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I just googled GitHub and the top results were ads for circleci and gitlab. Buying ads for competitors keywords is extremely normal. Gitlab would love to dissua

by hexis 3y ago

I just googled GitHub and the top results were ads for circleci and gitlab. Buying ads for competitors keywords is extremely normal. Gitlab would love to dissuade me from using GitHub, just as a crisis pregnancy center would love to dissuade me from getting an abortion.

mablopoule 3y ago
As an another example, searching for the "Lenovo Smart Paper" gives me as a sponsored link his concurrent, the Remarkable.
afavour 3y ago
In what way are these situations comparable? If you google GitHub you’re probably looking for source control. GitLab offers source control. If you google “abortion providers” you’re looking to get an abortion. The ads you see are specifically for people who want to look like abortion providers but actually seek to stop you from getting one and don’t provide any abortion services at all. It’s like googling GitHub and the top result being a religious group that considers source control to be an abomination, disguising themselves until you’ve paid for an account when they can inundate you with propaganda.
- potatototoo99 3y ago
  Like searching for how to commit suicide and the top results being about dissuading you from it?
  - fkyoureadthedoc 3y ago
    The analogy would work if suicide was legal and desirable and there were reputable suicide services a la Futurama.
    - rad_gruchalski 3y ago
      There are 20 countries in the world where suicide is considered illegal, which is a weird concept on its own. Here’s the map: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_legislation https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_legislation. Now, if we talked about assisted suicide…
      - calvinmorrison 3y ago
        > Marijuana Illegal, straight to jail, and morally bad > Assisted Marijuana Totally legal and morally good
        fkyoureadthedoc 3y ago
        I know you're being sarcastic, but medical marijuana in various US States has basically been this.
        rad_gruchalski 3y ago
        > Illegal, straight to jail, and morally bad It depends on where you are: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legality_of_cannabis https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legality_of_cannabis
        lostgame 3y ago
        >> comparing weed to suicide You okay there, bud?
    - 3pt14159 3y ago
      1. When you say "desirable" here you're speaking relatively. Abortion isn't intrinsically something that the vast majority of women want, what they want is to not be pregnant for one reason or another. 2. Many, many people have middle-of-the-road opinions about abortion. Nudging them into carrying the human to term and giving it up for adoption isn't akin to selling fake services, it's more akin to organ donation.
      - civilitty 3y ago
        Go to r/RegretfulParents and read about some of the stories of women who wanted abortions and were manipulated by these places at a vulnerable time in their life. It’s pretty horrifying. Most of these places won’t help a lick once the baby is actually born.
        3pt14159 3y ago
        Well I can't speak for these places since I've never worked for them or used them, but that being said, giving up a child for adoption is very, very easy. Even fire halls take children, no questions asked. I understand that there are regretful parents, but keep in mind these things: 1. These very parents were given the gift of making it to adulthood to make a choice they regret, something that unborn children do not get to make. 2. Adults regret many things and the choice for carrying a baby to term while adoption is such a viable option is far from the top of the list of things that someone regrets in life. It is much more likely for someone to regret getting married than for them to regret giving birth. 3. Ethics truly do matter. It is not what someone does when the manager of the bank is standing over them and they check their balance with their debit card that matters. It is what they do when the ATM erroneously displays a much higher balance in the middle of the night in a dark and seedy bar that counts. In the same way, resisting the dehumanizing characterization of unborn humans matters most in societies where this is common place enough for these decisions to carry weight, and there are many example from history that highlight the same type of moral dilemmas. It seems strange standing in the present and being confronted with a challenge that we may very well be "the bad guys" but the same was true of slavers and many other horrible types of people.
  - afavour 3y ago
    No because suicide and abortion are not comparable.
    - hombre_fatal 3y ago
      There are all sorts of ways you can compare them. For example, you just compared them. Another: “they are both controversial topics”.
      - afavour 3y ago
        Any attempt to invoke suicide in a discussion about abortion is pure whataboutism, as this thread is aptly demonstrating.
  - perihelions 3y ago
    Notably, Kagi considered but declined to implement this functionality, out of principle (basically the very principle we're debating right here). https://kagifeedback.org/d/865-suicide-results-should-probably-have-a-dont-do-that-widget-like-google https://kagifeedback.org/d/865-suicide-results-should-probab... ("Suicide results should probably have a "don't do that" widget like google")
- Dalewyn 3y ago
  >If you google GitHub you’re probably looking for source control. If I google Github I'm looking for github.com because I don't remember the URL or I don't know what an address bar is.
- prepend 3y ago
  > In what way are these situations comparable? People searching for GitHub are more likely to use git and therefore are gitlab’s target audience. People searching for abortions are more likely to get an abortion and thus the target audience for anti-abortion orgs. It seems logical from an advertising perspective even though you may not agree with it. As a pregnant woman deciding what I do with my pregnancy, this isn’t even a bad ad as the info is probably something I’m interested in. Sometimes I know exactly what I want. Sometimes I’m researching options.
  - afavour 3y ago
    > the info is probably something I’m interested in So if you were a pregnant woman you’d agree that these ads are bad because they deliberately misrepresent themselves. If you’re researching what to do with your pregnancy you’d surely want your search results to be accurate? > As a pregnant woman deciding what I do with my pregnancy For what it’s worth I’m pretty sure someone googling “abortion center near me” has decided what to do with their pregnancy anyway.
    - prepend 3y ago
      > For what it’s worth I’m pretty sure someone googling “abortion center near me” has decided what to do with their pregnancy anyway. I think it’s hard to speak for everyone in such a way and everyone is different. Personally, I’ve googled this exact thing and hadn’t made up my mind yet. This is a hard problem to google to solve, but they do make one off exceptions for banned types of ad buys. Off the top of my head, they voluntarily add restrictions for who can advertise for drug names. Not sure how they decide, but I suppose some abortion rights advocacy group could write a letter asking google to limit who can advertise related to abortion. Although I could see this being a Supreme Court case if the anti-abortion folks are willing to pursue.
  - the_mar 3y ago
    It would be all totally fine if the pro-life totally not abortion clinics didn’t masquerade as abortion clinics. There is no problem with presenting people with option, but there is a problem with misrepresenting what the options are. The screenshots in the article show pro-life clinic that is advertising itself as “abortion pill”. Google literally had to implement the “provides abortions” and “does not provide abortions” tags because the results are otherwise indistinguishable. I totally respect people’s right to choose.I can understand the stance that life is precious. I am not against the ads for pro life clinics, because pregnancy can be scary and it can be a way to find some resources and support. However it doesn’t feel right that pro life clinics try to trick you into it.
- veave 3y ago
  I want to think that people who google abortion providers don't want their babies killed, they simply need help, one way or another
  - afavour 3y ago
    Fetuses, not babies. Let’s be accurate here.
    - xdennis 3y ago
      The difference is immaterial in the third trimester[1] when it becomes viable and the only difference is whether it's outside or inside. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fetus#/media/File:Prenatal_development_table.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fetus#/media/File:Prenatal_dev...
      - afavour 3y ago
        And that's complete goalpost shifting. Third trimester abortions are extremely rare (less than 1%) and are overwhelmingly performed for medical reasons, not because of personal choice. There aren't tons of women carrying babies around in their bodies for six months then spontaneously deciding they don't want it after all, it's always been a disingenuous talking point.
  - lostgame 3y ago
    That’s great because nobody who is having an abortion is killing babies! :)
  - the_mar 3y ago
    Fair. It’s valid to present options. The problem here is not that pro life orgs show up as ads in abortion searches. It is quite a bit shit that pro life organizations advertise themselves as abortion clinics. You can see it in the screenshot in the article, the ad is talking about abortion pill, no mention of pro life whatsoever. It is literally indistinguishable from actual abortion clinics, and it is by design. Why do we need to trick women into it? Why do you have to wait weeks for your appointment with a fake abortion clinic only to find out hours into your appointment that they will actually not provide an abortion?
- TheRealDunkirk 3y ago
  GP "got it in one." This is SEO 101. Just because you don't like how it worked out doesn't mean the system broke. It's working exactly as designed. More and more of us hate it, for ALL the reasons that it doesn't take us to exactly what WE think it ought to show us. Like having several ads at the top, and then the next several links leading us to YouTube videos asking us to "like and subscribe" for more source control "content." This entire thread is now devoted to how much censorship, ethics, and literal mind reading we need to program AI with to make it work in our new, evolved, and COMPLETELY overly-sensitized society.
  - afavour 3y ago
    Nope. If these anti-abortion ads were honest about what they are I’d agree with you. But they aren’t, they’re deliberately portraying themselves as something they are not in order to ensnare their target market. Google makes value judgements about search results all the time. PageRank has always been a value judgement. Spam filtering is a value judgment. Any result, ad or not, portraying itself as something other than what it is? That’s a bad search result and Google would be a better search engine if it didn’t have them.
    - TheRealDunkirk 3y ago
      What do you mean "nope?" You're implying that PageRank makes MORAL judgements about the content, and you know it doesn't. It CAN'T. All it can know are metrics like incoming links and traffic. You're using "value judgement" here in a completely wrong way. Your definition of "value" and Google's are very different. And, honestly, I'm flummoxed why this is so confusing.
      - afavour 3y ago
        You're the one injecting morals into the debate. At no point am I making a moral argument. I'm saying that PageRank is just one of many value judgements Google makes. Google is not impartial. Not all incoming links are equal, Google makes a value judgement about which domains are more valuable than others. Google also makes value judgements about what is and isn't spam, which includes results that try to game the system by appearing to be something they are not. This is the latter. These are anti-abortion activists attempting to look like abortion centers, something they are not. If it helps you remove the moral angle here: let's say I place an ad against the search term "cars for sale" with an ad saying "great value cars available to buy here!" and when you click you end up on a page that sells bikes. Is that a good search result? No, it is not. Is that likely to satisfy a user searching for a car? No, it is not. By the rules Google themselves outline they would remove my ad: > We don’t allow ads or destinations that deceive users by excluding relevant product information or providing misleading information about products, services, or businesses. https://support.google.com/adspolicy/answer/6020955?hl=en https://support.google.com/adspolicy/answer/6020955?hl=en You're so focused on trying to push a contrarian view that you're losing sight of the fact that Google is a business, and it serves their business interests to give users relevant results.
john-radio 3y ago
This conversation is about ethics. Google has no ethical obligation to help GitHub outcompete Gitlab; but it does have an ethical obligation to prevent anti-abortion centers from using Google services to trick young women into a lifetime of difficulty and poverty by misrepresenting themselves as medical providers. And what is more, we have an ethical obligations as Google's users and customers to force Google to behave ethically, since massive international corporations never will do so on their own.
- crisdux 3y ago
  Abortion is a complex and controversial issue. Google does not have an obligation to only show pro-choice material when searching abortion, because that would be a form of censorship and bias that would violate its own principles of neutrality and diversity. I am not persuaded by your argument that these search results will harm users.
  - jeromegv 3y ago
    That's how human rights get violated and start getting worse for the people who are impacted, by calling it "controversial", wanting to be "neutral". It's typically people who have no skin in the game that call it that way and will never lose anything by debating it.
  - Goronmon 3y ago
    Google does not have an obligation to only show pro-choice material when searching abortion Your twisted words here aren't helping your argument. In this situation someone is looking for healthcare options and they are being shown options for scam services that have no intention to ever provide any healthcare. Just as if someone was searching for prescription medication and it directed them to sites that sold what appeared to be medication and instead were just sugar pills made to look like real medication. Same concept. Same form of deceit.
    - TheRealDunkirk 3y ago
      Boy, talk about the pot calling the kettle black. You twisting the definition of "healthcare" to only mean abortion is just as bad. "Healthcare" to a teen on the fence might mean EXACTLY looking for an agency that can help them deliver and give the baby up for adoption.
rcme 3y ago
I’ve actually thought it was weird Google was allowed to advertise competitors for keyword searches. Like how is Google not leveraging GitHub’s brand to sell ads to competitors in this case?
- civilitty 3y ago
  It's the digital equivalent of a protection racket. I hope we eventually address this as part of anti-trust regulations because it's been a money sink for every company I've ever worked at.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

by hexis 3y ago

mablopoule 3y ago

As an another example, searching for the "Lenovo Smart Paper" gives me as a sponsored link his concurrent, the Remarkable.

afavour 3y ago

In what way are these situations comparable? If you google GitHub you’re probably looking for source control. GitLab offers source control. If you google “abortion providers” you’re looking to get an abortion. The ads you see are specifically for people who want to look like abortion providers but actually seek to stop you from getting one and don’t provide any abortion services at all. It’s like googling GitHub and the top result being a religious group that considers source control to be an abomination, disguising themselves until you’ve paid for an account when they can inundate you with propaganda.

potatototoo99 3y ago
Like searching for how to commit suicide and the top results being about dissuading you from it?
- fkyoureadthedoc 3y ago
  The analogy would work if suicide was legal and desirable and there were reputable suicide services a la Futurama.
  - rad_gruchalski 3y ago
    There are 20 countries in the world where suicide is considered illegal, which is a weird concept on its own. Here’s the map: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_legislation https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_legislation. Now, if we talked about assisted suicide…
    - calvinmorrison 3y ago
      > Marijuana Illegal, straight to jail, and morally bad > Assisted Marijuana Totally legal and morally good
      - fkyoureadthedoc 3y ago
        I know you're being sarcastic, but medical marijuana in various US States has basically been this.
      - rad_gruchalski 3y ago
        > Illegal, straight to jail, and morally bad It depends on where you are: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legality_of_cannabis https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legality_of_cannabis
      - lostgame 3y ago
        >> comparing weed to suicide You okay there, bud?
  - 3pt14159 3y ago
    1. When you say "desirable" here you're speaking relatively. Abortion isn't intrinsically something that the vast majority of women want, what they want is to not be pregnant for one reason or another. 2. Many, many people have middle-of-the-road opinions about abortion. Nudging them into carrying the human to term and giving it up for adoption isn't akin to selling fake services, it's more akin to organ donation.
    - civilitty 3y ago
      Go to r/RegretfulParents and read about some of the stories of women who wanted abortions and were manipulated by these places at a vulnerable time in their life. It’s pretty horrifying. Most of these places won’t help a lick once the baby is actually born.
      - 3pt14159 3y ago
        Well I can't speak for these places since I've never worked for them or used them, but that being said, giving up a child for adoption is very, very easy. Even fire halls take children, no questions asked. I understand that there are regretful parents, but keep in mind these things: 1. These very parents were given the gift of making it to adulthood to make a choice they regret, something that unborn children do not get to make. 2. Adults regret many things and the choice for carrying a baby to term while adoption is such a viable option is far from the top of the list of things that someone regrets in life. It is much more likely for someone to regret getting married than for them to regret giving birth. 3. Ethics truly do matter. It is not what someone does when the manager of the bank is standing over them and they check their balance with their debit card that matters. It is what they do when the ATM erroneously displays a much higher balance in the middle of the night in a dark and seedy bar that counts. In the same way, resisting the dehumanizing characterization of unborn humans matters most in societies where this is common place enough for these decisions to carry weight, and there are many example from history that highlight the same type of moral dilemmas. It seems strange standing in the present and being confronted with a challenge that we may very well be "the bad guys" but the same was true of slavers and many other horrible types of people.
- afavour 3y ago
  No because suicide and abortion are not comparable.
  - hombre_fatal 3y ago
    There are all sorts of ways you can compare them. For example, you just compared them. Another: “they are both controversial topics”.
    - afavour 3y ago
      Any attempt to invoke suicide in a discussion about abortion is pure whataboutism, as this thread is aptly demonstrating.
- perihelions 3y ago
  Notably, Kagi considered but declined to implement this functionality, out of principle (basically the very principle we're debating right here). https://kagifeedback.org/d/865-suicide-results-should-probably-have-a-dont-do-that-widget-like-google https://kagifeedback.org/d/865-suicide-results-should-probab... ("Suicide results should probably have a "don't do that" widget like google")
Dalewyn 3y ago
>If you google GitHub you’re probably looking for source control. If I google Github I'm looking for github.com because I don't remember the URL or I don't know what an address bar is.
prepend 3y ago
> In what way are these situations comparable? People searching for GitHub are more likely to use git and therefore are gitlab’s target audience. People searching for abortions are more likely to get an abortion and thus the target audience for anti-abortion orgs. It seems logical from an advertising perspective even though you may not agree with it. As a pregnant woman deciding what I do with my pregnancy, this isn’t even a bad ad as the info is probably something I’m interested in. Sometimes I know exactly what I want. Sometimes I’m researching options.
- afavour 3y ago
  > the info is probably something I’m interested in So if you were a pregnant woman you’d agree that these ads are bad because they deliberately misrepresent themselves. If you’re researching what to do with your pregnancy you’d surely want your search results to be accurate? > As a pregnant woman deciding what I do with my pregnancy For what it’s worth I’m pretty sure someone googling “abortion center near me” has decided what to do with their pregnancy anyway.
  - prepend 3y ago
    > For what it’s worth I’m pretty sure someone googling “abortion center near me” has decided what to do with their pregnancy anyway. I think it’s hard to speak for everyone in such a way and everyone is different. Personally, I’ve googled this exact thing and hadn’t made up my mind yet. This is a hard problem to google to solve, but they do make one off exceptions for banned types of ad buys. Off the top of my head, they voluntarily add restrictions for who can advertise for drug names. Not sure how they decide, but I suppose some abortion rights advocacy group could write a letter asking google to limit who can advertise related to abortion. Although I could see this being a Supreme Court case if the anti-abortion folks are willing to pursue.
- the_mar 3y ago
  It would be all totally fine if the pro-life totally not abortion clinics didn’t masquerade as abortion clinics. There is no problem with presenting people with option, but there is a problem with misrepresenting what the options are. The screenshots in the article show pro-life clinic that is advertising itself as “abortion pill”. Google literally had to implement the “provides abortions” and “does not provide abortions” tags because the results are otherwise indistinguishable. I totally respect people’s right to choose.I can understand the stance that life is precious. I am not against the ads for pro life clinics, because pregnancy can be scary and it can be a way to find some resources and support. However it doesn’t feel right that pro life clinics try to trick you into it.
veave 3y ago
I want to think that people who google abortion providers don't want their babies killed, they simply need help, one way or another
- afavour 3y ago
  Fetuses, not babies. Let’s be accurate here.
  - xdennis 3y ago
    The difference is immaterial in the third trimester[1] when it becomes viable and the only difference is whether it's outside or inside. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fetus#/media/File:Prenatal_development_table.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fetus#/media/File:Prenatal_dev...
    - afavour 3y ago
      And that's complete goalpost shifting. Third trimester abortions are extremely rare (less than 1%) and are overwhelmingly performed for medical reasons, not because of personal choice. There aren't tons of women carrying babies around in their bodies for six months then spontaneously deciding they don't want it after all, it's always been a disingenuous talking point.
- lostgame 3y ago
  That’s great because nobody who is having an abortion is killing babies! :)
- the_mar 3y ago
  Fair. It’s valid to present options. The problem here is not that pro life orgs show up as ads in abortion searches. It is quite a bit shit that pro life organizations advertise themselves as abortion clinics. You can see it in the screenshot in the article, the ad is talking about abortion pill, no mention of pro life whatsoever. It is literally indistinguishable from actual abortion clinics, and it is by design. Why do we need to trick women into it? Why do you have to wait weeks for your appointment with a fake abortion clinic only to find out hours into your appointment that they will actually not provide an abortion?
TheRealDunkirk 3y ago
GP "got it in one." This is SEO 101. Just because you don't like how it worked out doesn't mean the system broke. It's working exactly as designed. More and more of us hate it, for ALL the reasons that it doesn't take us to exactly what WE think it ought to show us. Like having several ads at the top, and then the next several links leading us to YouTube videos asking us to "like and subscribe" for more source control "content." This entire thread is now devoted to how much censorship, ethics, and literal mind reading we need to program AI with to make it work in our new, evolved, and COMPLETELY overly-sensitized society.
- afavour 3y ago
  Nope. If these anti-abortion ads were honest about what they are I’d agree with you. But they aren’t, they’re deliberately portraying themselves as something they are not in order to ensnare their target market. Google makes value judgements about search results all the time. PageRank has always been a value judgement. Spam filtering is a value judgment. Any result, ad or not, portraying itself as something other than what it is? That’s a bad search result and Google would be a better search engine if it didn’t have them.
  - TheRealDunkirk 3y ago
    What do you mean "nope?" You're implying that PageRank makes MORAL judgements about the content, and you know it doesn't. It CAN'T. All it can know are metrics like incoming links and traffic. You're using "value judgement" here in a completely wrong way. Your definition of "value" and Google's are very different. And, honestly, I'm flummoxed why this is so confusing.
    - afavour 3y ago
      You're the one injecting morals into the debate. At no point am I making a moral argument. I'm saying that PageRank is just one of many value judgements Google makes. Google is not impartial. Not all incoming links are equal, Google makes a value judgement about which domains are more valuable than others. Google also makes value judgements about what is and isn't spam, which includes results that try to game the system by appearing to be something they are not. This is the latter. These are anti-abortion activists attempting to look like abortion centers, something they are not. If it helps you remove the moral angle here: let's say I place an ad against the search term "cars for sale" with an ad saying "great value cars available to buy here!" and when you click you end up on a page that sells bikes. Is that a good search result? No, it is not. Is that likely to satisfy a user searching for a car? No, it is not. By the rules Google themselves outline they would remove my ad: > We don’t allow ads or destinations that deceive users by excluding relevant product information or providing misleading information about products, services, or businesses. https://support.google.com/adspolicy/answer/6020955?hl=en https://support.google.com/adspolicy/answer/6020955?hl=en You're so focused on trying to push a contrarian view that you're losing sight of the fact that Google is a business, and it serves their business interests to give users relevant results.

john-radio 3y ago

This conversation is about ethics. Google has no ethical obligation to help GitHub outcompete Gitlab; but it does have an ethical obligation to prevent anti-abortion centers from using Google services to trick young women into a lifetime of difficulty and poverty by misrepresenting themselves as medical providers. And what is more, we have an ethical obligations as Google's users and customers to force Google to behave ethically, since massive international corporations never will do so on their own.

crisdux 3y ago
Abortion is a complex and controversial issue. Google does not have an obligation to only show pro-choice material when searching abortion, because that would be a form of censorship and bias that would violate its own principles of neutrality and diversity. I am not persuaded by your argument that these search results will harm users.
- jeromegv 3y ago
  That's how human rights get violated and start getting worse for the people who are impacted, by calling it "controversial", wanting to be "neutral". It's typically people who have no skin in the game that call it that way and will never lose anything by debating it.
- Goronmon 3y ago
  Google does not have an obligation to only show pro-choice material when searching abortion Your twisted words here aren't helping your argument. In this situation someone is looking for healthcare options and they are being shown options for scam services that have no intention to ever provide any healthcare. Just as if someone was searching for prescription medication and it directed them to sites that sold what appeared to be medication and instead were just sugar pills made to look like real medication. Same concept. Same form of deceit.
  - TheRealDunkirk 3y ago
    Boy, talk about the pot calling the kettle black. You twisting the definition of "healthcare" to only mean abortion is just as bad. "Healthcare" to a teen on the fence might mean EXACTLY looking for an agency that can help them deliver and give the baby up for adoption.

rcme 3y ago

I’ve actually thought it was weird Google was allowed to advertise competitors for keyword searches. Like how is Google not leveraging GitHub’s brand to sell ads to competitors in this case?

civilitty 3y ago
It's the digital equivalent of a protection racket. I hope we eventually address this as part of anti-trust regulations because it's been a money sink for every company I've ever worked at.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]