Google users locked out after 15 years' use • Hacker News Board

Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use

#641

Post by eternalban » Mon, Nov 02, 2020, 10:18 PM UTC

_imba_ wrote: post #359

Not completely related to personal accounts being banned, but something that happened to me recently: I started a side business with some friends during lockdown. We created an online store selling some hard-to-get long tail items, and almost instantly got some traction and growth thanks to Google Shopping. A month ago we received one of these generic automated mails that our account is banned and we were misrepresen…

You will be delighted to know that Google is one of the tech giants tasked with contact tracing for Covid.

Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use

#642

Post by vkou » Mon, Nov 02, 2020, 10:20 PM UTC

hedora wrote: post #472

londons_explore wrote: post #430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There have been big swings in advertiser behaviour in the last few years. One big advertiser changes their policy to "no longer include sites about LGBT issues", and suddenly a blog about that could see revenue drop 90%.

In the past, the advertiser would likely to tell that to the people selling ad space. Then, they’d suffer political blowback for being anti-LGBT. It sounds like Google is laundering third party behavior that is further dividing our society. Perhaps advertisers should be forced (by the government, on all algorithmic platforms) to publish their targeting criteria.

> In the past, the advertiser would likely to tell that to the people selling ad space.

Prior to ad networks that automatically match advertisers to display space, yes.

The thing is, though, prior to ad networks, there were a lot fewer advertisers who were interested in spending time and money on doing this song and dance with a slew of tiny web properties. Most of them wouldn't even bother.

You can have no ad networks, or you can have a long tail of low-prominence websites earn ad revenue. Pick one.

Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use

#643

Post by pembrook » Mon, Nov 02, 2020, 10:21 PM UTC

mensetmanusman wrote: post #582

_imba_ wrote: post #359

Not completely related to personal accounts being banned, but something that happened to me recently: I started a side business with some friends during lockdown. We created an online store selling some hard-to-get long tail items, and almost instantly got some traction and growth thanks to Google Shopping. A month ago we received one of these generic automated mails that our account is banned and we were misrepresen…

On youtube at least, competitors can flag videos as ‘ungood’ in a number of ways (copyright, hate speech, NSFW, etc.) to entangle their competitors in bureaucracy.

Not just YouTube. One of my competitors spent thousands of dollars on AdWords to send traffic to my site with an ad for something completely unrelated.

This of course led to bounce rates of 99%+ for all of this traffic, which dramatically increased my bounce rate overall.

As far as I can tell, Google used this as a signal that my site was a shady/scam site and removed me from the search pages I used to rank on entirely.

Took nearly 6 months to figure out the problem, and where all this phantom AdWords traffic was coming from.

Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use

#644

Post by fao_ » Mon, Nov 02, 2020, 10:24 PM UTC

ljm wrote: post #213

cutemonster wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if I forget to renew the domain? Someone else buys the domain after me? And steals all my online accounts? (Pwd reset emails)

That's honestly nobody's problem but your own. Set it to autorenew or buy it for a longer period of time. I bought 10 years up-front for my own domain.

Hmm, let's look at how feasible this is.

Namecheap is quite a popular place to buy domains, isn't it?

(myname).xyz - 10 years - £85.29 / $110.15

(myname).com - 10 years - £69.87 / $90.24

(myname).net - 10 years - £98.40 / $127.08

In a world where many people are not able to afford food for themselves[0][1], this is hardly an alternative. At minimum wage ($7.25[2]), a single domain name would take about half a month to earn, assuming you have no other outgoings, which is very likely not the case.

What coherent person would do that?

[0]: https://eu.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2020/10/01/how-confron...

[1]: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/09/02/magazine/food...

[2]: https://www.epi.org/blog/millions-of-workers-are-paid-less-t...

Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use

#645

Post by dhimes » Mon, Nov 02, 2020, 10:38 PM UTC

Guest19023892 wrote: post #523

londons_explore wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to work on adsense. There is no facility for an "earnings cap". Your revenue is the literal sum of earnings from every click on your property. While ads are showing and being clicked on, you will always be earning more. If I were to guess, you failed to implement ads.txt and/or your content didn't meet the standards required by some big advertisers, so auction pressure was very low for your site.

I've had similar issues with AdSense. Running a site for 10 years, and it was earning $250/day for years, then suddenly it dropped. For a while I had the same traffic and instead of 500 clicks a day Google would say I had 3 or 4 clicks. I contacted them, waited a month, and they said to label them "Advertisements" so users are not confused. Well, my site is mostly text based and I have at least 50px of space around a…

but then in the last year Google started taking back 80% of my revenue at the end of the month saying it's "Invalid Traffic"

I wonder if they returned the money to the advertisers.

Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use

#646

Post by dhimes » Mon, Nov 02, 2020, 10:42 PM UTC

londons_explore wrote: post #637

Guest19023892 wrote: post #523

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've had similar issues with AdSense. Running a site for 10 years, and it was earning $250/day for years, then suddenly it dropped. For a while I had the same traffic and instead of 500 clicks a day Google would say I had 3 or 4 clicks. I contacted them, waited a month, and they said to label them "Advertisements" so users are not confused. Well, my site is mostly text based and I have at least 50px of space around a…

> The other week I tried building a database of 800 million IP addresses using lists of all IP addresses from datacenters, VPNs, proxies, TOR exit nodes, and IPs flagged as abusive. This isn't going to work well... Both Google and many advertisers will send bots to your site to scan the content. If they see javascript shenanigans going on affecting ad presentation, they'll do something between not advertising (reduci…

But maybe you don't have to be logged in to see ads? If so, then maybe changing that feature could help. Or at least show a majority to only logged-in folks.

Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use

#647

Post by qu4z-2 » Mon, Nov 02, 2020, 10:44 PM UTC

warent wrote: post #370

fullstop wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a few things that protonmail is not good at, but I guess I've learned to live with them. 1. You can't search message content. gmail is very good at this, so I've had to become more organized to make sure that I can find a particular message in protonmail. 2. Notifications on mobile do not clear if I've read the message on another device. I have to open up the app and sync to stop them from popping up with o…

all these issues sound more like client issues than protonmail service issues. why not just use a different email client to connect to protonmail, such as Spark?

Because they don't support standard protocols like pop3, smtp and imap. It's why I switched.

(They do have Protonmail Bridge now, but it doesn't work great for alternate mobile clients unless they've changed it)

Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use

#648

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Nov 02, 2020, 10:47 PM UTC

londons_explore wrote: post #637

Guest19023892 wrote: post #523

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've had similar issues with AdSense. Running a site for 10 years, and it was earning $250/day for years, then suddenly it dropped. For a while I had the same traffic and instead of 500 clicks a day Google would say I had 3 or 4 clicks. I contacted them, waited a month, and they said to label them "Advertisements" so users are not confused. Well, my site is mostly text based and I have at least 50px of space around a…

> The other week I tried building a database of 800 million IP addresses using lists of all IP addresses from datacenters, VPNs, proxies, TOR exit nodes, and IPs flagged as abusive. This isn't going to work well... Both Google and many advertisers will send bots to your site to scan the content. If they see javascript shenanigans going on affecting ad presentation, they'll do something between not advertising (reduci…

[deleted]

Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use

#649

Post by nucleardog » Mon, Nov 02, 2020, 10:59 PM UTC

varispeed wrote: post #543

londons_explore wrote: post #527

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Did you have access to the entire source code and understanding of all services running the system? Near enough, yes. Sure, there are millions of lines of code, and I did not read every one, but I debugged enough issues that I'm sure I would have come across this capping effect if it existed and affected more than some dormant/test accounts.

It's possible to implement something like this and you wouldn't be able to find out, as a service sitting between the network and ad servers, it could even be embedded in an innocent looking load balancer. Why would you think something like that wouldn't exist?

Why would Google, internally, implement a feature as if they were maliciously attacking their own systems?

Re: Google users locked out after 15 years' use

#650

Post by eloff » Mon, Nov 02, 2020, 11:16 PM UTC

tracker1 wrote: post #628

slashdev wrote: post #492

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My parents have a business selling low-carb cookbooks online. They used to do very well because of the organic reach they had on Facebook (they have 1 million likes on their page). Posts would routinely have reach in the millions. One day Facebook changed their algorithm and their reach (and revenue) dropped over 10x. They've been limping along since then, and are planning to retire. It's tough having a single point…

Facebook's moderation rules have determined that Keto and Low Carb aren't scientifically supported, so now tend to suppress resources that proliferate those views. I emphatically don't agree with this, but this seems to be the line of reasoning with a lot of things. The reality that much of science is never truly "settled" doesn't really matter. On the one hand, I feel there are a lot of leeches to society that hop o…

Wow I never thought of that possibility.

I can't stand the censoring by tech giants. It's applied unequally, there is no recourse, and it merely serves to enforce the orthodoxy and drive dissent underground. Honestly it's like the church in the middle ages. What a dystopian moment we're living through when monopoly corporations wield that power in society.

Facebook specifically can go to hell. They're making money by selling people's precious time to advertisers at pennies on the dollar. Jewel thieves pawning stolen goods at 10% of their value is less wasteful to society as a whole. I know they don't force anyone to use their services, but neither do the tobacco companies. They just get people addicted to their product. Just because it's legal doesn't make it ethical.