Don't get me wrong, Google is bad/evil in many ways, but the public suffix list exists to solve a real risk to users. Google is flagging this for a legit reason in this particular case.
It's not a legit reason at all. A website isn't "unsafe" just because it looks similar to another one to Google's AI. At best such an automated flag should trigger a human review, not take the website offline.
Google needs to be held liable for the damages they do in cases like this or they will continue to implement the laziest solutions as long as they can externalize the costs.
> the safe search guards catch more bad actors than they false positive good actors.
Well, if the legal system used the same "Guilty until proven innocent" model, we would definitely "catch more bad actors than false positive good actors".
You do not want malware protection to be running at the speed of the legal system.
A better analogy, unfortunately for all the reasons it's unfortunate, is police: acting on the partial knowledge in the field to try to make the not-worst decision.
> people keep using Google's browser because the safe search guards catch more bad actors than they false positive good actors.
This is the first thing i disable in Chrome, Firefox and Edge. The only safe thing they do is safely sending all my browsing history to Google or Microsoft.
That's a reasonable thing for you to do (especially if you have some other signal source you use for malware protection), but HN readers are rarely representative of average users.
This feature is there for my mother-in-law, who never saw a popup ad she didn't like. You might think I'm kidding; I am not. I periodically had to go into her Android device and dump twenty apps she had manually installed from the Play Store because they were in a ring of promoting each other.
I will go with Google being bad / evil for 500.
Google 90s to 2010 is nothings like Google 2025. There is a reason they removed "Don't be evil" ... being evil and authoritarian makes more money.
Looking at you Manifest V2 ... pour one out for your homies.
Don't get me wrong, Google is bad/evil in many ways, but the public suffix list exists to solve a real risk to users. Google is flagging this for a legit reason in this particular case.
It's not a legit reason at all. A website isn't "unsafe" just because it looks similar to another one to Google's AI. At best such an automated flag should trigger a human review, not take the website offline.
Google needs to be held liable for the damages they do in cases like this or they will continue to implement the laziest solutions as long as they can externalize the costs.
Sympathy for the devil, people keep using Google's browser because the safe search guards catch more bad actors than they false positive good actors.
> the safe search guards catch more bad actors than they false positive good actors.
Well, if the legal system used the same "Guilty until proven innocent" model, we would definitely "catch more bad actors than false positive good actors".
That's a tricky one, isn't it.
You do not want malware protection to be running at the speed of the legal system.
A better analogy, unfortunately for all the reasons it's unfortunate, is police: acting on the partial knowledge in the field to try to make the not-worst decision.
> people keep using Google's browser because the safe search guards catch more bad actors than they false positive good actors.
This is the first thing i disable in Chrome, Firefox and Edge. The only safe thing they do is safely sending all my browsing history to Google or Microsoft.
That's a reasonable thing for you to do (especially if you have some other signal source you use for malware protection), but HN readers are rarely representative of average users.
This feature is there for my mother-in-law, who never saw a popup ad she didn't like. You might think I'm kidding; I am not. I periodically had to go into her Android device and dump twenty apps she had manually installed from the Play Store because they were in a ring of promoting each other.
This is not an honest argument. Most people don't even know this web censorship mechanism exists until they see something (usually legit) blocked.
Do they then switch browsers in response?
downvoted for saying truth
many google employee is in here, so I dont expect them to be agree with you