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I'm slowly leaning more and more towards "It's unacceptable to ban a user without providing EXACT details about why they were banned". I understand that this i

I'm slowly leaning more and more towards "It's unacceptable to ban a user without providing EXACT details about why they were banned". I understand that this is a cat and mouse game of abuse by these companies - I no longer care. I'm utterly disgusted when the company in question is a monopoly (and to be clear: Google is a monopoly in search, and it should have been addressed years ago - except the US government is crippled and dysfunctional) I don't mind some sanity checks around the process (the most obvious and foolproof: Make a representative show up in person at a company location) but this whole "Appeal and get auto-denied with no explanation" bullshit needs to stop.

jandrese 4y ago
I 100% agree with this. I also think it should apply to things like error codes from applications. The bad actors will figure it out anyway because that is their day job. So the people who get harmed are the innocents who don't want to fight in some information war just to run an ad.
nlh 4y ago
I'm leaning this way too. I've read and understand the counterargument - "if we tell the bad actors why we banned them, it will give them explicit help on new ways to scam us." You know what? Too bad. Here's my best analogy: If you run a jewelry store, yes, you can have hidden cameras and silent alarms and lots of things so the bad guys don't know what your defenses are. But also, sometimes a big person with a big weapon standing at the doorway is fine too. It very clearly tells people what your defenses are, and that's OK. To build on that in Google's case: If they just said "Sorry, your payment via Brex triggered some of our security policies because lots of bad actors use Brex", then yes, bad actors would stop using Brex and look for other methods to defraud. Is that a....bad thing?
- jfim 4y ago
  There would probably be a lawsuit coming from Brex if that was written down, so it would just expose Google to additional liability. It's the kind of situation where the correct decision for Google is to not reveal anything, as it just adds risk on their end for not much gain, but at the same time, we're all losing because everyone is subject to random acts of overzealous algorithms with no clear understanding of what happened, candidates don't get interview feedback if they fail the interview, executives never apologize for anything because that would be admitting guilt, and so on. But hey, we minimized liability!
  - horsawlarway 4y ago
    Correct - it's clearly a case of market failure. The incentives for the company do not align with the incentives of the public. That's when you fucking regulate them! That's literally the foundational case law for the last 100 some years (more really, since anti-trust goes back to the 1890s) on when to god damn regulate a company.

jandrese 4y ago

I 100% agree with this. I also think it should apply to things like error codes from applications. The bad actors will figure it out anyway because that is their day job. So the people who get harmed are the innocents who don't want to fight in some information war just to run an ad.

nlh 4y ago

I'm leaning this way too. I've read and understand the counterargument - "if we tell the bad actors why we banned them, it will give them explicit help on new ways to scam us." You know what? Too bad. Here's my best analogy: If you run a jewelry store, yes, you can have hidden cameras and silent alarms and lots of things so the bad guys don't know what your defenses are. But also, sometimes a big person with a big weapon standing at the doorway is fine too. It very clearly tells people what your defenses are, and that's OK. To build on that in Google's case: If they just said "Sorry, your payment via Brex triggered some of our security policies because lots of bad actors use Brex", then yes, bad actors would stop using Brex and look for other methods to defraud. Is that a....bad thing?

jfim 4y ago
There would probably be a lawsuit coming from Brex if that was written down, so it would just expose Google to additional liability. It's the kind of situation where the correct decision for Google is to not reveal anything, as it just adds risk on their end for not much gain, but at the same time, we're all losing because everyone is subject to random acts of overzealous algorithms with no clear understanding of what happened, candidates don't get interview feedback if they fail the interview, executives never apologize for anything because that would be admitting guilt, and so on. But hey, we minimized liability!
- horsawlarway 4y ago
  Correct - it's clearly a case of market failure. The incentives for the company do not align with the incentives of the public. That's when you fucking regulate them! That's literally the foundational case law for the last 100 some years (more really, since anti-trust goes back to the 1890s) on when to god damn regulate a company.