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Google has a secret deal with FB called “Jedi Blue” that they knew was illegal

• nojito 5y ago
  So AMP for quicker load times was a bold faced lie https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FCbGxnYWYAcyzq3?format=png&name=small https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FCbGxnYWYAcyzq3?format=png&name=...
  • lgrialn 5y ago
    bald-faced
• GregFellin 5y ago
  Be good is better than don’t be evil. When was it again that google dropped the tagline “don’t be evil”?
• smegger001 5y ago
  I don't think i understand how this was supposed to benefit Google? just making facebook bid like everyone else would surely have just raised the floor as everyone had to compete with them, where this way google makes less on the ads sold to facebook.
  • alfalfasprout 5y ago
    The point was to kill header bidding altogether forcing people onto google's exchange. Or some portion of the time, facebook's exchange. Basically Google and Facebook wanted to create a walled garden where you're more or less forced to bid on their ad exchanges. Since they control the ad exchange they can front-run everyone and bid using insider info. By eliminating all other competitors Google and FB can basically collude to split the pie.
• greenyoda 5y ago
  Big discussion of the original source (the 173-page antitrust complaint that's referenced in this tweet): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28975222 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28975222 A full article on Jedi Blue: "Google acknowledges it foresaw possibility of probe of 'Jedi Blue' advertising deal with Facebook" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28975782 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28975782 A big discussion of an article on "Project NERA": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28974798 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28974798
  • ColinWright 5y ago
    Brilliant ... thanks for the cross-references.
  • dang 5y ago
    Also related: An enormous thread on alleged Google Facebook collusion - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28965949 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28965949 - Oct 2021 (335 comments)
• jqpabc123 5y ago
  Hello advertisers. You are being manipulated and abused just like the consumers you are targeting. There is very little evidence to show that invasive digital advertising is actually effective. When was the last time you clicked on one of these ads and actually made a purchase? Bad for consumers and bad for advertisers. Why continue with this opaque, profit sucking charade that mainly enriches those selling the ads?
  • corobo 5y ago
    > There is very little evidence to show that invasive digital advertising is actually effective Wish.com would heavily disagree with you I'm sure. Almost everyone I know has ordered at least one thing off them, some use it more than Amazon these days for their overpriced useless junk needs
    • criddell 5y ago
      Where do they advertise? I've never heard of them... When I go to the website I can't see anything without logging in. What do they sell?
      • corobo 5y ago
        Facebook and Instagram They sell random guff. They're eBay if you replace other sellers with Alibaba You're on hacker news mate, you are not their target market. Don't judge popularity with your blinkers on haha
  • drunkpotato 5y ago
    What we found at a previous employer through extensive testing: advertising on Facebook works pretty well, but the highest return on ad spend was to not use any of the demographic tools at all. Also, weirdly, having an attractive product and displaying it well in photo and video ads did very well. Almost as if there is no real magic trick of effectiveness at all.
    • corobo 5y ago
• echelon 5y ago
  When can we send the leadership to federal prison instead of slapping them on the wrist with paltry fines? This has been used to inflate and extort advertising dollars. It has utterly trashed the web, gutted Mozilla, created a corporate tech monoculture controlled by platform giants, and led our social media engagement crisis. Break up these companies and send the leaders that approved of this to jail.
  • devnull3 5y ago
    > When can we send the leadership to federal prison Yeah, these companies make employees read & sign code-of-conduct, ethics etc. Hell, I was made to attend sessions explaining "values" of the company. The sheer hypocrisy ... only if execs walk the talk, the world would be a better place
  • freen 5y ago
    Well, if Starcom and Omnicom actually represented their clients, they would both sue and file criminal charges for fraud. They don’t. So they won’t. I wonder, to what degree the big agencies are complicit? If I spent any dollars at all on ads on either Facebook or google I would be filing criminal charges.
    • matt123456789 5y ago
      Isn’t this price fixing? That’s a criminal federal offense. The US Government would have to bring the criminal charges, although you (and likely the FTC) could bring charges for damages.
  • csee 5y ago
    Yep, jail sentences. Fines are good but don't work that well, even if they're large, because of agency conflict of interest. It's mostly the shareholders who are paying the price. The execs already saw their call option paid off with their 10 years of comp while they were running this scam (among others).
    • sokoloff 5y ago
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• qnsi 5y ago
  What can we as people in top 1% with 1) information about big tech abuses 2) skills to fix this do? Individually we can use browsers like firefox or brave and probably donate time or money to them, but I think it's not enough. I think we would need something like a movement against those abuses, but probably the biggest win would be a business model that could win with them in the free market. Is this possible? Has anyone tried something like this?
  • klyrs 5y ago
    Protecting the top %.01 appears to be just about the only thing that both parties can agree on.
  • dzonga 5y ago
    stop working at those companies. but a good number of people around these parts have already decided going through fb/google hazing is worth it for the paycheck. screw ethics. you already know, once a company reaches monopoly position, a lot of corners have been cut and it has been unethical. that's a discussion HN at large is not ready to have atm.
    • bigiain 5y ago
      "You can’t buy ethics offsets for the terrible things you do at your day job." and: "But here’s the thing. You can’t help Uber build Greyball during the day, or help Palantir design databases to round up immigrants as your main gig, and then buy ethics offsets by doing a non-profit side hustle. We need you to work ethically during that day job much more than we need you working with that non-profit." -- https://deardesignstudent.com/ethics-cant-be-a-side-hustle-b9e78c090aee https://deardesignstudent.com/ethics-cant-be-a-side-hustle-b...
  • cianmm 5y ago
    I think more whistleblowers and legal ramifications for C-level execs (prison time preferably since they can happily pay any fine thrown at them) is the only real way to do it at this point.
• mabbo 5y ago
  It takes two things for programs like "Jedi Blue" to happen. First, you need sociopaths in leadership positions who champion this 'great idea' they've figured out. These people often rise up in large companies because they are willing to do this sort of thing without any remorse. But second, you need developers to build it. A large number of them, usually, for a big project like this. Dozens of people like us knew they were building a piece of software that was obviously illegal. Oh sure, management had probably told them some version of "but you see, it's legal because...". At a company that spent decades claiming they only hire the smartest people in the world, that doesn't pass the test for me- they had to know. Which means that the people who built this fall into two categories, in my mind. Those who understand they're doing something illegal, but don't care- future sociopath leaders themselves. And those who know it's illegal but are too cowardly to walk away, to whistle blow, to do something about it.
  • mcrae 5y ago
    All this presupposes that what the AG has written is correct, and that what happened was actually illegal. Generally a court of law decides that. Since none of this has been proven, maybe it would be prudent not to throw all of the folks who work there under the sociopath or coward bus? A cursory reading belies the authors don’t fully understand the mechanics of the industry (eg, the broken analogy comparing an ad exchange to a stock exchange), so I’ll reserve judgement personally.
  • vadfa 5y ago
    What you are saying is that morals and laws are the same thing, which they are not. Laws can very well be immoral, and sense of morality depends entirely on each one of us.
    • mabbo 5y ago
      No, I'm not saying that. I'm saying that ethics should matter when choosing where you work and on what you work more than laws. I'm saying anyone willing to work on an obvious unethical or illegal project is either an accomplice or a coward.
• shp0ngle 5y ago
  Those are claims of an attorney general, right. Not something swore by oath from Google/Facebook. Claims from AGs strictly from conservative states.
  • JeremyNT 5y ago
    Your insinuation that this is politically motivated seems plausible, but even so that doesn't mean the assertions are wrong. Sometimes when you go on a fishing expedition you actually reel in a big one.
    • shp0ngle 5y ago
      It obviously is motivated politically. Let’s wait and see if it’s actually true.
  • flenserboy 5y ago
    Your accusation can be turned around: Interesting, isn't it, that those most likely to engage in collusion with G/FB are silent on the matter?
  • JasonFruit 5y ago
    Don't try to use political division to redirect people's anger at each other. I'm to the point where I'm deeply suspicious of the motives of anyone who deploys a novel way to recast an issue as partisan. I hope others are equally suspicious.
    • lazide 5y ago
      Doesn’t seem particularly novel - rather pointing out that it seems rather explicitly partisan already?
    • shp0ngle 5y ago
      No, I just want to make sure what am I looking at.
      • 5y ago
• dschuetz 5y ago
  Welp, it's time to de-google my networks then. Facebook traffic is already blocked, now I wonder how much Web content I will lose when I block all google traffic.
  • jraph 5y ago
    Not much except websites blocked by reCAPTCHA. Which are quite numerous unfortunately, including free software based services like element.io.
• bellyfullofbac 5y ago
  I remember in 2nd grade, a kid brought a note from his parent which was written in a few dozen tiny Post-It notes. The teacher was furious about the improperness of the format of the message. That just came to mind seeing yet another too-fucking-long Twitter thread.
  • mileycyrusXOXO 5y ago
    Not every discussion needs to be held in a formal context. It’s okay to have casual conversations
  • draw_down 5y ago
    Come on
  • aspenmayer 5y ago
    Your vapid comment is even lower effort than this canned response.
    • beeboop 5y ago
      im not sure you know what vapid means
  • thrwyoilarticle 5y ago
    This comment is in every thread that links to a Twitter thread. Please don't do another one. If it was really such an ineffective method of communication, it wouldn't be on the front page.
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
• tonetheman 5y ago
  Can we finally get rid of AMP as part of all of this?
  • tartoran 5y ago
    Been using duckduckgo for the past year and AMP doesn’t exist for me.
• 323 5y ago
  Let's not blame a whole company for what some small part of it did. Google does a lot of good in this world. They were the first "ethical" tech company, the first tech company with "hacker values" at heart. "do no evil" is still a core value there.
  • tartoran 5y ago
    No, google is not what it started off as. They dropped the do no evil moto long time ago
  • dotancohen 5y ago
    One bad apple does spoil an entire bunch.
  • djsbs 5y ago
    I disagree with everything you say, but: “ They were the first "ethical" tech company,” What does that even mean? Unless you equate “ethical” with manipulating their dominant social position to shove a worldview you happen to agree with. Which is a very… narrow understanding of ethics. As well as convenient, and, historically, trite (socially advantaged person agrees w/ the worldview a social institution imposes that reinforces and explains their privilege)
    • 323 5y ago
      > What does that even mean? Read HN from 10 years ago. Posters were gushing about how cool and amazing Google is, how much good they are doing to the tech industry, how more companies should be like than and do ethical things like they do, for example support open standards and source instead of proprietary systems. They were saying that Google is a company run by techies who value hacking ethics ideals and not by business men who only care about money.
      • djsbs 5y ago
        I first joined HN ten years ago. So that was sarcasm? Wow that went over my head. Makes sense though.
• aasasd 5y ago
  > Re: forced Chrome logins. Don't need cookies if you own the browser! (https://twitter.com/fasterthanlime/status/1452094513741189122 https://twitter.com/fasterthanlime/status/145209451374118912...) The swindle with FLOC was pretty obviously tied in this, but people still went in circles discussing whether it's private or not, and downvoting those who said FLOC is a trap. Let's consult the plan, nothing is even secret about this: - Google disables third-party cookies, crippling competitors to its Analytics, and thus their data for ads. - Google throws them the FLOC bone to avoid being sued, dressing it up as a privacy measure. Meanwhile FLOC is controlled by Google's code in the browser. - Google itself continues to vacuum up users' stats for all sites through the browser, never needing the cookies or FLOC. So, if this is not a case of Google using its monopoly on web services (email and video) and the monopoly on the browser to prop up its monopoly on web ads, then I don't know what is. The baffling part, really, is: with Goog already being ahead of the rest of the planet by having surveillance in The Browser, why don't they chill the hell out and stop right there. It's almost like someone inside decided to set up a multibillion-dollar morality performance and demonstrate what happens when a company is being too greedy. Also, we probably need to remember that even if Goog is told off and has to dial its appetites back, it still sits on a database of surveillance data on people through the web, the browser, the services and Android. Which database, for example, is used by the US police for location->people requests, of which folks by definition only some are potential subjects of investigation (see e.g. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/13/technology/google-sensorvault-location-tracking.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/13/technology/google-sensorv...).
  • sixothree 5y ago
    > The swindle with FLOC was pretty obviously tied in this, but people still went in circles discussing whether it's private or not, and downvoting those who said FLOC is a trap. The brigading on HN in particular seems extremely obvious when it comes to Google related articles.
  • braveyellowtoad 5y ago
    Woah, so if a user is logged into chrome, Google has permission / is able to track all web activity for that user?
• corporateshil1 5y ago
  Expect some 'cosmetic' change and back to the norm. The personal data hoarded is too valuable to the surveillance apparatus for us to stop it now. You wouldn't want a Chinese/Russian company taking over these industries, and the West seems capable of only one flavor, the current status quo. Seems like FAAMG is here to stay, they are probably already one with the government, it will be spelled out more obvious in the future, since we need a judge to give us truth, but honest judges aren't in demand
• gvv 5y ago
  Cost of doing business. If the penalty costs less than the profit they make they will keep doing it.
  • tgsovlerkhgsel 5y ago
    Even if the penalty costs more than the profit in the cases where they get caught, they'll keep doing it if they don't always get caught. Or if it allows them to build a hard-to-break market position (see e.g. how Intel destroyed AMD, the fines couldn't undo that).
• JustFinishedBSG 5y ago
  The most "surprising" thing for me as a mathematician is that Google publishes a lot of top notch research on bidding and pricing theory. But it's all rigged in the end. So Google pushed the perverseness as far as basically creating a fake research lab to cover it all.
  • SimeVidas 5y ago
    Maybe Google’s researchers are kept out of the loop.
    • JustFinishedBSG 5y ago
      Well I imagine so. But it still means google management decided to fund (relatively expensive) top notch research just to act as a front for their criminal operation.
      • 9387367 5y ago
        Maybe Google’s managers are also kept out of the loop.
      • rossdavidh 5y ago
        One might want top-notch research, in case it reveals to you some way to maximize your own revenue that doesn't have the legal risk (which this very Twitter thread is related to). So they might have a true interest in the research, even if that's not how they're running things right now. Also, many large corporations are best thought of as multiple personalities, with different parts of the organization acting in different ways.
      • goldenkey 5y ago
        They have hundreds of billions of dollars of ad money coming in. A research lab and even a dozen PHDs is like you or me tossing pennies.
      • atleta 5y ago
        People think all the time that whatever turns out to be bad for them (or the society) has been planned from the beginning. Despite that you basically never see it happening around yourself. A lot more likely explanation is that they did setup the research lab with 100% honest intentions (i.e. they expected that it would produce value to them) but then it turned out that the results didn't meet their expectations and/or they slowly figured out that they don't have to adhere to all the rules and principles they set out for themselves earlier.
• thr0w72594 5y ago
  The big tech companies (and more) act as a cartel, doing things for each other to kick out smaller rivals or just censor and deplatform people and groups they don't like. This is just evidence that it's more than wink-and-nod deals, which I think most of us suspected anyway. Social media, search, payment processors, hosting sites... they all work in lockstep for the benefit of the cartel. We lose privacy, opportunity, and freedom and these companies gain more power. There needs to be a bigger crackdown on the power that these companies hold, and not just when some documents happen to leak. America is in the best position to do this theoretically, but neither head of the American uniparty even pretends like they're going to do anything about it.
  • intricatedetail 5y ago
    Google and Facebook are the biggest threat to democracy by the influence they have. I think such influence should be regulated and controlled.
• aronpye 5y ago
  TTDR
• cryptica 5y ago
  Wow I just saw a headline to a far less interesting article about Google and Facebook conspiring together to bypass some restrictions of the Apple App Store... I thought this 'Jedi Blue' was the same thing so I almost did not click it... But this is a whole different beast. If they're willing to distract people with fake whistleblowers and boring articles in order to suppress this much more interesting information, it must be very bad. Will be interesting to see how deep it goes. Google or Facebook ads never seemed to work for me, I wonder if this is because of the manipulation. If this is true, it is outright fraud. They have defrauded millions of paying customers over decades. Also, I believe some Facebook marketing directors resigned not long ago... I wonder if this is related? This has the hallmarks of a news story which keeps on giving...
• DSingularity 5y ago
  It’s interesting that only republican states are holding google accountable on all this.
  • slater 5y ago
    Isn't that part of the whole "we're being silenced!!11~~" nonsense they've got going on?
    • kory 5y ago
      It is nonsense? Just a few months ago, facebook was banning people for the “lab leak theory,” and now it’s a widely accepted possibility. Facebook bans people now for writing about vaccine side effects.
    • RNCTX 5y ago
      Is it nonsense? For a tech company to tell the news press that it isn’t allowed to talk about a pres candidate’s crackhead son two weeks before an election? When crackhead son mysteriously had a 400k/yr job from a foreign corporation? When there’s video of said pres candidate bragging about getting a prosecutor fired in that country where his crackhead son is paid 400k/yr? What’s your definition of nonsense? Perhaps it’s just nonsense that the supposed news press rolled over and played along because they didn’t want to lose their friends in the DoD and CIA?
  • enumjorge 5y ago
    That’s not quite true. The specific lawsuit from which these documents originate (related to ad tech) was filed by Republican states but the Justice Department’s antitrust division, led by a Biden appointment attorney, is involved and is preparing a second lawsuit. One of Biden’s stated goals is to tighten antitrust violations in tech. There is also the other antitrust lawsuit related to the Playstore that were filed by blue and red states.
  • setpatchaddress 5y ago
    Specifically, activist GOP states; some of the most corrupt politicians on the planet. I’m sure there’s actionable antitrust against Google, but this particular lawsuit is probably hot air.
• Digit-Al 5y ago
  Does anyone else wonder if Page and Brin feel any pangs of guilt over how their company went from "Don't be evil" to such corrupt practises? It really is a classic case study in the journey from apparent idealism to a complete moral vacuum.
  • credittw2021 5y ago
    [flagged]
    • crawfordcomeaux 5y ago
      I'll second this. "Evil" is a subjective judgment, so using it clouds people's emotions. The non-villain org I want to start is dedicated to "Meeting all needs while denying none." I'd love for people to parse it for hidden villainy.
    • dang 5y ago
      Please don't do internet psychiatric diagnosis on HN or glibly call names like sociopath. That's already one circle of internet hell and it points deeper in. We want the opposite vector here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&type=comment&dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=%22internet%20psychiatric%20diagnosis%22 https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&type=comment&dateRange=a...
  • dqpb 5y ago
    With about $100b net worth each, I’m going to guess they feel just fine.
    • stackbutterflow 5y ago
      That's the thing though. They don't need more money. So why not try to make the world a better place for once? I know they donate to charity but they're uniquely well positioned to influence one of the biggest, and most dangerous, tech company on the planet. I wonder. Do they care? Do they have personal problems that makes the rest seem insignificant? Or do they believe they're truly making the world better?
• hamilyon2 5y ago
  I sometimes wonder, what if there was a universal governing principle, that was simple to enforce, obvious, formulated in few words, so that everyone understands it. All those priveleges which every of theese corporations enjoy, some simple, like not publishing schematic for 1000$+ device, some complex, like making backroom deals harming millions of people in a some insignificant and obscure way daily, like showing certain ads to certain people. Some other evade taxes using laws in ways laws were never intended to be used. To enumerate and prevent every abuse possible is not optimal spending of time. What if there were no hard rules, but instead the whole playing filed was in favour of little men. What would be the the main idea behind such system? Maybe some kind of radical transparency? This idea, principle should apply to every company and reward those who play not only by the rules, but to the common end: sustainable, transparent, non-abusive, respecting sosiety. If only existed some simple rule that reward this behaviour.
  • coliveira 5y ago
    Of course this exists, it is called socialism. But our society is so deep into consumerist propaganda that it has lost the ways to evaluate anything that doesn't presume capitalism.
    • thow-01187 5y ago
      I suspect that worshiping "The Rule of Law" as an unadulterated good is responsible for a lot of the corporate overreach we observe in the past few decades. When we construct a social fiction that state is just one among many actors, and must be bound by rigid rules and justify its actions, that Bermuda is basically an equal partner to the US, it just naturally leads other entities to malignant behavior Of course the corporations will reverse engineer the legal code to get away with as much as they can. Of course they will evade taxes. Of course there will be a slow creep, where previously borderline illegal behavior is now the best practice adopted by everyone, and therefore unenforceable If there's a sovereign on top of the hierarchy that doesn't have to answer to anyone, the corporations are way more docile, as seen in China or FDR-era USA, and proactively align their goals with the goals of the society
• ElevenFingers 5y ago
  Oh nice.
• literallyaduck 5y ago
  Here is how to contact your state Attorney General in the US: https://www.usa.gov/state-attorney-general https://www.usa.gov/state-attorney-general If everyone asks them to do everything in their power to investigate the the illegal activities and prosecute all parties involved, we might have a chance at one biting. Sending a message beyond an offensively small fine is crucial. If you are in the EU or other locations please post similar information so it can be a global effort.
  • moffkalast 5y ago
    I'm sure a global effort will increase the offensively small fine to a medium sized fine. Google: "This is fine." They print money at an astonishing rate with AdSense.
    • TechBro8615 5y ago
      I think the goal of this lawsuit is probably more than just a fine. There will be a push to break up the companies into independent silos so google can’t frontrun its own ad exchange.
      • m0zg 5y ago
        Man, as much as I'd like to see it, it really cracks me up when people think this has a snowball's chance in hell of happening. Google and FB are _required_ to win elections now, have been since 2012. This golden population control goose will not be killed. Instead it'll be taken care of and fattened up.
• cletus 5y ago
  F Twitter threads. Seriously... just... stop. It's worth noting with all the revelations in the last couple of days, that at least some of them aren't new. For example: - "Jedi Blue: A Scandal That Highlights, Yet Again, The Need To Regulate Big Tech" (19 Jan 2021) [1] - "Facebook and Google allegedly cut a deal that reduced ad competition" (17 Jan 2021) [2] - "Google acknowledges it foresaw possibility of probe of 'Jedi Blue' advertising deal with Facebook" (7 Apr 2021) [3] I mean this is all fruit of the same tree, the states' suit, but it seems there's some revisionism here. What is new is parts of the suit that were redacted were recently unredacted. To be clear, these are fairly damning allegations and revelations. Personally, I find the most troubling allegations to be about AMP and ad market price-fixing. [1]: https://www.forbes.com/sites/enriquedans/2021/01/19/jedi-blue-a-scandal-that-highlights-yet-again-the-need-to-regulate-bigtech/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/enriquedans/2021/01/19/jedi-blu... [2]: https://www.engadget.com/facebook-google-jedi-blue-ad-deal-165604926.html https://www.engadget.com/facebook-google-jedi-blue-ad-deal-1... [3]: https://mlexmarketinsight.com/news-hub/editors-picks/area-of-expertise/antitrust/google-acknowledges-it-foresaw-possibility-of-probe-of-jedi-blue-advertising-deal-with-facebook https://mlexmarketinsight.com/news-hub/editors-picks/area-of...
  • dylan604 5y ago
    It's quite simple why people do Twitter threads. It's all about the stats for themselves. Everyone wants to be internet famous
    • blowski 5y ago
      I imagine you're probably right. But I still don't understand - why not have a single Tweet, with a summary of a blog post running on your own domain? Wouldn't that make you even more internet famous?
      • slimsag 5y ago
        All people will do is switch over to Medium.
• luxuryballs 5y ago
  Anyone want to take a guess as to why they chose “Blue” and “Jedi”, a fictional order that uses invisible powers to manipulate their opponents?
  • salawat 5y ago
    These aren't the thoughts you should be thinking.
• kzrdude 5y ago
  This argument I don't understand https://twitter.com/fasterthanlime/status/1452066487913664512 https://twitter.com/fasterthanlime/status/145206648791366451... Using the median page load time is one of the best tools for analyzing effective load speedups. Sounds legit to me, and they're just trying to speak to the jury.
  • lostdog 5y ago
    Yeah, for this whole case we have to choose whether Google or the Texas AG is being more honest.
  • tgsovlerkhgsel 5y ago
    In my subjective perception, most of the improvements from AMP came from the fact that all the abusive technology that publishers had amassed on their primary web sites over the past decade or so got temporarily dropped in the forced rewrite. A non-AMP site could be just as fast as an AMP site (minus the initial prefetching) or even faster by not requiring all the AMP-specific stuff, but in practice, the AMP sites were a minimal rewrite of the full site, leaving behind the popups, autoplaying videos, 40 different trackers, ads from 5 different companies, etc. AMP overcame the inertia of just leaving all the crap in and incrementally adding more by forcing the rewrite. Over time, as the publishers had more time to crappify the AMP versions too, they became worse.
• Havoc 5y ago
  >The parties agreed up front on when and how often Facebook would bid in auctions, and when and how often Facebook would ultimately win. That sounds rather cartel-like
  • kevinthew 5y ago
    This sounds exactly like the LIBOR rigging scam, various commodity market scandals. People rightfully go to jail for this stuff -- meanwhile we see the big tech companies bid rig
    • gonzo41 5y ago
      Actually, we didn't see that many people go to jail for rigging the LIBOR rate. There were a few fall guys but a lot of people made a lot of money.
      • dbuder 5y ago
        It was a fake rate anyway and they only moved it around a little, what Jedi Blue did was far more criminal and egregious. The ad networks act with impunity, for example, they know when a user has installed an app with no connection to them and then they serve that user ads for the app and then attribute the install to themselves! out and out fraud but they'll just claim the algo is really complex and our ML/AI doesn't have intent.
        • bombcar 5y ago
          “Give us lots of money or you will lose your business” is basically they argument. It obviously works in some cases but I seriously suspect most advertising money is wasted.
        • istinetz 5y ago
          >It was a fake rate anyway It was my impression that everyone uses LIBOR, so even a tiny change has massive consequences.
• karaterobot 5y ago
  This is a list of accusations, right? This is all pre-trial, so a journalist would want to put the word "alleged" in front of this rather than writing it up as though they'd discovered the undisputed truth? Just checking, I know it's not going to make a difference. Not a fan of Google at all, but I do like to pretend there's a process.
  • vehemenz 5y ago
    They're not all accusations. One of the tweets is about Chrome forcing logins to Google products (and vice versa), which has officially been a thing for like 5 years, at least. This anti-feature is very well known and is why many of us switched to Firefox.
    • hoffs 5y ago
      > Many of us What is this us?
      • vehemenz 5y ago
        The average HN user is more likely to use Firefox and have 2+ Google accounts than the average person. Very straightforward stuff.
        • MikusR 5y ago
          Source?
  • BiteCode_dev 5y ago
    They don't respect due process with illegal mass spying or bazooka dmca on youtube. They just do it, and you can't appeal. So at this point, even if none of that ended up being true (unlikely), I still hope it will hurt their reputation badly.
    • hoffs 5y ago
      What mass spying and you can appeal DMCA on YouTube
• Woodi 5y ago
  So, they (juries, sanators, others busy with wrong things peoples) will finlly do something or we can just discuss it for next 8-9 years and on 10 + 1 day all goes to history ?
  • actually_a_dog 5y ago
    My guess: this wends through the system long enough that the details end up getting forgotten and confused in the retelling, finally ending in some trivial (relative to these companies' profits) being issued, and the public forgets about it in another year or two. In other words, this is likely to be the Experian data breach all over again. You remember, right? When the credit files of virtually every working adult in America got released and... nothing happened?
• lvs 5y ago
  The purpose of AMP was completely obvious, and you all consented to buying into it anyway for the traffic. It couldn't have been successful without your help!
• wly_cdgr 5y ago
  I don't think it's possible for something to have less sex appeal than an online advertising scam named after a star wars character
  • DaveExeter 5y ago
    Do code names have to be sexy? I think they were riffing off 'Have Blue'. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Have_Blue https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Have_Blue
    • wly_cdgr 5y ago
      Yes, but also, I'm talking about the thing as a whole, not so much the codename. The codename just makes it even worse, like calling a frontend developer a ninja makes the fact that you're wasting the best years of your life building forms and brochures even more depressing
• _dain_ 5y ago
  Funny how we learned precisely none of this from that so-called "Facebook whistleblower" two weeks ago. Looking at her Twitter, she doesn't seem to have anything to say about it. How strange! Instead, she's just shilling against encryption: https://nitter.net/FrancesHaugen/status/1452362024856559616 https://nitter.net/FrancesHaugen/status/1452362024856559616
  • TazeTSchnitzel 5y ago
    Perhaps Facebook is a very large corporation and different former employees would have different knowledge?
  • HatchedLake721 5y ago
    A single person doesn’t know everything that happens at 60,000 employee company. More at 10
  • nathanvanfleet 5y ago
    But it doesn't sound like she would be involved in a specific business deal between FB and Google while she was working there?
  • ma2rten 5y ago
    This was already known since at least January.
  • encryptluks2 5y ago
    The timing on her coming forward and the media pushing her right after Facebook went down was impeccable. Remember, the the engineers couldn't even get into the data center. Just a way to try to convince the public that we need more surveillance.
  • sumedh 5y ago
    Facebook is not some scrappy startup where few employees know everything.
• Animats 5y ago
  Sherman Act: "Every person who shall monopolize, or attempt to monopolize, or combine or conspire with any other person or persons, to monopolize any part of the trade or commerce among the several States, or with foreign nations, shall be deemed guilty of a felony." People do go to prison for Sherman Act violations. Here are some older Department of Justice statistics.[1] So when will we see the first arrests? [1] https://www.ussc.gov/sites/default/files/pdf/about/commissioners/selected-articles/Howell_Review_of_Antitrust_Sentencing_Data.pdf https://www.ussc.gov/sites/default/files/pdf/about/commissio...
  • dd444fgdfg 5y ago
    laws are for the poor
    • throwaway0a5e 5y ago
      Laws are for the poorly connected. But you'll get more internet virtue points phrasing it your way.
      • rpmisms 5y ago
        You're both right.
      • darig 5y ago
        Neither of you has enough money or connections to truly understand anything.
      • elzbardico 5y ago
        "Yeah, one of those days, I was smoking a joint after leaving my shift as a janitor in a hospital and the police took me. If I hadn't called my friends Buffet and Elison to help me, probably I would be still stuck in jail." - Nobody, ever. Being poor and poorly connected, in the real world, are basically the same thing.
        • nmm 5y ago
• janesvilleseo 5y ago
  This explains my question. How much does Google pay for its own ads on its own platforms? No way to check. Easy to manipulate. But this is a whole lot worse.
• isodev 5y ago
  It’s kind of a perfect plan really - it works as long as folks are using Chrome or anything Chromium based (which still feeds into Google’s leverage with W3C). Makes one wonder just how “free” Android really is.
• ldehaan 5y ago
  Yeah and apparently UFO's are real too, and Edward Snowden was right, nobody cares man, nobody cares. If we cared we'd smash our phones and bake our neighbors cookies, but instead house after house settles in for the fear fest blasting right into our face from inches away. Begging for more. Just more.
• Threeve303 5y ago
  If nothing else, Disney is not going to be too happy about it.