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Everybody wants to hear it, but Google can't tell it. One part of the fight with the bad guys is never to tell them how they got caught, so they never know how

Everybody wants to hear it, but Google can't tell it. One part of the fight with the bad guys is never to tell them how they got caught, so they never know how to protect themselves.

fauigerzigerk 8y ago
There's a difference between telling someone what they did wrong and telling them how they got caught. The former should be a legal requirement. But I'm not sure what actually happened in this particular case. We don't even know if it concerns a G Suite account and what the company was or wasn't told about why they got banned.
- gwerbret 8y ago
  Non-expert here, but I wonder if the obscurity actually points to an machine learning-based solution at Google's end. Let's say that Google has developed a deep learning paradigm to identify -- and ban -- low-value users who violate their ToS. The low-value group would probably include all non-paying users, as well as small G Suite accounts. Let's also say that the paradigm was deployed as an automated solution, since it was 99% accurate during testing at picking out ToS violators, though the exact percentage doesn't really matter. I would imagine that the relevant Google execs did a cost-benefit analysis, and figured that the PR hit and revenue loss associated with a liberal and fully automated use of the banhammer against all supposed ToS violators -- including the 1% that were false positives -- was justified by the benefits to Google's bottom line. Based on this possibility, it seems likely that Google employees would not _know_ why the banhammer fell in any particular instance -- nor would they care to know, since that would involve digging through the data to figure out which events triggered a positive hit in their machine learning implementation. It presumably wouldn't be worth Google's time and effort on behalf of users already classified as "low-value". This might also explain why, as mentioned in another post, it took a few days for the banhammer to fall on a start-up, after a dev with a "poisoned" Google account joined the team. Presumably it took those few days worth of traffic and usage data for ToS-Hammer(tm) to figure that the dev had spawned new accounts elsewhere. Again, I'm not an expert, so pardon any flaws in the relevant logic.
  - fauigerzigerk 8y ago
    This seems realistic, if it's not like that today it may soon be. But I think this is exactly the sort of scenario that doesn't go together with all the claims of responsible use of AI powers. Given the oligopolistic structure of the industry, throwing an unlucky minority under the bus without recourse just because it's statistically "rational" will not hold up. I think Google knows that and there will be some sort of more systematic fix (compared to reddit posts and friends at Google). Some AI algorithms can explain how they came to the conclusion they came to and why not have a paid support option as well.
scardine 8y ago
Sure. Let's go ahead and turn the world into a Kafkaesque nightmare where you are prosecuted but has no right to know why. Justice system is perfect so if the man says you are guilty it's because you are. /S
- nordsieck 8y ago
  > Sure. Let's go ahead and turn the world into a Kafkaesque nightmare where you are prosecuted but has no right to know why. Justice system is perfect so if the man says you are guilty it's because you are. /S The great virtue of private industry over government is the ease with which you can opt out.
  - JasonFruit 8y ago
    Have you tried to opt out of Google services, especially if you got in early on? It's not easy, let me tell you.
    - dvfjsdhgfv 8y ago
      I completely agree, it's extremely hard. I can do without Google on my servers at all, and I'm happy about it. On my notebook, it's much harder. On a phone, it's almost impossible, if you have and Android phone. Google is bending over backwards to make you turn on more sensors and gather more data. I recently discovered it's enough to use the Gmail app once with a given e-mail address and it will happily turn on the location service (.i.e. phone tracking) for these accounts, even though you use a completely different account for your phone set up, including Google Play. They want to lay their hands on everything, it's so annoying.
  - scardine 8y ago
    Yes, changing to another cloud provider may be less annoying than moving to another country but for how long it will be the case?
- hluska 8y ago
  Isn't Google a private company?
themaninthedark 8y ago
Security through obscurity is a bad design.

Everybody wants to hear it, but Google can't tell it. One part of the fight with the bad guys is never to tell them how they got caught, so they never know how to protect themselves.

fauigerzigerk 8y ago

There's a difference between telling someone what they did wrong and telling them how they got caught. The former should be a legal requirement. But I'm not sure what actually happened in this particular case. We don't even know if it concerns a G Suite account and what the company was or wasn't told about why they got banned.

gwerbret 8y ago
Non-expert here, but I wonder if the obscurity actually points to an machine learning-based solution at Google's end. Let's say that Google has developed a deep learning paradigm to identify -- and ban -- low-value users who violate their ToS. The low-value group would probably include all non-paying users, as well as small G Suite accounts. Let's also say that the paradigm was deployed as an automated solution, since it was 99% accurate during testing at picking out ToS violators, though the exact percentage doesn't really matter. I would imagine that the relevant Google execs did a cost-benefit analysis, and figured that the PR hit and revenue loss associated with a liberal and fully automated use of the banhammer against all supposed ToS violators -- including the 1% that were false positives -- was justified by the benefits to Google's bottom line. Based on this possibility, it seems likely that Google employees would not _know_ why the banhammer fell in any particular instance -- nor would they care to know, since that would involve digging through the data to figure out which events triggered a positive hit in their machine learning implementation. It presumably wouldn't be worth Google's time and effort on behalf of users already classified as "low-value". This might also explain why, as mentioned in another post, it took a few days for the banhammer to fall on a start-up, after a dev with a "poisoned" Google account joined the team. Presumably it took those few days worth of traffic and usage data for ToS-Hammer(tm) to figure that the dev had spawned new accounts elsewhere. Again, I'm not an expert, so pardon any flaws in the relevant logic.
- fauigerzigerk 8y ago
  This seems realistic, if it's not like that today it may soon be. But I think this is exactly the sort of scenario that doesn't go together with all the claims of responsible use of AI powers. Given the oligopolistic structure of the industry, throwing an unlucky minority under the bus without recourse just because it's statistically "rational" will not hold up. I think Google knows that and there will be some sort of more systematic fix (compared to reddit posts and friends at Google). Some AI algorithms can explain how they came to the conclusion they came to and why not have a paid support option as well.

scardine 8y ago

Sure. Let's go ahead and turn the world into a Kafkaesque nightmare where you are prosecuted but has no right to know why. Justice system is perfect so if the man says you are guilty it's because you are. /S

nordsieck 8y ago
> Sure. Let's go ahead and turn the world into a Kafkaesque nightmare where you are prosecuted but has no right to know why. Justice system is perfect so if the man says you are guilty it's because you are. /S The great virtue of private industry over government is the ease with which you can opt out.
- JasonFruit 8y ago
  Have you tried to opt out of Google services, especially if you got in early on? It's not easy, let me tell you.
  - dvfjsdhgfv 8y ago
    I completely agree, it's extremely hard. I can do without Google on my servers at all, and I'm happy about it. On my notebook, it's much harder. On a phone, it's almost impossible, if you have and Android phone. Google is bending over backwards to make you turn on more sensors and gather more data. I recently discovered it's enough to use the Gmail app once with a given e-mail address and it will happily turn on the location service (.i.e. phone tracking) for these accounts, even though you use a completely different account for your phone set up, including Google Play. They want to lay their hands on everything, it's so annoying.
- scardine 8y ago
  Yes, changing to another cloud provider may be less annoying than moving to another country but for how long it will be the case?
hluska 8y ago
Isn't Google a private company?

themaninthedark 8y ago

Security through obscurity is a bad design.