The curious comfort of victim-blaming – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow:
In 1998, two Stanford students published a paper in Computer Networks entitled "The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine," in which they wrote, "Advertising funded search engines will be inherently biased towards the advertisers and away from the needs of consumers."
https://research.google/pubs/pub334/
The co-authors were Lawrence Page and Sergey Brin, and the "large-scale hypertextual web search-engine" they were describing was their new project, which they called "Google." They were 100% correct – prescient, even!
On Wednesday night, a friend came over to watch some TV with us. We ordered out. We got scammed. We searched for a great local Thai place we like called Kiin and clicked a sponsored link for a Wix site called "Kiinthaila.com." We should have clicked the third link down (kiinthaiburbank.com).
We got scammed. The Wix site was a lookalike for Kiin Thai, which marked up their prices by 15% and relayed the order to our local, mom-and-pop, one-branch restaurant. The restaurant knew it, too – they called us and told us they were canceling the order, and said we could still come get our food, but we'd have to call Amex to reverse the charge.
[...] In the grand scheme of things, this is a minor hassle, but boy, it's haunting to watch the quarter-century old prophecy of Brin and Page coming true. Search Google for carpenters, plumbers, gas-stations, locksmiths, concert tickets, entry visas, jobs at the US Post Office or (not making this up) tech support for Google products, and the top result will be a paid ad for a scam. Sometimes it's several of the top ads.
This kind of "intermediation" business is actually revered in business-schools. As Douglas Rushkoff has written, the modern business wisdom reveres "going meta" – not doing anything useful, but rather, creating a chokepoint between people who do useful things and people who want to pay for those things, and squatting there, collecting rent:
[...] Now, Google has an answer for this: they tell merchants who are being impersonated by ad-buying scammers that all they need to do is outbid them for the top ad-spot. This is a common approach – Amazon has a $31b/year "ad business" that's mostly its own platform sellers bidding against each other to show you fake results for your query. The first five screens of Amazon search results are 50% ads:
[...] As I was submitting complaints about the fake Kiin scam-site (and Amex's handling of my fraud call) to the FTC, the California Attorney General, the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau and Wix, I wrote a little Twitter thread about what a gross scam this is:
https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/1628948906657878016
The thread got more than two million reads and got picked up by Hacker News and other sites. While most of the responses evinced solidarity and frustration and recounted similar incidents in other domains, a significant plurality of the replies were scam apologetics – messages from people who wanted to explain why this wasn't a problem after all.
The most common of these was victim-blaming: "you should have used an adblocker" or "never click the sponsored link." Of course, I do use an ad-blocker – but this order was placed with a mobile browser, after an absentminded query into the Google search-box permanently placed on the home screen, which opens results in Chrome (where I don't have an ad-blocker, so I can see material behind an ad-blocker-blocker), not Firefox (which does have an ad-blocker).
[...] Where do all of these apologetics come from? Why are people so eager to leap to the defense of scammers and their adtech and fintech enablers? Why is there such an impulse to victim-blame?
I think it's fear: in their hearts, people – especially techies – know that they, too, are vulnerable to these ripoffs, but they don't want to admit it. They want to convince themselves that the person who got scammed made an easily avoidable mistake, and that they themselves will never make a similar mistake.
[...] In my Twitter thread, I called this "the worst of all possible timelines." Everything we do is mediated by gigantic, surveillant monopolists that spy on us comprehensively from asshole to appetite – but none of them, not a 20th century payment giant nor a 21st century search giant – can bestir itself to use that data to keep us safe from scams.
(Score: 1) by DadaDoofy on Sunday March 05, @11:25PM (8 children)
Does anyone still search on Google?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 06, @12:22AM (5 children)
Sure, I search on Google. But when I want something local (like take out food) I use the telephone and talk to a person.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 06, @06:22AM (4 children)
And how do you get the phone number for the restaurant?
This is mentioned in TFA. These scammers run call centers. When you call the number from the scam ad you will talk to a person and still get scammed.
Phone books with their handy listings of local businesses don't exist anymore in many places. So I guess if you only order from places you have previously visited in-person to confirm contact information for your rolodex, it's ok. But this is just ridiculous to expect of anyone.
(Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 06, @10:58AM (3 children)
Move to a civilized locale that still offers phone books and/or other traditional means of locating information, such as government/commerce chamber ran business registries.
OR
Use an ad-blocker that filters google's/and other search engines' sponsored links. This ain't foolproof but would have prevented tfa.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 06, @11:08AM
PS: And yes, they *knew* better and even admit that they'd use an ad-blocker if not on mobile. Shouldn't have browsed on mobile. In fact much would be better today if people just stuck to doing this on proper computers (including the internet at large and webpage design).
When people hand power to these parasite companies with their general behavior (using moBILE über alles and social media platforms et alia) on one hand and then whine about the consequences with the other? That ain't victim blaming, that's blaming a behavior pattern that while "innocent" individually causes problems that permeate everyone's use of the internet and ultimately turns everyone, even those that avoid such things, into a victimized or at least strongly annoyed party.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday March 06, @01:30PM (1 child)
>Move to a civilized locale that still offers phone books
My time travel machine is broken. Yes: we have phone books. No: most local businesses no longer pay to be listed in them.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 06, @01:44PM
That's why there're two options :)
Hell, in context of tfa there's even a third option: Don't use google as a replacement for the address bar and remember or bookmark URLs of establishments you frequent (which would've also prevented this specific incident seeing how they admit to already having known the place).
PSS: The time machine comment can be equally applied to trusting google to function as an address bar replacement. That might've gotten you somewhere you want to back in the days of "I'm feeling lucky", but now it's a recipe for drive-by flavored disaster.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Monday March 06, @05:47AM
Only 85% of all desktop searches. Not that much.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday March 06, @01:25PM
AI to the rescue?
Seems like fraudulent advertisers would be relatively easy to spot. Still want some human in the loop to spot when the algorithms are being successfully gamed.
In the long term, Google's best interests would be served by cutting off scam adverts as quickly as possible (and clawing out as much revenue from them as possible, perhaps: "Your request for advertising matches a high risk profile, we require 5 years' payment up-front in escrow before the initial showing of your ad, and if your ad is found to be fraudulent those escrowed funds will be retained."
Of course, short term, the longer they take money from the scammers, the more money they get...
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 05, @11:27PM (3 children)
It's as if the entire economy is based on middlemen whose job is to obscure and obfuscate in order to cream off a percentage. The rational solution is to leave them holding the bag - you won the contract? Go ahead and fulfill it.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 05, @11:50PM (2 children)
Middlemen:
Every downtown skyscraper in the world is full of nothing but middlemen...
(Score: 5, Funny) by ikanreed on Monday March 06, @05:50AM (1 child)
Very rude to hard working janitors.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 06, @05:44PM
They're only the middlemen between the office schlub and the garbageman
(Score: 4, Funny) by krishnoid on Monday March 06, @12:37AM (3 children)
Well, now I want some Thai food.
(Score: 4, Touché) by driverless on Monday March 06, @09:50AM
I know a good place for that, try Kiinthaila.com.
Signed: Totally not a scammer on Google.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Monday March 06, @06:11PM (1 child)
If you've never been to Thailand, you've never eaten Thai food. The "Thai" food here in America doesn't taste like anything I ever ate in Thailand.
Carbon, The only element in the known universe to ever gain sentience
(Score: 3, Informative) by JoeMerchant on Monday March 06, @07:39PM
I've slowly evolved into pan-asian dishes, underscored by the fact that I have to visit both the Indian and Chinese groceries to get all the ingredients. The standby (which reminds me very strongly of something our favorite Thai restaurant used to serve):
One jar of curry paste (never seen at the Chinese grocer) + one can of coconut cream (no longer carried at the Indian grocer) + fresh chopped ginger, garlic and shallots to taste, usually about a "thumb" worth of ginger, 5-6 cloves of garlic, and a good sized shallot (interestingly, the Chinese and Indian groceries appear to get all these fresh from the same distributor) + a healthy dusting of cinnamon + a teaspoon of Cardamom powder (Indian only), oh and 5-6 chicken breasts, diced. Cook in a large wok over low heat until the coconut cream has reduced significantly and the oil from the curry paste is trying to separate - usually about 15-20 minutes on the stove.
Served over white rice with chopped fresh shallot greens (let a shallot sprout and grow...) You may want to wear goggles while dicing the shallots, but after they cook down they, and the garlic, have a much more mellow flavor, the ginger will still bite back if you don't chop it thin enough.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 3, Funny) by DannyB on Monday March 06, @04:06PM (2 children)
Yesterday (Sunday) evening. We decided to get food out. Okay, let's look at the menu. I googled (sadfully instead of using ddg). Ah, the menu. No, wait, that's not the menu for the local store. That's some third party interloper. How can Google, who is supposed to help you find things, make it so difficult to locate something as simple as a menu for a local drive through to get some burritos and tacos.
Alas how I wish Hillary had won. Trump promised that if Hillary won, there would be a taco truck on EVERY street corner. Oh, how I want my local taco truck on my own block.
How often should I have my memory checked? I used to know but...
(Score: 3, Funny) by mcgrew on Monday March 06, @06:15PM (1 child)
If former President Pinocchio promised taco trucks on every corner, you could be sure that he would do his damndest to outlaw taco trucks. He should thank George Santos for making him look honest by comparison.
"I am not a crook" -- a different crooked president than Trump
Carbon, The only element in the known universe to ever gain sentience
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 06, @11:19PM
I think Santos said that at some point too.
(Score: 2) by ShovelOperator1 on Tuesday March 07, @01:21AM
The problem with biasing Google is only a small part of the larger problem. The problem in which continuous feedbacks amplify some things and extinguish other. While Google is certainly some part of it, the Internet communities are the other part.
So, the commercial search engine points towards advertisers and all "new" stuff, no matter what users want. Mostly, users want just to find some information or to solve some problem.
However, it doesn't matter - advertiser stuff is pumped up.
This automatically depletes Internet's storage capability for knowledge - the typical answer to fix the Great Old Ones damned problem is not new and shiny, it's old, and buried probably in some forums last answered in 2010 or even Usenet FAQ which are the best starters for every activity someone may take.
So users don't find what they want because it is not popular.
And they are not encouraged to add this information to the Internet as it will not be found anywhere.
So existing knowledge bases go down, mostly dying in slow neglect of outdated scripts and broken links.
So more spam emerges only to satisfy the search engine.
This way, by constantly working feedbacks, the Internet's value as the medium of practical knowledge goes lower and lower.
I have seen this recently - I was looking for a simple info - when did the famous-for-all-time "Star Wars through the ssh" shut down. The thing is - the info how to access it, with repeating the same dead address, is present in some "articles" from 3 months ago! For Your information - the server got down in mid-2021.
However, because cheap how-tos and "[random int 2..10] best $thing_you_are_looking_for in $current_year" articles bump all these shady e-shops and link farms better, they slowly replace the actual practical knowledge.
Maybe this passing the Internet from scientists to corporations was not so great idea?