How Google Sliced Away Our Knife Ads • Hacker News Board

Re: How Google Sliced Away Our Knife Ads

#21

Post by btilly » Mon, Mar 25, 2013, 7:41 PM UTC

tjic wrote: post #8

rdl wrote: post #6

I'm in favor of banning porn ads (generally), since those tend to be offensive to a lot of people and also are highly correlated with spammy behavior, but I'd be tempted to boycott a vendor who prohibited weapons ads for any reason other than legal compliance. Amazon is pretty reasonable (knives are fine, firearms accessories are fine, but firearms and ammunition are out due to compliance issues). Google has no excus…

> Amazon is pretty reasonable (knives are fine, firearms accessories are fine, but firearms and ammunition are out As a target shooter, I don't find this any more reasonable than a gay person might find "personal ads are fine, but not gay personal ads". All too often our definition of "reasonable" is "gores HIS ox but not mine".

You may think there is unreasonableness here, but is that unreasonableness Amazon's?

For Amazon to enter online sales of weapons, they have to address a mess of state and local compliance issues which are not their core competency. No matter what your opinion is on firearms and ammunition, Amazon's reticence as a business to get involved with that seems very reasonable to me.

Re: How Google Sliced Away Our Knife Ads

#22

Post by jetti » Mon, Mar 25, 2013, 7:41 PM UTC

analog wrote: post #14

ImprovedSilence wrote: post #4

very slowly, but very, very surly, google is doing a complete 180 on "don't be evil". I think the slow pressure of being a public company is really going to strangle out much of the "good side" of Google. Everything they've done in the past 1.5yrs has been terrible for their users.

Hang on, what? Refusing to advertise knives which are clearly intended to be used as weapons is 'evil' now is it?

They aren't doing that though. They are refusing to advertise ads of a smaller company meanwhile allowing ads of large companies that sell the same (or similar) product that caused the smaller company to be banned.

Re: How Google Sliced Away Our Knife Ads

#23

Post by josefresco » Mon, Mar 25, 2013, 7:42 PM UTC

jonknee wrote: post #13

ImprovedSilence wrote: post #4

very slowly, but very, very surly, google is doing a complete 180 on "don't be evil". I think the slow pressure of being a public company is really going to strangle out much of the "good side" of Google. Everything they've done in the past 1.5yrs has been terrible for their users.

Since AdWords has been large (many years) there have been stories of unfair treatment. The same goes for AdSense. Google keeps its sauce secret which is extremely frustrating in these types of scenarios. It's sort of like Apple's App Approval process, very frustrating to be on the wrong side of. It's not crazy to believe that a store solely selling knives will receive more attention from the Knife Patrol in the AdWor…

Don't hold your breath for fair treatment. We thought this same thing (after some of our clients keywords were banned), and than day after day I monitored AdWords results to see if our competitors using the same tactics were removed and let's just say I got tired of checking.

Re: How Google Sliced Away Our Knife Ads

#24

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Mar 25, 2013, 7:42 PM UTC

jonknee wrote: post #13

ImprovedSilence wrote: post #4

very slowly, but very, very surly, google is doing a complete 180 on "don't be evil". I think the slow pressure of being a public company is really going to strangle out much of the "good side" of Google. Everything they've done in the past 1.5yrs has been terrible for their users.

Since AdWords has been large (many years) there have been stories of unfair treatment. The same goes for AdSense. Google keeps its sauce secret which is extremely frustrating in these types of scenarios. It's sort of like Apple's App Approval process, very frustrating to be on the wrong side of. It's not crazy to believe that a store solely selling knives will receive more attention from the Knife Patrol in the AdWor…

[deleted]

Re: How Google Sliced Away Our Knife Ads

#25

Post by onemorepassword » Mon, Mar 25, 2013, 7:42 PM UTC

Oh, the irony of publicizing the same knives via YouTube, the Google property that censors boobies but allows you to promote machine guns to a global audience...

Re: How Google Sliced Away Our Knife Ads

#26

Post by cobrausn » Mon, Mar 25, 2013, 7:43 PM UTC

xutopia wrote: post #12

Is it really illegal to own a switch blade but legal to purchase and own assault rifles?

I've been doing some searching on why switchblades are illegal (your post sparked my curiosity) and can't seem to find a good reason other than 'politicians are scared of whatever hollywood villifies'. It seems all the interest in switchblades faded after they became illegal, so there was no lobby to bring them back into legality.

Nunchaku and Nightsticks are also illegal in many places.

Re: How Google Sliced Away Our Knife Ads

#27

Post by pionar » Mon, Mar 25, 2013, 7:44 PM UTC

Spooky23 wrote: post #20

tjic wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Amazon is pretty reasonable (knives are fine, firearms accessories are fine, but firearms and ammunition are out As a target shooter, I don't find this any more reasonable than a gay person might find "personal ads are fine, but not gay personal ads". All too often our definition of "reasonable" is "gores HIS ox but not mine".

I think the difference is that firearms are heavily regulated by localities in different ways. For example, transport over state lines may require coordination with the shipper. For Amazon, having attorneys stay up to date on the law in multiple jurisdictions doesn't fit with their operating model. Knives are less difficult regulatory-wise, and where there are local legal issues, they usually aren't serious felonies.

Generally, when selling a gun over state lines, a federally-registered local arms dealer must act as the "seller" and follow normal procedures for selling a firearm, as only dealer to dealer sales are permitted.

Re: How Google Sliced Away Our Knife Ads

#28

Post by daten » Mon, Mar 25, 2013, 7:45 PM UTC

analog wrote: post #14

ImprovedSilence wrote: post #4

very slowly, but very, very surly, google is doing a complete 180 on "don't be evil". I think the slow pressure of being a public company is really going to strangle out much of the "good side" of Google. Everything they've done in the past 1.5yrs has been terrible for their users.

Hang on, what? Refusing to advertise knives which are clearly intended to be used as weapons is 'evil' now is it?

As the OP explains, the knives in question are not illegal and not in violation of Google's policies. Additionally, other vendors selling the same items are not being banned.

I think the "evil" part relates to discriminating against certain vendors instead of treating all vendors equally and consistently.

Re: How Google Sliced Away Our Knife Ads

#29

Post by jetti » Mon, Mar 25, 2013, 7:45 PM UTC

xutopia wrote: post #12

Is it really illegal to own a switch blade but legal to purchase and own assault rifles?

First off, switchblades are legal in some states in the US (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Switchblade#United_States).

I can see some logic behind making switchblades illegal. They are easy to conceal both pre and post crime, as well as being low cost. Add to that there is no paperwork (that I'm aware of) to purchase one and you have a virtually untraceable weapon. That is hard to say about assault rifles.

Re: How Google Sliced Away Our Knife Ads

#30

Post by GFischer » Mon, Mar 25, 2013, 7:46 PM UTC

josefresco wrote: post #7

Being an AdWords veteran (having managed campaigns for several clients) all I could do was nod my head grumble under my breath about how this is "business as usual" for Google. One of my clients who was selling in the health market had this and other seemingly "unfair" treatments happen again and again over the years. All the while Google was taking money from Canadian "pharmacies" and allowing big brand competitors…

Google ads in the health sector is tough, we tried advertising a medication/pill management software (for keeping track of times, stock, etc. with a twist), and Google was extremely frustrating in randomly restricting our keywords, and we had to repeatedly assert that we were NOT advertising medications.

They did not ban our account or anything, they were happy to take a few of our dollars :) (we didn't get to the MVP stage, just an embarassingly bad landing page), but traffic was a lot less than I expected (and I can't seem to tweak our ads to stay out of Indian pages, we wanted U.S. only). At least we only paid per clicks.