6 ms·

Google de-indexes 3k articles over bogus DMCA notice

182 points by bashinator 5y ago

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
WarOnPrivacy 5y ago
In a better future, we'll look back on copyright's dark ages - when decades of purchased legislation shaped it to become a tool for censorship and gatekeeping.
easton_s 5y ago
Google did not delete the articles. I found them just fine on duckduckgo.com
- WarOnPrivacy 5y ago
  Reading the article reveals that "Google deletes over 3,000 articles of WheelsJoint from its search results".
- codetrotter 5y ago
  Deleted from their search results.
- samhw 5y ago
  Did you think Google might have deleted them from the internet? I'm somewhat struggling to understand.
  - fooqux 5y ago
    For vast amounts of people (probably well over majority, but who knows), if it doesn't show up in a Google search, it might as well have been deleted from the internet. Hell, try running a business that doesn't show up in a Google search result. You might as well not exist. EDIT: Also, keep in mind that many sites now use Google as their search tool. So going to the domain and searching for an article in their website that you've seen in the past wouldn't even work.
    - rahimnathwani 5y ago
      This suggests 1.0 average pages per visit.
  - robbrown451 5y ago
    I'll admit my first thought, based on the wording, was that the articles were posted on a google service such as google docs.
  - ryantgtg 5y ago
    From the headline alone, my initial assumption was that it was about a google-hosted website and the content was actually deleted. Then I read the article…
  - dspillett 5y ago
    Without further context than the title provided, it could mean that they deleted the articles from another Google property, not search results. Not sure what that property would be. Blogger perhaps if that is still a thing?
- dang 5y ago
  Ok, we've changed 'deletes' to 'de-indexes' in the title above. Thanks!
theginger 5y ago
Not again I get that these tech companies work on volume and automation and to manually review everything would be impossible and the more avenue of contact they put in the more they get swamped with noise, but they could do a lot more to identify real people with accounts of real value and have people that they can call to get these problems resolved without it having to cause a social media stink. I don't think they realise how much stories like this make me want to use other products, because it doesn't usually quite cross the threshold of making me do it, but it has done on occasion it would do more often if there were more alternatives. It really can't be good for their business model to have potentially lots of people even slightly motivated to go elsewhere just waiting for a viable alternative.
josefx 5y ago
> Submitting DMCA takedown notices for thousands of URLs to Google is easier than you think. You just have to fill out a DMCA form available on Google’s website and you can include 1000 URLs in each notice. The form includes a text field which accepts 1000 URLs at once. > But if you want to submit a counter DMCA notice, you have to submit one URL at a time. Submitting over 3,000 URLs took us over 15 hours – while it would have taken the scammer a few minutes to submit those URLs. Now if that design isn't intentionally abusive on Googles part. I think it at least qualifies as a dark pattern.
- WarOnPrivacy 5y ago
  > Now if that design isn't intentionally abusive on Googles part. It's the end result of a generation of copyright corruption. Google found more profit and less headache in yielding to the harmful systems (regulatory, etc) crafted by copyright cartels.
  - Isthatablackgsd 5y ago
    Viacom is originator of this, this is why Google have that 1k URLs for DMCA takedown due to Viacom vs Google (2012) lawsuit. After that, copyrights and trolls massively abused DMCA due to this.
    - WarOnPrivacy 5y ago
      If the inference here is that this (or a similar) abuse-ridden system wouldn't exist in the absence of Viacom, I offer that there's more than enough powerful, corrupt copyright interests to fill that theoretical void.
      - cmeacham98 5y ago
        I agree, but in our world, where Viacom does exist, we can put most of the blame on them.
        5y ago
xeromal 5y ago
The title should be " Google deletes 3k articles from its search results over bogus DMCA notice "
jsperson 5y ago
And once again HN becomes the escalation end point for Google support. I wish they’d throw the internet a bone and put 1% of revenue into support. Edit: I do t actually know how much they invest in support. It may be a lot higher than 1%. Regardless, the number of “Google screwed me and won’t answer the phone.” articles we see is scary.
- blunte 5y ago
  There’s no chance they put 1% into support. It’s probably 0.01%.
- fighterpilot 5y ago
  We need strong consumer protection laws and a body that can issue large fines in response to violations. The stick is the only thing that's going to cause change. It is not acceptable, for example, that Google is allowed to ruin someone's life by associating their photo with a convicted rapist for weeks, and then not have a human that that person can talk to to address the issue. Such things should be punished with a large fine.
netcan 5y ago
It's painful how much of this is "on schedule" to achieve circa 2000s doomsayer's dystopia. Make gateways to the internet, they become gates. Whether it's advertising/monetisation policies, getting suddenly buried in their corporate bureaucracy, content moderation or whatnot... it's clear that you're dealing with a monopolith gatekeeper. What a mess, and all for what? To protect creators? How far we are from any such goal.
phrz 5y ago
An unpleasant reinforcement of my decision to avoid anything Google—these folks have been cut off from revenue and search with absolutely zero recourse.
pvg 5y ago
This is may be complicated by the fact the site appears a bit of a content farm itself. The article immediately following this one in their news section is https://www.wheelsjoint.com/toyota-to-cut-production-by-40-percent-as-chip-shortage-wreaks-havoc-in-auto-industry/ https://www.wheelsjoint.com/toyota-to-cut-production-by-40-p... Which looks like an unattributed re-written Bloomberg piece with the added twist that they misspelled the name of the Toyota purchasing manager in question. Edit: There was a WSJ article about Google's problems with fake DMCA notices last year, discussed then at: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23195680 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23195680
- vadfa 5y ago
  >“In Southeast Asia in particular, the spread of Covid and lockdowns are affecting our local suppliers,” said Toyota Purchasing Manager Kazuanri Kumakura. Toyota will make sure in future to diversify its supply chain even more spatially. In the weeks before, Toyota had announced minor production stoppages due to missing parts deliveries. Last month, Toyota extended a production stop in Thailand because parts were missing as a result of the Covid pandemic. Looks like it was written by a bot or hastily rewritten.
- savingGrace 5y ago
  Is this a common thing? I initially feel outraged against Google for their practices, but then I see a comment about how this is just regurgitated news. Now I don't know whether to feel annoyed at a site that just regurgitates other site content or what. Then I start thinking about how the majority of news sites regurgitate AP/other journalists. Bad Google. Bad Wheelsjoint. Who am I supposed to feel sorry for at this point? Us, the consumers? https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-08-19/toyota-cuts-show-chip-shortage-ravages-even-best-supply-planners https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-08-19/toyota-cu...
  - WarOnPrivacy 5y ago
    > I initially feel outraged against Google for their practices, but then I see a comment about how this is just regurgitated news. These two issues developed independently. One issue is that the site carries the (ostensibly low quality) content that Google rewards with search rankings. The other is that Youtube/Google embraces copyright enforcement that heavily favors legacy copyright interests - and that enabled ContentID to become an easily/safely wielded instrument of censorship and abuse (a scenario the tech community repeatedly warned us about).
lxe 5y ago
*de-indexes
blunte 5y ago
If google can be so easily fooled, perhaps the easy way to get attention to this problem is to submit similar bogus claims en masse against very high profile sites - major players like wsj, Fox News, bbc, etc. Of course doing so would be illegal… With a coordinated effort, and assuming the google system is fully automated and apparently very stupid, it might be possible to wipe half of the major sites off google for a period.
- bell-cot 5y ago
  You assume that Google has no "secret VIP list" - full of sites, ah, "conveniently above the rules which us little people are subject to".
random3 5y ago
Looks like a vulnerability. No such term as "DMCAing" (like SWATting) or "DDMCA" (like DDOS) yet?
iamjbn 5y ago
Search should be the native feature of the Web itself (even if it's just basic), just like any other discovery protocol.
- dredmorbius 5y ago
  I've had similar thoughts, though there seem to be a number of challenges. How would you suggest: - this be done? - site / source rankings be done (the real value of current search portals)? - avoiding (or penalising) false indexing --- either including index terms not in the indexed document(s), or omitting significant terms (excluding stopwords)? - updating indices with new content submissions or modifications? Particularly for simple / technologically primitive sites. - access points to search for users of the system?
8eye 5y ago
I was thinking about this earlier. I’ll give the idea away because I don’t have the time to build it. We should tokenize search. We can store data like location, trust score and reviews. Currently search is pruning a lot of things for the sake of money alone. Has anyone noticed a reduction in quality results and an increase in repetitive content? the current algorithm is terrible. If you are reading this google, rollback or fix the AI influence on search. It has become a lot harder to discover new content with this algorithm. And it seems to be punishing the wrong content. Just my two cents
intrasight 5y ago
Title is pretty stupid. The articles weren't deleted. Nobody has a "right" to be indexed by Google.
- input_sh 5y ago
  And here I was thinking Google broke into some random site's CMS to delete them. /s
ManBlanket 5y ago
They don't care if a few eggs are broken, chalk it up to the price of progress for eliminating the overhead of vetting requests. Money in the bank. Maybe flooding Google with fraudulent requests would force them to take the issue of seriously. The moment overhead of litigation stemming from fraudulent requests exceeds that of legitimate requests they'll fix that problem. For that reason perhaps some individuals collaborating to build network of bots which systematically flag everything indiscriminately with DMCA takedown requests would be justified. As of now it's pretty easy for Google to ignore the issue. One of many reasons corporations achieving the size of Alphabet inevitably becomes anti-consumer. They don't hear claims of fraud over the din of golden coins dropping into their accounts. I'd wager if Google Ads and Youtube were independent corporation they'd take supporting their customers and fraud a lot more seriously.
gorhill 5y ago
> after receiving 4 DMCA notices by “info-bloom.site”, a website that does not exist There is a similarly-named website which still exists, `what-info-bloom.com`, and which currently appears to be a copycat of `wheelsjoint.com`.
notreallyserio 5y ago
I thought the DMCA had provisions for fines against people filing fraudulent/bogus claims. Wonder if these folks have explored that.

182 points by bashinator 5y ago

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

In a better future, we'll look back on copyright's dark ages - when decades of purchased legislation shaped it to become a tool for censorship and gatekeeping.

easton_s 5y ago

Google did not delete the articles. I found them just fine on duckduckgo.com

WarOnPrivacy 5y ago
Reading the article reveals that "Google deletes over 3,000 articles of WheelsJoint from its search results".
codetrotter 5y ago
Deleted from their search results.
samhw 5y ago
Did you think Google might have deleted them from the internet? I'm somewhat struggling to understand.
- fooqux 5y ago
  For vast amounts of people (probably well over majority, but who knows), if it doesn't show up in a Google search, it might as well have been deleted from the internet. Hell, try running a business that doesn't show up in a Google search result. You might as well not exist. EDIT: Also, keep in mind that many sites now use Google as their search tool. So going to the domain and searching for an article in their website that you've seen in the past wouldn't even work.
  - rahimnathwani 5y ago
    This suggests 1.0 average pages per visit.
- robbrown451 5y ago
  I'll admit my first thought, based on the wording, was that the articles were posted on a google service such as google docs.
- ryantgtg 5y ago
  From the headline alone, my initial assumption was that it was about a google-hosted website and the content was actually deleted. Then I read the article…
- dspillett 5y ago
  Without further context than the title provided, it could mean that they deleted the articles from another Google property, not search results. Not sure what that property would be. Blogger perhaps if that is still a thing?
dang 5y ago
Ok, we've changed 'deletes' to 'de-indexes' in the title above. Thanks!

theginger 5y ago

Not again I get that these tech companies work on volume and automation and to manually review everything would be impossible and the more avenue of contact they put in the more they get swamped with noise, but they could do a lot more to identify real people with accounts of real value and have people that they can call to get these problems resolved without it having to cause a social media stink. I don't think they realise how much stories like this make me want to use other products, because it doesn't usually quite cross the threshold of making me do it, but it has done on occasion it would do more often if there were more alternatives. It really can't be good for their business model to have potentially lots of people even slightly motivated to go elsewhere just waiting for a viable alternative.

josefx 5y ago

> Submitting DMCA takedown notices for thousands of URLs to Google is easier than you think. You just have to fill out a DMCA form available on Google’s website and you can include 1000 URLs in each notice. The form includes a text field which accepts 1000 URLs at once. > But if you want to submit a counter DMCA notice, you have to submit one URL at a time. Submitting over 3,000 URLs took us over 15 hours – while it would have taken the scammer a few minutes to submit those URLs. Now if that design isn't intentionally abusive on Googles part. I think it at least qualifies as a dark pattern.

WarOnPrivacy 5y ago
> Now if that design isn't intentionally abusive on Googles part. It's the end result of a generation of copyright corruption. Google found more profit and less headache in yielding to the harmful systems (regulatory, etc) crafted by copyright cartels.
- Isthatablackgsd 5y ago
  Viacom is originator of this, this is why Google have that 1k URLs for DMCA takedown due to Viacom vs Google (2012) lawsuit. After that, copyrights and trolls massively abused DMCA due to this.
  - WarOnPrivacy 5y ago
    If the inference here is that this (or a similar) abuse-ridden system wouldn't exist in the absence of Viacom, I offer that there's more than enough powerful, corrupt copyright interests to fill that theoretical void.
    - cmeacham98 5y ago
      I agree, but in our world, where Viacom does exist, we can put most of the blame on them.
      - 5y ago

xeromal 5y ago

The title should be " Google deletes 3k articles from its search results over bogus DMCA notice "

jsperson 5y ago

And once again HN becomes the escalation end point for Google support. I wish they’d throw the internet a bone and put 1% of revenue into support. Edit: I do t actually know how much they invest in support. It may be a lot higher than 1%. Regardless, the number of “Google screwed me and won’t answer the phone.” articles we see is scary.

blunte 5y ago
There’s no chance they put 1% into support. It’s probably 0.01%.
fighterpilot 5y ago
We need strong consumer protection laws and a body that can issue large fines in response to violations. The stick is the only thing that's going to cause change. It is not acceptable, for example, that Google is allowed to ruin someone's life by associating their photo with a convicted rapist for weeks, and then not have a human that that person can talk to to address the issue. Such things should be punished with a large fine.

netcan 5y ago

It's painful how much of this is "on schedule" to achieve circa 2000s doomsayer's dystopia. Make gateways to the internet, they become gates. Whether it's advertising/monetisation policies, getting suddenly buried in their corporate bureaucracy, content moderation or whatnot... it's clear that you're dealing with a monopolith gatekeeper. What a mess, and all for what? To protect creators? How far we are from any such goal.

phrz 5y ago

An unpleasant reinforcement of my decision to avoid anything Google—these folks have been cut off from revenue and search with absolutely zero recourse.

pvg 5y ago

This is may be complicated by the fact the site appears a bit of a content farm itself. The article immediately following this one in their news section is https://www.wheelsjoint.com/toyota-to-cut-production-by-40-percent-as-chip-shortage-wreaks-havoc-in-auto-industry/ https://www.wheelsjoint.com/toyota-to-cut-production-by-40-p... Which looks like an unattributed re-written Bloomberg piece with the added twist that they misspelled the name of the Toyota purchasing manager in question. Edit: There was a WSJ article about Google's problems with fake DMCA notices last year, discussed then at: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23195680 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23195680

vadfa 5y ago
>“In Southeast Asia in particular, the spread of Covid and lockdowns are affecting our local suppliers,” said Toyota Purchasing Manager Kazuanri Kumakura. Toyota will make sure in future to diversify its supply chain even more spatially. In the weeks before, Toyota had announced minor production stoppages due to missing parts deliveries. Last month, Toyota extended a production stop in Thailand because parts were missing as a result of the Covid pandemic. Looks like it was written by a bot or hastily rewritten.
savingGrace 5y ago
Is this a common thing? I initially feel outraged against Google for their practices, but then I see a comment about how this is just regurgitated news. Now I don't know whether to feel annoyed at a site that just regurgitates other site content or what. Then I start thinking about how the majority of news sites regurgitate AP/other journalists. Bad Google. Bad Wheelsjoint. Who am I supposed to feel sorry for at this point? Us, the consumers? https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-08-19/toyota-cuts-show-chip-shortage-ravages-even-best-supply-planners https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-08-19/toyota-cu...
- WarOnPrivacy 5y ago
  > I initially feel outraged against Google for their practices, but then I see a comment about how this is just regurgitated news. These two issues developed independently. One issue is that the site carries the (ostensibly low quality) content that Google rewards with search rankings. The other is that Youtube/Google embraces copyright enforcement that heavily favors legacy copyright interests - and that enabled ContentID to become an easily/safely wielded instrument of censorship and abuse (a scenario the tech community repeatedly warned us about).

lxe 5y ago

*de-indexes

blunte 5y ago

If google can be so easily fooled, perhaps the easy way to get attention to this problem is to submit similar bogus claims en masse against very high profile sites - major players like wsj, Fox News, bbc, etc. Of course doing so would be illegal… With a coordinated effort, and assuming the google system is fully automated and apparently very stupid, it might be possible to wipe half of the major sites off google for a period.

bell-cot 5y ago
You assume that Google has no "secret VIP list" - full of sites, ah, "conveniently above the rules which us little people are subject to".

random3 5y ago

Looks like a vulnerability. No such term as "DMCAing" (like SWATting) or "DDMCA" (like DDOS) yet?

iamjbn 5y ago

Search should be the native feature of the Web itself (even if it's just basic), just like any other discovery protocol.

dredmorbius 5y ago
I've had similar thoughts, though there seem to be a number of challenges. How would you suggest: - this be done? - site / source rankings be done (the real value of current search portals)? - avoiding (or penalising) false indexing --- either including index terms not in the indexed document(s), or omitting significant terms (excluding stopwords)? - updating indices with new content submissions or modifications? Particularly for simple / technologically primitive sites. - access points to search for users of the system?

8eye 5y ago

I was thinking about this earlier. I’ll give the idea away because I don’t have the time to build it. We should tokenize search. We can store data like location, trust score and reviews. Currently search is pruning a lot of things for the sake of money alone. Has anyone noticed a reduction in quality results and an increase in repetitive content? the current algorithm is terrible. If you are reading this google, rollback or fix the AI influence on search. It has become a lot harder to discover new content with this algorithm. And it seems to be punishing the wrong content. Just my two cents

intrasight 5y ago

Title is pretty stupid. The articles weren't deleted. Nobody has a "right" to be indexed by Google.

input_sh 5y ago
And here I was thinking Google broke into some random site's CMS to delete them. /s

ManBlanket 5y ago

They don't care if a few eggs are broken, chalk it up to the price of progress for eliminating the overhead of vetting requests. Money in the bank. Maybe flooding Google with fraudulent requests would force them to take the issue of seriously. The moment overhead of litigation stemming from fraudulent requests exceeds that of legitimate requests they'll fix that problem. For that reason perhaps some individuals collaborating to build network of bots which systematically flag everything indiscriminately with DMCA takedown requests would be justified. As of now it's pretty easy for Google to ignore the issue. One of many reasons corporations achieving the size of Alphabet inevitably becomes anti-consumer. They don't hear claims of fraud over the din of golden coins dropping into their accounts. I'd wager if Google Ads and Youtube were independent corporation they'd take supporting their customers and fraud a lot more seriously.

gorhill 5y ago

> after receiving 4 DMCA notices by “info-bloom.site”, a website that does not exist There is a similarly-named website which still exists, `what-info-bloom.com`, and which currently appears to be a copycat of `wheelsjoint.com`.

notreallyserio 5y ago

I thought the DMCA had provisions for fines against people filing fraudulent/bogus claims. Wonder if these folks have explored that.