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Gaming Google a Gateway To Crime?
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Tue Jan 08, 2008 11:31 AM
from the they-sure-piss-me-off-more dept.
from the they-sure-piss-me-off-more dept.
netbuzz writes "Merely hiring a blackhat practitioner of search-engine optimization may be indicative of a willingness to 'cut corners' — the kind that land business executives behind bars — says Matt Cutts, Google's top cop regarding such matters. It's an interesting theory, as generalizations go, but there would seem to be quite a leap between risking the death penalty from Google and risking a stint in prison."
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it's not even cutting corners (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not even cutting corners, the Google guy is euphemistically describing "illegal" activity by Google's rules. And while SEO activities that break Google's rules aren't technically illegal other than sanctions brought by Google for getting caught I think Cutts makes an interesting and probably valid point.
Just because something isn't codified into law doesn't make it ethical or right. Law can and will never model completely human behavior, nor should it. But outside of the law there are behaviors that demonstrate or point to probability someone would also break codified law. SEO like any other discipline has approaches that work and are within ethical boundaries. But it also, like any other, has approaches that are not okay.
IMO it's about boundaries, and the ramifications when activity infringes on another's ability to freely engage in their own activity. Competition is one thing. Subverting a mechanism is quite another, especially when subversion comes at others' expense.
As for the quasi-argument from the summary:
The whole MO of people like this is they don't think they're risking a stint in prison. They completely rationalize their behaviors beyond any reasonable state of self-denial. Watch some of the videos of the Enron depositions... these guys (IMO) truly believe their actions were within the bounds of legal activity. (Actually some probably were, the shame of the whole Enron scam is a lot of goats took the fall for the more powerful, though it was nice to see at least a couple of high level execs finally taken out.)
Re:it's not even cutting corners (Score:5, Interesting)
I worked in a Fortune 100 retail environment for many years and was amazed at the moral lapses that seemingly otherwise upstanding managers would commit on behalf of the company. One manager in particular, who was particularly hard on shoplifters (always prosecuted no matter the amount) and employee pilfering, would routinely shave hours off of employees' timesheets. His "thefts" added up to thousands of dollars per month and he felt perfectly justified in doing it.
Parent
Re:it's not even cutting corners (Score:4, Interesting)
I'll bet you we see a lot more of this in the future, because internationalization has introduced an element of nationalism into the competitions between companies. Nationalism enables our tribalist ability to slaughter (i.e. rip off) any human who is from a different tribe. Wow will it be nice when genetic engineering allows us to remove the tribalism gene.
Also, the middle-class is heavily involved in the stock market now, and companies are responding by becoming increasingly short-sighted. Short-sightedness means cutting corners and selling out the long run, as we know.
Parent
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It's no longer about making money. Making money is the point of business and hey, that's just fine.
But no, it's now about making MORE money.
You can't be happy that you spent a million dollars and made a billion. Because you made 2 billion last year, so you should have made at least THREE billion.
The stock market and its investors tend to, I've noticed, ignore the concept of averages. Sometimes, a store will do better than average. Sometimes, it will do wors
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The stock market was always a form of usury gambling, and ownership control over key assets and a way for them to increase their wealth exponentially, and also way for the upper classes to offload risk onto the middle and lower classes. The whole idea of investment is fucked up to begin with. Gaining money without working for it through ownership loopholes (i.e. 'passive income') which offloads risk onto other people (i.e. the workers working
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You certainly touched on it and I'll add my bit here, focusing entirely and only on that last sentence fragment.
The entire logic and reasoning behind that fragment is quite questionable. Frankly, I have to wonder about the character of the person that wrote it. To them, it would appear, the only reason people do not do wrong things, is because they are afraid of the ramifications of their actions. Put another way, the logic of that sentence fragment states that the only reason people do not slit your thr
Re:it's not even cutting corners (Score:5, Insightful)
Thats actually not clear at all.
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Re:it's not even cutting corners (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:it's not even cutting corners (Score:5, Insightful)
It isn't about revenge. The hope is that the system will try to rehabilitate. Revenge only teaches a criminal to be more careful and/or armed.
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That's because laws can never precisely describe "intent", only "action."
i.e. You can follow the laws to the letter, and still act unethically.
That's why laws are open to interpretation to determine the "spirit of the law." For every law, you can almost always think of an exception in a special circumstance.
Maybe it's breaking the rules (Score:2, Insightful)
Any success in breaking Google's rules could result in increased profits from a higher pagerank giving the rule breaker a sense that it pays to cheat. So why not cheat somewhere else with another set of breakable rules? Taxes? Mortgages?
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Just because something isn't codified into law doesn't make it ethical or right.
How true. Also true is the opposite, just because something IS codified into law doesn't make it unethical or wrong. Bring forth the DMCA.
Suprise (Score:5, Insightful)
What a surprise.
How about, "People who don't think about what larger effect their actions will have are amoral, while people who recognize that their actions will have larger, detrimental effects on others and still engage in those actions are evil."
People behave according to their character.
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How about "People who don't think abou the larger effects their actions will have are reckless, while people who recognize that their actions will have larger, detrimental effects on others and still engage in those actions are moral, immoral or amoral, depending on whether the
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Right. They "accidentally" went to a black hat SEO to push up their site rank.
More abstractly, there is a difference between being reckless, which involves jeopardizing you
This should have been dumped in the Firehose! (Score:5, Informative)
Can I definitively claim that there's a connection between a willingness to embrace blackhat SEO and a willingness to cut corners in other areas of business? No, of course not.
So in other words, he's drawing a conclusion based on one (or a handful, who knows) of cases and then this particular author made a story out of it and Slashdot picked it up?
Yeah, non-issue; move along.
It *is* an issue (Score:4, Interesting)
Yeah, non-issue; move along
The mere fact that Cutts can't prove definitively that there is a correlation between use of blackhat SEO techniques and cutting corners in other areas doesn't mean that his statement is without merit. Anecdotal evidence has shown me that in the business world if you cut corners in one place, you're likely to do the same in others. Hire undocumented workers. Pay people under the table. Don't divulge some earnings. Mix your personal and business accounts. Tarnish other businesses with innuendo. Hire a blackhat SEO specialist.
I think it is important to recognize that SEO is in the mainstream of most big business operations these days, and it is no longer appropriate to think of blackhat SEO as just a "geek topic." It's a front and center business ethics issue.
Parent
Makes sense to me (Score:5, Insightful)
If you are willing to pretend you are something you are not to the search engines (which is basically what black hat SEO consists of) in order to lure customers to your site, there is a good chance you are willing to do something similar to the customers in order to ensure a sale.
Gaming google? (Score:2)
Cutting corners (Score:2)
Sounds a lot like Microsoft noises ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Gateway to crime? (Score:4, Funny)
Kid: "YOU, alright! I learned it from watching you!"
in the late 80s (Score:2)
now, new york city just recorded its lowest yearly count of murders since they started counting. real estate values are soaring in previously bombed out blighted neighborhoods
and people have thought alot about the philosophies during the 90s that helped clean up the city, and two stand out:
1. compstat. computerized, statistical analysis of crime trends, up t
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Well, I wouldn't equate the two quite so strongly. Gaming a system is one thing, violent crimes are another.
However, there are reasons why people game the system. In a search engine like google, new web sites are at a distinct disadvantage to older, more established web sites. Olde web sites have longer histories, have more links back to them, are more "poplar", etc than newer sites. The barrier t
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1. compstat. computerized, statistical analysis of crime trends, up to the minute, down to the apartment building and block. this allowed the police brass to stay ahead of trends tactically
2. the broken window theory. which is the point of this entire comment:
Funny, I recently read a book, which stated that the explosion of the prison population and the large number of abortions 20 years earl
Speaking of cutting corners (Score:2)
I guess the summary decided to join in on the corner cutting...
This reminds me of a commercial I saw... (Score:3, Insightful)
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A bit off-topic, but the tagging here is odd (Score:2)
Did hundreds or dozens of Slashdotters not know how to spell Chewbacca? Sounds pretty much impossible, given the kind of crowd.
Surely there must be some other explanation? *shrug*
Anonymous taggers (Score:2)
1) Slashdot's tags are obviously manipulated. I don't bother to tag anymore because I know that the only ones that show up are from people with bots or some other scheme with the ability to promote any bizarre tag they think up.
2) Tags that pass judgement on the article, rather than merely classifying it, are the lowest f
Well, at least... (Score:2)
Cutts makes no sense (Score:3, Insightful)
My 5 cents... (Score:2)
In this optic people exploiting google's deficiencies are just giving google the chance to make their algorithms better... and being better is how the become #1 after all.
I'm pr
bad summary! bad, naughty summary. (Score:2)
Might I suggest you put "death penalty" in quotes?
I don't think Google wields quite that much power, at least not yet, and it's a very confusing sentence with an opposite meaning until the metaphor part kicks in.
Google (Score:5, Insightful)
I know that a lot of the things they push may be in the best interests of the tech industry but at the same time it doesnt seem right that they have anointed themselves as the police and lawmakers of the internet. (how many lobbyists do they have again trying to get laws written which are friendly to them?)
Unsuprising (Score:2)
Eventually it becomes "please remove the copyright info from this jscript", then send an email to this "single opt-in" list of 10 million addresses, and lastly "Can you use an Ess Que El injecion to insert our website address in other people's sites?".
One big slippery slope to crackersville.
Wazzat? (Score:2)
What else would you expect him to say? (Score:2)
Google Cuts Corners on Taxes With Irish Subsidiary (Score:4, Informative)
It's funny - laugh. (Score:4, Insightful)
But it's Google, so they get a pass and people take them almost seriously.
When will they learn? (Score:2)
It's just like caffeine is a gateway drug for meth addiction.
I expect a whole new government agency and "War on " campaign soon.
How to help? (Score:2)
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Correlation != Causation (Score:5, Insightful)
The same holds true for marijuana as a gateway drug. People think that taking marijuana almost always leads to harder drugs. That's simply not true. The fact that someone jumps from mary jane to cocaine does happen, but it has nothing to do with the drug, but the person using it. Just like people continue to think "prostitution" is a gateway crime and therefore want laws strictly enforced. If government would simply make it legal and regulate it, crimes tied to prostitution would be drastically reduced, but that would require going against the moral majority and thinking outside the box.
If you are willing to do one dishonest and illegal thing (and do it with no remorse), you are likely to do others (i.e. correlation). It all has to do with the morals of the person committing the act. The article doesn't say much but it makes sense in all other areas. But stop calling it "Gateway crime," I'm sick of that label because it implies causation and leads to stupid crime prevention policies.
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Note it is not a reliable indicator of criminal activity, as there is quite a leap from cheating a search engine to mugging old ladies on the street. But it shows a certain tendency to break the rules and promoting one'Äs own goal at the expense of others.
So I would not be overly surprised to read about Google executives being caught with some outright illegal actions.
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Neither of those is actually, actively, intentionally dishonest. Black-hat SEO is.