Comment by esperent
2 years ago
It's a constant fear, and there's no way to avoid using these companies. I'm currently dealing with a bakery business that was suddenly suspended from Google Maps. This is a big deal because it's the main way, by far, that people find us.
7 days ago, boom. Your account has been suspended for not following the business guidelines. The only thing I've updated recently was our hours. It's been listed without problems for about two years.
Of course they don't tell you what the issue is. They just tell you to fix it and then beg them to reinstate you. It takes up to two weeks apparently (7 days so far). And if they decide not to, the only thing you can do is delete the listing, and two years worth of hard earned reviews go up in smoke.
A few days ago one of our staff told me a Korean tourist came in the day before we were suspended and accused us of being fake. I don't know exactly what happened but due to the tourist's limited English nobody could persuade them we were the real location. Or maybe they were looking for somewhere else entirely? Who knows. Apparently they left a negative review, which I can't see while the account is suspended. Probably they reported the location as fake.
So that's it. Two years, over 100 positive reviews sitting at 4.9 stars. Gone because of one confused tourist. Or maybe because I updated the hours. Or maybe an automatic spam check didn't like us.
I sincerely hope that the next round of EU laws tackles this instead of privacy. It's just as big an issue, especially if you're running a small business.
My wife's floristry business has been blocked from being able to access facebook advertising and permanently restricted in how she is able to interact with her customers in part because a bot flagged and suspended her for trading in trading exotic animals. The exotic animal she was accused of trading? Aphelandra Squarrosa - The zebra leaf plant.
There's no way of getting this ban reversed, there's no way of invoking any human to perform a manual review on the ban. It is a permanent restriction that impacts her ability to communicate with her customer base.
> There's no way of getting this ban reversed, there's no way of invoking any human to perform a manual review on the ban. It is a permanent restriction that impacts her ability to communicate with her customer base.
You know you're doing it wrong when the the Ministry of Information in the movie Brazil has better customer service than you do.
Edit: add "the movie" to remove ambiguity.
Every time someone complains about being kicked off of Facebook or Youtube or some other such service for political reasons, the response from just about everyone is "they're a private business, they have a right to kick you off for any reason they want to with no explanation".
How isnt that also true here? They're a private business, they have a right to kick you off by automated systems if they think it's cheaper to have a couple of errors in the automatic system than to pay for manual reviewers. Hey, they're a private business and don't have to justify themselves, right?
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> You know you're doing it wrong when the the Ministry of Information in Brazil has better customer service than you do.
Care to explain?
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Such a fantastic film
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Getting lawyers involved is one guaranteed way to talk to a human at Facebook. It won't be easy or cheap though, so I can understand why a business like a flower shop wouldn't want to do that.
Take Facebook to small claims court. They can't bring a lawyer, it will cost them a small fortune and they'll lose.
What exactly is the claim you would sue for?
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Is it possible to leverage another case filing, to reduce lawyer fees? Or some sort of Nola Press DIY process? Since it seems so common.
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Is there a specific type of attorney?
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This is a political problem manifesting as a legal one.
Call your US Senators and Representative. Explain the problem.
Call your State Senators and Representative. Explain the problem.
Contact the FTC and file a complaint.
if you're based in Europe, try framing it as a GDPR issue. Article 16 says that data processors have to rectify data that is inaccurate or incomplete within 1 month. If they don't do that, you can raise it to your national privacy ombudsman as an incident. This being Facebook, there is a chance that they'll act on it.
Be sure to CC privacy@facebook.com and legal@facebook.com
Only issue: not sure that the GDPR applies to companies. And it's a 'pro' account I guess?
GDPR protects individuals 'natural persons' and not businesses 'legal persons'
Recital 14 - The protection afforded by this Regulation should apply to natural persons, whatever their nationality or place of residence, in relation to the processing of their personal data. This Regulation does not cover the processing of personal data which concerns legal persons and in particular undertakings established as legal persons, including the name and the form of the legal person and the contact details of the legal person.
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Maybe article 22 (“automated individual decision-making, including profiling”) can be useful here, too. This will not work if the account is not nominative though.
Sorry to hear this. Floristry is pretty cut throat with all the shipped direct sites that undercut prices. (Used to work at FTD.com, which bought ProFlowers, a very large flowers-in-a box operation.}
> I sincerely hope that the next round of EU laws tackles this instead of privacy. It's just as big an issue, especially if you're running a small business.
This! Couldn't agree more. I believe this is a much more bigger, huge problem compared to privacy, which is preventable (users can choose not to use a service) but this can take down entire businesses because of data giants' crappy/false alerting systems.
It should be illegal for Google, say, to remove listing without proving, or if that's not possible, if they remove they should legally be forced to compensate for the damage done. (Of course Google is just an example here, applies to any large enough platform)
Maybe then they will take this serious.
> users can choose not to use a service
By that logic you can just not use Google. But that's ridiculous, as ridiculous as the statement that users can choose not to use a service. I believe it's impossible to live in modern society without having an account in FAANG, even harder than a business not having a google maps listing.
I just visited family in California and I was surprised at how many things needs an app now, and there is no alternative.
For example, I went to visit the beach, which is on a national park. Parking required an app. There were park rangers there, the location was staffed, but they did not accept cash or credit card. Just an app. And there are two phone operating systems now, Apple and Android. So no. Can’t live without FAANG. I ended up downloading the app on the spot and purchasing a pass.
I’m sure the park service does this for their convenience. And it’s so populated near the coasts that if anyone doesn’t comply, they still have plenty of people who would gladly use the app. They can get away with demanding smartphone use. You can certainly get away with not having a smartphone further inland, and not needing to depend on FAANG explicitly. But I know this expectation is going to creep into the continent over time. In 5 years, if you say “I don’t have a smart phone” you’ll just be denied service. Period. No questions asked. And you will be considered the unreasonable party by most.
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> I believe it's impossible to live in modern society without having an account in FAANG
Oh, this is completely possible -- I do it.
But it won't stop them from getting your personal data.
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People get along fine without accounts in FAANG. You don't even need an account to use many Google services.
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Privacy is a choice? That's a new one, I didn't know people had the choice of their data not being leaked or sold by small and big businesses.
We can chew gum and walk at the same time, no need to throw privacy under the bus.
Of course privacy is not a choice, it's a fundamental right.
Giving your personal data to private companies, however, is a choice. You can simply not use their services.
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Given that Google handles a tremendous amount of email (not all to gmail.com domains either), and that other companies maintain "shadow profiles" of non-members, or simply track vast numbers of people (credit bureaux and other data-brokers), let alone the vast levels of surveillance baked into the present-day Internet, saying people can simply opt out of services is ... profoundly untrue.
There's not need to pit fairness in business dealings against privacy. Both are wins for the average person.
The problem is that such large platforms work like utilities, but are governed as services
For example it is illegal for the water utility companies where I live to cut off water supply, even if someone does not pay the bills. It should be illegal for payment processors, search engines and other large internet platforms to take away people's business. We need utilities, not services.
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I really am I favor of your suggestion. Next to that my stance is that big companies should be by law be required to have a human representative you can contact, especially in the time of AI.
But then we will face the original problem: prevalence of fake location spam
Not if you have to provide proof of your identity to register. Such proof could then also be a prerequisite to have government protection against arbitrary bans.
> I sincerely hope that the next round of EU laws tackles this instead of privacy. It's just as big an issue, especially if you're running a small business.
At least in Germany, you can file for a court order ("Einstweilige Verfügung") against Google - that usually works out and is relatively cheap, a couple hundred euros. Consult a lawyer, I think most EU countries have a similar instrument. Do note, you might have to file for an order both against the Google Europe HQ in Dublin/Ireland and against your country's Google office.
How would this work? Google isn't an official registry, do they have an obligation to list any business?
And the privacy argument is often effectively countered with security concerns, even more so if that is expressly stated so in the ToS.
Just to be clear: I'm 100% on the GP's side, I'm just curious what the Verfügung could do here. In order for the court issue such an order, it needs at least a reasonable legal basis.
If you're 1 out of 100 marketing agencies, you're part of a free market.
Once you have monopoly or near-monopoly, you become more like infrastructure, whether you provide electricity or access to customers.
At that point, you either have to expect to be willing to host anyone who stays within the law, or have the monopoly broken up.
Only the most hardcore market fundamentalists/objectivits tend to disagree about this principle, in my experience. (Which means practically nobody outside the US). Though some seem to be quite willing to accept abuse of market power if it primarily hurts their political enemies.
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Simple: by offering you to host a marker on google maps or by even giving you an account, they are entering a contract with you/your corporate entity from which they can't just unilaterally exit without good reason. The legal basis is just the same as the various people on both ends of the political spectrum who filed for injunctions against Facebook/Meta and Twitter to have their accounts unbanned.
The question of course is if the jurisdiction of the person I replied to has the same idea about contract law but IIRC (and IANAL...) it should be harmonized across the EU - but heh, if the removal of the maps marker has led to a drastic decrease in traffic, a couple hundred euros for an actual lawyer should be more than worth it!
The key thing is, going via the court system or even "just" the legal department without involving the courts short-circuits the relatively powerless first-level support.
If you're interested in the finer details and a bit of ranting, read e.g. this post from lawyer Christian Saefken [1] - it's geared towards Twitter (and Facebook, which a friend of mine had success with just the same).
[1] https://christian-saefken.de/abmahnen-aber-richtig/
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I guess it has mostly to do with the fact that once legal gets involved, even at Google scale it makes sense to just take a look and see that, yes, of course, it was just another case of someone sabotaging someone else and the system being to dumb to catch it, lets fix it before we have to show up in court.
On a side note: GDPR demands that companies provide a way to get a manual review for decisions made by machines.
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I wonder if the refusal to list a business could be considered tortuous interference now, as it has effectively become a negative false statement: "There's no bakery here".
Honestly this kind of "honest question" is quite depressing: If you don't start out from the understanding that yes, Google is ground reality for most people and yes, the law should protect you from unjust persecution on those kinds of platforms then what can we tell you? This point of view is inhumane and should just be released. It is not for others to convince you that you should consider human rights more important than corporate rights. You should wonder why you have this point of view and why you think it's reasonable. Then let it go, so you don't infect others with it (and make the world a measurably worse place as your legacy).
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Even if you dont want to be listed on google maps, they will sometimes generate a fake listing for you anyhow. I got burned by one of these as a customer, the link for takeout was not actually a site the restaurant was partnered with. I’ve also seen restaurants with similar names url squat these other places.
It seems so bizzare google will publish such information without ever validating it with the business. It must cause a lot of damage and support quite the environment of scammers though.
This happened to a restaurant I go to a lot. Their Maps listing said there was online ordering, but the link went to a site that even had a disclaimer saying they were not actually affiliated with the restaurant. I reported it to Google and they removed the entry, but anyone can make a change and double checking seems to be cursory at best.
> It seems so bizzare google will publish such information without ever validating it with the business.
Why should they? Validation would be expensive, and the false information doesn't hurt Google. Where else are you gonna list?
If they don't want to validate it, they shouldn't publish it or sell advertising on a service that used the unverified data. It was OK for the web because that's the only way, but maps have a lot more sources of truth.
On the flip side, as an avid Google Maps reviewer they also removed my negative review from a restaurant without any good reason (supposedly the business reported it as being “fake” or something)
It really pissed me off because I wrote a long thoughtful review and mentioned the good aspects of the restaurant too as well as some recommendations, and it’s just completely gone
The worst part is the restaurant is sitting at 4.5 stars despite being quite bad, and the recent low star reviews are all questioning the rating, which is obviously artificial
I've been reading a lot of reports recently about how businesses abuse AirBnb and Google Maps reviews by forcing the companies to remove them on technicalities or by outright lies. I wonder if I should just post any less-than-stellar reviews without any text but with rating only in order to make it harder for them to remove. Thoughts?
I’m at Level 8, how far along are you?
Just curious why you guys do this and for free?
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If that happened recently enough, I would guess that your "long thoughtful review" was confused for a ChatGPT fake.
This is also a problem on the customer side. I don’t shy away from leaving bad reviews to businesses that deserve it. These businesses either reply with a passive aggressive doxx like “Hi Or Nornor” when I don’t use my real name anywhere on the internets (including medical-related businesses), or they report the review and my account gets blocked with all my reviews removed.
And then of course there is it a single living human at google you can contact to even find out which review was flagged, why, and what to do about it.
I don’t even read reviews anywhere anymore, they’re all faked or AstroTurfed anyway that they give no indication of anything. What a brave new world.
I encountered the same problem recently. My family member’s business changed location. Updating the Google maps listing caused Google to flag it for not following guidelines and weeks passed with the listing being “under review”.
The solution that ended up working for me was to start paying a few dollars a day for Adwords. For some reason that cleared the issue up the next day. Then, I turned AdWords down to a few bucks a week and then later off entirely.
> The solution that ended up working for me was to start paying a few dollars a day for Adwords. For some reason that cleared the issue up the next day.
Yes, for some reason it cleared up after spending money. I really hope it’s not the norm. Sounds like extortion to me.
Can confirm. This works in more places than one, Reddit too. Reason? When you're a paying customer, you get routed to elevated support staff. They have a higher incentive to help you fix the problem and fast.
I don't hate it, I appreciate it. Better than having no easy recourse. Because I bet if everyone were treated equally, it'd be shitty service for all. Better to toss in a few bucks if it's valuable and get the support (and some ads run).
> I don't hate it, I appreciate it.
Since that amounts to a kind of extortion, I can't see how it would do anything but make me furious.
This sounds like an Mafia movie. Pay up for a little protection and don't let it happen again!
Intentionally or accidentally, it's a great problem for big tech to have. You scramble with everybody else to be on the service and the DDOS crowd, confused tourists and local ruffians take your account offline. Better grovel up to reinstate your honour and pay for protection/added services/more identity validation that doesn't stop the problem from happening. Same thing every big country does, we are all under a "security umbrella".
Honestly, real life advertising needs to make a come back. And localized knowledge of the businesses worth keeping alive, when Google's security algorithm dumps them without administration even knowing it. Eggs all in one basket, was never a good idea.. right?
All business and all government eventually become a racket.
Also, how should a small business deal with fake negative reviews in, say, Play Store? Google does nothing to fix that. As the app developer you know a review from an account that didn't sign-up to your service is fake, especially when it appears at the same time other similar fake reviews do.
This is very sad. It's a disgrace that even physical businesses today depend so much on Google.
If you happen to review few places on Google Map you are holding superpowers. Idk if that works for new accounts too. But yeah, at least if you do some activity then you report a place as closed, they are "checking" it for 1h, then you get the e-mail that the place got removed from Maps.
I use that for good purpose - I fix a lot of invalid information on Google Maps around my home town, and they apply the changes without batting an eye. This is good for society. But I can clearly see how that could be used for abusive purposes.
Companies that don't provide their customers with an easy way to speak with a representative shouldn't be allowed to operate inside the EU.
I feel like you should be able to request a call from their call center rather then be forced to wait on the phone for one. The long wait times to speak to representatives is a cost savings measure.
First saving on having to hire an appropriate level of customer service staff. Second that percentage of people who give up.
It's a feature, not a bug.
I think one of the pixel phone had an option to detect when there was a human on the other end of the line. Definitely made me consider getting it back when I was looking for a new phone.
Google Assistant will wait on hold for you, yes.
Though from what I've seen, most places have callback options.
>I sincerely hope that the next round of EU laws tackles this instead of privacy
why instead?
Well because there's already been a lot of laws passed in that regard and there's already momentum. I don't mean they should stop this momentum, these privacy laws are incredibly important.
I meant the need to start a new front.
Because privacy laws have zero teeth and workarounds are technically easy (or endlessly annoying for zero new outcome, e.g. see cookie popups). If the EU would actually enforce GDPR it would be amazing.
Meanwhile these companies who have essentially became a public utility don’t provide customer support or explanations.
If the EU privacy regulations didn’t actually solve the problem, what makes you think they would do any better regulating customer support?
your ideas are contradictory:
>If the EU would actually enforce GDPR it would be amazing
>The EU should not focus on privacy laws any further
and not to be advdersarial, but they do enforce GDPR. have a look at the enforcement tracker and sort by Fine:
https://www.enforcementtracker.com/
TLDR: less than 2 months ago, Meta - one of those de facto public utilities you're describing - was fined 1.2 Billion Euros for GDPR breaches. they and Amazon have previously been fined hundreds of millions
Lots of companies are expending a lot of effort to ensure they respect GDPR
Non EU companies are the worst offenders at not understanding their privacy obligations (particularly ones that provide tags)
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Is it listed on OSM?
If its not you're part of the problem.
Yes of course it is. I put it on both on the same day.
Your comment feels very passive aggressive, FYI. There's no need to make accusations like that.
you get bad service from these companies for the same reason the government generally provides bad service, they are monopolies with no reason to spend more money to improve
I worry about the horrible side effects that would occur from trying to grant that wish. It is always easy to make demands when you aren't the one carrying them out and most people don't think the implications through.
My mind just boggles at the implicit additional bureaucracy, expenses, and slowdowns being cheered for. The kind of mess which results in a system so complex that it has its own "degrees which shouldn't exist" spawned from it like medical billing.
feel free to post a link or add it to your profile and ill leave a good review
Thank you, that's very kind. However, it's not possible even for me to view the listing while it is blocked.