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There are probably more entries to list, and these are complex issues being reduced to a sentence or two A recurring pattern with Google and YouTube: Someone a

There are probably more entries to list, and these are complex issues being reduced to a sentence or two A recurring pattern with Google and YouTube: Someone achieves virality through controversy. They are promptly de-monetized, deleted, or frozen with no reason given. When the period of viral opportunity has passed, typically in about a day or two, the account/monetization is reinstated with no reason given. This pattern is so insidiously subtle, so frequent, and so potentially powerful in manipulating the media of 2019, it probably deserves its own Wiki and its own investigation. Those who can control virality can modulate most of the loudest voices on the Internet. That's basically the power to relegate the ideas you don't like to relative near silence. (Also, those who can control virality can pick the winners among startup companies.) (EDIT: Basically, these sorts of shenanigans are like Michael Swaine's story from decades back about deleting his own parking tickets in South Carolina. He was supposed to have parking so he could work on the city's mainframe, but the bureaucracy dropped the ball. Way back then, this sort of thing amounts to a funny anecdote. In the world of 2019, it would be a firing offense and possibly get someone prosecuted for fraud. There are analogous things from the world of aviation, and stories of the wild west. With great power comes great responsibility. Make no mistake, as a technologist, you wield power.)

Gibbon1 7y ago
> Those who can control virality can modulate most of the loudest voices on the Internet. That's basically the power to relegate the ideas you don't like to relative near silence. If you wonder why HN exists, this is it.
- smush 7y ago
  If HN went down tomorrow, I could hop to slashdot to find the old-timers, lobste.rs for the hip, reddit.com/r/sysadmin | r/selfhosted | many, many more tech subreddits, and more tech watering holes. If Google went down tomorrow, we have what, Bing? Yahoo, DDG, and others are all powered by Bing. Otherwise we are trapped with the likes of Yandex/Baidu.
  - adventured 7y ago
    > If Google went down tomorrow, we have what, Bing? If it's down for a day, Bing is fine. If it's down forever, we have access to $100 billion per year in venture capital to chase one of the greatest economic opportunities in world history. It'd be an extraordinary gold rush that would draw in dozens of start-ups. Europe would also produce several dozen new search start-ups attempting to take a piece of Google's former market position. It'd be a fun time with a lot of experimentation. Would we end up doing New Search mostly the same way we do Google Search today, just with more competition (or only until there's another winner takes all)?
    - Multicomp 7y ago
      I was focused on a short term argument, but I get and agree with your point regarding long term opportunity.
    - alexmlamb 7y ago
      I've been using Bing primarily and it seems fine. It's stronger in a few areas like image search, customization, and weather. Translation is roughly equal. For code and paper search it's somewhat worse than google but not WAY worse. I'd highly recommend making it your default search engine if only to help create a more multipolar internet power system.
  - MiroF 7y ago
    The point isn't about whether HN goes down. It's about the community you can shape and cultivate.
smush 7y ago
I knew I was forgetting a big one but couldn't bring it to mind. I agree with you wholeheartedly. It is rather chilling to see that even though the world-wide web started open, so much centralization can have quite the chilling effect on competition. What can we do about it? If I were king of the world, it would be P2P decentralized content provided over mesh-network-powered-by-cognitive-frequency-hopping-radio but since I'm not, what are solutions prospective officials could leverage? Split Alphabet from YouTube, then split YouTube in half between user-posted content and business-posted content?
- fjabre 7y ago
  The only way forward is p2p. Inet in current form is too susceptible to governments and bad actors like Google who only work for their shareholders. Has google released anything worthwhile the last several years? What has happened to the culture of innovation at Google? We still know them for gmail, maps, and search but what have they done lately? They seem bland by comparison to the Google of the late 90s and 2000s. Why has Google become the new Microsoft?
  - stcredzero 7y ago
    Rather, they are becoming the old Microsoft. Are you sure they aren't becoming the new Yahoo? Also, what new thing is the new Microsoft?
    - blackflame7000 7y ago
      Microsoft is the new Microsoft lol. It's back on top as the largest market cap just like it was in its heyday
    - fragmede 7y ago
      Nadella's Microsoft is the new Microsoft. Before Nadella, Microsoft looked doomed to a slow demise behind the increasing irrelevance of Windows, with revenue from (local-only) Microsoft Office as the only future source of income. Nadella has changed the course of that staid ship by changing the underlying culture, no small feat! Some specific actions: Microsoft Office on iPad and Android, going all in on cloud (Azure has 22% of the market, ahead of GCP's 7%, at the start of 2019), being friendly with Linux (Windows Subsystem for Linux - WSL, exFAT specs were released a few days ago), given up Windows Mobile (he “did not get why the world needed the third ecosystem in phones”). https://www.inc.com/scott-mautz/microsoft-ceo-satya-nadella-says-this-1-thing-unlocks-employee-greatness-its-why-microsoft-is-winning-again.html https://www.inc.com/scott-mautz/microsoft-ceo-satya-nadella-... https://qz.com/work/1539071/how-microsoft-ceo-satya-nadella-rebuilt-the-company-culture/ https://qz.com/work/1539071/how-microsoft-ceo-satya-nadella-...
ac29 7y ago
> Someone achieves virality through controversy. They are promptly de-monetized, deleted, or frozen with no reason given. In my mind the simplest explanation is not something nefarious by Google, but simply that advertisers don't want to be associated with controversial videos.
- stcredzero 7y ago
  simply that advertisers don't want to be associated with controversial videos. Then why would the re-monetization and restorations happen? It makes more sense that the timing of denial is the key thing. Also, it's an article of faith for implementers of large systems, that if something can be exploited, it will be exploited. This applies as much to attention and political power as it does to monetary gain. In the case of the 1st two, the exploitation is probably done by low level employees for outside interests.
- ozymandias12 7y ago
  If that was the case Google AD hell would simply realocate the space for the next high bidder of that space.
  - r-w 7y ago
    This is millions of “spaces” we’re talking about. Advertisers can’t vet that many videos, and neither can Google. So they demonetize.
Zpalmtree 7y ago
>Basically, these sorts of shenanigans are like Michael Swaine's story from decades back about deleting his own parking tickets in South Carolina I can't find anything on this. Do you have a reference? Sounds interesting.
PhasmaFelis 7y ago
> * A recurring pattern with Google and YouTube: Someone achieves virality through controversy. They are promptly de-monetized, deleted, or frozen with no reason given. When the period of viral opportunity has passed, typically in about a day or two, the account/monetization is reinstated with no reason given.* Do we have a partial list of videos that followed this specific pattern? I'm curious what the agenda(s) might be.
- cameronbrown 7y ago
  This happens a lot in political commentary videos. Almost none of them receive ads anymore.
  - wastedhours 7y ago
    Also because a lot of marketers were royally taken to task for letting their ads appear on political videos. Part of it might also not be that Google demonetised them directly, but allowed us the tools to opt out of having our ads shown on those types of videos altogether. We now have a load of hoops to jump through to justify spend on YouTube advertising - and political videos are a strict no-go area.
    - cameronbrown 7y ago
      Can I ask why advertisers care? You do realise everybody understands that YouTube videos are tailored to them and not an endorsement of the content, right? It's having the horrible side effect of destroying independent journalism which has nowhere else to go but YouTube (and neither does anyone else).
  - PhasmaFelis 7y ago
    Hm. Is that to suppress a particular set of ideas, do you think, or just cynically pandering to controversy-phobic advertisers? Not that either one is good, but that latter at least seems even-handed, I guess.
    - 7y ago
dreamcompiler 7y ago
The dual pattern is a variant on what used to be called a "Joe Job"[0]: Falsely directing the platform's harsh automated bots against your competitor or enemy. This has become quite prevalent on Amazon [1] and I've seen several indirect instances of it on HN recently, where an Android developer tries to defend against shadowy competitors stealing their app by putting resources in nonstandard places, which then results in Google banning the original developer rather than the true guilty party. If Google (or Amazon or anybody else) is going to use zero-tolerance bots to police itself, they need to be designed such that people can't turn them into weapons. Designing such bots is not at all easy and it requires a very high level of skill. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_job https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_job [1] https://www.theverge.com/2018/12/19/18140799/amazon-marketplace-scams-seller-court-appeal-reinstatement https://www.theverge.com/2018/12/19/18140799/amazon-marketpl...
- darpa_escapee 7y ago
  Automated bureaucracy without a means for recourse is nightmare fuel.
  - sitkack 7y ago
    You should read Philip K Dick.
    - r-w 7y ago
      Interesting, seems like a worthwhile read in this context. Any particular suggestions?
      - asteli 7y ago
        Sounds more Kafkaesque to me, but the GP's comment brought to mind Autofac, a short story about an automated manufacturing and distribution system that continues producing and delivering product to humam settlements long after the apocalypse, while monopolizing resources, effectively preventing the humans from rebuilding.
garyfirestorm 7y ago
Can you give some citation on Michael Swaine's story. Not challenging you, I'm just interested about it. I couldn't find anything when I searched 'Michael Swaine parking tickets'
otakucode 7y ago
Exhibit A should be Eric Schmidt's book 'The New Digital Age' in which he explains his view that because Google is rich, they should therefore take the reigns of global culture and decide the moral and social norms of society. He is not terribly secretive about the fact that he believes he is inherently Better than the masses and should be a large player in herding the public 'for their own protection.' Of course that just so happens to amount to ossifying global culture in the exact state it was in when Google rose to prominence in the early 2000s but I'm sure that's a total coincidence.
JadeNB 7y ago
> Basically, these sorts of shenanigans are like Michael Swaine's story from decades back about deleting his own parking tickets in South Carolina. He was supposed to have parking so he could work on the city's mainframe, but the bureaucracy dropped the ball. Do you have a link with more details? A quick Google didn't seem to turn up anything.
SkyMarshal 7y ago
>A recurring pattern with Google and YouTube: Someone achieves virality through controversy. They are promptly de-monetized, deleted, or frozen with no reason given. When the period of viral opportunity has passed, typically in about a day or two, the account/monetization is reinstated with no reason given. Tulsi Gabbard is suing Google for exactly this: https://www.staradvertiser.com/2019/07/25/hawaii-news/hawaii-congresswoman-tulsi-gabbard-sues-google-for-50-million/ https://www.staradvertiser.com/2019/07/25/hawaii-news/hawaii...
InternetUser 7y ago
Regarding the pattern you described: > On July 27, Tulsi Now Inc. filed a lawsuit against Google, alleging that the internet technology company suspended the campaign's Google Ads account without reason and that the company had treated the campaign's mail differently than it treated other campaigns' mail. The lawsuit seeks "an injunction against Google from further meddling in the election and damages of at least $50 million."[50] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulsi_Gabbard_2020_presidential_campaign#Lawsuit_against_Google https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulsi_Gabbard_2020_presidentia... Interview about it, from yesterday: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gy797D3cAY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gy797D3cAY Won't be in the 3rd debate, so that it's for her: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Democratic_Party_presidential_debates_and_forums#Participation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Democratic_Party_presiden...
- caf 7y ago
  She can still qualify the fourth debate - the thresholds remain the same. Tom Steyer just qualified for it despite not qualifying for the third one.
  - BurnGpuBurn 7y ago
    An anti-war candidate like Tulsi will never be allowed to be the final presidential candidate by the DNC. Google and the party work in lock step to make her go away. And they will. You'll get a candidate like Biden or the other awful woman who will do what they're told.

Gibbon1 7y ago

> Those who can control virality can modulate most of the loudest voices on the Internet. That's basically the power to relegate the ideas you don't like to relative near silence. If you wonder why HN exists, this is it.

smush 7y ago
If HN went down tomorrow, I could hop to slashdot to find the old-timers, lobste.rs for the hip, reddit.com/r/sysadmin | r/selfhosted | many, many more tech subreddits, and more tech watering holes. If Google went down tomorrow, we have what, Bing? Yahoo, DDG, and others are all powered by Bing. Otherwise we are trapped with the likes of Yandex/Baidu.
- adventured 7y ago
  > If Google went down tomorrow, we have what, Bing? If it's down for a day, Bing is fine. If it's down forever, we have access to $100 billion per year in venture capital to chase one of the greatest economic opportunities in world history. It'd be an extraordinary gold rush that would draw in dozens of start-ups. Europe would also produce several dozen new search start-ups attempting to take a piece of Google's former market position. It'd be a fun time with a lot of experimentation. Would we end up doing New Search mostly the same way we do Google Search today, just with more competition (or only until there's another winner takes all)?
  - Multicomp 7y ago
    I was focused on a short term argument, but I get and agree with your point regarding long term opportunity.
  - alexmlamb 7y ago
    I've been using Bing primarily and it seems fine. It's stronger in a few areas like image search, customization, and weather. Translation is roughly equal. For code and paper search it's somewhat worse than google but not WAY worse. I'd highly recommend making it your default search engine if only to help create a more multipolar internet power system.
- MiroF 7y ago
  The point isn't about whether HN goes down. It's about the community you can shape and cultivate.

smush 7y ago

I knew I was forgetting a big one but couldn't bring it to mind. I agree with you wholeheartedly. It is rather chilling to see that even though the world-wide web started open, so much centralization can have quite the chilling effect on competition. What can we do about it? If I were king of the world, it would be P2P decentralized content provided over mesh-network-powered-by-cognitive-frequency-hopping-radio but since I'm not, what are solutions prospective officials could leverage? Split Alphabet from YouTube, then split YouTube in half between user-posted content and business-posted content?

fjabre 7y ago
The only way forward is p2p. Inet in current form is too susceptible to governments and bad actors like Google who only work for their shareholders. Has google released anything worthwhile the last several years? What has happened to the culture of innovation at Google? We still know them for gmail, maps, and search but what have they done lately? They seem bland by comparison to the Google of the late 90s and 2000s. Why has Google become the new Microsoft?
- stcredzero 7y ago
  Rather, they are becoming the old Microsoft. Are you sure they aren't becoming the new Yahoo? Also, what new thing is the new Microsoft?
  - blackflame7000 7y ago
    Microsoft is the new Microsoft lol. It's back on top as the largest market cap just like it was in its heyday
  - fragmede 7y ago
    Nadella's Microsoft is the new Microsoft. Before Nadella, Microsoft looked doomed to a slow demise behind the increasing irrelevance of Windows, with revenue from (local-only) Microsoft Office as the only future source of income. Nadella has changed the course of that staid ship by changing the underlying culture, no small feat! Some specific actions: Microsoft Office on iPad and Android, going all in on cloud (Azure has 22% of the market, ahead of GCP's 7%, at the start of 2019), being friendly with Linux (Windows Subsystem for Linux - WSL, exFAT specs were released a few days ago), given up Windows Mobile (he “did not get why the world needed the third ecosystem in phones”). https://www.inc.com/scott-mautz/microsoft-ceo-satya-nadella-says-this-1-thing-unlocks-employee-greatness-its-why-microsoft-is-winning-again.html https://www.inc.com/scott-mautz/microsoft-ceo-satya-nadella-... https://qz.com/work/1539071/how-microsoft-ceo-satya-nadella-rebuilt-the-company-culture/ https://qz.com/work/1539071/how-microsoft-ceo-satya-nadella-...

ac29 7y ago

> Someone achieves virality through controversy. They are promptly de-monetized, deleted, or frozen with no reason given. In my mind the simplest explanation is not something nefarious by Google, but simply that advertisers don't want to be associated with controversial videos.

stcredzero 7y ago
simply that advertisers don't want to be associated with controversial videos. Then why would the re-monetization and restorations happen? It makes more sense that the timing of denial is the key thing. Also, it's an article of faith for implementers of large systems, that if something can be exploited, it will be exploited. This applies as much to attention and political power as it does to monetary gain. In the case of the 1st two, the exploitation is probably done by low level employees for outside interests.
ozymandias12 7y ago
If that was the case Google AD hell would simply realocate the space for the next high bidder of that space.
- r-w 7y ago
  This is millions of “spaces” we’re talking about. Advertisers can’t vet that many videos, and neither can Google. So they demonetize.

Zpalmtree 7y ago

>Basically, these sorts of shenanigans are like Michael Swaine's story from decades back about deleting his own parking tickets in South Carolina I can't find anything on this. Do you have a reference? Sounds interesting.

PhasmaFelis 7y ago

> * A recurring pattern with Google and YouTube: Someone achieves virality through controversy. They are promptly de-monetized, deleted, or frozen with no reason given. When the period of viral opportunity has passed, typically in about a day or two, the account/monetization is reinstated with no reason given.* Do we have a partial list of videos that followed this specific pattern? I'm curious what the agenda(s) might be.

cameronbrown 7y ago
This happens a lot in political commentary videos. Almost none of them receive ads anymore.
- wastedhours 7y ago
  Also because a lot of marketers were royally taken to task for letting their ads appear on political videos. Part of it might also not be that Google demonetised them directly, but allowed us the tools to opt out of having our ads shown on those types of videos altogether. We now have a load of hoops to jump through to justify spend on YouTube advertising - and political videos are a strict no-go area.
  - cameronbrown 7y ago
    Can I ask why advertisers care? You do realise everybody understands that YouTube videos are tailored to them and not an endorsement of the content, right? It's having the horrible side effect of destroying independent journalism which has nowhere else to go but YouTube (and neither does anyone else).
- PhasmaFelis 7y ago
  Hm. Is that to suppress a particular set of ideas, do you think, or just cynically pandering to controversy-phobic advertisers? Not that either one is good, but that latter at least seems even-handed, I guess.
  - 7y ago

dreamcompiler 7y ago

The dual pattern is a variant on what used to be called a "Joe Job"[0]: Falsely directing the platform's harsh automated bots against your competitor or enemy. This has become quite prevalent on Amazon [1] and I've seen several indirect instances of it on HN recently, where an Android developer tries to defend against shadowy competitors stealing their app by putting resources in nonstandard places, which then results in Google banning the original developer rather than the true guilty party. If Google (or Amazon or anybody else) is going to use zero-tolerance bots to police itself, they need to be designed such that people can't turn them into weapons. Designing such bots is not at all easy and it requires a very high level of skill. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_job https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_job [1] https://www.theverge.com/2018/12/19/18140799/amazon-marketplace-scams-seller-court-appeal-reinstatement https://www.theverge.com/2018/12/19/18140799/amazon-marketpl...

darpa_escapee 7y ago
Automated bureaucracy without a means for recourse is nightmare fuel.
- sitkack 7y ago
  You should read Philip K Dick.
  - r-w 7y ago
    Interesting, seems like a worthwhile read in this context. Any particular suggestions?
    - asteli 7y ago
      Sounds more Kafkaesque to me, but the GP's comment brought to mind Autofac, a short story about an automated manufacturing and distribution system that continues producing and delivering product to humam settlements long after the apocalypse, while monopolizing resources, effectively preventing the humans from rebuilding.

garyfirestorm 7y ago

Can you give some citation on Michael Swaine's story. Not challenging you, I'm just interested about it. I couldn't find anything when I searched 'Michael Swaine parking tickets'

otakucode 7y ago

Exhibit A should be Eric Schmidt's book 'The New Digital Age' in which he explains his view that because Google is rich, they should therefore take the reigns of global culture and decide the moral and social norms of society. He is not terribly secretive about the fact that he believes he is inherently Better than the masses and should be a large player in herding the public 'for their own protection.' Of course that just so happens to amount to ossifying global culture in the exact state it was in when Google rose to prominence in the early 2000s but I'm sure that's a total coincidence.

JadeNB 7y ago

> Basically, these sorts of shenanigans are like Michael Swaine's story from decades back about deleting his own parking tickets in South Carolina. He was supposed to have parking so he could work on the city's mainframe, but the bureaucracy dropped the ball. Do you have a link with more details? A quick Google didn't seem to turn up anything.

SkyMarshal 7y ago

>A recurring pattern with Google and YouTube: Someone achieves virality through controversy. They are promptly de-monetized, deleted, or frozen with no reason given. When the period of viral opportunity has passed, typically in about a day or two, the account/monetization is reinstated with no reason given. Tulsi Gabbard is suing Google for exactly this: https://www.staradvertiser.com/2019/07/25/hawaii-news/hawaii-congresswoman-tulsi-gabbard-sues-google-for-50-million/ https://www.staradvertiser.com/2019/07/25/hawaii-news/hawaii...

InternetUser 7y ago

Regarding the pattern you described: > On July 27, Tulsi Now Inc. filed a lawsuit against Google, alleging that the internet technology company suspended the campaign's Google Ads account without reason and that the company had treated the campaign's mail differently than it treated other campaigns' mail. The lawsuit seeks "an injunction against Google from further meddling in the election and damages of at least $50 million."[50] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulsi_Gabbard_2020_presidential_campaign#Lawsuit_against_Google https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulsi_Gabbard_2020_presidentia... Interview about it, from yesterday: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gy797D3cAY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gy797D3cAY Won't be in the 3rd debate, so that it's for her: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Democratic_Party_presidential_debates_and_forums#Participation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Democratic_Party_presiden...

caf 7y ago
She can still qualify the fourth debate - the thresholds remain the same. Tom Steyer just qualified for it despite not qualifying for the third one.
- BurnGpuBurn 7y ago
  An anti-war candidate like Tulsi will never be allowed to be the final presidential candidate by the DNC. Google and the party work in lock step to make her go away. And they will. You'll get a candidate like Biden or the other awful woman who will do what they're told.