8 ms·

It hurts Google, the consumer and the advertiser. Some individual site owners are the only ones who benefit from a more lenient stance on fraud.

by chc 15y ago

Steko 15y ago
Please don't miscategorize asking for honest business practices as "a more lenient stance on fraud". What's Google's alleged to have done here -- deprived payment for services rendered -- is morally equivalent to fraud.
- ajross 15y ago
  Indeed. And what Hatchlings is alleged to have done is likewise fraud (or perhaps accessory to fraud). We have no evidence either way (though as I've mentioned, I'm on the whole not predisposed to believing spammy Facebook games companies), yet you've jumped in on one side. Why? Look, this isn't "PayPal vs. regretsy" here. It's one company in a business area rife with (pseudo-)fraud trying to make a living and getting into a tussle with another company which is badly exposed to risks from the same fraud. Yawn.
  - yeldarb 15y ago
    I just want to jump in here and say that we (Hatchlings) are also not asking for more leniency on fraud. We've been on the opposite side of the advertiser/publisher fence too and fraud on the campaigns we run is not acceptable. It's not even necessarily false-positives that we're against either. Mistakes happen. The real issue is that we've been doing everything possible for the last year to get this issue resolved and have been willfully ignored. We, a small 5 person startup, take care to provide personal support for our 3.5 million users (yes, even to the non-paying ones) and we don't think it's too much to ask for Google to do the same especially with an issue as big as this. PS - the "spammy Facebook games companies" is a whole different issue. We try not to be spammy either and the FB platform is a similar situation where there are bad actors who tend to ruin it for everyone else.
    - ajross 15y ago
      If it's really $40k, you haven't done everything possible. Call a lawyer, file a suit. This kind of money won't pay for a big firm, but you can absolutely get someone local. And in discovery you'll learn why you were banned. Or you get some of it back in a settlement.
  - Steko 15y ago
    "And what Hatchlings is alleged to have done is likewise fraud (or perhaps accessory to fraud)." Wait where is anything alleged to have been done by Hatchlings? Did you just make that up? "yet you've jumped in on one side. Why?" Because the issue appears one sided? {ignoring for the moment the many other people saying this is exactly how google operates). "Look, this isn't "PayPal vs. regretsy" here. " Funny it bore a striking resemblance. Web companies grow up and their shitty to nonexistent customer service doesn't go over so well when they decide to shutter a business account with significant balances. "It's one company in a business area rife with (pseudo-)fraud trying to make a living and getting into a tussle with another company which is badly exposed to risks from the same fraud. Yawn." There's lots of fraud in financial transactions and credit card issuers (banks) are exposed to this but if your bank suddenly closed up your account and never communicated with you I'll bet you wouldn't be yawning, you'd be screaming bloody murder.
    - ajross 15y ago
      Not to continue a pointless flame war, except to respond to your very last point: you realize that banks do terminate merchant accounts at the drop of a hat, right? The situation there is absolutely symmetrical with the one here. They also will freeze a customer's card at the barest hint of strangeness, forcing you to call in and verbally OK the transactions. This happens to me once a year at least.
      - DanBC 15y ago
        > forcing you to call in and verbally OK the transactions This is the bit that people seem to get most frustrated about. Banks have telephone numbers. Even if that support is outsourced to Mumbai you still get a person to talk to.
      - bromley 15y ago
        When you call your bank they generally pick up the phone. In contrast it seems the only way to get help from Google is to know someone influential or have a high profile blog on which you can embarrass them publicly.
      - 15y ago
mistercow 15y ago
Consumers are not much hurt by false negatives in fraud detection. Consumers are significantly harmed by false positives because they lose access to ad-supported content. I would still be regularly updating my old blog and entertaining my readers if it were profitable like it was before Google accused me of being a scam artist and shut down my account.
- ajross 15y ago
  That doesn't follow. If ads don't make money there won't be ad supported content. Consumers are the beneficiaries of a very complicated three-way relationship (advertiser/broker/content). Of course they get harmed when that relationship stops working, it doesn't matter which direction it happens in or whose fault it is.
  - mistercow 15y ago
    I did not say that consumers were not harmed by false negatives. I said they were harmed more by false positives.
    - ajross 15y ago
      Right, and I said that's wrong. Or it's only speciously right: content providers are smaller and have less buffering capacity, so in the event that the cash flow to them is interrupted they will drop faster than the broker or advertiser. But all three parties have to be making money for the consumer to derive benefit from the system.
      - mistercow 15y ago
        Actually you said that it doesn't matter in which direction the system breaks, which is preposterously false.
- chc 15y ago
  That's true, I should have explained that better. The hypothesis I was working from is that, on the whole, Google probably enables more ad-supported content than it hurts with false positives. For every one unfortunate blogger like you, there are a thousand more who would be harmed if the whole ad network were delegitimized by fraud. Eventually, I think the ad networks would become even seedier than they already are and this (combined with the lack of legit ad revenue) would hurt consumers.
cft 15y ago
You have a very narrow understanding of what internet is. It hurts Google, in an indirect, but very deep way: Google should be most interested in the proliferation and diversity of independent sites, since this is what they search. They should be especially interested in the long-tail. When they cut revenue sources for them, the eyeballs go to places that they cannot touch/financially hurt or more importantly they cannot search, i.e. to Facebook.

It hurts Google, the consumer and the advertiser. Some individual site owners are the only ones who benefit from a more lenient stance on fraud.

by chc 15y ago

It hurts Google, the consumer and the advertiser. Some individual site owners are the only ones who benefit from a more lenient stance on fraud.

Steko 15y ago

Please don't miscategorize asking for honest business practices as "a more lenient stance on fraud". What's Google's alleged to have done here -- deprived payment for services rendered -- is morally equivalent to fraud.

ajross 15y ago
Indeed. And what Hatchlings is alleged to have done is likewise fraud (or perhaps accessory to fraud). We have no evidence either way (though as I've mentioned, I'm on the whole not predisposed to believing spammy Facebook games companies), yet you've jumped in on one side. Why? Look, this isn't "PayPal vs. regretsy" here. It's one company in a business area rife with (pseudo-)fraud trying to make a living and getting into a tussle with another company which is badly exposed to risks from the same fraud. Yawn.
- yeldarb 15y ago
  I just want to jump in here and say that we (Hatchlings) are also not asking for more leniency on fraud. We've been on the opposite side of the advertiser/publisher fence too and fraud on the campaigns we run is not acceptable. It's not even necessarily false-positives that we're against either. Mistakes happen. The real issue is that we've been doing everything possible for the last year to get this issue resolved and have been willfully ignored. We, a small 5 person startup, take care to provide personal support for our 3.5 million users (yes, even to the non-paying ones) and we don't think it's too much to ask for Google to do the same especially with an issue as big as this. PS - the "spammy Facebook games companies" is a whole different issue. We try not to be spammy either and the FB platform is a similar situation where there are bad actors who tend to ruin it for everyone else.
  - ajross 15y ago
    If it's really $40k, you haven't done everything possible. Call a lawyer, file a suit. This kind of money won't pay for a big firm, but you can absolutely get someone local. And in discovery you'll learn why you were banned. Or you get some of it back in a settlement.
- Steko 15y ago
  "And what Hatchlings is alleged to have done is likewise fraud (or perhaps accessory to fraud)." Wait where is anything alleged to have been done by Hatchlings? Did you just make that up? "yet you've jumped in on one side. Why?" Because the issue appears one sided? {ignoring for the moment the many other people saying this is exactly how google operates). "Look, this isn't "PayPal vs. regretsy" here. " Funny it bore a striking resemblance. Web companies grow up and their shitty to nonexistent customer service doesn't go over so well when they decide to shutter a business account with significant balances. "It's one company in a business area rife with (pseudo-)fraud trying to make a living and getting into a tussle with another company which is badly exposed to risks from the same fraud. Yawn." There's lots of fraud in financial transactions and credit card issuers (banks) are exposed to this but if your bank suddenly closed up your account and never communicated with you I'll bet you wouldn't be yawning, you'd be screaming bloody murder.
  - ajross 15y ago
    Not to continue a pointless flame war, except to respond to your very last point: you realize that banks do terminate merchant accounts at the drop of a hat, right? The situation there is absolutely symmetrical with the one here. They also will freeze a customer's card at the barest hint of strangeness, forcing you to call in and verbally OK the transactions. This happens to me once a year at least.
    - DanBC 15y ago
      > forcing you to call in and verbally OK the transactions This is the bit that people seem to get most frustrated about. Banks have telephone numbers. Even if that support is outsourced to Mumbai you still get a person to talk to.
    - bromley 15y ago
      When you call your bank they generally pick up the phone. In contrast it seems the only way to get help from Google is to know someone influential or have a high profile blog on which you can embarrass them publicly.
    - 15y ago

mistercow 15y ago

Consumers are not much hurt by false negatives in fraud detection. Consumers are significantly harmed by false positives because they lose access to ad-supported content. I would still be regularly updating my old blog and entertaining my readers if it were profitable like it was before Google accused me of being a scam artist and shut down my account.

ajross 15y ago
That doesn't follow. If ads don't make money there won't be ad supported content. Consumers are the beneficiaries of a very complicated three-way relationship (advertiser/broker/content). Of course they get harmed when that relationship stops working, it doesn't matter which direction it happens in or whose fault it is.
- mistercow 15y ago
  I did not say that consumers were not harmed by false negatives. I said they were harmed more by false positives.
  - ajross 15y ago
    Right, and I said that's wrong. Or it's only speciously right: content providers are smaller and have less buffering capacity, so in the event that the cash flow to them is interrupted they will drop faster than the broker or advertiser. But all three parties have to be making money for the consumer to derive benefit from the system.
    - mistercow 15y ago
      Actually you said that it doesn't matter in which direction the system breaks, which is preposterously false.
chc 15y ago
That's true, I should have explained that better. The hypothesis I was working from is that, on the whole, Google probably enables more ad-supported content than it hurts with false positives. For every one unfortunate blogger like you, there are a thousand more who would be harmed if the whole ad network were delegitimized by fraud. Eventually, I think the ad networks would become even seedier than they already are and this (combined with the lack of legit ad revenue) would hurt consumers.

cft 15y ago

You have a very narrow understanding of what internet is. It hurts Google, in an indirect, but very deep way: Google should be most interested in the proliferation and diversity of independent sites, since this is what they search. They should be especially interested in the long-tail. When they cut revenue sources for them, the eyeballs go to places that they cannot touch/financially hurt or more importantly they cannot search, i.e. to Facebook.