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I run a small startup building a real time streaming engine. We're used by some of the biggest names in media and entertainment to power their live content. We
by knoland 3y ago
I run a small startup building a real time streaming engine. We're used by some of the biggest names in media and entertainment to power their live content.
Wednesday, Google decided to kill our business by declaring to all browsers, email client, and social media that our sites are phishing scams.
They did this 4 hours before the biggest event for our biggest customer. Anyone who went to the site got a giant red "Deceptive site ahead". Viewership has plummeted, and customers are (understandably) livid.
Seemingly there is no way to contact Google about this, aside from a random form with no follow up. No one at our customers can find someone to contact, we can't find anyone to contact.
It's a totally centralized system, Google controls the list, and everyone uses it. The shadow cabal decides what sites live and what sites die and there's no way to contact them.
- codetrotter 3y agoIndeed. At the moment the link you submitted here results in a “deceptive site” warning in mobile iOS as well. But when I view an archived version of your site, I see the Disney logo there. https://archive.is/VmzyF https://archive.is/VmzyF So are you guys owned by Disney and/or working with them? Surely Disney is big enough to be able to resolve this with Google?
- knoland 3y agoWe work directly with Disney, Netflix, Amazon, etc. Even they haven't been able to get a hold of someone at Google.
- pipo234 3y agoI've disabled safe browsing protections and the site indeed seems operational. Sign up form, video playing in the background...
- knoland 3y agoYea the site is totally functional, but with the big red "THIS SITE IS A SCAM" our traffic is down over 95%. We also can't email or share the link with anyone cause the mail servers and social media all block it as phishing.
- pipo234 3y agoI feel sorry. Hope enough HNers (like me) jump through the CAPTCHA hoops to report the false positive to Google. That won't of course solve the bigger issue of Google feeling it's their responsibility to litter the Internet with trap wires, but not the responsibility to be accountable for those that get caught by them. Good luck with this.
- croes 3y agoAt first your link redirected me to https://lcdigital.io/ https://lcdigital.io/ and according to archive.org the website screening.live was expired in December 2022. So there is certainly something that seems to be suspicious. How long do you own and use the domain?
- knoland 3y agoWe're using a subdomain here (kiff.). There a variety of domains that Google has blocked; some apex domains, some subdomains. The apex domain redirects to our marketing page (lcdigital.io), there's no actual website at the apex domain of screening.live anymore. Our product is essentially a hosted site builder (like Framer or Webflow), but with a focus on real time media and live steaming. So there are a lot of domains and subdomains that point to the hosted technology on AWS.
- sylware 3y agoThat makes me think of the moment google decided to kill the usage of noscript/basic (x)html browsers to re-authenticate gmail accounts. Only big tech browsers were then allowed.
- pwdisswordfishc 3y ago> Wednesday, Google decided to kill our business by declaring to all browsers, email client, and social media that our sites are phishing scams. […] Anyone who went to the site got a giant red "Deceptive site ahead". Do you think using the Disney ‘D’ as the favicon and linking to Disney terms of use as your own may have had something to do with it?
- knoland 3y agoYes I imagine that is the root cause. However, this site was created by Disney on our technology. This happens even when the domain is owned by the enterprise customer (and shows up in the whois for the domain).