Google skewered in ad sting after Oracle-backed bods turn troll An advocacy group funded in part by Oracle posed as a Russian internet troll farm to call attention to what it claims is Google's failure to police online political ad sales. To demonstrate shortcomings in Google's ad sales oversight, Campaign for Accountability (CfA) spent about $100 (~6,800 rubles) on political ads over the …
I personally hope for Mutually Assured Destruction.
Maybe it is time for a new cartoon strip in the form of Everybody Loves Eric Raymond, but instead of that fabled strip, we now have Ellison, Page, Nadella...oh screw it - lets put Stallman and Torvalds back into the house, too.
I would click on those Russian State Sponsored Ads to give that creator revenue.
(I want my 10% however).
Oh, so you're not auto-filling Russian contact details anymore, is that it ?
Because that really represents a massive change. Not that someone can't enter it manually, right ?
And CfA is now a competitor to Google ? Really ? In what alternate universe is that possible ?
Google PR spokesdrone trying to paint Google as a victim. FAIL.
...it's easy to find somebody doing something wrong.
Well the problem here is definitely with the looker, not the lookee. They're just an innocent law breaker, and probably a very very fine one. But looking for mistakes? That's a witch hunt if ever I saw one!
it's easy to find somebody doing something wrong
"If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him."
(Attributed to Cardinal Richelieu but Wikiquotes says this is disputed)
The Nazz,
French is a fictional language. If you sneak into France like a ninja, you'll find they're all speaking english, all the time. You can even go across on le ferry boat for le weekend, then jump on le train to Paris to buy le sandwich - and to burn off the calories there's le jogging.
They only switch to french when they see someone foreign-looking walk into the room. The equivalent of walking into a country pub and everyone going silent.
I've seen several documentaries about Dogtanion and the Muskahounds - and all the participants were speaking english the whole time. Proves it.
"it's easy to find somebody doing something wrong
"If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him."
And thus is the basis on which any Presidential investigation can continue on indefinitely with further purpose or outcome...
"When you actively go looking for mistakes, it's easy to find somebody doing something wrong..."
Oh – oh – I know this one – that's except in the case when it's people looking for security flaws in software and IoT etc. – then it's OK actively [to] go looking for mistakes. Yes?
Why didn't Google just take the high ground and politely thank these people for finding a weakness in their system and thus giving them the opportunity to improve it?
.... evidently they now believe they are a sovereign state, making their own rules.
In a free(*) country, the legislature and government cannot just order people around generally, and people are not required to follow said orders unless those orders have a legal basis behind them. There is no rule that says if congress 'orders' an appearance, you are required to attend, unless it is accompanied by a subpoena/warrant.
Congress can issue such a subpoena, but unless they do so there is no rule that says you must attend. And so far such a subpoena has not been issued compelling attendance. So far congress has only made non-binding, non-compelling, non-legally enforceable requests for an appearance. Therefore Google/Alphabet hasn't broken any rules or made up any of their own with respect to this particular circumstance.
I mean, it is impolite, and bad form to not attend. And could lead to legislative consequences down the road such as the snubbed/offended congresscritters giving bad publicity or influencing their votes on legislation impacting those no-shows.
(*) assuming said country is indeed a free country.
The sting used the IRA's own tax details to confirm that the ad buyer was who it said it was. Google accepted these.
The sting used images and text already known to have originated with the IRA operation. Again, no problem for Google. No filters were tripped.
In fact, Google said "Great stuff guys" and even chose a picture to make the ads more wonderful.
Whenever Google PR says, "Look over there, Oracle!" you know they've really fscked up.
"We’d encourage Oracle and its astroturf groups to work together with us to prevent real instances of foreign abuse – that’s how we work with other technology companies"
... however, we'll still knife you in the back if we don't like what you're doing.
@Bibbit:
Glad I'm not the only one that caught that. I'm hoping that it was a sly nudge on the whole 'we're radicalizing both ends of the entire population so they don't see what we're letting the wall street financial trolls get up to in the next 5 years'. But I suspect it was just a typo.
In years past, someone attempting to demonstrate how easy it was to fool G's search algorithms would set up half a dozen servers & quickly get top rankings for whatever target words he went after. G consistently ignored them.
Looks like Oracle has done the same thing, but with the ads.
Imperiousness is the word I believe we need.
A week ago it was the Democrats in Michigan. Now it's a private US group linked to Oracle. Who next?
Russia must be guilty of something - any state does bad things. But when they're the world's prime bogeyman, it becomes impossible to pick out the true stories from the fake news, and those who stand accused from those who have stolen their identity.
And we already knew that western TLAs routinely frame those nations on which they want to put pressure.
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