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Ad fraud = ban, it’s not much more complicated than that. It’s trivial to make a new developer account and release similar products, so as an App Store you can
by jmole 5y ago
Ad fraud = ban, it’s not much more complicated than that.
It’s trivial to make a new developer account and release similar products, so as an App Store you can do things like looking for similarities between new apps and banned apps to root out simple “change of ownership” schemes like this.
Google can’t afford to take this lightly, games with fraudulent ad clicks can generate (i.e. steal) millions of dollars in ad spend from businesses who think they are getting legitimate impressions.
- busymom0 5y ago"Guilt by association" is a bad way to run companies - especially when you don't even know who and how someone is guilty. They also do not apply rules fairly. Bigger companies like Facebook, Uber etc get to have more of a "human" connection to sort out issues while the small developer doesn't even get told what exactly they did wrong.
- sitkack 5y agoWhich itself reinforces cartel behavior. The small players get the full force of the automated rulings, the large orgs get infinite levels of undo.
- Agathos 5y ago"For my friends, everything; for my enemies, the law." - Óscar Benavides
- humaniania 5y agoYou have no clue what information Google used to reach this decision.
- yashasolutions 5y agoThat's precisely the point. People want to understand what they did wrong.
- Jensson 5y agoGoogle didn't give a reason in this case. Have you heard of a big company getting terminated like this without being given a reason? So as far as I know the rules are unfair.
- sharken 5y agoIsn't that a serious problem, when the final decision withholds information related to the case. For all we know it could be the virus attack that lead to Googles decision.
- 2cb 5y agoYeah no one outside of Google does including the developers who got banned, that's kinda the whole problem...
- lamontcg 5y agoWe need an anti-Kafka law to force tech companies to disclose the reasons behind account bans and provide for an appeals process. This will naturally make their jobs a whole lot harder, but currently they're just externalizing their costs onto people like in this article. Just like all the recent articles pointing out that "identity theft" is a term offloading incompetence of the companies onto the individual. We need to stop putting up with this shit.
- closeparen 5y agoGuilt by association is the only way to cope with a world where bad actors can trivially switch pseudonyms whenever they’re caught.
- josephcsible 5y agoGoogle doesn't pay you in Bitcoin. Isn't it hard to switch pseudonyms when you need to receive real money?
- closeparen 5y agoI don’t think malicious apps are making their money through Play Store purchases. Probably ads and data, and maybe by taking user credit cards directly.
- 2cb 5y agoYeah the genuinely malicious apps are unlikely to be using Google ads or other services to generate revenue.
- profmonocle 5y ago> "Guilt by association" is a bad way to run companies It's frighteningly common in big tech. Amazon is known for banning people for life because someone else with the same address returned too many items. Pick your roommates carefully I guess.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- perihelions 5y ago"It's not much more complicated than that" is the language of the oppressor. It's the view of the indifferent technocrat who would flatten the world into software, and is willing to steamroll over any human bits that stick out. Google's algorithmic reinterpretation of justice is a perversion of justice. The simplicity of its approach signs its abdication of its moral and legal responsibilities. OP's story isn't remotely okay. Fraud is a complicated issue. Here's what's uncomplicated: OP are not frauds. Here's what uncomplicated: Google reneged on a (very one-sided) contract, and destroyed a business. Here's a really simple one: Google is an abusive monopoly.
- f6v 5y agoFrom what I gather, OP is an anonymous voice on the internet. He might as well be Indian, Russian, Bulgarian, etc. pretending to be a US developer. That might have led to the ban.
- 2cb 5y agoThe blog post says outright they are not an American company, they are not hiding that.
- dmingod666 5y agoI like how you've put it..
- sigzero 5y ago"the language of the oppressor" Yeah, the guy who commented on HN is the oppressor. lol
- perihelions 5y agoI mean it's the language Google would use. It has a connotation akin to Stockholm syndrome: to accept the argumentative premise of the adversary who is taking advantage of you.
- djur 5y ago> Here's what's uncomplicated: OP are not frauds. According to OP -- do you have firmer evidence of this than their own say-so?
- ohgodplsno 5y agoOh no, the attention robbers and psychological manipulators are getting a few million our of their literal billions taken away :(
- rudian 5y agoAd fraud = ban from everything a huge company offers? Seems a tad much when the company literally reaches into your pocket by owning your smartphone and/or livelihood. Bans should be limited in time and scale. This really must be regulated, Google and co should not be able to lock you out of your digital identity.
- delroth 5y agoDo you have any example of situations where Google have "locked [anyone] out of [their] digital identity" for ad fraud? As far as I can tell, this blog post is only mentioning the company's Android developer account being disabled. It in fact shows evidence that other access to the account is still available (e.g. screenshots from the account security checkup tool, which wouldn't be accessible if the whole account was disabled). This does seem limited in scale. (Disclaimer: I work at Google, but not on anything related to this.)
- josephcsible 5y ago> Ad fraud = ban, it’s not much more complicated than that. You think it's reasonable to ban an entire company because one of their employees committed ad fraud at a previous job?
- judge2020 5y agoIn a non-nuanced scenario, yes, because chances are the higher-ups are willfully ignorant on what sort of deals their marketing is doing, and will use the person as a scapegoat if they’re found out.
- josephcsible 5y agoThat would be reasonable if an employee committed ad fraud for the company in question, but not just because they've previously done so for a past employer.
- vvillena 5y agoSo, Google is judge, jury, and executioner. How can such an approach justified in this day and age?