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How Google Sliced Away Our Knife Ads

knife-depot.com

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Re: How Google Sliced Away Our Knife Ads

#81

Post by analog »

navyrain wrote: post #43
analog wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Not sure if you're just trolling, but I'll bite. The government has regulations in place on dangerous weapons, which you are ostensibly free, through the democratic process, to change if they are not to your liking. Google has decided that legal/illegal is not a sufficient criteria, and made up their own rules about how you can use their service, but then only applied those rules to smaller clients. That is the evil…

I agree that it would be better if Google applied the same rules to other vendors selling similar knives. They are entirely free to decide how you can use their service, there's nothing evil about that.

Edit: To clarify, I've used knives professionally (diving instructor) and recreationally (kite surfer), but I fail to see the non-weapon use for a knife that is small (and therefore concealable) and also opens quickly. Not to mention the window-smashing attachment. [1]

[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&lis...!

Re: How Google Sliced Away Our Knife Ads

#82

Post by vacri »

kamjam wrote: post #56
msrpotus wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Knives are a lot less lethal than guns.

That's bullsh*t, knives kill just as guns do. In the UK we have many more knife related crime than we do gun related crime. That said, the issue here is not how lethal one is over the other, but Google playing judge,jury and executioner for something they should have no right to jurisdict over.

The UK has knife crime but not knife murder, despite what the fearmongering press would have you believe. The UK murder rate is a quarter that of the US, and is in line with similar countries.

Re: How Google Sliced Away Our Knife Ads

#83

Post by ISL »

jordoh wrote: post #31

This seems like a pretty clear-cut case of assuming that there is some intentional malice or favoritism in actions that are the result of an automated system. - Google adds some terms like "assisted opening knife" and "assist folding knife" so they are recognized as prohibited knife ads. Adding these terms could very well have been automated based on the terms having a strong association with other terms found alongs…

"- Amazon and Walmart also have X% disallowed knife ads, but X is an extremely small percent of their overall number of items. Accounts remain active."

And the little guy, selling the same product in competition with the big guy, gets killed.

It's often better to have a level playing field.

Re: How Google Sliced Away Our Knife Ads

#84

Post by cooldeal »

kkowalczyk wrote: post #59
kybernetyk wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> dealing with user-generated content (like these ads) is hard. That's not really an excuse because no one forces Google to be in the user generated ad business. They want money from advertisers so they should do all they can to offer the best service possible.

If the advertiser is not happy with Google's service, they are free to use another service. "no one forces you to do X" argument cuts both ways?

Google has such a large percentage of search traffic that your competitors who are not flagged will have a huge advantage over you.

Re: How Google Sliced Away Our Knife Ads

#85

Post by cooldeal »

readme wrote: post #78
DanielBMarkham wrote: post #16

You cannot wield the kind of economic power Google does and not be evil, at least for the working definition many people have of "evil". We've put a huge hunk of our intellectual and economic capital under the control of a marketing company. I really, really like Google, but I don't see this situation as being stable over a period of decades. Maybe 5-10 more years or so, but not a lot longer. These kinds of decisions…

Evil is a totally relative term. Google probably thinks they are being benevolent by taking an anti-weapons stance. I'd be inclined to disagree...

>Google probably thinks they are being benevolent by taking an anti-weapons stance

I think consistency is the bigger issue here. If they take that stance, the should go after Amazon and others and not just the site linked here.

Re: How Google Sliced Away Our Knife Ads

#86

Post by fnayr »

paborden wrote: post #73
kkowalczyk wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Reminds me of the time an Apple staffer called me to discuss an app I had submitted. "We'd rather discuss this on the phone," he said. "What's up?" "We can approve your app, but can you please remove all references to midgets touching themselves, first?" Would've paid to have seen that in writing.

I need to download that app NOW

Re: How Google Sliced Away Our Knife Ads

#87

Post by kyrra »

onemorepassword wrote: post #25

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...

(At least in the US) weapons and violence are fine in video/audio format, while naked people are not. I'm not sure how much this has to do with Google than it does the regulations imposed by the FCC and social norms.

Re: How Google Sliced Away Our Knife Ads

#88

Post by curiousfiddler »

readme wrote: post #78
DanielBMarkham wrote: post #16

You cannot wield the kind of economic power Google does and not be evil, at least for the working definition many people have of "evil". We've put a huge hunk of our intellectual and economic capital under the control of a marketing company. I really, really like Google, but I don't see this situation as being stable over a period of decades. Maybe 5-10 more years or so, but not a lot longer. These kinds of decisions…

Evil is a totally relative term. Google probably thinks they are being benevolent by taking an anti-weapons stance. I'd be inclined to disagree...

Can you name a few other companies which operate at Google's scale and are less evil? I feel Google has had a big contribution in how open internet as a medium is. I'd like to believe that the people at Google's helm are generally nicer, and can be trusted with this massive responsibility (more than a lot of other people and other companies). I also believe and hope, that they are picking signals from these conversations and resolving to improve and be better in future. PS: Absolutely no affiliation with Google.

Re: How Google Sliced Away Our Knife Ads

#89

Post by corresation »

http://support.google.com/adwordspolicy/answer/176077?hl=en

Company tried to sell a product that Google prohibits. Where is the story here? Trying to say "well they do it too!" is not and is never a valid complaint, just as it wasn't in primary school -- their day will come. Further the desperate reaching to make Google evil is a stretch given that doing this can only possibly lose them money (favoring the "big guys" isn't rational for a bid-based service, where the highest bid gets Google the most money, regardless of the vendor).

The only real story here is that Google managed to achieve such dominance in advertising (though it certainly isn't as absolute as some are pretending).

Re: How Google Sliced Away Our Knife Ads

#90

Post by MartinCron »

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…

but I'd be tempted to boycott a vendor who prohibited weapons ads for any reason other than legal compliance

Craigslist is pretty aggressively anti-weapon. Do you boycott them?

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