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> I'm sure there is no malicious intent behind this How can anyone be sure of this? This is only one of Google’s practices that seems to follow a pervasive pat

by maxaf 7y ago

> I'm sure there is no malicious intent behind this How can anyone be sure of this? This is only one of Google’s practices that seems to follow a pervasive pattern of eroding open internet standards while presenting Google’s own proprietary implementation as somehow superior. Eventually, the open standard loses all meaning because the most popular implementation does not actually adhere to it. Meanwhile, Google reaps enormous benefits in the form of additional signals for its advertising business. How can this not be grounded in malicious intent? > and that there are some very smart people working on spam prevention at Google. There are some very smart people working on advertising at Google. The rush to forget the primary nature of Google - it’s an adtech firm - is why they’ve been allowed to skate for so long. Gmail’s spam filtering is just a pretext for passing all email through a machine learning system. Sure, one possible signal emitted by that system is whether a message is spam or not. Perhaps this determination is conflated with wether the message is useful for ad targeting: after all, when viewed from Google’s own perspective certain e-mail messages contain no information which can be used for ad targeting, so they must be spam. The user’s interests are clearly secondary to this. So, back to the “smart people” working on this: at what point do we begin judging engineers for working at Google? There’s a lot of highly vitriolic criticism that emanates from Google’s workforce on a variety of subjects, but how many of them would actually pull the pin and leave their employer? I don’t have any statistics to offer, but it seems to me that we still have a ways to go before Google has become completely drained of engineering mindshare.

upofadown 7y ago
Indifference that causes a business problem turns into not-indifference. Indifference that does not cause a business problem remains indifference. No one ever calls a meeting. There is a lot of evil done in the world that comes from this simple and straightforward principle. You don't have to have an evil plan to end up doing evil. Personally I see this as just more Google incompetence. Gmail has just become bad. If you want to get all your mail you have to use something else.
- reaperducer 7y ago
  Personally I see this as just more Google incompetence. Gmail has just become bad. If you want to get all your mail you have to use something else. It's like we're going back to the days when each e-mail service only trusted messages from its own users, and if you wanted messages to go to another network, you had to use an e-mail gateway. Can I get my ...!killer!jolnet bang path back?
  - greenyoda 7y ago
    I don't think this is a general problem with e-mail services. If you use an e-mail provider that's a paid service rather than a pipeline into an ad company, you actually get good service and a customer support team that has an incentive to fix your problems. (I've been very happy with Fastmail for many years.)
    - r3bl 7y ago
      I agree. I self-host a lot of services I use, but I'll happily let someone else deal with my emails passing through to Gmail for a few bucks a month.
- pdkl95 7y ago
  > Indifference that does not cause a business problem remains indifference. More generally, indifference to small "trivial" problems eventually normalizes the deviant behavior[1]. Evil behavior doesn't happen in one step, it's end result of regularly being indifferent to "minor" problems[2]. For a very good explanation of why this happens, I recommend Richard Cook's excellent talk, "Resilience In Complex Adaptive Systems"[3]. [1] https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Professionalism/Diane_Vaughan_and_the_normalization_of_deviance https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Professionalism/Diane_Vaughan_... [2] https://blog.aopa.org/aopa/2015/12/07/the-normalization-of-deviance/ https://blog.aopa.org/aopa/2015/12/07/the-normalization-of-d... [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGLYEDpNu60 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGLYEDpNu60
blamestross 7y ago
Organizations are often best modeled by an optimizing AI system. Often there is no intent behind behavior, simple that behaviors that result in propagation of the meme are preferred by the system. Never ascribe to intent what emergent behavior and individual's apathy can explain.
- maxaf 7y ago
  You’re saying that the system’s apparent behavior is by design, but wasn’t that design put forth by employees of the company in question? These aren’t natural phenomena we’re discussing. When a puma tears apart a rabbit, it does so without any influence from the agency of man. Gmail’s “spam filtering” is no such thing: it was deliberately designed to work this way by paid professionals who knew what they were doing.
  - 0x262d 7y ago
    the next step of analysis is that they behave this way to capture more growth and market share, which they must do under capitalism or lose out to any more ruthless company.
- 0x262d 7y ago
  this is basically equivalent to pretending that as long as no one says "this is my evil plan" before doing something, it's not evil. which even google doesn't bother to try to do anymore.
k2enemy 7y ago
I have been thinking a bit about the anti-competitive effects of Google's behavior in the email space. It is something I'd like to research further. One interesting part of the research would be looking at email provider market share over time (or even just a current snapshot). Does anyone have suggestions on how to go about this? My first thought was to use a password breach like Collection #1 to get a distribution of domains used, then query each domain to see which provider they are using or if they are self hosted. But I would certainly appreciate other suggestions!
joshuamorton 7y ago
Email in Gmail isn't used for ad targeting, so this line of thinking doesn't follow well.
- 0x262d 7y ago
  imagine thinking this
  - SquareWheel 7y ago
    Please keep these reddit-esque comments to other platforms.
- craftinator 7y ago
  So says... Google?
- umeshunni 7y ago
  The fact that you're being downvoted for stating the facts is a good indication of HN's groupthink.
  - Sabinus 7y ago
    Just because Google stopped scanning email for ad targeting two years ago doesn't detract from the fact that it was their practice for ten years previously. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/23/technology/gmail-ads.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/23/technology/gmail-ads.html
    - joshuamorton 7y ago
      Sure, but GP contended that > Gmail’s spam filtering is just a pretext for passing all email through a machine learning system. Sure, one possible signal emitted by that system is whether a message is spam or not. Perhaps this determination is conflated with wether the message is useful for ad targeting And well, that's clearly not the case if Google moved from doing both ad targeting and spam to just spam. The evidence is literally Google moving in the polar opposite direction from the nefariousness that they suggest.
coryfklein 7y ago
>> I'm sure there is no malicious intent behind this > How can anyone be sure of this? I know this would sound crazy to an alien learning English but the phrase, "I'm sure there is no malicious intent" in this context actually means "I don't presume there is malicious intent". It does not mean, "I have a positive reason to believe there is no malicious intent."
- aeorgnoieang 7y ago
  Actually, I interpreted it as exactly "I have a positive reason to believe there is no malicious intent." and I presume the positive reasons are, e.g. most people not being malicious. "I don't presume there is malicious intent" is significantly weaker than the original.
drngdds 7y ago
>Gmail’s spam filtering is just a pretext for passing all email through a machine learning system It can't be just that. Spam filtering makes email in general much more usable, and Google of course wants Gmail to be an attractive product.
- pembrook 7y ago
  I find it mind-blowing that Gmail's algorithm doesn't lean more on users to train the spam filters...instead of top-down arbitrary keyword filters & rules that constantly result in false positives. Apparently human users are trustworthy enough to train 4,000 lb self-driving cars to not kill humans via CAPTCHA. Why the hell can't we rely more on humans to train the spam filter? It could solve literally every issue with email deliverability today. It's clear the current algorithms are simply not sophisticated enough to do this job properly. Hell, gmail can't even properly discern the difference between an "Update" and a "Promotion." Every dev-related newsletter I'm subscribed to (all of which I want to receive) randomly alternates between those two tabs each week. To be honest, I highly doubt Google is using any sophisticated Machine Learning algorithms inside Gmail. It doesn't seem like a big priority for them. The space is ripe for a competitor to come in. I would LOVE to have an email address where I was 100% confident in the spam filter, didn't hide a large portion of my emails behind disappearing tabs, and had more control over what categories my messages go to. Any alternatives out there I should be using?

by maxaf 7y ago

upofadown 7y ago

Indifference that causes a business problem turns into not-indifference. Indifference that does not cause a business problem remains indifference. No one ever calls a meeting. There is a lot of evil done in the world that comes from this simple and straightforward principle. You don't have to have an evil plan to end up doing evil. Personally I see this as just more Google incompetence. Gmail has just become bad. If you want to get all your mail you have to use something else.

reaperducer 7y ago
Personally I see this as just more Google incompetence. Gmail has just become bad. If you want to get all your mail you have to use something else. It's like we're going back to the days when each e-mail service only trusted messages from its own users, and if you wanted messages to go to another network, you had to use an e-mail gateway. Can I get my ...!killer!jolnet bang path back?
- greenyoda 7y ago
  I don't think this is a general problem with e-mail services. If you use an e-mail provider that's a paid service rather than a pipeline into an ad company, you actually get good service and a customer support team that has an incentive to fix your problems. (I've been very happy with Fastmail for many years.)
  - r3bl 7y ago
    I agree. I self-host a lot of services I use, but I'll happily let someone else deal with my emails passing through to Gmail for a few bucks a month.
pdkl95 7y ago
> Indifference that does not cause a business problem remains indifference. More generally, indifference to small "trivial" problems eventually normalizes the deviant behavior[1]. Evil behavior doesn't happen in one step, it's end result of regularly being indifferent to "minor" problems[2]. For a very good explanation of why this happens, I recommend Richard Cook's excellent talk, "Resilience In Complex Adaptive Systems"[3]. [1] https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Professionalism/Diane_Vaughan_and_the_normalization_of_deviance https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Professionalism/Diane_Vaughan_... [2] https://blog.aopa.org/aopa/2015/12/07/the-normalization-of-deviance/ https://blog.aopa.org/aopa/2015/12/07/the-normalization-of-d... [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGLYEDpNu60 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGLYEDpNu60

blamestross 7y ago

Organizations are often best modeled by an optimizing AI system. Often there is no intent behind behavior, simple that behaviors that result in propagation of the meme are preferred by the system. Never ascribe to intent what emergent behavior and individual's apathy can explain.

maxaf 7y ago
You’re saying that the system’s apparent behavior is by design, but wasn’t that design put forth by employees of the company in question? These aren’t natural phenomena we’re discussing. When a puma tears apart a rabbit, it does so without any influence from the agency of man. Gmail’s “spam filtering” is no such thing: it was deliberately designed to work this way by paid professionals who knew what they were doing.
- 0x262d 7y ago
  the next step of analysis is that they behave this way to capture more growth and market share, which they must do under capitalism or lose out to any more ruthless company.
0x262d 7y ago
this is basically equivalent to pretending that as long as no one says "this is my evil plan" before doing something, it's not evil. which even google doesn't bother to try to do anymore.

k2enemy 7y ago

I have been thinking a bit about the anti-competitive effects of Google's behavior in the email space. It is something I'd like to research further. One interesting part of the research would be looking at email provider market share over time (or even just a current snapshot). Does anyone have suggestions on how to go about this? My first thought was to use a password breach like Collection #1 to get a distribution of domains used, then query each domain to see which provider they are using or if they are self hosted. But I would certainly appreciate other suggestions!

joshuamorton 7y ago

Email in Gmail isn't used for ad targeting, so this line of thinking doesn't follow well.

0x262d 7y ago
imagine thinking this
- SquareWheel 7y ago
  Please keep these reddit-esque comments to other platforms.
craftinator 7y ago
So says... Google?
umeshunni 7y ago
The fact that you're being downvoted for stating the facts is a good indication of HN's groupthink.
- Sabinus 7y ago
  Just because Google stopped scanning email for ad targeting two years ago doesn't detract from the fact that it was their practice for ten years previously. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/23/technology/gmail-ads.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/23/technology/gmail-ads.html
  - joshuamorton 7y ago
    Sure, but GP contended that > Gmail’s spam filtering is just a pretext for passing all email through a machine learning system. Sure, one possible signal emitted by that system is whether a message is spam or not. Perhaps this determination is conflated with wether the message is useful for ad targeting And well, that's clearly not the case if Google moved from doing both ad targeting and spam to just spam. The evidence is literally Google moving in the polar opposite direction from the nefariousness that they suggest.

coryfklein 7y ago

>> I'm sure there is no malicious intent behind this > How can anyone be sure of this? I know this would sound crazy to an alien learning English but the phrase, "I'm sure there is no malicious intent" in this context actually means "I don't presume there is malicious intent". It does not mean, "I have a positive reason to believe there is no malicious intent."

aeorgnoieang 7y ago
Actually, I interpreted it as exactly "I have a positive reason to believe there is no malicious intent." and I presume the positive reasons are, e.g. most people not being malicious. "I don't presume there is malicious intent" is significantly weaker than the original.

drngdds 7y ago

>Gmail’s spam filtering is just a pretext for passing all email through a machine learning system It can't be just that. Spam filtering makes email in general much more usable, and Google of course wants Gmail to be an attractive product.

pembrook 7y ago
I find it mind-blowing that Gmail's algorithm doesn't lean more on users to train the spam filters...instead of top-down arbitrary keyword filters & rules that constantly result in false positives. Apparently human users are trustworthy enough to train 4,000 lb self-driving cars to not kill humans via CAPTCHA. Why the hell can't we rely more on humans to train the spam filter? It could solve literally every issue with email deliverability today. It's clear the current algorithms are simply not sophisticated enough to do this job properly. Hell, gmail can't even properly discern the difference between an "Update" and a "Promotion." Every dev-related newsletter I'm subscribed to (all of which I want to receive) randomly alternates between those two tabs each week. To be honest, I highly doubt Google is using any sophisticated Machine Learning algorithms inside Gmail. It doesn't seem like a big priority for them. The space is ripe for a competitor to come in. I would LOVE to have an email address where I was 100% confident in the spam filter, didn't hide a large portion of my emails behind disappearing tabs, and had more control over what categories my messages go to. Any alternatives out there I should be using?