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Yet there are many more users that actually get protected from actual phishing thanks to Safe Browsing. A microscopic false positive rate does not a bad tool ma

Yet there are many more users that actually get protected from actual phishing thanks to Safe Browsing. A microscopic false positive rate does not a bad tool make.

ImPostingOnHN 3y ago
yet there are nonetheless many people harmed by the service, an issue unresolved by any amount of unrelated goodness >A [low] false positive rate does not a bad tool make. It does, if your tool fails to address the issue of false positives to the satisfaction of the people you harm with them, and especially if it fails to provide a quick, easy, direct line to humans, to deal with false positives obviously it's not acceptable to screw people over and justify it by saying "we're not screwing over everybody, and look, we're doing good stuff, too!” if you can't resolve the negative externalities of your service to the satisfaction of the people you're harming with them, don't roll out the service
- Avamander 3y ago
  > obviously it's not acceptable to screw people over and justify it by saying "we're not screwing over everybody, and look, we're doing good stuff, too!” That's the thing, the benefits immensely outweigh the small negatives. Small inconvenience from even tens of thousands of false positives out of tens of billions site visits is such a small cost. You do understand that the alternative would be most phishing sites remaining active for days, if not months, if this service didn't exist? That means a significantly higher amount of people getting significantly more inconvenienced than some false positives cause. > if you can't resolve the negative externalities of your service to the satisfaction of the people you're harming with them, don't roll out the service Case study of letting the perfect become the enemy of the good.
  - ImPostingOnHN 3y ago
    > That's the thing, the benefits immensely outweigh the small negatives that's the thing: they don't. both co-exist, and you must address the negative externalities individually, vs. saying "well we think we do more good so suck it, too bad" to the people you harm. > You do understand that the alternative would be most phishing sites remaining active for days, if not months, if this service didn't exist? the alternative could be a meteor hitting the planet, that doesn't justify your creating new negative externalities and unleashing them on the world with no reasonable recourse for the people you harm indeed, your stated excuse for wrongdoing is a case study in letting the ends justify the means you also neglect the many other alternatives, one of which is properly staffing and funding enough humans to deal with the harm you're inflicting on other people, and providing easy access to them from the people you've harmed, and scaling your service up only so long as you can support that proper level of staffing
    - Avamander 3y ago
      > the alternative could be a meteor hitting the planet, that doesn't justify your creating new negative externalities and unleashing them on the world with no reasonable recourse for the people you harm Either you have no clue how much phish there really is or you know exactly. In both cases it sucks to be you. > you also neglect the many other alternatives, one of which is properly staffing and funding enough humans to deal with the harm you're inflicting on other people, and providing easy access to them from the people you've harmed, and scaling your service up only so long as you can support that proper level of staffing Sure, you're free to pay for an antivirus product that does the same and you can contact them. It's thankfully not up to you to decide if people want to be inconvenienced or protected by what Google offers for free.
      - ImPostingOnHN 3y ago
        > Sure, you're free to pay for an antivirus product that does the same and you can contact them. this is disingenuous: sure, you could, but no amount of antivirus can stop google from blocking customers or potential customers from seeing you without either of your informed, affirmative consent in any case, thankfully your opinions that the ends justify the means (and also justify easily avoidable negative externalities), and that the lack of recourse available to the people you harm is somehow justified (unspecified how), seems to be the exception among people, rather than the norm one wishes google actually cared what people thought, rather than professing to know better than them what's best, and directing them through the service without their informed, affirmative consent
        Avamander 3y ago
        > this is disingenuous: sure, you could, but no amount of antivirus can stop google from blocking customers or potential customers from seeing you without either of your informed, affirmative consent No amount of Google will stop an antivirus from doing the same without your consent. What's your point? Anti-phish solutions must have the site owners' consent? Don't be ridiculous.
  - BizarroLand 3y ago
    If a weapons manufacturer made a gun that 1 in every billion times shot you in the head instead of your target, we wouldn't say, "well, sometimes accidents happen" and brush it off. There would be a full investigation as to how and why this happened and someone somewhere would be held accountable. Google in its current form is immune to the consequences of the decisions of its robots, and that is not acceptable.
    - Avamander 3y ago
      > If a weapons manufacturer made a gun that 1 in every billion times shot you in the head instead of your target, we wouldn't say, "well, sometimes accidents happen" and brush it off. A more apt comparison would be with seatbelts or airbags. > Google in its current form is immune to the consequences of the decisions of its robots, and that is not acceptable. The market forces are sufficient. If the FP rate climbs too high more people will disable the feature, easy.
      - BizarroLand 3y ago
        >The market forces are sufficient Try explaining that to people who lost tens of thousands of dollars or more in missed transactions due to Google's fuckups. I'm sure they will be consoled that one day if the right fairy farts in the right direction google will stop screwing people over in this particular way.
        Avamander 3y ago
        That's a business risk alright. Some other AV vendor or RBL might list you as well. Inevitably anti-phish solutions end up with false positives, but it's utterly out of the question and silly to ask everyone to stand down defenceless.
        BizarroLand 3y ago
        I get that you're deadset on defending googoo no matter what, but surely you have to agree that the fact that they made browsers block access to your site AND that you have no ability to do anything about it short of filing a lawsuit or waiting for them to get around to fixing it if they ever do is unconscionable, right? I get that it's a service. I don't get how not having human intervention available to fix it when it goes wrong is defendable business practices.

Yet there are many more users that actually get protected from actual phishing thanks to Safe Browsing. A microscopic false positive rate does not a bad tool make.

ImPostingOnHN 3y ago

yet there are nonetheless many people harmed by the service, an issue unresolved by any amount of unrelated goodness >A [low] false positive rate does not a bad tool make. It does, if your tool fails to address the issue of false positives to the satisfaction of the people you harm with them, and especially if it fails to provide a quick, easy, direct line to humans, to deal with false positives obviously it's not acceptable to screw people over and justify it by saying "we're not screwing over everybody, and look, we're doing good stuff, too!” if you can't resolve the negative externalities of your service to the satisfaction of the people you're harming with them, don't roll out the service

Avamander 3y ago
> obviously it's not acceptable to screw people over and justify it by saying "we're not screwing over everybody, and look, we're doing good stuff, too!” That's the thing, the benefits immensely outweigh the small negatives. Small inconvenience from even tens of thousands of false positives out of tens of billions site visits is such a small cost. You do understand that the alternative would be most phishing sites remaining active for days, if not months, if this service didn't exist? That means a significantly higher amount of people getting significantly more inconvenienced than some false positives cause. > if you can't resolve the negative externalities of your service to the satisfaction of the people you're harming with them, don't roll out the service Case study of letting the perfect become the enemy of the good.
- ImPostingOnHN 3y ago
  > That's the thing, the benefits immensely outweigh the small negatives that's the thing: they don't. both co-exist, and you must address the negative externalities individually, vs. saying "well we think we do more good so suck it, too bad" to the people you harm. > You do understand that the alternative would be most phishing sites remaining active for days, if not months, if this service didn't exist? the alternative could be a meteor hitting the planet, that doesn't justify your creating new negative externalities and unleashing them on the world with no reasonable recourse for the people you harm indeed, your stated excuse for wrongdoing is a case study in letting the ends justify the means you also neglect the many other alternatives, one of which is properly staffing and funding enough humans to deal with the harm you're inflicting on other people, and providing easy access to them from the people you've harmed, and scaling your service up only so long as you can support that proper level of staffing
  - Avamander 3y ago
    > the alternative could be a meteor hitting the planet, that doesn't justify your creating new negative externalities and unleashing them on the world with no reasonable recourse for the people you harm Either you have no clue how much phish there really is or you know exactly. In both cases it sucks to be you. > you also neglect the many other alternatives, one of which is properly staffing and funding enough humans to deal with the harm you're inflicting on other people, and providing easy access to them from the people you've harmed, and scaling your service up only so long as you can support that proper level of staffing Sure, you're free to pay for an antivirus product that does the same and you can contact them. It's thankfully not up to you to decide if people want to be inconvenienced or protected by what Google offers for free.
    - ImPostingOnHN 3y ago
      > Sure, you're free to pay for an antivirus product that does the same and you can contact them. this is disingenuous: sure, you could, but no amount of antivirus can stop google from blocking customers or potential customers from seeing you without either of your informed, affirmative consent in any case, thankfully your opinions that the ends justify the means (and also justify easily avoidable negative externalities), and that the lack of recourse available to the people you harm is somehow justified (unspecified how), seems to be the exception among people, rather than the norm one wishes google actually cared what people thought, rather than professing to know better than them what's best, and directing them through the service without their informed, affirmative consent
      - Avamander 3y ago
        > this is disingenuous: sure, you could, but no amount of antivirus can stop google from blocking customers or potential customers from seeing you without either of your informed, affirmative consent No amount of Google will stop an antivirus from doing the same without your consent. What's your point? Anti-phish solutions must have the site owners' consent? Don't be ridiculous.
- BizarroLand 3y ago
  If a weapons manufacturer made a gun that 1 in every billion times shot you in the head instead of your target, we wouldn't say, "well, sometimes accidents happen" and brush it off. There would be a full investigation as to how and why this happened and someone somewhere would be held accountable. Google in its current form is immune to the consequences of the decisions of its robots, and that is not acceptable.
  - Avamander 3y ago
    > If a weapons manufacturer made a gun that 1 in every billion times shot you in the head instead of your target, we wouldn't say, "well, sometimes accidents happen" and brush it off. A more apt comparison would be with seatbelts or airbags. > Google in its current form is immune to the consequences of the decisions of its robots, and that is not acceptable. The market forces are sufficient. If the FP rate climbs too high more people will disable the feature, easy.
    - BizarroLand 3y ago
      >The market forces are sufficient Try explaining that to people who lost tens of thousands of dollars or more in missed transactions due to Google's fuckups. I'm sure they will be consoled that one day if the right fairy farts in the right direction google will stop screwing people over in this particular way.
      - Avamander 3y ago
        That's a business risk alright. Some other AV vendor or RBL might list you as well. Inevitably anti-phish solutions end up with false positives, but it's utterly out of the question and silly to ask everyone to stand down defenceless.
        BizarroLand 3y ago
        I get that you're deadset on defending googoo no matter what, but surely you have to agree that the fact that they made browsers block access to your site AND that you have no ability to do anything about it short of filing a lawsuit or waiting for them to get around to fixing it if they ever do is unconscionable, right? I get that it's a service. I don't get how not having human intervention available to fix it when it goes wrong is defendable business practices.