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Google can ban your Android app if they think you’ve clicked on your own ads

danfabulich.medium.com

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Re: Google can ban your Android app if they think you’ve clicked on your own ads

#271

Post by Tom4hawk »

ximeng wrote: post #86
themolecularman wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If there's a good alternative never use Google anything. Brave instead of Chrome. Duck Duck Go instead of Google. Proton Mail instead of Gmail. The only thing I haven't been able to replace is YouTube. That's a tricky one because it's the content creators that keep me locked into it.

Ziglang creator moved from YouTube ( https://m.youtube.com/c/AndrewKelley/featured ) to Vimeo ( https://vimeo.com/showcase/7818787 ) to have more control. Encouraging creators you like to migrate could help decrease dependency on YouTube.

I think there are two types of content.

- content that you seek

- content that seeks you

If I want to watch someone knowledgeable working on my favorite language I will look for this content (or I will find that they are doing this via some other means - like Twitter, irc, Mastodon etc.) and unless experience is not horrible for some reason I don't care if it's Youtube, PeerTube, RSS feed with links to the video on ftp server. If you delivery something unique enough (in this case I assume that there are not that many people providing such content on similar level) for specific group of people you can probably leave YouTube and be fine.

But if I'm interested in something less specialized like for example tech news and I'm not attached to specific creator I might not even notice that someone left the platform. If I don't see "Linus tech tips" in my video feed I'll watch "Gamer Nexus" or "Hardware Unboxed" or something else.

Sad truth is that when I want to see video about something general I look for it on YouTube and don't even bother searching for other source. I think that YouTube "monopoly" is not on hosting video content but on discoverability of it. And I say this as someone who tries to avoid Google products as much as possible.

Re: Google can ban your Android app if they think you’ve clicked on your own ads

#272

Post by teppix »

GoOnThenDoTell wrote: post #8

Google needs a general support line that doesn’t involve a Medium post making the HN front page

I've been trying to set up a private google cloud account for some experiments, however anytime i try to add a payment method there is a generic error.

Ironically, there is no way to reach their support without an active paying account, so they're basically blocking me from becoming a paying customer.

I have no confidence left in google for anything critical.

Re: Google can ban your Android app if they think you’ve clicked on your own ads

#273

Post by lbriner »

alexchamberlain wrote: post #268
blibble wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why so expensive? in the UK it's £13/year (under $20)

It's going to be more expensive than that to get accounts prepared, right?

For small company accounts in the UK, you can file them yourself. It is not completely easy depending on what you are doing but well within the ability of an engineer, as long as you are keeping the relevant receipts etc.

For me, running a company was never expensive, just hassle like sending your annual update to Companies House and understanding the various overlapping communications from HMRC for tax.

Re: Google can ban your Android app if they think you’ve clicked on your own ads

#274

Post by lbriner »

GuB-42 wrote: post #199

I winder if stories like that will ultimately be Google and other tech giants downfall. The idea is that you can get banned, you will never know why, there is no way to appeal, they won't give you a chance to fix things, and the only contact you will have will be robots, or if you are lucky, people completely dehumanized by the corporate structure. So simply, they are unreliable. Just like files stored in a hard driv…

I guess the $10B question is whether if someone could set up a competing app store that was available on all Android phones and could present some form of assurance that it wasn't full of malware, would Google lose the entire market or do they have special access to Android OS to prevent this happening?

Re: Google can ban your Android app if they think you’ve clicked on your own ads

#275

Post by londons_explore »

skinkestek wrote: post #266
londons_explore wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> getting links to download stuff takes more than enough time to get you to forget it. Building takeout archives is incredibly expensive for Google. Do that just a few times and you might have wiped out years of profit Google made off you. Thats because most data in your Google account (eg. a random email or a photo you took in 2013) is only accessed once and then never again. Storage systems are designed for that. Y…

Aha, that explains a lot of course. Still: why make it so hard to get the archives once they are generated?

Once the archive is generated it isn't hard to download it I don't think... Click the link in the email and it starts downloading... They even have an option to split into multiple files for ease of download if you have slow or unreliable internet, and their download links do support "download managers" which can resume failed downloads.

Giving you 7 days to download it seems fine... Remember they are effectively giving you double storage capacity for those 7 days, and hundreds of gigabytes of network egress (which would cost $8 or so if I paid GCP network costs each time I takeout my account).

Re: Google can ban your Android app if they think you’ve clicked on your own ads

#276

Post by ImPostingOnHN »

nextlevelwizard wrote: post #83
malikNF wrote: post #21

How on earth does google manage to still be one of the most valuable (in $$$) companies in the world with this kind of behavior. I just can't imagine treating my customers half as bad as the way google does and still continue to be in business. Abruptly dropping support for products[1], violating their user's privacy [2] , working with organizations accused of human rights violations. Each passing year it seems googl…

Are you serious with your question or is this hyperbole? When you hear about something like this you are seeing the one in a million false positive or more likely there was some fuckery going on. Obviously there is no upside for the banned devs to admit that they tried to abuse click rate on their ads, so unless Google comes forward admitting they made a mistake we will never know whose on right here. This still leav…

The defendant (Google) was asked to defend their actions, on multiple occasions, and could not.

That amounts to a default judgement against then in our eyes, is all.

It'd be pretty silly to withhold judgement until the defendant admits to wrongdoing, which would explain why few other people in this thread are doing that.

Re: Google can ban your Android app if they think you’ve clicked on your own ads

#278

Post by ImPostingOnHN »

Tepix wrote: post #156

Everyone is bashing Google, and rightfully so. I avoid using their services. However, I've also experienced the other side. I've run an online gaming business and we had to ban players that created multiple accounts to cheat. I remember an infamous player whom we kicked out after he created a bunch of accounts and used them to brazenly cheat. He created yet another account and posted on our forums complaining about h…

The issue is that it's better for society that a thousand guilty people go unpunished than that a single innocent one is.

"The end justifies the means" is how atrocities are justified.

Re: Google can ban your Android app if they think you’ve clicked on your own ads

#279

Post by alexchamberlain »

lbriner wrote: post #273
alexchamberlain wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's going to be more expensive than that to get accounts prepared, right?

For small company accounts in the UK, you can file them yourself. It is not completely easy depending on what you are doing but well within the ability of an engineer, as long as you are keeping the relevant receipts etc. For me, running a company was never expensive, just hassle like sending your annual update to Companies House and understanding the various overlapping communications from HMRC for tax.

Interesting - I thought all companies had to file electronically with tagged accounts - ie you need some level of an accountant.

Re: Google can ban your Android app if they think you’ve clicked on your own ads

#280

Post by gooses »

nkozyra wrote: post #28

It really does feel like there's a day of reckoning coming for services that can boot you with one fell swoop. And unfortunately it's unlikely to come from the source or from a general public appeal, but from government intervention. My adsense account was banned years ago. No details, no receptiveness to appeals. It's the kind of thing that's kept me from some personal/professional pursuits because I know there's a…

This is my exact situation, I was banned from adsence over 10 years ago when I was a teenager. I still to this day do not know what caused the ban. I'm now running a successfull business and have had to shape our whole monetization strategy around avoiding google.
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