It goes like this: Google bans or disables something, then they pretend they made a mistake, but still delay fixing it for days or weeks while giving amateurish explanations for these delays. In the end what this tactic achieves, is hampering a software Google disapproves (or competes against). The tired users switches to a different software (made by google?) or stop using the software altogether. The same tactic targets competing developers.
All it requires is that panic efforts to fix things be primarily allocated to problems that hurt google and not primarily allocated to things that hurt google's opponents. Or for infrastructure that has a history of hurting google to get disabled while infrastructure that has a history of hurting others gets ignored in favor of spending more time on new projects or fixing things that hurt google.
IMO characterizing it as involving malice ('pretend') actually _understates_ the problem. Google's actions are sometimes explicitly malicious, but they're even more often malicious OR indifferent, as that is a strict superset. If one day they decided to stop being actively evil this problem would not go away.
Maybe it could be reduced with the right kind of attitude towards introspecting and seeking out systemic causes of evil consequences even at their own expense. I heard there was once a company with a "don't be evil" mantra, but they abandoned it as they grew.
This also explains why the same evil conduct sometimes shows up in cases where no one can figure out any way that google actually benefits. It's a lot easier to cause harm through indifference than greed because greed requires that you have a way to benefit. Most conceivable harmful acts don't have much of a benefit for anyone.
You can't plausibly claim indifference when Google's business processes that took many millions of dollars to set up and optimize promote Google's success by harming Google's competitors and taming Google's existential threats in user-hostile ways that range from perhaps subtle to outrageously obvious.
They didn't start doing this yesterday. No amount of plausible deniability can cover a gaping void this large.
Google's behaviour is entirely consistent with a huge company exercising its monopolistic power in a largely unregulated environment. They do whatever they can get away with.
Mozilla is far more honest than Google, but better safe than sorry.
I'm curious.. Does Brave have their extensions managed by Google?
Further down the github issue, another person attempts to submit the same build recieving the same response. But then asks for clarification on the applicability to uBlock only to receive an excerpt from ToC bundling advice...
Pretty sure this is not algorithmic. As the dev said they are being stone walled.
https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBlock-issues/issues/745#iss...
That's the developer relenting and trying to resubmit, after fuming at one of their users suggesting to do so. The reply they get is the same as the original reply, including the ToS (right? Not "ToC") but excluding the bit about risking being banned if the same vilation occurs multiple times. It still looks like an automated reply though.
What does seem to 'work' is the subversion of one sub-market by another, e.g. when we transition from radio to TV, or when began the post-Facebook era. These are technological innovations. Political science taught me one thing: what changes the world is not what we think or say, it's what we do, and the most groundbreaking actions are those who create the everyday things that change our lives in dramatic ways — mobile phones, cars, planes, TV, YouTube, Netflix, Maps, chats, what-you-use.
Ergo, if we want a truly "fair" network, I think there's no other way but to make one. A real innovation that pretty much owns the market of inter-human communication, eventually. Something the magnitude of netscape/javascript at the end of the 1990s, or SMS, or Facebook versus everything else before, or streaming video and audio... a real shift in 'what you can do' or the way you do it.
It is simply unacceptable that you can be kicked off extremely dominant platforms without explanation or recourse and often without even getting your data back.
There has to be a higher barrier to obliterating someone's livelihood.
In that concentration is inevitable, not exempting any possible legal framework.
So government / legal isn't a solution, only radical innovation.
[1] The meetings that people who rant about faceless bureaucrats never show up at.
... woman inherits the Earth?
I think the mortgage derivative swaps crisis taught us that. Powerful fools are still fools, and there's nothing about the system as-is that prevents some fools from becoming powerful.
In that sense, it's entirely possible we have bad outcomes from automated systems created by people who don't understand them. And that's the ambivalent case.
The actively evil case is: "How much would I have to pay you to design an unethical automated system?"
But actions your automated systems are still your actions, regardless of intentions and outcomes. If we hold people responsible for negligently causing damage, we should also hold them responsible for negligently causing damage using an automated system. And of course, we should positive outcomes a system causes to the people behind it as well.
I'm pretty sure I can build a tinder clone with cool extra features pretty easily - barring maybe the infrastructure to support a giant number of users and the legal issues of operating internationally. But such an app would be completely useless, since the point of the app is that their userbase can easily be half the dating pool of your city. The same idea is true for many internet businesses - once established they're almost untouchable. they can't be challenged unless they screw up royally or someone's able to launch a giant enough marketing campaing that can bootstrap a large userbase in a matter of days.
Join to that the tendency towards monolithic ecosystems (google, apple, to a lesser extent microsoft, huawei...) and the result is pretty scary.
When I search for "firebase vs ..." I don't get parse server, I get nonsensical rubbish that folks won't compare with firebase. like mongodb, heroku, google analytics, amplify. But if I search for "parse server v". the first suggestion is firebase. Google is pure evil, you just have to open your eyes to see all their dirty tricks.
These closed markets need to become open markets. Apply fair and impartial courts, jury trials, system of appeals, tort, etc.
given how often this happens, and the money google makes off and puts into these systems, this is "not either or" but rather two flavors of "on purpose"
I don't believe that you have a meaningful right to use a website.
Honestly, Google's (and general tech giants') willingness to let people's lives be caught in the cracks of their algorithms in their pursue for scalability scares me more than any ideology they could push.
More and more, we're seeing developers and content creators being banned or demonetised, people being shadowbanned from dating apps that represent a majority of your chances to find a significant other, and so on.
I think we need legislation to deal with these issues: people subjected to punishment should be able to know the rules they're being subjected to, the way they supposedly broke those laws, and have a non automated chance to contest the ruling. Even if these businesses aren't public property, when they represent an almost monopolistic chance to get the service they provided they should be treated as if they are.