Comment by judge2020
4 years ago
Might be similar to the last time this came up (i'm looking for it now, edit: found it[0]) where the developer worked with a sizable development-for-hire firm that were themselves associated with many other dev accounts, some of which ended up being suspended for ToS violations (possibly by this firm, possibly by the customer without the firm's knowledge). The anti-ban-evasion technology Google runs then effectively poisoned this firm's Play developer profile so that anyone working with them would be suspended for the potential ban evasion, eventually.
Note that, for this specific case, it might not be a firm but one of the developers themselves that has a poisoned account thanks to past dealings that violated ToS. I imagine the system only banning by associate if the $25 developer account itself ever uploads an app so that it doesn't ban associated Google accounts for non-play-developer purposes.
Ad fraud = ban, it’s not much more complicated than that.
It’s trivial to make a new developer account and release similar products, so as an App Store you can do things like looking for similarities between new apps and banned apps to root out simple “change of ownership” schemes like this.
Google can’t afford to take this lightly, games with fraudulent ad clicks can generate (i.e. steal) millions of dollars in ad spend from businesses who think they are getting legitimate impressions.
"It's not much more complicated than that" is the language of the oppressor. It's the view of the indifferent technocrat who would flatten the world into software, and is willing to steamroll over any human bits that stick out. Google's algorithmic reinterpretation of justice is a perversion of justice. The simplicity of its approach signs its abdication of its moral and legal responsibilities.
OP's story isn't remotely okay. Fraud is a complicated issue. Here's what's uncomplicated: OP are not frauds. Here's what uncomplicated: Google reneged on a (very one-sided) contract, and destroyed a business. Here's a really simple one: Google is an abusive monopoly.
> Here's what's uncomplicated: OP are not frauds.
According to OP -- do you have firmer evidence of this than their own say-so?
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I like how you've put it..
"the language of the oppressor"
Yeah, the guy who commented on HN is the oppressor. lol
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From what I gather, OP is an anonymous voice on the internet. He might as well be Indian, Russian, Bulgarian, etc. pretending to be a US developer. That might have led to the ban.
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> Ad fraud = ban, it’s not much more complicated than that.
You think it's reasonable to ban an entire company because one of their employees committed ad fraud at a previous job?
In a non-nuanced scenario, yes, because chances are the higher-ups are willfully ignorant on what sort of deals their marketing is doing, and will use the person as a scapegoat if they’re found out.
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Ad fraud = ban from everything a huge company offers? Seems a tad much when the company literally reaches into your pocket by owning your smartphone and/or livelihood.
Bans should be limited in time and scale.
This really must be regulated, Google and co should not be able to lock you out of your digital identity.
Do you have any example of situations where Google have "locked [anyone] out of [their] digital identity" for ad fraud?
As far as I can tell, this blog post is only mentioning the company's Android developer account being disabled. It in fact shows evidence that other access to the account is still available (e.g. screenshots from the account security checkup tool, which wouldn't be accessible if the whole account was disabled). This does seem limited in scale.
(Disclaimer: I work at Google, but not on anything related to this.)
So, Google is judge, jury, and executioner. How can such an approach justified in this day and age?
Oh no, the attention robbers and psychological manipulators are getting a few million our of their literal billions taken away :(
"Guilt by association" is a bad way to run companies - especially when you don't even know who and how someone is guilty. They also do not apply rules fairly. Bigger companies like Facebook, Uber etc get to have more of a "human" connection to sort out issues while the small developer doesn't even get told what exactly they did wrong.
Which itself reinforces cartel behavior. The small players get the full force of the automated rulings, the large orgs get infinite levels of undo.
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Guilt by association is the only way to cope with a world where bad actors can trivially switch pseudonyms whenever they’re caught.
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> "Guilt by association" is a bad way to run companies
It's frighteningly common in big tech. Amazon is known for banning people for life because someone else with the same address returned too many items. Pick your roommates carefully I guess.
You have no clue what information Google used to reach this decision.
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One has to wonder how far this guilt by association goes. If my personal Google account is banned for one reason or another today, does that mean all the companies I have worked for in the past are also at risk of being banned? Could an app that I haven't had anything to do with for years get removed?
For any of the startup sized companies, this is totally a risk. I presume they wouldn't ban e.g. Twilio's account because one of their former or current employees got themselves personally banned, but there's certainly been accounts of it happening on HN to smaller companies where they hire a banned dev, and then the company's own accounts get banned (and on at least one occasion, their devs personal accounts too).