Comment by saalweachter

The problem, from HN's perspective, is that false positives on GSB hurt businesses a lot more than they hurt users or the internet at large.

If I'm a random person browsing the internet at large, and a website I try to visit gets flagged as "possibly malicious", well, I probably didn't need the information or services on that particular website that badly anyway. I can find another website that offers the same information and services easily enough. Meanwhile, if my computer or browser is infected with malware, that's pretty bad for me personally. I could lose money, time and personal data and security. The potential consequences are bad enough that I really shouldn't risk it.

On the other hand, if my business is blocked by GSB, that is very bad for my business. The customers I don't lose are going to lose confidence in me. Meanwhile, the cost to me if I am accidentally hosting malware is pretty minimal. Even if a large number of my users are harmed by the malware, they're unlikely to be so harmed they stop paying me, and it's pretty hard for to know where you picked up malware, so it's unlikely to be traced back to me. I've never actually heard of a lawsuit from an end-user against the website they downloaded malware from.

A false negative from GSB is a lot worse for internet users than a false positive; an internet business, on the other hand, would prefer a false negative to a true positive, let alone a false positive.

Add in that internet business owners (or people highly invested in internet businesses through their jobs) are over-represented on HN, and it's no surprise that HN is not a fan of Google Safe Browsing.