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Banned From Making Money, These YouTubers Share Their Stories

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

#51

Post by chimi »

jrockway wrote: post #46
Vivtek wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or any appeal system at all. The only way to get unbanned is to get noticed by a human at Google - through a non-Google channel, because Google channels are specifically designed never to bother humans.

Google channels are specifically designed never to bother humans This is not really true; Google does answer customer support queries for products that have customer support. Google Wallet and Google Apps are two products with dedicated 24/7 phone support.

There are plenty of channels for customers. If you're a customer. None of these people are customers. Google is their customer and Google is saying they don't want to be their customer anymore because Google doesn't trust them.

Content providers are not the customer. Google is the customer and the content provider is the vendor. Google can make whatever decisions Google wants to make about who they give money too.

If a customer decides to stop being your customer -- for whatever reason -- they are entirely entitled to do that and you are not entitled to their money.

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

#52

Post by jonknee »

chimi wrote: post #47
jonknee wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yikes, not sure what I did to set that off. I'm not angry at Google, I'm just stating the fact that as someone who does business with Google I am constantly aware that our arrangement could be gone at any moment at no-fault of my own and without any recourse. > 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 som…

I think years and years of people focusing on the tiny percentage of people who are wrongly accused by the googleplex is what set me off. Everyone knows. It's boring. Get over it. It's exactly the way it is supposed to be and there is no better way. All the proposals to get a human involved slow everything down and Google would never have gotten to where they are if they had people wasting their time on every case th…

> Everyone knows. It's boring. Get over it. It's exactly the way it is supposed to be an there is no better way. All the proposals to get a human involved slow everything down and Google would never have gotten to where they are if they had people wasting their time on every case that cried about being an exception to the rule -- especially since even those who cry about being the exception really aren't the exception.

There is a better way, but it's against Google's ethos to not use engineering to solve a problem. That itself is the problem this thread is speaking to. Algorithms are great, except when they're not. Most companies have a way to deal with that, but Google makes it a point of pride to not.

Other fraud systems are not completely controlled by an algorithm. Imagine if Visa banned you from ever being able to accept Visa without an appeals process or even providing any information about what you did wrong? If Visa detects a pattern of fraud they open an investigation and the merchant is a part of this process. It's slow and expensive, but also necessary and has not prevented credit card companies to operate at huge scale.

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

#53

Post by ChuckMcM »

noonespecial wrote: post #34

If you think about it from Google's perspective, its working like its supposed to. Overzealous fans going on click-fests are a problem for Google's customers (the advertisers). Automatically banning that account and showing those ads elsewhere completely solves that problem. Simple load-balancing at work. What more do they need to do?

This is true, the attitude of 'click a few times to send some money' (which really is sending the advertisers money) is always a bad idea. And as long as you realize the advertiser is the customer and the guy uploading videos is the product, well you don't leave a bad carton of milk on the shelf do you?

Its a sad way to treat the content producers. From the big picture however the 'bad actors' figured out that there was a 'hole' in the AdSense cover which you could pull millions out of, it was create a bunch of AdSense accounts in a bunch of accounts and distribute clicks through them. Reasonably easy to automate and provided a good return on the investment.

So independent video producer with a modest stream? Or part of a clickfraud ring? Hard to tell apart. But the customers really hate seeing a bunch of clicks that don't result in any conversions.

The solution will end up with advertisers paying less per click (we're already seeing that in Google's reports) and/or switching to a per-impression model, or on the outside chance a flat fee over time model which is analogous to the magazine model.

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

#54

Post by jnazario »

i suffered this several years ago. even had a good friend explore, in person, the team who banned me. no movement, no appeal.

my adsense account still shows hundreds of dollars to pay out that they wont. sadly no other easy to launch-with ad tool (e.g. yahoo) for a regular home user with a site can yield much money. they really have a monopoly, and this behavior just screws people.

in this scenario, fuck google.

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

#55

Post by jnazario »

at-fates-hands wrote: post #38

I'm hoping the staggering lack of concern for proper customer service for any of their products will someday start to affect their bottom line. These stories are not new and seem to be adding up. I'm still confused why they haven't invested in a call center or some type of dedicated customer service for the products they support. It makes absolutely no sense to me.

margins. it doesn't affect them yet so why invest the cost? in fact it will always benefit them until /advertisers/ pull their participation, and they have them covered.

you, as the small person showing ads, are so insignificant that they wont listen to these complaints.

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

#56

Post by jrockway »

chimi wrote: post #51
jrockway wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google channels are specifically designed never to bother humans This is not really true; Google does answer customer support queries for products that have customer support. Google Wallet and Google Apps are two products with dedicated 24/7 phone support.

There are plenty of channels for customers. If you're a customer. None of these people are customers. Google is their customer and Google is saying they don't want to be their customer anymore because Google doesn't trust them. Content providers are not the customer. Google is the customer and the content provider is the vendor . Google can make whatever decisions Google wants to make about who they give money too. I…

Actually, Google considers everyone "users", not "customers", and "focus on the user" is one of company's core beliefs:

http://www.google.com/about/company/philosophy/

The tough part is balancing the needs of all users: content creators, advertisers, and viewers.

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

#57

Post by noonespecial »

pkteison wrote: post #45
noonespecial wrote: post #34

If you think about it from Google's perspective, its working like its supposed to. Overzealous fans going on click-fests are a problem for Google's customers (the advertisers). Automatically banning that account and showing those ads elsewhere completely solves that problem. Simple load-balancing at work. What more do they need to do?

The problem is the wrong person is punished, and the content creator has no recourse, and it nets out worse for everyone. Somebody who used to be rewarded for producing good content no longer is so they stop. Google's content gets worse, advertisers venue for selling their ads gets worse, consumers have less good content to watch. Nobody wins. Would you want me to be able to shut down your business with a relatively…

It might be more of a supply and demand thing. Google thinks it has an endless supply of small bit-players willing to supply content so it doesn't value any of them. They might be right.

It really hasn't cost them anything so they haven't spent anything trying to fix it.

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

#58

Post by mistercow »

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?

It is a good argument against creating a native iOS app, certainly. If Apple decides to drop you, your app's code is virtually worthless.
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