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This sort of thing truly needs to run into regulatory force. I don't believe in government being up our collective skirts for everything but regulation does ha

This sort of thing truly needs to run into regulatory force. I don't believe in government being up our collective skirts for everything but regulation does have its place and this, I think, would be appropriate use of such power. And this does not apply to just Google. We've had run-ins with Google, Facebook and Amazon on different fronts and for different issues. And, in all cases, our clients had their accounts suspended forever, permanently, done, no more. One case happened about six years ago. Google opened-up a product called, if I remember correctly, "AdSense for Domains". The idea was that, rather than park your domains with GoDaddy (or whoever) and have GoDaddy earn $0.02 and give you $0.005 on ads placed on your domains you could, instead, park them directly with Google and get paid directly. One of our clients had over 250 domains on GoDaddy. They decided to move them ALL to Google. The process entailed moving them over to the Google provided DNS, followed by an automated approval process that took minutes. All 250+ domains got moved and all 250+ domains got approved. About three days later: "All your Google accounts have been suspended due to fraudulent activity on your Google for Domains pages". Upon digging, it appears they claimed excessive clicks on ads. Well, nobody clicked on any of them. At least not our client. The domains were many years old and were logging ad clicks on a regular basis when parked with GoDaddy for years. In other words, normal behavior. So, Google acted like a totalitarian regime run by an asshole and cut off our client. All for the $50 a month these parked domains were going to earn him. What really sucked was that his AdWords account got rolled into that as well, so they lost all ability to use AdWords to promote their legitimate business. No appeal. No email. No way to communicate. Can't get more despicable than that. Oh, wait, you can! A different client. They had been advertising their products on Facebook with some results. Nothing great, but they were learning. Their product, for women, featured images of a woman wearing a normal bikini. No, nothing racy, just a normal looking bikini worn by a model. Facebook flagged the ads as inappropriate despite the fact that, during the same period of time, you could regularly see half-naked Victoria's Secret ads on FB all the time. So these guys, not wanting to get into trouble, changed-up their ads to simple graphics. No problem. About six months later they decide to take advantage of a lucrative affiliate program for a business course. They decided on a budget and started to advertise it on FB. No scam, a course tens of thousands of people had taken. Legit through and through. About a week into this FB emails: "Your advertising account has been suspended permanently." No reason given. They reached out to FB with their appeal form. No reply. Tried again. Snotty reply saying "Please consider this decision final. This will be our last communication". And so, this company, a valuable and upstanding member of society, is now cutoff from advertising on Facebook forever. Done. For life. This, in no uncertain terms, is pure highly refined bullshit totalitarian crap. This is NOT how business is done outside of the realm of games played by petulant children. It is disgusting, to say the least. In the real world business people engage in conversations to find common ground. If a magazine doesn't like your ads, the editor will discuss them with you and seek modifications. They don't cut you off for life. That's some violent bullshit there. No, I think it's high time the likes of Google and Facebook visit the receiving end of a good government style reaming. I'm so sick of it I am more than willing to get the ball rolling. What's the best course of action? Any law firms who read HN interested in a nice fat class action lawsuit? Consumers can't be treated like this. It has been going on for many years. High time we put an end to it. Any takers?

MrThePresident 10y ago
You hit the nail on the head describing the culture of doing business with these companies. This is not the way the world works and certainly not the way legitimate businesses operate, dealing with them is incredibly frustrating. I laugh every time people complain about comcast or att customer service, just wait until they have to deal with google and facebook's nonexistent customer service.
sacradix 10y ago
I don't know if it's so much attributable to malice as it is that it's their business model of working hard to satisfy the 99% but neglecting the concerns of the 1% that cause trouble and take up a lot of labor without yielding commensurate return to the bottom line. I don't know if regulation is the solution, but at the least, we should be mindful of this and try to arrange their lives to be anti-fragile to these unexpected shocks.
- rebootthesystem 10y ago
  I am going to be harsh here. It's not malice. It's the lack of an education. No, I am not talking about college. I am talking about manners, caring, being considerate, respectful and not insolent, petulant and completely oblivious to what human decency and respect entail. Places like Facebook are almost entirely populated by a generation of young people who are intellectually smart yet socially vacuous to an unbelievable extent. It is an insolent, immature generation where 27 year olds can actually behave like my 9 year old's do, or worst. And, in many ways, it's like Vulcans with shitty attitudes. No human part at all. An empty logic machine operating with a flawed and fucked-up version of logic they have created. That's what's going on. They now rule the world and have very little in the way of human decency within them as a guide. And, of course, through intense age discrimination there are no adults to teach them how to behave in the face of real human beings, with real lives, kids, businesses, problems, bills to pay, concerns and needs. This is the only context within which a person could possibly decide it is OK to utterly destroy someone's income without as much as a conversation. And, since they don't seem very interested in correcting their behavior (or don't even understand why they should) it might be time to throw the only possible correcting factor people on the outside can reach for: Government goons. It sure feels like it's about time. Too many of these stories out there.

MrThePresident 10y ago

You hit the nail on the head describing the culture of doing business with these companies. This is not the way the world works and certainly not the way legitimate businesses operate, dealing with them is incredibly frustrating. I laugh every time people complain about comcast or att customer service, just wait until they have to deal with google and facebook's nonexistent customer service.

sacradix 10y ago

I don't know if it's so much attributable to malice as it is that it's their business model of working hard to satisfy the 99% but neglecting the concerns of the 1% that cause trouble and take up a lot of labor without yielding commensurate return to the bottom line. I don't know if regulation is the solution, but at the least, we should be mindful of this and try to arrange their lives to be anti-fragile to these unexpected shocks.

rebootthesystem 10y ago
I am going to be harsh here. It's not malice. It's the lack of an education. No, I am not talking about college. I am talking about manners, caring, being considerate, respectful and not insolent, petulant and completely oblivious to what human decency and respect entail. Places like Facebook are almost entirely populated by a generation of young people who are intellectually smart yet socially vacuous to an unbelievable extent. It is an insolent, immature generation where 27 year olds can actually behave like my 9 year old's do, or worst. And, in many ways, it's like Vulcans with shitty attitudes. No human part at all. An empty logic machine operating with a flawed and fucked-up version of logic they have created. That's what's going on. They now rule the world and have very little in the way of human decency within them as a guide. And, of course, through intense age discrimination there are no adults to teach them how to behave in the face of real human beings, with real lives, kids, businesses, problems, bills to pay, concerns and needs. This is the only context within which a person could possibly decide it is OK to utterly destroy someone's income without as much as a conversation. And, since they don't seem very interested in correcting their behavior (or don't even understand why they should) it might be time to throw the only possible correcting factor people on the outside can reach for: Government goons. It sure feels like it's about time. Too many of these stories out there.