Re: Banned From Making Money, These YouTubers Share Their Stories

#23

Post by knowaveragejoe » Mon, Dec 03, 2012, 4:57 PM UTC

falcolas wrote: post #4

chimi wrote: post #3

These stories are getting tired. Google is too big to investigate every single exception to their machine rules. We know. We get it. When you have 100 accounts, you can devote time to every exception. When you have 100,000,000 accounts you can't. You have to automate it and with 100,000,000 accounts there are going to be a lot of exceptions to the rules. Even a failure rate of 0.0001% would be enough to fill that che…

Are they too big to provide some basic customer support and an escalation path? Interestingly enough, if they did this, we wouldn't be seeing their .0001% failures either.

They do provide a very minimal set of resources in that regard, but I doubt it is anything more than someone giving a cursory glance to your appeal and checking some boxes that amount to "should we even care?".

Re: Banned From Making Money, These YouTubers Share Their Stories

#24

Post by hinoglu » Mon, Dec 03, 2012, 5:00 PM UTC

If it's possible to get banned from using adsense just by few persons questionable actions, and if google is too big to answer properly but not that big enough to skip watching even the tiniest "fraudilent" actions, then be it and become big enough to get google's attention by reaching out others in the same position.

How would one find the others? Well... http://memegenerator.net/instance/31212117 might work for creating one's own community.

Sometimes, the best way to show a structure's flaws is to bring down the structure by abusing those flaws.

Re: Banned From Making Money, These YouTubers Share Their Stories

#25

Post by falcolas » Mon, Dec 03, 2012, 5:03 PM UTC

chimi wrote: post #6

falcolas wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are they too big to provide some basic customer support and an escalation path? Interestingly enough, if they did this, we wouldn't be seeing their .0001% failures either.

They do provide that. That's why accounts were suddenly re-enabled. The advertisers are the customers and customers want to know they are paying for clicks from valid opportunities. Google is handling the customer appropriately by banning those that are committing fraud. If you're my sales guy and you defraud my customers I'm going to fire you too.

The dozens of HC comments to the opposite aside, here's a quote that sums it up from the original article:

> "It is not possible to directly contact Google," he said. "No one will speak with you, and there are no other avenues unless you are friends with someone who works there. Once your appeal is rejected, they will not reply to your emails or speak with you further on the issue (they actually tell you that in the rejection letter). It is essentially a LIFETIME ban for your account. Seems fair, right?"

His account was reinstated due to the press coverage, just as many HNers get their accounts back due to the many Googlers who frequent here.

That's not what I would define as customer service.

Re: Banned From Making Money, These YouTubers Share Their Stories

#26

Post by chimi » Mon, Dec 03, 2012, 5:05 PM UTC

knowaveragejoe wrote: post #16

chimi wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would say a 99.9999% success rate is a reasonable algorithm.

I would say that statistic is entirely flawed, since we're not only talking about Partner accounts which are far, far less in number than the 100,000,000 figure cited, but the likely minuscule percentage of them actually generating any substantial revenue.

Probably because I made it up. Look, the post had what, 4 very one-sided arguments from people whose credibility is unknown claiming they are honest and Google is cheating them out of money and a couple more who weren't even smart enough to realize they in fact were the very kind of fraudsters Google's algorithms are designed to catch.

Even if it's 99% finding a person to employ who would make fewer mistakes would be a stellar employee -- good luck. Even if you could, at that scale there'd be a tiny fraction of people who actually made money.

How many of the cases of "OMG, Google is shutting me down!" have legitimate grievances? Maybe a tiny fraction? How many of those are "worth" investigating? Even smaller fraction. Heck, those complainers on that guy's blog could have been making $4 a month, who knows. All this has been a complete waste of time. Let's talk about something important.

I'm usually not one to defend Google, but in this case, they are behaving exactly perfectly.

Get back to work.

Re: Banned From Making Money, These YouTubers Share Their Stories

#27

Post by jiggy2011 » Mon, Dec 03, 2012, 5:07 PM UTC

mistercow wrote: post #2

I'm glad the word is getting out about this. Google's abuse of content creators on AdSense has been going on since before they acquired YouTube. As usual, the only way to make any headway with them is to get some media attention. For anyone considering anything resembling a professional relationship with Google (i.e. you are relying on them for income), make absolutely sure that you have real alternatives that you ca…

I think if you have a large youtube audience who's loyalty you depend on it would be wise to also have an external website (even a crappy 1 page thing) and link to that in every video.

That way even if your videos are deleted you can stick them up somewhere else and link from your site and hopefully at least some of your followers will have bookmarked it.

Re: Banned From Making Money, These YouTubers Share Their Stories

#28

Post by lambda » Mon, Dec 03, 2012, 5:08 PM UTC

pavel_lishin wrote: post #17

lambda wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This applies to more than just Google. Your income should not solely depend on one party, unless you're in an employment relationship with them, which carries with it various sorts of legal and social obligations that are a lot harder to simply end on a whim. Does your revenue depend entirely on being in Apple's good graces, and being dropped from the App Store would end it? Does it depend solely on Google's advertis…

Isn't this basically an argument against ever creating any iPhone app?

No. It's an argument against having all of your income based on an iPhone app. Now, sure, you might start out on the iPhone; but rather than focusing all of your effort there, once you've got some traction, it might be good to work on porting it to Android, and possibly Windows Phone or Blackberry. Of course, even there, it's mostly a duopoly; I don't think that Windows Phone or Blackberry are really viable platforms at this point, so you are going to have to deal with the duopoly nature of the business for now.

Re: Banned From Making Money, These YouTubers Share Their Stories

#29

Post by jiggy2011 » Mon, Dec 03, 2012, 5:09 PM UTC

lambda wrote: post #9

mistercow wrote: post #2

I'm glad the word is getting out about this. Google's abuse of content creators on AdSense has been going on since before they acquired YouTube. As usual, the only way to make any headway with them is to get some media attention. For anyone considering anything resembling a professional relationship with Google (i.e. you are relying on them for income), make absolutely sure that you have real alternatives that you ca…

This applies to more than just Google. Your income should not solely depend on one party, unless you're in an employment relationship with them, which carries with it various sorts of legal and social obligations that are a lot harder to simply end on a whim. Does your revenue depend entirely on being in Apple's good graces, and being dropped from the App Store would end it? Does it depend solely on Google's advertis…

Problem is that in some markets (e.g games) you can't really help but be beholden to some large publisher. Whether it be Apple, Steam or MS. You can hedge your risk a little by releasing across multiple platforms but then there is still the risk that one platform in particular accounts for 50%+ of your sales and you could lose that at the drop of a hat.

Re: Banned From Making Money, These YouTubers Share Their Stories

#30

Post by jiggy2011 » Mon, Dec 03, 2012, 5:12 PM UTC

shocks wrote: post #19

I was banned from AdSense for a similar reason. When I was 14 I made a flash games/funny videos website, and used AdSense as my only income. I learnt a lot about driving traffic and things just started to pick up - and then I was banned. It later came to my attention that a few friends and (at the time) girlfriend had taken it upon themselves to 'help' me by clicking an ad once a day. Annoying, since I was making abo…

I wonder if this was because your friends were all using the same IP address that you were?

If not it would be a great way to sabotage somebody you didn't like.