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My favorite story: 1. Dev publishes app with Google Admob integration to the Play Store. 2. Buys Google Ads to drive traffic to the app. 3. Google Admob bans
by yunusabd 21d ago
My favorite story:
1. Dev publishes app with Google Admob integration to the Play Store.
2. Buys Google Ads to drive traffic to the app.
3. Google Admob bans his account for invalid traffic.
https://www.reddit.com/r/admob/comments/1vzg3fu/i_paid_google_to_ban_me/ https://www.reddit.com/r/admob/comments/1vzg3fu/i_paid_googl...
- mitxela 21d agoLawsuit time!
- varispeed 21d agoI would suspect that entities affected don't have money for a lawsuit.
- pottspotts 21d agoAre most Americans not able to fight an international tech conglomerate at the drop of a hat?
- mitxela 21d agoEven a failed lawsuit has the potential to cost the company a lot more money than it costs you. If it's small claims court the company has to pay a lawyer hourly to attend as their representative, while you just have to show up and pay the small court fee. If it's big claims court, well, you always have the option to represent yourself, and then you'll probably lose, but at least you won't have spent much money.
- Grombobulous 21d agoSmall claims court!
- qlte 20d ago...which Google then wins on appeal, such as in the follow up from an example someone posted above of a "win" in small claims. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/why-google-bothered-to-ap_b_213176 https://www.huffpost.com/entry/why-google-bothered-to-ap_b_2...
- Grombobulous 20d agoIf you lose on appeal perhaps your case wasn’t that strong to begin with. If I were the author if that article I would rest easy knowing that Google blew 5 figures on lawyers to recover $800 and enhance my journalism.
- hn_throwaway_99 21d agoThis is what class actions are literally for. Yes, I know it sucks that the only people who make money are the lawyers, but it can result in some behavioral change. Google is fine attracting bots when it makes money for itself, but it can clearly detect that bot traffic when it has to pay out. There is likely huge amounts of money in total that Google has collected money from in ad buys but that they could also detect as bots. I would think class action lawyers would be all over this given the total amount of money involved.
- crooked-v 21d agoUnless, of course, the terms of service require mandatory binding arbitration and bar you from the recourse of the legal system entirely.
- hn_throwaway_99 21d agoI agree these clauses suck, but consumer mass arbitration is also a thing.
- eadler 20d agoUntil the terms start including "mass arbitration" provisions limiting consumers ability to even use the psuesocourts the companies force.
- mitxela 21d agoIt doesn't have to be a class action. In fact it's worse for the defending company if they get 500 separate lawsuits than one class action.
- bluGill 21d agoProblem is the guy here spent $100 on ads that went to bots, and thus can get his $100 back after spending a million on lawyers.
- ocdtrekkie 21d agoConsidering the government routinely both decides Google is violating the law but is unwilling to do things to change it, like split apart their ad monopoly, suing them is most likely futile. Better ways to spend your money, like funding competitors.
- mitxela 21d agoYou still get your money back
- deleted 21d ago[deleted]
- ventana 19d agoHere's a quote from their terms and conditions: Governing Law; Venue. All claims arising out of or relating to the AdSense Terms or the Services will be governed by California law, excluding California's conflict of laws rules, and will be litigated exclusively in the federal or state courts of Santa Clara County, California, USA, and you and Google consent to personal jurisdiction in those courts. Okay, I do indeed live in Santa Clara County, California, so if I ever get in a situation where I might want to sue Google Ads, I might as well try and see how local courts work, especially if the claim is small enough for the small claims court. For those who do not live here, it might be a prohibitive requirement.
- dangero 21d agoSame thing happened to us. We were large enough to have an admob rep who reached out to the IVT team for help. After our first appeal was rejected, our rep negotiated a second appeal attempt but he said “This time make sure you take full responsibility for the IVT getting through. Funny part to me was Google was the only network bidding on these bots while others must have detected something and stayed out. We submitted a second appeal taking full responsibility plus providing a long list of corrective action we took in house plus a full triage of what happened. They again rejected our second appeal with no feedback.
- weare138 21d agoI keep hearing this same story over and over. It's starting to sound like that's just Google's business model.
- tokioyoyo 21d agoBut in large, it works. We only hear from people for whom it doesn’t work.
- aorloff 21d agoI think Google's business model in large part is having a super complicated ad console that very few, if anyone, actually knows how to most efficiently operate. So what happens is that the savvy media teams figure out what works through meticulous trial and error, and constantly monitor Googles weird changes to the levers you are given to operate the "console."
- deleted 21d ago[deleted]
- duxup 21d agoSeems about right, in the sense that these advertising companies are just fine dealing with scammers / taking their money … but there are corners of the same company that also have reasons to not allow that behavior and it becomes a circle where Google users and etc are banned for Google encouraged activity. Last week on YouTube I was logged out of YouTube and on my work computer got an ad that appeared to offer access to underage girls, the pic was creepy as hell. Google took their money but if I posted that image in a video I bet I would be banned….
- iamflimflam1 21d agoI was getting an advert that was obviously some scam software on YouTube mobile. The image looked like a system alert that storage was low. It was an obvious attempt to trick users. https://bsky.app/profile/atomic14.bsky.social/post/3mnc7ws2hfc2e https://bsky.app/profile/atomic14.bsky.social/post/3mnc7ws2h... Perfectly fine according to google.
- ceroxylon 21d agoYikes, that is especially egregious. As the comment to that post mentions, you see it on adult sites (so I've heard) but that's also the kind of ad you'd see on an old forum where the moderators have lost all respect for their users and are trying to cash out.
- adamtulinius 21d agoFunny, I too reported it a long time ago, with the predictable response that it’s not breaking any of Google’s rules. It also tells me how primitive Google Ads are, when they keep showing me an ad I reported.
- iamflimflam1 21d agoI also reported it - twice - and was fobbed off. The frustrating thing is, this is very easy for AI to detect. Just feed the image into any AI and it will tell you it is deceptive.
- deleted 21d ago[deleted]
- shevy-java 21d agoThat's double ironic because Google feeds off of ad-money addiction, but here it also uses that traffic to ban people from the evil Google empire (which is actually pretty good, if everyone would be banned then Google would collapse quickly. Without adMoney this adCompany would be useless. It has nothing to do with the old Google company before the adMoney inflow addiction).
- Razengan 21d agoMeanwhile, there's rampant ads for scams all over YouTube going on for years
- whstl 20d agoBeing outside of the US, most Google ads I see are some kind of finance scam, or scam-adjacent. And in smaller websites it's mostly Malware and health-related scams. The reason you don't see these on every website is purely because the website owner decides to block some of those.