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Google just shut down our $1M business

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Google just shut down our $1M business

#31

Post by carlosjobim »

nhchris wrote: post #11

> We will (barely) survive That a single company, in an unrelated market (ads), merely refusing to do business with you, can almost bankrupt you, means it's time for trust-busting. No single company should have such power.

If it wasn't for Google, millions of businesses would never have had a chance to exist, because they didn't have anywhere near the initial budget or right political connections to reach their customers through traditional media. It is a terrible power they have in their hands, but it is leagues better than what was before.

But I think it is outrageous how they mistreat important customers like OP and let some petty employee who probably has never done anything useful in their life destroy the livelihood of other people just out of spite.

Re: Google just shut down our $1M business

#33

Post by nhchris »

carlosjobim wrote: post #31
nhchris wrote: post #11

> We will (barely) survive That a single company, in an unrelated market (ads), merely refusing to do business with you, can almost bankrupt you, means it's time for trust-busting. No single company should have such power.

If it wasn't for Google, millions of businesses would never have had a chance to exist, because they didn't have anywhere near the initial budget or right political connections to reach their customers through traditional media. It is a terrible power they have in their hands, but it is leagues better than what was before. But I think it is outrageous how they mistreat important customers like OP and let some petty e…

If it wasn't for Google, it would be someone else delivering ads online. Gratitude for their near-complete takeover of that market is severely misplaced.

Re: Google just shut down our $1M business

#36

Post by midoridensha »

v0idzer0 wrote: post #17
masukomi wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it already does tell people to go to sites, but it also lies about what's there. https://blog.opencagedata.com/post/dont-believe-chatgpt ChatGPT is a convincing fiction generator. Any facts it produces are purely coincidental. It's just really good at mansplaining and gaslighting people about things it knows nothing about.

Google just sends you to random websites where regular humans “mansplain and gaslight”? ChatGPT is meant to mimic a human. Not be some god like arbtrar of truth. No such entity will ever exist.

It doesn't have to be a god-like arbiter of truth, it just needs to use actual facts that it can source, not just make stuff up out of thin air, which is exactly what it does.

I asked it recently about how Fermat's Last Theorem was discussed in Star Trek (referencing the episode where Picard is talking to Riker about how it's never been solved, though in reality it was solved less than 10 years after the episode aired), and it wrote a very convincing answer that was complete BS, making up details in different episodes that didn't actually happen. It's easy to get detailed plot summaries of these episodes from Wikipedia or Memory Alpha, so I'm really curious how ChatGPT got its info, or if it just likes to make things up that sound plausible but are completely wrong. Just for starters, according to ChatGPT, Picard did not talk about Fermat's theorem; Data did!

Re: Google just shut down our $1M business

#37

Post by maxbond »

dankwizard wrote: post #25

So can I create a Google Ad about a competitors domain which will flag Google thinking that they have two accounts running two ad campaigns for the same website? Interesting

Moderation is the dual of denial of service. Every moderation primitive is a denial of service primitive, and every denial of service primitive is a moderation primitive - what moderation really is is the denial of service actions we believe are prosocial.

If you penalize people for engaging in link-farming SEO, the SEO people who's tricks don't work anymore will go into business doing "negative SEO" for hire or as extortion. When people use DDoS as an act of protest (I don't know if this still happens but it did circa 2010 when the Anonymous hacktivist movement was active), you can view that as similar "community moderation" to flagging posts on HN, but on the IP level. (I am not endorsing DDoS, I am just illustrating the duality. My point is technical and not political.)

Keep this in mind when you write moderation primitives. They will be abused.

Re: Google just shut down our $1M business

#38

Post by carlosjobim »

nhchris wrote: post #33
carlosjobim wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it wasn't for Google, millions of businesses would never have had a chance to exist, because they didn't have anywhere near the initial budget or right political connections to reach their customers through traditional media. It is a terrible power they have in their hands, but it is leagues better than what was before. But I think it is outrageous how they mistreat important customers like OP and let some petty e…

If it wasn't for Google, it would be someone else delivering ads online. Gratitude for their near-complete takeover of that market is severely misplaced.

What is hindering someone else from competing with Google on search? Google is awful when it comes to things such as censorship and free speech, but it is a boon to business competition, compared to how things where before.

Re: Google just shut down our $1M business

#39

Post by santoshalper »

carlosjobim wrote: post #31
nhchris wrote: post #11

> We will (barely) survive That a single company, in an unrelated market (ads), merely refusing to do business with you, can almost bankrupt you, means it's time for trust-busting. No single company should have such power.

If it wasn't for Google, millions of businesses would never have had a chance to exist, because they didn't have anywhere near the initial budget or right political connections to reach their customers through traditional media. It is a terrible power they have in their hands, but it is leagues better than what was before. But I think it is outrageous how they mistreat important customers like OP and let some petty e…

I think you are mistaking Google for "The Internet", believe me, someone else would be thrilled to show us ads.

Re: Google just shut down our $1M business

#40

Post by maxbond »

afandian wrote: post #23
logicalmonster wrote: post #14

OP seems like he'll hopefully be fine, but there's probably been many people like this who aren't fine. I'm sure many people lose their jobs when an advertiser is banned for some dumb and false reason. I'm sure some people fall into depression and commit suicide when their life's work is destroyed. Can't the allegedly smartest company on Earth figure out some solution to help people in these extreme cases? Especially…

> Can't the allegedly smartest company on Earth figure out some solution to help people in these extreme cases? I was in a different but comparable situation with Google. I closed my paid account, they claimed I owe them money, and the only way of replying is to log in with said non-existent account. It's a trivially foreseeable situation, and trivially detected. I bet it's quite common too. If a reasonably intellige…

I bet there's lots of people who do care, I think it's usually the structure of an organization that stops problems from getting solved and not the moral failing of any individual. It's entirely possible that literally everyone involved wants to get it fixed, there's a ticket with 100 comments below it detailing how the fix will be implemented, but everytime it makes it into the sprint it gets kicked out and quarter or two because something mission critical always comes up.
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