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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

#231

Post by Zak »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #178
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…

>This is the same way you'd criticize a king, somebody you are beholden to. "Golly! I know you, the king, are not at fault, but some of these advisers of yours must have accidentally goofed up somewhere..." I don't buy it. People don't criticize a king at all . You don't criticize the communist party in Stalinist Russia, tactfully or otherwise. Doing that gets you sent to the gulag. The reason people say that it was…

It strikes me as very unlikely that Google is getting government pressure to restrict the advertising of assisted opening knives. These knives are exceedingly popular; Walmart and Amazon sell them.

I can't actually think of any reason that passes a basic sanity check that Google would have an issue with them at all. This situation seems a little bizarre.

Re: How Google Sliced Away Our Knife Ads

#232

Post by AnthonyMouse »

macchina wrote: post #224
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>This is the same way you'd criticize a king, somebody you are beholden to. "Golly! I know you, the king, are not at fault, but some of these advisers of yours must have accidentally goofed up somewhere..." I don't buy it. People don't criticize a king at all . You don't criticize the communist party in Stalinist Russia, tactfully or otherwise. Doing that gets you sent to the gulag. The reason people say that it was…

I think you've shifted the meaning of king in the parent comment to tyrant. After that you go on to give Google the benefit of the doubt. Google isn't a tyrant, but we are all beholden to Google. Due to cognitive dissonance, we have the tendency to minimize or excuse any instances of abuse on the part of our benevolent data custodian.

I think you're just making a different argument. The parent seemed to be implying that people are afraid to criticize Google aggressively because Google have too much power and may retaliate. I don't think that's true -- in particular, if they did start retaliating, it would invoke a backlash and push people to start actively seeking out competitors or advocating new regulations.

Maybe there is something to the cognitive dissonance argument, but that's a very different dynamic. Resigning yourself to having to deal with someone in the future and then convincing yourself that you like them because they're the option you've chosen for yourself is not at all the same thing as that party having some kind of sovereign power over you. Look at what people do with their local sports teams -- people love the local team because it's "their team," that doesn't prove anything about whether the Mets have any excess of economic power over the citizens of New York.

Re: How Google Sliced Away Our Knife Ads

#233

Post by corresation »

jlgreco wrote: post #219
corresation wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is absolutely no accidental opening of the knife Knife has an edge actuator that, when pushed (by your thumb, the table you're leaning against...you know, anything that pushes on it), causes it to kinetically open. I think most of the people around here are fairly intelligent and can see countless accidental deployments scenarios, notwithstanding your endless cries of "bullshit!". notice the "tools and home imp…

> Knife has an edge actuator that, when pushed (by your thumb, the table you're leaning against...you know, anything that pushes on it), causes it to kinetically open. I think most of the people around here are fairly intelligent and can see countless accidental deployments scenarios, notwithstanding your endless cries of "bullshit!". You have clearly never used one of these knives, you are just pulling shit out of y…

I suggest you try posting minus variations of "bullshit" or "shit". It might be tough, but it will be worth it in the end.

You have clearly never used one of these knives

You refute me by making claims directly contrary to the video in the story being discussed. You know, the company making the product being discussed, where a protruding trigger is, with obviously little force via an index finger, actuated causing the blade to immediately swing 180 degrees at a high rate of speed.

But your personal experience is fascinating nonetheless, however completely irrelevant.

* If you are somehow accidentally doing this with a table edge*

The context of my comment on it is that people who actually use knives as tools don't use knives made for 14 year old boys, emblazoned with names like "SWAT" by gun makers. I stand by that.

Re: How Google Sliced Away Our Knife Ads

#234

Post by SoftwareMaven »

TomGullen wrote: post #165
SoftwareMaven wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, Google has had a contribution to the openness of the web. Unfortunately, in their haste to follow the paths of Apple and Facebook, they no longer seem to be making a contribution anymore. If anything, they are now actively "closing" the web.

How do you believe they are "closing the web"?

Google+, the Play Store and many other services are not open. In some cases, they may have APIs, but they are not open APIs. They have closed down more open platforms, such as Reader, in favor of the more closed platforms, like Google+.

That doesn't mean they are a closed company today, but I believe they've turned the corner. Just like Facebook has a lot of OSS projects but isn't an "open company", I think Google has shifted the balance away from openness, even though they have a lot of OSS projects. I see them as qualitatively the same, but significantly different in degree. I wouldn't have said that three years ago.

EDIT: I realized I answered how Google is closing, but not how they are closing the web.

I think that has to do with two things: preferential treatment of their services in search results and hiding information behind Google logins. The former makes it harder to find anything Google hasn't sanctioned; the latter makes it harder to go elsewhere to get your search results.

I see it as exactly the same thing as Facebook pages for businesses instead of web sites. Sure, http is fine and intact, but now we are beholden to Facebook for information.

Re: How Google Sliced Away Our Knife Ads

#235

Post by jlgreco »

tehwalrus wrote: post #205

(from UK, and happy to accept your downvotes): I'm shocked that people litteraly sell knives designed to hurt people on the internet, and that people on HN come to the defence of these arms dealers . I assumed this was about kitchen knives when I clicked on the link. The US constitution was written with a right to bear arms so people could overthrow the government , not protect themselves from criminals. Since then,…

The only difference between my assisted opening knife and my paring knife is that the former is safe to put into my pocket. Same size, same blade shape, one lives in my kitchen cabinet and the other lives in my toolbag. I don't use the later for food because I don't want it to get sticky. How exactly does that make the later "designed to hurt people"?

Re: How Google Sliced Away Our Knife Ads

#236

Post by quanticle »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #178
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…

>This is the same way you'd criticize a king, somebody you are beholden to. "Golly! I know you, the king, are not at fault, but some of these advisers of yours must have accidentally goofed up somewhere..." I don't buy it. People don't criticize a king at all . You don't criticize the communist party in Stalinist Russia, tactfully or otherwise. Doing that gets you sent to the gulag. The reason people say that it was…

    I don't buy it. People don't criticize a king at all. You don't criticize the
    communist party in Stalinist Russia, tactfully or otherwise. Doing that gets you
    sent to the gulag
That's not true. Even during the Stalinist period in Russia or the Maoist period in China, there was still criticism of the government. It's just that criticism was phrased in language that was politically acceptable to the leaders. Individual cases of corruption and mismanagement could and were exposed and castigated, but as long as one was careful to emphasize that they were exposing and castigating the individual case of corruption (as opposed to the system as a whole), one could obliquely criticize the system.

That's exactly what I'm seeing here. Small businesses are afraid of Google. They're afraid to directly criticize the general principles behind Google AdWords program. But they can highlight individual failures of the Google AdWords program, and, as long as they emphasize that they're talking about this specific business or that specific account, they can obliquely criticize the general principles.

Re: How Google Sliced Away Our Knife Ads

#237

Post by Zak »

betterunix wrote: post #102
btilly wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Not really -- Amazon would just have to have a policy along the lines of, "We only sell guns via gun stores in your local area," and their legal team would only have to ensure compliance with regulations in 50 states (and whatever other countries they do business in). The last rifle I purchased was from a friend in New York, and he mailed the rifle and the case to a local gun store, which is basically what the law re…

Amazon would just have to have a policy along the lines of, "We only sell guns via gun stores in your local area,"

Federal law already requires that anyone selling guns by mail-order do exactly that. A gun can only be shipped to a licensed dealer, who must then perform a background check on the buyer before handing it over. It's common enough that almost all gun stores have a set fee for providing this service.

Re: How Google Sliced Away Our Knife Ads

#238

Post by tn13 »

There is one more point we all might be missing here. This is not just about knief-depot.

It is unreasonable to believe that someone at Google said, "Hey, I dont like these knief-depot people, let us screw them to benefit Amazon".

Likely case is this. People at Amazon (or put other large company spending significant amounts with Google) maintains a dashboard and does a competitor analysis to find out that knief-depot is doing better than them and hence there is scope for screwing this smaller company. They talk to google and create problems from them. And I dont think they have singled out knife depot alone, but they have done this with many more on the slippary slope.

This means that Google does have some non-transparent ways of doing business when with comes to Adwords.

This is not just bad for Knife-depot but bad for all of us.

Re: How Google Sliced Away Our Knife Ads

#239

Post by quanticle »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #226
saraid216 wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't buy it. People don't criticize a king at all . You don't criticize the communist party in Stalinist Russia, tactfully or otherwise. Doing that gets you sent to the gulag. Uh, yes they did. Kingdoms of the beforetime were not all Stalinist Russias. Kings had to gather and maintain support; some of them did this through shutting down dissenters hard, but many of them never did, or did so with the full support…

>Kings had to gather and maintain support; some of them did this through shutting down dissenters hard, but many of them never did, or did so with the full support of "the people". If the king has to do what the subjects and lesser lords want or he'll be overthrown, he's really serving at the consent of the people. That pretty well breaks the analogy: If the only sort of king people can criticize is the sort who does…

    If the king has to do what the subjects and lesser lords want or he'll be
    overthrown, he's really serving at the consent of the people.
That sounds an awful lot like the "mandate of Heaven" principle they have in China. The government can do whatever it wants, as long as it has the mandate of Heaven. How does the government know that it has the mandate of Heaven? By successfully surviving an attempted revolution or coup. How does a government lose the mandate of Heaven? By falling to a revolution or coup.

It's wonderfully circular logic that highlights the flaw in your argument. By your logic, every government that manages to survive is serving with the "consent of the governed". By your logic, even Kim Jong-Un is serving with the "consent" of his people, simply because they have not risen up and cast him down.

Re: How Google Sliced Away Our Knife Ads

#240

Post by SoftwareMaven »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #180
SoftwareMaven wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What credentials does Google have to decide what is bogus versus what is not? Why should they get to decide what ads (for legal products) have a chance of being shown to me? Perhaps more importantly, especially for entrepreneurs, why should the effective "gateway to the Internet" be allowed to capriciously choose to favor established brands over small companies?

It's not so much that they get to decide as much as thu are being told to decide. Google would much rather operate in a safe harbour where they act as an indiscriminate marketplace for advertising, with the advertisers being responsible for compliance. Regulators, however, find it easier to go after bottlenecks versus chasing down individual offenders. This makes compliance the marketplaces' problem. The alternative…

Certainly, and to the extent Google is required to intervene, I have no problem. It's when it goes the next step and says, "Google has decided foo objects are bad, therefore, thou shalt not sell them", independent of any regulatory concerns, that I have problem.

TFA is a gray area. I don't have a problem with Google's requirement so much as their capricious implementation. But if they decide it's OK to say, "We don't like the sound of that type of offer. You shall not pass." That I would have a real problem.

To be clear, this is a hypothetical brought up by the parent of my original post and referring to things like miracle diet ads that he/she doesn't like.

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