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

How Google Sliced Away Our Knife Ads

knife-depot.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 341 posts

Re: How Google Sliced Away Our Knife Ads

#61

Post by dsr_ »

cobrausn wrote: post #26
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.

Many of the state laws are written as if the author had just watched several 1960s and 70s martial arts films and mistook them for documentaries about gang culture.

I'm not kidding. Read Massachusetts GL 269S10: http://www.knifeup.com/massachusetts-knife-law/

Re: How Google Sliced Away Our Knife Ads

#63

Post by radtad »

Search 'assisted opening knives' and you won't see any ads about such knives EXCEPT for Amazon. You will also see "Shop for Assisted Opening Knives on Google" which, if you follow the link, will show you a nice assortment of about 14k assisted opening knives. This feels like an abuse of monopoly power.

Re: How Google Sliced Away Our Knife Ads

#64

Post by nearengine »

jetti wrote: post #29
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.

So is a regular (or assisted) folding knife like the ones Knife Depot sells, and they are just as fast to open with a little practice. Where do we draw the line between "convenient" and "illegal"? I don't want to see a UK-style ban on pointy objects here in the states.

Re: How Google Sliced Away Our Knife Ads

#66

Post by kkowalczyk »

josefresco wrote: post #57
pud wrote: post #36

Whenever I ban a user from one of my sites for an infraction, he invariably points to several other infracting users and says "well why do they get to post porn (or ads for weapons or whatever) and I don't?" The reason is because I didn't catch the other users. Or their infraction isn't as bad. While I feel bad for the knife company, I also know dealing with user-generated content (like these ads) is hard.

"The reason is because I didn't catch the other users. Or their infraction isn't as bad." That's your reason, not Google's. Google knows full well who is bidding on what keyword. Are you suggesting they are under-staffed, under budgeted or overwhelmed in their task of keeping AdWords clean? I'm not buying it. Google has the resources to evenly apply guidelines, they're not a one-man show who's too busy to squash out…

The famous last words.

Of course they are overwhelmed by the taks of keeping AdWords clean, just like Apple is overwhelmed by the task of timely approving apps for App Store, despite having more money than god and the number of AdWord ads submitted to Google is several orders of magnitude greater than number of Apps submitted to Apple.

Processes that involve humans are inherently non-scalable and determining whether an ad crosses the line of acceptable usage is a human task.

And humans have different opinions so there will never be "evenly applying guidelines", not for google ads, not for App Store apps. The only time 3 people have exactly the same opinion is when 2 of them are dead.

Re: How Google Sliced Away Our Knife Ads

#67

Post by mindcrime »

Anechoic wrote: post #33
mindcrime wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Knives, nunchucks, brass knuckles, etc. are usually covered by state level laws, from what I've seen, and the legality varies widely. Firearms are a slightly different story, since the 2nd Amendment very specifically protects firearms ownership. So yes, it is possible that somewhere or other, a switch blade knife is illegal while an "assault rifle" is legal. I saw "assault rifle" in quotes, because most people talkin…

since the 2nd Amendment very specifically protects firearms ownership I've seen folks use that rationale, but the 2A doesn't say "firearms" it says "arms" - presumably "knives, nunchucks, brass knuckles, etc" would fall under that, although that's clearly not how it's been interpreted.

FWIW, I just found this article / paper discussing the very issue of knives and the 2nd Amendment.

http://www.volokh.com/2013/03/25/knives-and-the-second-amend...

The author(s) appear to take the position that knives are protected under the 2A and that many existing laws regulating knives are probably unconstitutional. At least from the bit I've had time to read so far...

Re: How Google Sliced Away Our Knife Ads

#68

Post by samd »

What's really important is this line:

"For that reason, we wanted to let you guys, loyal Cutting Edge readers and Knife Depot fans, know that you might not being seeing Knife Depot ads peppered across the Internet."

If you don't get to advertise with Google you basically don't get to advertise on the Internet. That's a powerful monopoly, one they've had for years, and that's the real story here. You have to deal with Google and all their idiosyncratic/evil/whatever behavior because there's no alternative.

Re: How Google Sliced Away Our Knife Ads

#69

Post by derefr »

josefresco wrote: post #53
GFischer wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 MV…

Yeah I lost count on how many times I had to tell Google my client was not a pharmacy and not offering any prescription medications (even though we were bidding on terms that related to that market segment). I understand (and can tolerate) false positives in regards to software but there was no excuse for the uneven application by human editors of the guidelines.

> I understand (and can tolerate) false positives in regards to software but there was no excuse for the uneven application by human editors of the guidelines.

Why? Humans are more fallible than computers, not less. Expecting that replacing the computers in a process with humans will improve predictability is insanity.

Re: How Google Sliced Away Our Knife Ads

#70

Post by cdjk »

koenigdavidmj wrote: post #45
Spooky23 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> For Amazon, having attorneys stay up to date on the law in multiple jurisdictions doesn't fit with their operating model. They already calculate local taxes (city and county taxes too!) for the states in which they choose to tax.

The penalties for messing up on on local taxes are a lot less severe than messing up federal firearms laws.
Post reply on HN