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Calling Their Bluff

anguscheng.com

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Re: Calling Their Bluff

#61

Post by magnetometer »

gattilorenz wrote: post #56
magnetometer wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never experienced any government process where paying a third party would have simplified things. I've also never heard of any third party offerings for that purpose. Could you share some examples?

Not sure about now, but last year your only way of getting a digital vignette for the Austrian highway that is valid “today” was via a third party (from outside Austria, I think). Austrian ASFINAG would only sell you one that is valid in ~2 week at the earliest, since that’s the time you are guaranteed by law to return it. Not very handy if you are already on the road, and don’t want to stop to buy a physical vignett…

Sorry, should have specified that I'm looking for examples for Germany, as this was what the parent comment was talking about.

Re: Calling Their Bluff

#62

Post by magnetometer »

nicbou wrote: post #52
magnetometer wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never experienced any government process where paying a third party would have simplified things. I've also never heard of any third party offerings for that purpose. Could you share some examples?

It generally means someone translating your information to the format the government employees expect, because each attempt costs multiple weeks of waiting. Basically, if there is a 6-week response time, you want to get it right on the first try. In other cases, you pay people to save yourself the hassle of fighting for an appointment slot, and to save a trip across town in the middle of a work day. These fixers beco…

I've never had this issue with any government communication in Germany. Also, all appointments I need can be booked online, so I never had to pay someone for them (wouldn't even come to my mind). Maybe it's more of an issue for particular cities?

Re: Calling Their Bluff

#63

Post by account42 »

a3w wrote: post #31

In Germany, we had a private company that offered a service no one needed to pay the household bill on public broadcasting. If their SEO ranking beats the official site, they could confuse the hell out of people. (And I am told people do not use uBlock or Pihole everywhere, so paid ads would work, too.) They seem to leave the market, perhaps due to being sued they cannot make a profit: https://www.verbraucherzentrale…

> In Germany, we had a private company that offered a service no one needed to pay the household bill on public broadcasting.

At first I thought you were talking about GEZ itself.

Re: Calling Their Bluff

#64

Post by nicbou »

magnetometer wrote: post #62
nicbou wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It generally means someone translating your information to the format the government employees expect, because each attempt costs multiple weeks of waiting. Basically, if there is a 6-week response time, you want to get it right on the first try. In other cases, you pay people to save yourself the hassle of fighting for an appointment slot, and to save a trip across town in the middle of a work day. These fixers beco…

I've never had this issue with any government communication in Germany. Also, all appointments I need can be booked online, so I never had to pay someone for them (wouldn't even come to my mind). Maybe it's more of an issue for particular cities?

Is it safe to assume that you were born in Germany? The system is a lot less friendly to newcomers who have to do everything at once. It's full of catch 22 situations.

That aside, Germany is a federation and every state, city, office and employee adds a layer of variance for a given process.

Re: Calling Their Bluff

#65

Post by BLKNSLVR »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #41
BLKNSLVR wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure how Google can't be held responsible for this. They're literally advertising scams. They're taking money for putting up an ad for a scam site. I don't know how there is an excuse for this that's acceptable to any authority. It's their own platform that they seem unable to control. Take some responsibility Google, you are profiting by facilitating evil (even moreso than by regular advertising).

> I'm not sure how Google can't be held responsible for this. They're literally advertising scams. They're taking money for putting up an ad for a scam site. The thing I don't understand is why people keep expecting them to. Who even wants Google to be the police? To actually act as a deterrent you need the ability to impose penalties, and for that you need the actual police. All Google can do is close their account,…

I don't understand your position at all (and I don't mean this aggressively, I just can't get myself into a position of understanding). From my current perspective you seem to be absolving Google of any responsibility for, literally, their product.

My reasoning is:

Google have created an advertising platform. It is their raison d'etre; their entire millions per hour profit engine. But they only built the easy, profitable half because there were / are no regulations to enforce the responsible, difficult half.

They built the half that allows anyone with the money to put something on their platform. They didn't build the half that makes sure that they're not helping scammers, con artists, and outright criminals from reaching the global audience that their wonderful, profitable, scalable platform enables.

They should be policing it on their own to an extent that obvious scams and fake banking websites and clickbait should be detected. Even just to appear to not be a crime-facilitation platform, which they currently are.

To me it feels analogous to Microsoft and their commitment to security of Windows. It's not a priority because it's counter to profitability. Privatise the profits and socialise the costs.

If they can't control their own platform, they should not have the platform. It is not a mature enough product to be released upon the world. It is Frankenstein's monster, left to roam.

I would be supportive of legislation that outright banned advertising with Google until they were able to provably clean up their act; if their product was market-ready.

Which three letter agency said that an ad blocker was a required layer of security when browsing the web? There's a good reason: Google. If the Internet is full of scams, who is most responsible for its proliferation?

(I have a massive bias against advertising, so that heavily colours my opinion. I also understand that advertising is inevitable, but it should be held to a much higher standard than, well, the none that exists)

Re: Calling Their Bluff

#66

Post by Schweigerose »

ricudis wrote: post #19
nicbou wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Germany there is also a strange zone where people bring sanity to government processes that have no business being this complicated.

In Greece, traditionally, we tend to consider Germany as the almost ultimate place in regards to reliability, efficiency, etc. It's a bit soothing to discover that almost everywhere everybody has the same issues (the difference in magnitude matters, of course)

These times are long gone. Not only with government efficiency, but the transition to digital services, railroad services, you name it. And yet people voted for a 68 year old Blackrock manager without any kind of governmental expertise on any level as their new saviour.

Re: Calling Their Bluff

#67

Post by BobaFloutist »

ricudis wrote: post #14
BLKNSLVR wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure how Google can't be held responsible for this. They're literally advertising scams. They're taking money for putting up an ad for a scam site. I don't know how there is an excuse for this that's acceptable to any authority. It's their own platform that they seem unable to control. Take some responsibility Google, you are profiting by facilitating evil (even moreso than by regular advertising).

Nowadays 90% of the "Sponsored" category that I see are scams and clickbait sites The most "innocent" of them are competitor ads trying to convert you from what you're actually searching for. Unfortunately there are no incentives for Google to fix this. Apparently they make too much money out of it.

The most most innocent just duplicate the natural correct search result.

Re: Calling Their Bluff

#68

Post by WorldMaker »

BLKNSLVR wrote: post #65
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm not sure how Google can't be held responsible for this. They're literally advertising scams. They're taking money for putting up an ad for a scam site. The thing I don't understand is why people keep expecting them to. Who even wants Google to be the police? To actually act as a deterrent you need the ability to impose penalties, and for that you need the actual police. All Google can do is close their account,…

I don't understand your position at all (and I don't mean this aggressively, I just can't get myself into a position of understanding). From my current perspective you seem to be absolving Google of any responsibility for, literally, their product. My reasoning is: Google have created an advertising platform. It is their raison d'etre; their entire millions per hour profit engine. But they only built the easy, profit…

Newspapers and TV channels were held to Truth in Advertising Laws, and obvious scams would trigger law suits, from consumer groups, from the FCC itself sometimes, from rival newspapers and TV channels.

Google has enough of a near-monopoly in ads that there aren't rivals scaled enough to defend the public good out of the greed of their pocket books if not the good of everyone else. Google's competitors are too busy selling ad space to the same and similar lowest common denominator polluters and scammers than to police Google enough to hope to put it out of business.

The FCC gave up on policing anything on the internet ages ago. Between Congressional protections and multiple administrations trying to keep the FCC weak, it doesn't seem to have enough power to do anything towards Google.

I suppose that leaves consumer advocacy groups. I don't know how we build and scale a Consumers Against Predatory Google Ads to the point that it can force Google to reconsider their approach to advertising for the consumer good instead of evil. But then I also don't understand how Google isn't already doing tremendous enough damage to their brand that there isn't already enough of a sentiment that Google is actively engaged in evil and needs to stop, five or six years ago at least (or maybe at least as far back as when Google bought/merged Doubleclick). Their brand, too, seems too big to fail at this point, and it is weird to me.

Re: Calling Their Bluff

#69

Post by BobaFloutist »

Schweigerose wrote: post #66
ricudis wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Greece, traditionally, we tend to consider Germany as the almost ultimate place in regards to reliability, efficiency, etc. It's a bit soothing to discover that almost everywhere everybody has the same issues (the difference in magnitude matters, of course)

These times are long gone. Not only with government efficiency, but the transition to digital services, railroad services, you name it. And yet people voted for a 68 year old Blackrock manager without any kind of governmental expertise on any level as their new saviour.

Yeah these days the masters of officiencynard probably Japan.

Re: Calling Their Bluff

#70

Post by viridian »

nicbou wrote: post #55
ricudis wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Greece, traditionally, we tend to consider Germany as the almost ultimate place in regards to reliability, efficiency, etc. It's a bit soothing to discover that almost everywhere everybody has the same issues (the difference in magnitude matters, of course)

It's a myth. Germans are methodical and risk-averse, but definitely not efficient. Things to get stuck at the precise point in time when they were over-engineered, and never move from there. As a result, German bureaucracy tends to rely solely on paper and in-person appointments. With every state, every city, every office and every employee having their own interpretation of a procesd, you get an unpredictable, opaqu…

I think its overgeneralizing, but mostly accurate to say that the human-free constructs built by the Germans are quite efficient, but the human processes, systems, and interactions by which they get to these other results are byzantine at best, Kafkaesque at worst.

Perhaps the two are even related. American companies will reach 3 9's of reliability for a device, call it sufficient, and ship a product. German companies will be engaged with not only internal stakeholders, but also various levels of government for weeks to months just to come to an agreement about what the acceptable threshold is (it's the highest asked for by the combined pool of stakeholders), and 18 months after the Americans hit the market, you'll have a wristwatch with 7 9's of reliability that costs 3x as much as the American one.

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