Year one: progress in the fight against Unwanted Software • Hacker News Board

Re: Year one: progress in the fight against Unwanted Software

#41

Post by neerdowell » Mon, Dec 14, 2015, 4:15 PM UTC

niilzon wrote: post #2

According to their criteria, Windows 10 totally falls in the UwS category ! :)

Chrome meets their criteria too, when bundled with other software, example: https://i.imgur.com/MakuHWC.png

It deceptively claims to increase web speeds, piggybacks on CCleaner's installation, doesn't inform the user about what it does, replaces the default web browser by default, "collects or transmits private information without the user’s knowledge", and it is bundled with other software.

The only characteristic that Chrome doesn't have is being difficult to remove.

Re: Year one: progress in the fight against Unwanted Software

#42

Post by vmateixeira » Mon, Dec 14, 2015, 4:19 PM UTC

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #25

mschuster91 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that then noone would click on the ads any more

Acquiring ad clicks by deceiving people into thinking they aren't ads isn't an ethical business model.

I appreciate your effort on trying to putt the words 'google' and 'ethical' in the same sentence. It just doesn't fit. It's business. Who cares about the user any longer?

Re: Year one: progress in the fight against Unwanted Software

#43

Post by vmateixeira » Mon, Dec 14, 2015, 4:20 PM UTC

mschuster91 wrote: post #19

dhimes wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They need to go back to being quite clear about what are ads and what aren't.

The problem is that then noone would click on the ads any more

That only means ads don't fit anymore in this capitalistic world.. so shut them down..

Re: Year one: progress in the fight against Unwanted Software

#44

Post by serge2k » Tue, Dec 15, 2015, 2:27 AM UTC

eps wrote: post #16

r1ch wrote: post #12

Being on the false positive end of this system, it's incredibly frustrating having my site repeatedly flagged and not being able to do anything about it. There doesn't appear to be any way to contact a human except through the "Search Console" where the UI doesn't tell me what it thinks the problem is ( http://i.imgur.com/LWrBINe.png ), and Google's safe browsing list is the only thing that thinks there's a problem (…

Ditto here. Ended up banging head against the wall for nearly a month, submitting review request after review request only to discover that the damn request submission form in WMT console was broken and was failing silently . Fucking hell. If you take on responsibility of (mis)labeling other people work as dangerous crapware, you should probably test the hell out of false positive submission mechanism, shouldn't you?…

Honestly, it seems like a false positive is just Libel.

Re: Year one: progress in the fight against Unwanted Software

#45

Post by ikeboy » Wed, Dec 16, 2015, 12:57 AM UTC

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #28

dhimes wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They need to go back to being quite clear about what are ads and what aren't.

Honestly, the biggest and best move Google could make is to have certain categories of search results ad-free. No search result for a financial institution should include AdWords. There's too many phishing sites that get into AdWords. Same for specific download categories. If you search for "Adobe Flash Player download", you shouldn't get any results or ads that aren't adobe.com at this point.

They could require a deposit for ads, which gets confiscated if they're found to be problematic.