4 ms·

To me, this case illustrates a scary fact: we entrust large amounts of our data, visibility / reputation (in the form of search results), and revenue (ad sense)

by mellis 17y ago

To me, this case illustrates a scary fact: we entrust large amounts of our data, visibility / reputation (in the form of search results), and revenue (ad sense) to a company that applies no human judgement to individual cases regardless of their importance to the affected parties. This guy may have violated Google's ToS and have deserved to have his account terminated. But that doesn't change the fact that Google (or one of its algorithms) could decide to drop your website from its search results, or delete your GMail account, or cancel your Ad Sense account and keep the balance - all with no appeal to a human being, no opportunity to explain any extenuating circumstances, and little recourse. True, a person may not be a more effective reviewer in general, Google's algorithms may make few mistakes, and we all benefit from the efficiency of a customer service-free operation. Still, it would be nice to think that if something bad happened, you might have a chance to correct it.

madmanslitany 17y ago
I understand where you're coming from, but I think you already covered the counterargument to this; in the aggregate, humans may not be more effective reviewers than a purely computational system. There should always be some sort of recourse as a failsafe, but I don't think that spending more money and time on human customer service is a good idea for Google. I think it's something we'll get used to; I imagine there must have been a similar sort of discomfort when ATMs were introduced, but they're ubiquitous now. This sort of automation is also very much in tune with Google's philosophy (and really, the history of information retrieval itself--it's gradually steered away towards using much human expert input in problem solving from what I remember) and may be the only viable option for some of Google's services given the kind of scalability they need.

by mellis 17y ago

madmanslitany 17y ago

I understand where you're coming from, but I think you already covered the counterargument to this; in the aggregate, humans may not be more effective reviewers than a purely computational system. There should always be some sort of recourse as a failsafe, but I don't think that spending more money and time on human customer service is a good idea for Google. I think it's something we'll get used to; I imagine there must have been a similar sort of discomfort when ATMs were introduced, but they're ubiquitous now. This sort of automation is also very much in tune with Google's philosophy (and really, the history of information retrieval itself--it's gradually steered away towards using much human expert input in problem solving from what I remember) and may be the only viable option for some of Google's services given the kind of scalability they need.