4 ms·

Can you prosecute Google for spreading viruses and helping criminals?

by sccxy 3y ago

izacus 3y ago
That would make Google responsible for the work of police - you're saying that Google should be actively trying to identify "criminals" (by whatever definitnion of whatever state in US or even their legal departmeny - quotes deliberate) and prevent them from being able to do business in modern web world. Effectively you want Google to be the law enforcement corporation and not your government thus massively expanding their power and reach. Why would you want that? (And that also goes for people who want Apple to replace their government at law enforcement).
- Nextgrid 3y ago
  > Why would you want that? If someone were to stand outside holding a big banner advertising something malicious/illegal they'll be in legal trouble pretty quickly, which I think is fair. Why shouldn't Google be held to the same standard?
  - WrockBro 3y ago
    The problem is you have to prove intent to build a legal case. If the person holding a banner doesn't know whatever they're advertising is illegal then they wouldn't be liable. A case could be made if they're informed it's illegal and they continue anyways, but that isn't likely to happen.
    - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
      If a billboard starts advertising meth, you obviously go after the meth dealer. But the billboard owner—who painted the ad onto it—should also have liability (albeit civil).
  - DannyBee 3y ago
    "If someone were to stand outside holding a big banner advertising something malicious/illegal they'll be in legal trouble pretty quickly, which I think is fair." For the most part, you would not. While it is not protected by the first amendment in the US to advertise illegal products, it is also not particularly restricted in most of the US. To whit: If you hold up a big banner saying "fentanyl sale - 30 cents per gram", you would not have committed a crime or an actionable legal tort in most places. The thing that is actionable everywhere is deceptive/fraudulent/misleading advertising.
- MediumOwl 3y ago
  The malicious website is published on google dot com. It's not unreasonable to require that a website doesn't publish obvious scams. Of course, "obvious" is hard to define precisely.
  - izacus 3y ago
    And why is the website that's pushing malicious scams not punished by the appropriate government mechanism? That seems to be much more appropriate approach to prevent this kind of crime. Why is US so incompetent at punishing scammers as a country?
- mschuster91 3y ago
  > That would make Google responsible for the work of police - you're saying that Google should be actively trying to identify "criminals" (by whatever definitnion of whatever state in US or even their legal departmeny - quotes deliberate) and prevent them from being able to do business in modern web world. Google is a company that nets 60 billion $ a year in profits. They can afford hiring a few thousand people to manually vet ads before they go out, and they should.
  - izacus 3y ago
    They can, but can you afford to be policed and punished by them? It's kinda bizarre how many here whine about not trusting Google and then just want to give them police powers.
  - DannyBee 3y ago
    Your math is off, without more data. What do you think the number of different ads being displayed is, given how much each ad costs? Estimates suggest it's about 30 billion ad impressions per day to earn that. If each distinct ad gets 1000 impressions, that's 10 billion ads to review per year. Let's be super generous, and assume it's 10k impressions, leaving us with 1 billion ads to review. Let's further assume it's 1 minute per ad to review them, because people are super good at it. This will take 694440 person/days to review. So to even give a 24 hour turnaround time, they'd have to hire 694,000 people. If they pay them 65k each (yearly minimum wage in california), that's 45 billion a year. This again, assumes we have ads with lots of impressions, it's only a minute per ad, and that we are okay with 24 hour turnaround time. Otherwise, it costs more. It's really easy for people to play the "company makes x, they can afford y" game, but without real data it's sort of magical thinking. I doubt humans could easily keep up with the review load here, at scale, at any reasonable cost/living wage.
    - mschuster91 3y ago
      So what? If Google is only profitable because the vast externalized costs to it are borne by society at large (e.g. malvertising, scams, unsafe "medical" products and supplements, competitors placing ads in an unfair way [1]), then maybe prices for advertising have to rise to match the prevention cost, or Google has to figure out other ways of staying profitable. I don't care all that much. And if it leads to less, but higher quality ads in the end, even better. [1] https://dejure.org/dienste/vernetzung/rechtsprechung?Gericht=OLG%20Frankfurt&Datum=02.02.2017&Aktenzeichen=6%20U%20209%2F16 https://dejure.org/dienste/vernetzung/rechtsprechung?Gericht...
- brucethemoose2 3y ago
  Google is effectively a giant mall, and mall owners sure as heck police their stores by actively trying to identify criminal storefronts. Google doesn't have to do this because they are anticompetitive. The root problem here is that Google shouldn't be in this position where we are talking about them acting as law enforcement, and a business getting banned by Google is akin to getting ejected from society.

Can you prosecute Google for spreading viruses and helping criminals?

by sccxy 3y ago

Can you prosecute Google for spreading viruses and helping criminals?

That would make Google responsible for the work of police - you're saying that Google should be actively trying to identify "criminals" (by whatever definitnion of whatever state in US or even their legal departmeny - quotes deliberate) and prevent them from being able to do business in modern web world. Effectively you want Google to be the law enforcement corporation and not your government thus massively expanding their power and reach. Why would you want that? (And that also goes for people who want Apple to replace their government at law enforcement).

Nextgrid 3y ago
> Why would you want that? If someone were to stand outside holding a big banner advertising something malicious/illegal they'll be in legal trouble pretty quickly, which I think is fair. Why shouldn't Google be held to the same standard?
- WrockBro 3y ago
  The problem is you have to prove intent to build a legal case. If the person holding a banner doesn't know whatever they're advertising is illegal then they wouldn't be liable. A case could be made if they're informed it's illegal and they continue anyways, but that isn't likely to happen.
  - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
    If a billboard starts advertising meth, you obviously go after the meth dealer. But the billboard owner—who painted the ad onto it—should also have liability (albeit civil).
- DannyBee 3y ago
  "If someone were to stand outside holding a big banner advertising something malicious/illegal they'll be in legal trouble pretty quickly, which I think is fair." For the most part, you would not. While it is not protected by the first amendment in the US to advertise illegal products, it is also not particularly restricted in most of the US. To whit: If you hold up a big banner saying "fentanyl sale - 30 cents per gram", you would not have committed a crime or an actionable legal tort in most places. The thing that is actionable everywhere is deceptive/fraudulent/misleading advertising.
MediumOwl 3y ago
The malicious website is published on google dot com. It's not unreasonable to require that a website doesn't publish obvious scams. Of course, "obvious" is hard to define precisely.
- izacus 3y ago
  And why is the website that's pushing malicious scams not punished by the appropriate government mechanism? That seems to be much more appropriate approach to prevent this kind of crime. Why is US so incompetent at punishing scammers as a country?
mschuster91 3y ago
> That would make Google responsible for the work of police - you're saying that Google should be actively trying to identify "criminals" (by whatever definitnion of whatever state in US or even their legal departmeny - quotes deliberate) and prevent them from being able to do business in modern web world. Google is a company that nets 60 billion $ a year in profits. They can afford hiring a few thousand people to manually vet ads before they go out, and they should.
- izacus 3y ago
  They can, but can you afford to be policed and punished by them? It's kinda bizarre how many here whine about not trusting Google and then just want to give them police powers.
- DannyBee 3y ago
  Your math is off, without more data. What do you think the number of different ads being displayed is, given how much each ad costs? Estimates suggest it's about 30 billion ad impressions per day to earn that. If each distinct ad gets 1000 impressions, that's 10 billion ads to review per year. Let's be super generous, and assume it's 10k impressions, leaving us with 1 billion ads to review. Let's further assume it's 1 minute per ad to review them, because people are super good at it. This will take 694440 person/days to review. So to even give a 24 hour turnaround time, they'd have to hire 694,000 people. If they pay them 65k each (yearly minimum wage in california), that's 45 billion a year. This again, assumes we have ads with lots of impressions, it's only a minute per ad, and that we are okay with 24 hour turnaround time. Otherwise, it costs more. It's really easy for people to play the "company makes x, they can afford y" game, but without real data it's sort of magical thinking. I doubt humans could easily keep up with the review load here, at scale, at any reasonable cost/living wage.
  - mschuster91 3y ago
    So what? If Google is only profitable because the vast externalized costs to it are borne by society at large (e.g. malvertising, scams, unsafe "medical" products and supplements, competitors placing ads in an unfair way [1]), then maybe prices for advertising have to rise to match the prevention cost, or Google has to figure out other ways of staying profitable. I don't care all that much. And if it leads to less, but higher quality ads in the end, even better. [1] https://dejure.org/dienste/vernetzung/rechtsprechung?Gericht=OLG%20Frankfurt&Datum=02.02.2017&Aktenzeichen=6%20U%20209%2F16 https://dejure.org/dienste/vernetzung/rechtsprechung?Gericht...
brucethemoose2 3y ago
Google is effectively a giant mall, and mall owners sure as heck police their stores by actively trying to identify criminal storefronts. Google doesn't have to do this because they are anticompetitive. The root problem here is that Google shouldn't be in this position where we are talking about them acting as law enforcement, and a business getting banned by Google is akin to getting ejected from society.