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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

#261

Post by TA16161 »

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,…

> criminals simply don't use weapons on civilians (apart from high value targets, perhaps) because the penalties for doing so are so harsh

Do you think the penalties in the US are less harsh? Kill a cop here and you get the death penalty (in many states).

> This is the sole reason I would never ever consider living in the USA - the risk from a) criminals, b) civilian "heros" and c) the police themselves, all of whom are armed to the teeth, legally. Terrifying.

I think you have an exaggerated view of the dangers of living in the US.

Re: How Google Sliced Away Our Knife Ads

#262

Post by arbuge »

Google suspends AdWords acconts without much recourse all the time, as a quick search on "adwords account suspended" shows. Doesn't matter if they're paying customers, etc.

The thorny part about it is that the guidelines that can lead to suspension change over time and deleting ads that are no longer in compliance might not safeguard your account. I've known account holders that got suspended retroactively for ads that are no longer in compliance, even though these ads were actually deleted before the guidelines changed. The point seems to be non-negotiable with Google though.

This can be pretty tragic for many small businesses since Google accounts for such a huge percentage of search traffic. Larger customers typically have dedicated account reps who I'm guessing might be able to help in these situations.

Re: How Google Sliced Away Our Knife Ads

#263

Post by redthrowaway »

retrogradeorbit wrote: post #254
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Happens all the time. For example, Groupon recently dropped all firearms-related deals on the wave of the craziness that is going on. That's something else entirely. There is an argument to be made that doing things like that could actually be good for the shareholders, if you assume that a majority of customers are pro- gun control and doing that could get you accolades from them instead of boycotts. Maybe the oppo…

Maybe it's the agency problem. The mid level manager making the decisions is not a shareholder.

>The mid level manager making the decisions is not a shareholder.

They almost certainly are.

Re: How Google Sliced Away Our Knife Ads

#264

Post by oscardelben »

jlgreco wrote: post #256
archon wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is the sole reason I would never ever consider living in the USA Just to provide a counter-anecdote, the fact that I couldn't legally own weapons capable of leveling the playing field between me and an armed criminal makes me disinclined to ever consider living in the UK. The best I can do for protection is a baseball bat? Terrifying.

To be honest, as an American, either position strikes me as irrational. The chances of being the victim of random violent in either country is not worth worrying about. My habit of jaywalking probably puts me in far more danger than either not having a weapon in the UK or simply living in the US where others do, but I rarely give jaywalking a second thought.

It's not like a criminal is going to give you a call letting you know that they're getting in so you get prepared. Fun exercise: did guns save more lives or took more away?

EDIT: this is for gp.

Re: How Google Sliced Away Our Knife Ads

#265

Post by ISL »

jordoh wrote: post #116
ISL wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"- 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.

How do you level the playing field in this case? One account has 50% disallowed items (50 of 100) and another account has 0.005% disallowed items (50 of 1,000,000). You could bias _against_ large accounts by banning when they reach a fixed number of disallowed items - but then you let little guys (or any big guy that makes lots of small accounts) skate by under some arbitrary limit.

Agreed, unless the fixed number is zero.

You ban anyone selling banned items. I think vendors would respond quickly by self-censoring, especially the big guys.

Assisted-opening knives are a tiny fraction of Amazon's sales. If assisted-opening knife advertisements cut off Amazon's entire account, as has happened with Knife Depot, I'm pretty sure that Amazon would de-list assisted-opening knives.

A zero-tolerance policy, coupled with ample forgiveness for infractions, would be fair. Alternatively, you let anyone advertise anything.

Anything in-between turns Google into a kingmaker.

(NB - the very notion of censoring listings at all carries its own troubles, not at issue here)

Re: How Google Sliced Away Our Knife Ads

#266

Post by jameszol »

citricsquid wrote: post #259
jameszol wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been interested in crime stats and arguments for some time; thus, I'm interested to know where you are getting your data to make such assumptions that UK criminals don't use weapons on civilians when sources dictate that the UK is among the most violent in Europe and perhaps 2x more violent than in the USA? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violent_crime#United_Kingdom http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-o…

The UK is not more violent than America. Most years we have less than 1000 murders total across every single type of murder, the US has 10x that from firearms alone with only a 6x larger population. You hit on the reason why our violent crime seems to be so high, almost every crime that could be violent is counted as violent (for example if someone broke into my apartment while I was out) and in most other countries…

Higher in actual number is almost always going to be relative to the population, isn't it? Per capita is more accurate while it still is lacking for comparison purposes.

I agree that murder, as one type of violent crime, is more prominent here in the US than in the UK on a per capita basis.

Crime stats are most definitely open to a lot of interpretation between countries, actual reported statistics vs unreported, varying definitions, and more.

Re: How Google Sliced Away Our Knife Ads

#267

Post by jameszol »

Kequc wrote: post #250
jameszol wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been interested in crime stats and arguments for some time; thus, I'm interested to know where you are getting your data to make such assumptions that UK criminals don't use weapons on civilians when sources dictate that the UK is among the most violent in Europe and perhaps 2x more violent than in the USA? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violent_crime#United_Kingdom http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-o…

The Telegraph is a conservative rag for one thing, like Fox news. Even in that article it provides the number 927 murders in 2007. Compared to America's 16,929 murders in 2007. America's population is much larger than the UK though, 4.91 times. So you multiply the UK's murder rate by nearly 5 and get a paltry 4,557 compared to America's 16,929. http://www2.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2007/offenses/violent_crime/murd... http://ww…

I agree.

Murder is unequivocally a violent crime; however, I believe "violent crimes" can cover assault of just about any type, sexual crimes and more.

Re: How Google Sliced Away Our Knife Ads

#268

Post by moe »

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…

Turning down paying customers because of some moral objection to pointy objects

Are you suggesting the US government asked google to stop runnings ads for knives?

In the same country where I can pick up a semi automatic assault rifle at WalMart?

Re: How Google Sliced Away Our Knife Ads

#269

Post by throwaway420 »

capo wrote: post #253
throwaway420 wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I blame Matt Cutts' occasional appearances for the subsequent flocking of SEO sorts here. This post doesn't belong on HN, certainly not on the front page. Your anger is misplaced. The blame is solely on Google for not having an adequate customer service department. When Google has arbitrary decided that your business is in violation of some of its rules, you end up falling into a Kafkaesque nightmare of form respon…

So HN has to be the consumer service?! that's not what this place is about.

* Technical issues that affect the livelihoods of almost every person on here are important. The fact that this has so many upvotes is indicative of that.

* Unfortunately, because Google is on the surface a very friendly company, many technical people place Google on a pedestal and actually believe their slogan about doing no evil. It's just a slogan, and yes, Google does do a lot of evil.

* I suspect that you've never experienced the frustration of having your entire business on the line and not even being able to get a human response from Google. If you've ever been in that situation, I think you'd be able to understand how frustrating Google actually is.

Re: How Google Sliced Away Our Knife Ads

#270

Post by simeonf »

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…

You might try googling^H^H^H^H^H duckducking the phrase "If only Stalin knew!"
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