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If you use Google+, you could become an ad next month

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Re: If you use Google+, you could become an ad next month

#121

Post by lstamour »

haberman wrote: post #79

So you write a public review of a business, and then you're upset because Google shows people that review? I really don't get it. What if your review was the first search result instead? Isn't that the same thing? If I search for a product on Amazon, it shows me the number of stars for each product, and if I click on that it shows me excerpts of different people's reviews. How is that any different? http://imgur.com/…

I don't mind my image used in search results. That's not what you opt out of (you've no control over that, actually). The screenshots on the page are deceptive. https://plus.google.com/settings/endorsements?hl=en The third screenshot, of the avatar icon on top of a shaded background marked "Ad" is what you can opt out of, and what everyone's concerned about.

I opted out. For me, it's not privacy. I opted out because I didn't want my face taking up more real estate on an ad and pushing result #1 further down the page. I don't like seeing ads, and I don't want to be seen in them either -- unless you're paying me, perhaps.

Re: If you use Google+, you could become an ad next month

#122

Post by lstamour »

avar wrote: post #24
minikites wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if you publish a negative review of a restaurant? Now it's super easy for them to find you and possibly harass you. What if you're in a marginalized group? Now online harassment can move into real world harassment if you've reviewed local places you enjoy. Lots of people are harmed by a "real names" policy: http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Who_is_harmed_by_a_%22Rea...

> What if you publish a negative review of a restaurant? Now it's > super easy for them to find you and possibly harass you. That's already the case if you publish restaurant reviews on Google Maps, isn't the only difference here that those reviews will be presented on search results? Like Afterlife I really don't see what the big deal is. They're taking data that's already public and presenting it slightly different…

But it's not presenting them in search results. What you opt out of isn't search result featuring, but instead featuring on a little shaded section of the page someone else is paying for. That's money Google collects because I'm the product. And in this case, they're cashing in twice -- featuring my smiling face, using one product to sell another. That's too much. I care about other people's search experience and I want them to have less ad space on a page, not more. So I opt out so my friends can more easily ignore ads and focus on content. If I recommend something, social search should mean it appears in search results for friends anyway, why should I give Google extra cash for using my face to advertise to my friends if they're not paying me?

Re: If you use Google+, you could become an ad next month

#123

Post by lstamour »

dools wrote: post #97
magicalist wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I said below, I've opted out (I was already opted out, actually, but I also don't write reviews with my name in the first place), but my only real problem with this is the +1s part of it. I have no problem with quoting a review that you wrote with your name and face associated and putting your name and face next to it for your friends to see. For context, see the ads that appear at the top of yelp search results.…

Yeah this is the issue. If you click to "endorse" one thing and then all of a sudden that's generalised to a whole range of other stuff from the same brand, vendor, organisation etc. it can be very misleading. Also there are often incentives given for "likes" (eg. a competition) or you might "like" something as a favour to someone and then all of a sudden ads show up saying how much you like the ANZ bank which makes…

This said, you can't opt out of being featured on search results. If you +1 a webpage, it will show up more in friends' search results when relevant, and your name and face will appear under it with your endorsement. That's not going to change. All the opt-out does is stop this same placement from occurring when an advertiser is relevant -- it stops your face from appearing in Google's ads, formerly known as sponsored links.

I don't mind appearing in search results, as that's just useful to others. But ads, by definition, are less relevant to a search result than the search results themselves. I don't want my recommendation appearing where a sponsor dictates. That said, I personally wouldn't mind as much if Google was paying me and shared the stats on when my face showed up ;-) (Wouldn't that change the nature of Google+ though...)

Re: If you use Google+, you could become an ad next month

#124

Post by lstamour »

md224 wrote: post #98
spankalee wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know a ton about how it works (but there are articles out there), but as far as I do know, the quality, CTR and bid amount are all considered in the ranking so that an ad with a lower bid amount, but higher quality can easily show above the lower quality ad.

That's fair. I realize that bid amount is just one factor among a few, but I suppose my concern stems from the fact that there is a positive correlation between bid price and ad ranking at all . To put it another way: increasing bid price, all other things being equal, will increase ad ranking. I would posit that this relationship has zero benefit for the ad consumer, and may even serve as a detrimental force, essent…

It's interesting -- how does Google actually measure quality? The naive approach would be to measure the number of clicks an ad attracts, as an initial indication of usefulness is how many people click. But that encourages ads that look like search results, frankly. Or ads for products people would have naturally found through organic searching. And Google's never point-blank asked me if I found an ad useful, though perhaps they could time how quickly I clicked another link from the same search result, and how often advertisers themselves keep paying for the same keywords.

Ultimately, ads need to make more money for a company than they cost to run. And my main issue is I'm being sold twice here -- first by being shown ads, and second by being featured in ads. This "double dipping" seems a bit much to me, so I opted out.

Re: If you use Google+, you could become an ad next month

#125

Post by pacala »

haberman wrote: post #79

So you write a public review of a business, and then you're upset because Google shows people that review? I really don't get it. What if your review was the first search result instead? Isn't that the same thing? If I search for a product on Amazon, it shows me the number of stars for each product, and if I click on that it shows me excerpts of different people's reviews. How is that any different? http://imgur.com/…

No. I'm upset if it's not shown. I write 1 star reviews as well. There appears to be no commitment to show reviews fairly instead of selling 5 star reviews to the higher bidder. Compare and contrast with the care for fairness in the core search functionality.

Re: If you use Google+, you could become an ad next month

#126

Post by [deleted] »

notatoad wrote: post #95
davexunit wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why there are so many Google apologists?

i prefer to think of myself as reasonable, rather than an apologist. if i publish a public review of something, i do it specifically so that other people can see that review. I'm not going to get mad because google has done with my review exactly what i wanted to happen with it. if you don't want people to see what you write, maybe you should consider using a diary rather than a publishing service.

[deleted]

Re: If you use Google+, you could become an ad next month

#128

Post by ChuckMcM »

davexunit wrote: post #43
Alterlife wrote: post #10

This actually doesn't seem terrible to me: If I published a public review on a product, why should Google not auto-match this up to a search result? That's the logical next step. It's what I'd expect from Google. I don't see anything privacy breaking about it of it's own... As long as the review was public, ofcourse -- or only being shown to those it was published to. That said, I just went ahead and opted-out of it…

Why there are so many Google apologists?

Maybe for the same reason there are so many FOSS apologists.

Re: If you use Google+, you could become an ad next month

#130

Post by hrjet »

code_duck wrote: post #116
hrjet wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly what I thought. How are they going to be sure that the review is actually honest and relevant. What if I say something contradictory in the review? Or post irrelevant stuff in it? The only way they could avoid such face-palms would be to do some sort of natural language analysis. Or have humans curate and cherry-pick the reviews. The latter one would be worrying indeed. People are already ruffled up a…

Emails are expected to be private. Publicly shared posts in a social network are expected to be public, so I would not be concerned that someone is reading them.

But they are not just doing this for publicly shared posts. Even posts which are shared privately will appear besides the ad when a person whom you have shared the post with is viewing the ad.

That by itself is not a problem. However, to curate the post, somebody from Google would have to read it. Else, they have really good natural language processors.

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