5 ms·

Google AdSense Banned Web Page About 32yo Bill Because It Was About Sexual Abuse

42 points by lysp 8y ago

craftyguy 8y ago
> A page about a 1986 porn bill got demonetized shows how algorithms can’t be expected to make judgement calls. Another day, another article about how we cannot rely on algos. Yawn.
- untog 8y ago
  You don't think it's a topic worth talking about, given that we're shifting more and more decisions onto algorithms?
  - mimimihaha 8y ago
    It makes me scared to think that the government has to be trying to develop algorithms to give advice to people higher up on the military branch about the decisions they should make like in eagle eye.
    - dictum 8y ago
      Who doesn't love plausible deniability? You don't even have to rely on the failed excuse of "just following orders" if you lose, you don't even have to admit that you "didn't know what you didn't know": The machine inferred the wrong thing based on nobody's orders, and carried it out despite our wishes. The damn jalopy!
  - craftyguy 8y ago
    This topic has been posted here dozens of times before, and the discussion has not made any progress. The phrase 'beating a dead horse' comes to mind.
sandworm101 8y ago
Dont blame the machine. Blame those who wish to apply censorship standards meant for film/tv to the entire world. The internet cannot be made pg13. Dont ask the robots to try.
- nrb 8y ago
  Advertisers don’t want their ads displayed alongside “adult” content, this is strictly a financial decision.
  - Nuzzerino 8y ago
    Which advertisers? Google has unfortunately become the trend-setter for one-size-fits-some products, rubbing off on the rest of the industry. Monopolize what you can and turn as much of it into passive income with the least effort necessary.
onetimemanytime 8y ago
Google makes more than enough money to hire people to oversee appeals, but apparently that cuts into their earnings. At least short term... A human being would see what this page was about in 10 seconds. Check a box and click submit. Total time: less than a minute.
google_censors 8y ago
Does anyone know exactly when Google decided to become the pearl-clutching Tipper Gore of search engines? We had a similar problem a long time ago with Google and it seems like it hurt our page rank at the time. There was nothing legislative that would have had any influence at the time, so it has to be coming internally, and from fairly high in the food chain.
- sdenton4 8y ago
  March 2017, to be precise... https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2017/3/24/15053990/google-youtube-advertising-boycott-hate-speech https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2... The Alt Right: This is why we can't have nice things.
  - google_censors 8y ago
    My site was hit around 2010, so that's definitely not it. And they've been censoring adult content for longer than one year.
TangoTrotFox 8y ago
I have 0 love for what Google is doing and turning into, but this article is deeply flawed. Their focus is implicitly on the accuracy rate of Google's actions, yet it makes no effort to statistically demonstrate this. What would matter is not an anecdotal incident, but estimations of the error rate of Google's algorithmic censorship/deranking/demonitization as compared to how human's might perform. Humans regularly make dumb mistakes if not out of misunderstanding then out of sloppiness. Are these algorithmic decisions more accurate, on average, than we might expect of a collection of humans along the lines of Amazon's Mechanical Turk? We can only speculate, but I'd be quite surprised if they were not, but if so that refutes this article's entire premise. This is one of the biggest problems with advertising driven media. They love anecdotal evidence because we love anecdotal evidence which means the story gets clicks and they get their ad bucks. But it entirely misses the point of issues. For instance here, should the issue be the accuracy rate of Google's behaviors or Google's behaviors themselves and their desired endgame? Their accuracy, as a whole, is almost certainly going to be quite acceptable relative to human accuracy. So consequently you end up targeting them in a spot where they're extremely well 'defended.' By contrast, I think the world Google is trying to shape is certainly not one many would particularly enjoy. And the worst part here is that there is great potential for countless longform consideration and analysis of such a world. But putting out an anecdotal bit is far easier. It's just plain lazy.
Eridrus 8y ago
I wonder how publishers would feel if they were charged for the cost of appeals.
- onetimemanytime 8y ago
  Is Google struggling that much to charge them, what $50 or $100 per appeal? Shouldn't that be built in the system? Not to mention accusation of bias..."they banned me to get the appeal fee."
  - nrb 8y ago
    The fee is a deterrent so that sites don’t spam appeals for their blatantly outside-the-rules content.
    - onetimemanytime 8y ago
      Most scam sites know better...they try to get another adsense account, if possible, when caught. I guess Google can have different tiers of support. Those adjudicating initial appeals need not be Stanford grads, for 95% someone making $20 an hour will do. When in doubt, notch it to the next level.
  - Eridrus 8y ago
    As the other commenter said, once you're paying for the appeals, it's probably not abuse, and you can get better service because it's not coming out of the other party's bottom line. If it really costs Google $50-100 per appeal, it would be no surprise that they didn't have humans in the loop, the traffic to this page was probably worth pennies at best, and the company would have just decided it's not worth wasting everyone's time with.
WalterGR 8y ago
Google AdSense 'banned' web pages on my website - The Online Slang Dictionary - that define terms related to software piracy. For example, "warez": http://onlineslangdictionary.com/meaning-definition-of/warez http://onlineslangdictionary.com/meaning-definition-of/warez They've also 'banned' all web pages on the site that are related to human sexuality, despite the goal (mostly accomplished) of the site to have high-quality 'non-pornographic' definitions for such terms. There is no recourse - no way to appeal. You just bend over and comply, lest they block your entire site from using AdSense. When that happens, again, there is no way to appeal: your site is done.
- nitwit005 8y ago
  An appeal process would be difficult. Websites change all the time, so there is no practical way to sign off on something perminantly.
- v-i-09x 8y ago
  Have faith, friend! Any time now, the free market will invent a "better Google" to save you.
v-i-09x 8y ago
This is because a computer has no sense of social context. It can't aggregate what the general public feels is "OK" on its own, which is how human society defines what material is available. It will rely on a bland list of words fed to it by paranoid controllers who fear the wrath of emotionally captured adults. It won't at all reflect the variety of opinion. It will be TV 2.0

42 points by lysp 8y ago

> A page about a 1986 porn bill got demonetized shows how algorithms can’t be expected to make judgement calls. Another day, another article about how we cannot rely on algos. Yawn.

untog 8y ago
You don't think it's a topic worth talking about, given that we're shifting more and more decisions onto algorithms?
- mimimihaha 8y ago
  It makes me scared to think that the government has to be trying to develop algorithms to give advice to people higher up on the military branch about the decisions they should make like in eagle eye.
  - dictum 8y ago
    Who doesn't love plausible deniability? You don't even have to rely on the failed excuse of "just following orders" if you lose, you don't even have to admit that you "didn't know what you didn't know": The machine inferred the wrong thing based on nobody's orders, and carried it out despite our wishes. The damn jalopy!
- craftyguy 8y ago
  This topic has been posted here dozens of times before, and the discussion has not made any progress. The phrase 'beating a dead horse' comes to mind.

sandworm101 8y ago

Dont blame the machine. Blame those who wish to apply censorship standards meant for film/tv to the entire world. The internet cannot be made pg13. Dont ask the robots to try.

nrb 8y ago
Advertisers don’t want their ads displayed alongside “adult” content, this is strictly a financial decision.
- Nuzzerino 8y ago
  Which advertisers? Google has unfortunately become the trend-setter for one-size-fits-some products, rubbing off on the rest of the industry. Monopolize what you can and turn as much of it into passive income with the least effort necessary.

onetimemanytime 8y ago

Google makes more than enough money to hire people to oversee appeals, but apparently that cuts into their earnings. At least short term... A human being would see what this page was about in 10 seconds. Check a box and click submit. Total time: less than a minute.

google_censors 8y ago

Does anyone know exactly when Google decided to become the pearl-clutching Tipper Gore of search engines? We had a similar problem a long time ago with Google and it seems like it hurt our page rank at the time. There was nothing legislative that would have had any influence at the time, so it has to be coming internally, and from fairly high in the food chain.

sdenton4 8y ago
March 2017, to be precise... https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2017/3/24/15053990/google-youtube-advertising-boycott-hate-speech https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2... The Alt Right: This is why we can't have nice things.
- google_censors 8y ago
  My site was hit around 2010, so that's definitely not it. And they've been censoring adult content for longer than one year.

TangoTrotFox 8y ago

I have 0 love for what Google is doing and turning into, but this article is deeply flawed. Their focus is implicitly on the accuracy rate of Google's actions, yet it makes no effort to statistically demonstrate this. What would matter is not an anecdotal incident, but estimations of the error rate of Google's algorithmic censorship/deranking/demonitization as compared to how human's might perform. Humans regularly make dumb mistakes if not out of misunderstanding then out of sloppiness. Are these algorithmic decisions more accurate, on average, than we might expect of a collection of humans along the lines of Amazon's Mechanical Turk? We can only speculate, but I'd be quite surprised if they were not, but if so that refutes this article's entire premise. This is one of the biggest problems with advertising driven media. They love anecdotal evidence because we love anecdotal evidence which means the story gets clicks and they get their ad bucks. But it entirely misses the point of issues. For instance here, should the issue be the accuracy rate of Google's behaviors or Google's behaviors themselves and their desired endgame? Their accuracy, as a whole, is almost certainly going to be quite acceptable relative to human accuracy. So consequently you end up targeting them in a spot where they're extremely well 'defended.' By contrast, I think the world Google is trying to shape is certainly not one many would particularly enjoy. And the worst part here is that there is great potential for countless longform consideration and analysis of such a world. But putting out an anecdotal bit is far easier. It's just plain lazy.

Eridrus 8y ago

I wonder how publishers would feel if they were charged for the cost of appeals.

onetimemanytime 8y ago
Is Google struggling that much to charge them, what $50 or $100 per appeal? Shouldn't that be built in the system? Not to mention accusation of bias..."they banned me to get the appeal fee."
- nrb 8y ago
  The fee is a deterrent so that sites don’t spam appeals for their blatantly outside-the-rules content.
  - onetimemanytime 8y ago
    Most scam sites know better...they try to get another adsense account, if possible, when caught. I guess Google can have different tiers of support. Those adjudicating initial appeals need not be Stanford grads, for 95% someone making $20 an hour will do. When in doubt, notch it to the next level.
- Eridrus 8y ago
  As the other commenter said, once you're paying for the appeals, it's probably not abuse, and you can get better service because it's not coming out of the other party's bottom line. If it really costs Google $50-100 per appeal, it would be no surprise that they didn't have humans in the loop, the traffic to this page was probably worth pennies at best, and the company would have just decided it's not worth wasting everyone's time with.

WalterGR 8y ago

Google AdSense 'banned' web pages on my website - The Online Slang Dictionary - that define terms related to software piracy. For example, "warez": http://onlineslangdictionary.com/meaning-definition-of/warez http://onlineslangdictionary.com/meaning-definition-of/warez They've also 'banned' all web pages on the site that are related to human sexuality, despite the goal (mostly accomplished) of the site to have high-quality 'non-pornographic' definitions for such terms. There is no recourse - no way to appeal. You just bend over and comply, lest they block your entire site from using AdSense. When that happens, again, there is no way to appeal: your site is done.

nitwit005 8y ago
An appeal process would be difficult. Websites change all the time, so there is no practical way to sign off on something perminantly.
v-i-09x 8y ago
Have faith, friend! Any time now, the free market will invent a "better Google" to save you.

v-i-09x 8y ago

This is because a computer has no sense of social context. It can't aggregate what the general public feels is "OK" on its own, which is how human society defines what material is available. It will rely on a bland list of words fed to it by paranoid controllers who fear the wrath of emotionally captured adults. It won't at all reflect the variety of opinion. It will be TV 2.0