Google Safe Browsing can kill a startup • Hacker News Board

Re: Google Safe Browsing can kill a startup

#511

Post by segfaultbuserr » Sun, Jan 17, 2021, 11:45 AM UTC

throwaway2048 wrote: post #366

at_a_remove wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jon Williams, circa 1987, wrote a story of a far-flung humanity's future in "Dinosaurs," in which humans had been engineered into a variety of specialized forms to better serve humanity. After nine million years of tweaking, most of them are not too bright but they are perfect at what they do. Ambassador Drill is trying to prevent a newly discovered species, the Shar, from treading on the toes of humanity, because if…

Modern large corporations are just an more inefficient, less effective paperclip maximizer, with humans gumming up the works. Google is striving hard to remove the "human" part of the problem.

After finished reading the parent comment,

> Google's desire for scale, scale, scale, meant that interactions must be handled through The Algorithms. I can imagine it still muttering "The algorithms said ..." as anti-trust measures reverse-Frankenstein it into hopefully more manageable pieces.

I immediately pressed C-f to search the string "paperclip maximizer", and was not disappointed. Thanks for mentioning it.

Re: Google Safe Browsing can kill a startup

#512

Post by hutzlibu » Sun, Jan 17, 2021, 11:49 AM UTC

cthor wrote: post #478

judge2020 wrote: post #451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It feels like the need for automated systems is a result of the ever-increasing size of the world (there are now nearly 5 billion internet users[0]). For Apple, app review can take days, mainly because doing human review [consistently] well and constantly for 8 hours a day isn't easy[1], leading to staffing issues when bad reviewers get weeded out and only a small percentage of hires stick around. Outside of hiring 1…

There's no reason the number of humans dealing with these problems can't scale alongside the number of humans creating them. But it's a lot cheaper to pay for a few really expensive programmers to make a just-good-enough AI than to pay for thousands of human moderators. So we end up with a stupid computer creating tonnes of human misery all for the sake of FAANG's already fat profit margins.

"So we end up with a stupid computer creating tonnes of human misery all for the sake of FAANG's already fat profit margins."

I don't want to blame this entirely on the big companies, though. Also the people want and expect "free" things on the internet. This is how we ended up like this.

Re: Google Safe Browsing can kill a startup

#513

Post by hutzlibu » Sun, Jan 17, 2021, 11:53 AM UTC

ehsankia wrote: post #379

yuvalr1 wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an amazing story. It really demonstrates the way we pave our road to hell with good intentions... We should really do something about this issue, where so few companies (arguably, a single one) hold so much power over the most fundamental technology of the era.

Are you implying that the list no longer has a good intention? I wouldn't be surprised if there are multiple orders of magnitude more phishing and hacked websites in 2021 than there was in 2004. Even with human checking, I doubt you'll even have 0% failure rate. Is the solution to just give up on blocking phishing sites?

" Is the solution to just give up on blocking phishing sites?"

But maybe not do it by default on browser-level.

But if you do, then there really needs to be ways to combat wrong decisions in a timely manner.

Re: Google Safe Browsing can kill a startup

#514

Post by Const-me » Sun, Jan 17, 2021, 11:55 AM UTC

For desktop software, antivirus "industry" can be almost equally destructive.

For instance, Avast breaks installers of software made with a specific installation framework: https://github.com/wixtoolset/issues/issues/5593

The problem lasts for years. At one point I've tried to contact them, but people from Avast were either unable or unwilling to fix their software.

Re: Google Safe Browsing can kill a startup

#515

Post by SmokyBourbon » Sun, Jan 17, 2021, 12:09 PM UTC

jedberg wrote: post #316

This is actually funny, because I was involved with the creation of this list, way back in 2004. The whole thing started as a way to stop phishing. I was working at eBay/PayPal at the time, and we were finding a bunch of new phishing sites every day. We would keep a list and try to track down the owners of the (almost always hacked) sites and ask them to take it down. But sometimes it would take weeks or months for t…

It’s amazing that a person can write this and not feel any remorse for the pain they caused.

Re: Google Safe Browsing can kill a startup

#516

Post by koalaman » Sun, Jan 17, 2021, 12:25 PM UTC

freedomben wrote: post #20

After years of seeing developments like this, getting worse and worse, it fills me with rage to think about how clearly nobody in power at Google cares. I naively used to think, "they probably don't realize what's happening and will fix it." I always try to give benefit of the doubt, especially having been on the other side so many times and seeing how 9 times out of 10 it's not malice, just incompetence, apathy, or…

(Googler)

You are only focusing on the negatives while completely ignoring the positives here.

Here are a few questions to consider that may give you better perspective:

1) Do you know the magnitude of financial and psychological damage caused by malware, phishing, etc on the web?

2) Do you believe that it is possible to have a human review every piece of automation generated malware on the internet?

3) Do you believe it is possible to build an automated system that provides value with zero false positives?

4) Do you think an open standards body or government bureau would perform any better at implementing protections from the threats described here?

Re: Google Safe Browsing can kill a startup

#517

Post by bonoboTP » Sun, Jan 17, 2021, 12:51 PM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #494

nearbuy wrote: post #458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This helps one group and hurts another. If Google is liable for blocking potential malware and phishing pages, they'll either stop blocking it, or adjust their algorithm to strongly err on the side of allowing phishing sites. Businesses become safer, but more regular people will get phished.

> or adjust their algorithm to strongly err on the side of allowing phishing sites. It'a not the role of Google to disallow phishing sites (as a browser) just like it's not the role of the ISP. Make it hookable so people can chose their own phising protection service.

People wouldn't know or care which to pick. They would see the pop-up asking to select a phishing protection provider, would get confused and angry and think "where do I click to get past this pop-up, I want to go on Facebook and this stupid computer is nagging me with stuff again!"

Phishing protection is mostly needed for people who have no clear concept of phishing or technicalities. They just want to do things on the internet, like social media, they don't care about things behind the scenes, that's boring uncool nerd stuff.

Re: Google Safe Browsing can kill a startup

#518

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Jan 17, 2021, 1:03 PM UTC

Retric wrote: post #418

pryce wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's interesting how closely the unfolding of this awful scenario has followed an entirely predictable path based on the shifting incentives: now hundreds of thousands of businesses face the same massive hazard of blocklisted without adequate human review, and with mediocre options to respond to it if it occurs. Without a shift in incentives, its unlikely the outlook will improve. Unless the organisations affected (a…

Blacklisting a site incorrectly seems like a perfectly adequate reason for a defamation lawsuit. So, I think the real issue is with the legal system.

[deleted]

Re: Google Safe Browsing can kill a startup

#519

Post by msh » Sun, Jan 17, 2021, 1:03 PM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #503

msh wrote: post #502

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And then they will choose the same block list and sites will have the same problem.

All? I doubt it. Not to mention they could offer control to override whatever you like.

Well enough that it will still be a blocker.

Re: Google Safe Browsing can kill a startup

#520

Post by bborud » Sun, Jan 17, 2021, 1:44 PM UTC

cturner wrote: post #497

bborud wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, we can't vote with our clicks. That's what it means when a handful of companies dominate most of the web and the web playing a dominant role in global economy. We have very little real choice. Occasionally people will pretend this is not so. In particular those who can't escape the iron grasp these companies have on the industry. Whose success depends on being in good standing with these companies. Or those whose…

Stock picking is not realism.

If by that you mean that valuations are not the result of a rational process, you are correct.

But investment strategy isn't so much about any underlying reality as it is about the psychology of market participants. You don't invest based on what you hope will happen, but what you believe will happen.