Thanks HN: Lessons learned after Google nearly killed my site

Post by ttt0 » Sun, Mar 07, 2021, 3:47 AM UTC

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #226

gambiting wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. Absolutely hard disagree. To give you an example of this working well: In some countries(UK) regulators recognized that you cannot operate in the society without a bank account. So a rule was made that a bank cannot close down your bank account without a court order. They can block your access to nearly all other services, block all of your cards, but at the end of the day, you cannot lose access to your basic ba…

> you cannot lose access to your basic bank account and money in that account unless a judge says otherwise. "Losing access to the money in that account" is blatantly stealing from you. It's should be obvious that no company should be able to do this under any circumstances, but that is a separate issue from the question of adequate competition. You still need competition because a monopoly can find an unlimited numb…

Post by thayne » Sun, Mar 07, 2021, 3:48 AM UTC

brendoelfrendo wrote: post #224

thayne wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely there is a better way to address malicious content than blocking the entire domain. It also doesn't seem like sites like Facebook, Reddit, Youtube, Google photos, etc. run into this problem, even though they allow user uploaded content so there is some kind of bias against smaller companies.

You won't get away with uploading malware to your Google drive without Google noticing. The no-no here is that this guy is operating a demo site that allows anonymous file uploads without policing the content that goes there. That's just mind blowingly dumb and ripe for abuse.

Post by that_guy_iain » Sun, Mar 07, 2021, 3:54 AM UTC

phist_mcgee wrote: post #231

that_guy_iain wrote: post #86

>Now we run automated tests to monitor server uptime and check server for problems every 30 seconds. Unfortunately automated test scripts were happily getting HTTP/200 replies while people using the Chrome browser were being told this is a scam business trying to steal their bank account information. I was surprised this wasn't part of the lessons learned. But it seems the monitoring basically failed but that wasn't…

I wonder if there are page monitoring utilities that can download the full html payload, render the page via a headless chrome browser, and then perform a diff against the content? Most landing pages are quite static, and like you said, it's about full page load, so measuring how long the entire page took to load, along with each asset's network request and subsequent content paints, you could get a pretty good idea…

Post by ttt0 » Sun, Mar 07, 2021, 4:05 AM UTC

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #235

ttt0 wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Which allows banks to remain an uncompetitive yet inherently necessary market. But how is that better than having enough competition between banks that anyone can find one willing to provide service? Just because the market is regulated doesn't mean there is no competition. It's better because the banks can't gang up on you like tech companies do. At least in the EU.

But regulation is being proposed as an alternative to competition. It can't do that. You need competition whether or not you have regulation. Look at what a dumpster fire every regulated private monopoly is. "Success" is a stagnant inefficient bureaucracy that ossifies everything it touches. Failure is the F-35 wasting a number of public dollars with twelve zeroes after it.

Post by dhosek » Sun, Mar 07, 2021, 4:06 AM UTC

lostcolony wrote: post #221

rossdavidh wrote: post #179

So, clearly Google has too much power over the internet, it's arbitrary and opaque, etc. I agree. However, I think it is worth pointing out that: 1) malware is often very aggressive and fast-spreading, and once it's on a user's computer it's hard to get off, therefore... 2) the system to detect it and stop access to the site has to be automated, not a human-in-the-loop system that might take hours or days to shut off…

I think if Google is going to decide to police the web like this, they need to alert people more proactively. The first the OP should have heard of this was Google emailing them through uploader.win's Contact Us email address. It's easy and obvious to find on the site; seems like that should be part of the automated process.