Google Bans Bail Bond Ads, Invites Regulation
marginalrevolution.com
marginalrevolution.com
The search algorithm goes way out of its way to determine some measure of "legitimacy." Obviously this is a vague and hard-to-define measure, but the goal is commendable: show results that are both relevant to the user according to Google's relevance metrics and legitimate according to who links to it, quality of the page, freshness, etc. Whatever qualms you might have about the vagaries of the search algorithm, you can't dispute that it's difficult to game.
Meanwhile ads are chosen by what brings the most long term value to Google. Gaming this system is much easier, and usually begins with paying more per click. This favors advertisers with higher margins, which is harmless for innocuous queries like "flowers" which make up the bulk of search ads. For bail bonds, however, this favors advertisers with higher margins, which in turn rewards exploitative providers over the legitimate bail bondsmen this author seems to think will be harmed. If anything, this is actually a boon to the more socially-minded bail bondsmen this article is concerned about: exploitative bail bonds businesses that go out of their way to saddle their customers with debt will not appear on the top of the page, raising more legitimate ones.
Another point: one of the consequences of being able to pay for ranking is you can place ads on terms that are not really related to your business. For instance, "Home Depot" queries tend to show ads for Lowes and other competitors. In a similar way, searching for "bail bond counseling" and other terms tends to include at least one for-profit bail bond operation that offers no or nominal counseling. Meanwhile if there are no ads, then the legitimate counseling services will float to the top of the page. Likewise for queries for all the other services this article claims will be hurt.
Source/disclaimer: These are my personal opinions as someone who works in ads at Google, (but was not involved in this decision). All my points come from publicly available info. Please don't mistake this for anything but my own views.
Obviously this won't happen. I would argue that this is because bail bond services are demonized as exploiting the poor, while services white collar professionals typically use don't get the same treatment--precisely because it's easy to demonize something you will never need as predatory and useless.
[1] Though I would dispute it: higher margin doesn't equal "more exploitative," which is why we make purchasing decisions by thinking about consumer surplus instead of about how high the producer's margins were. I might purchase a new flagship phone instead of a $150 knockoff even if the former has higher margins. Or I might purchase a cheaper, better laptop from a company with high margins (and a dialed-in supply chain) rather than a one-off build from someone who is barely covering their (much higher) costs.
Well, yes: they're a unique feature of the US justice system that allows people to be financially penalized by the police before any kind of trial. The entire system should simply be abolished.
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I posted this on the blog:
Google is banning ads aka paid placements - organic search results are still fine, including reviews of bail bondsmen, etc.
Put another way, Google is simply refusing to profit from this industry and refusing to allow money to skew access to information.
How again is this a bad thing???
Nothing personal against you, but as a user I find that google's algorithms are trivially gamed by the SEO industry. Apart from the ads themselves, I personally think a small ranking boost for pages that don't run ads will go a long way to clean up the search results.
Google apparently knows (through its consultation with these thoughtful non-profits) which orgs aren't going to exploit those who need a bail bond. Why not use the ad space to point people to those orgs? (Per my other comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17022103 )
It's highly unlikely that google (a company whose business model is selling ads) will prioritise sites without ads.
They're going to still be making tons of money from paid ads in the search results, youtube, cloud services, and other google properties.
And doctors make most of their revenue from sick people! Makers of cheap food make most of their revenue from poor hungry people! Makers of cheap cars make most of their revenue from low-income people just trying to get to work!
The level of ignorance in Google's statement is breathtaking, reflecting the mistaken view that selling goods and services to poor people is a bad thing. Bail bondsmen provide a valuable service: they allow people for whom bail is required, because a judge deems them a risk for not showing up at trial, to be released and keep going to work.
If bail bonds are being disproportionately required for people in low-income and minority communities, that's the government's fault. Targeting the bail bondsmen doesn't fix that problem--if those people can't make bail, they'll just stay in jail and potentially lose their jobs. Indeed, preventing them from advertising makes the problem worse, because it reduces competition in the market that would drive interest rates down.
> including through opaque financing offers that can keep people in debt for months or years.
This would be a way to make their logic not horrible.
Does reordering charges to overdraft someone more than they should be provide economic benefit to society at large? No. Does it give the bank additional economic gain? Yes.
Does charging higher than necessary interest rates to low-income, low-information consumers provide economic benefit to society at large? No.[1] Does it give the lender additional economic gain? Yes.
It is rent seeking, quite clearly.
[1]: In fact, there's a decent argument to be made that in the long term it lowers the velocity of money and actively harms the economy.
Wikipedia has a more specific definition of rent seeking: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking.
> Rent-seeking is an attempt to obtain economic rent (i.e., the portion of income paid to a factor of production in excess of what is needed to keep it employed in its current use) by manipulating the social or political environment in which economic activities occur, rather than by creating new wealth.
With regards to pay-day lending, what is "higher than necessary?" Payday lending is an incredibly competitive market--not only is there a payday lender on every corner in poor neighborhoods, but such loans are easily available online, and there is competition from pawn shops, etc. Interest rates for payday loans almost certainly reflect a competitive market price accounting for the risk of default.
There is a good argument that increasing cost of visibility reduces competition. That a ban on Google advertising for this industry does that is far less clear; notably, banning advertising means the top relevant search result is the top organic result, not the top ad, so you've now potentially got similar visibility with zero Google ads spend as before took considerable ad spend.
No.
> that paid advertisements decrease competition in entire industries where organic search results would otherwise provide information discovery closer to optimal?
If Google's entire business model were seeking only search ads for those industries (or any ads for those industries where experience showed most ad conversions would be from searches for which industry competitors would be shown in lead positions in organic results), that would be a damning indictment of Google's whole business model, sure.
As that is not the case, and there seems to be good reason to believe that in many industries Google ads lower the net cost of visibility, it's probably more an illustration. that something being generally good can still be bad in specific cases, and that the fallacy of division is still a fallacy.
No, not in the same way. If I search “bail bonds san diego”, the first page of organic results are almost san diego bail bonds agencies, the same type of results (though not in the same order, and more of them) on the ads at the top of the page.
Lots of other industries the relevance of results of a product name and locations search are a lot less focussed on sellers, making the search results less directly useful for a search for places to buy. (This may be good results, because those queries may be less frequently supporting purchase-searches and more frequently searching for other web resources related to the topic; but it does mean without direct search advertising, sellers as a whole are less visible.)
Which is one of the reasons health care isn't charged for at the point of use in developed countries.
One way to solve the problem is to try harder to police it. Another (if alternative ways of searching are better) is to get out of the market. This can be a reasonable decision even if it's a perfectly legitimate market.
I'm guessing Google doesn't want to devote the resources into figuring out which bail bond advertisers are legitimate. They have lots of other rules about not accepting ads for legitimate businesses.
[1] https://marketingland.com/locksmiths-try-sue-google-fake-loc...
This is untrue. While bail bonds are a major feature of the U.S. legal system, removing the whole bail bond system would be an improvement.
How would this improve the system? This would mean that only rich people who can bail themselves out would be able to await trial as free men/women. Poorer people would stay in jail and presumably lose their jobs.
The idea of ensuring someone shows up to trial by holding onto something they value isn't terrible, but the implementation certainly is. If you want to set bail, why is it based mostly on the crime and not on the wealth of the suspect? $1000 of bail means nothing to a billionaire and everything to someone living hand to mouth.
Oh wait, the Copenhagen Ethicists[1] would clutch the pearls at the mere discussion of that, too.
But that wasn't core to my point, which was that the criticism of bail bonds lacks a coherent value system and model the problem such that can consistently identify improvements, and instead, just responds with outrage at every proposal.
The critics not only don't lack such a vision, there is a fairly consistent outline of an alternative proposed, and it's even had an implementation in the District of Columbia for a couple of decades.
Edit: The point isn't whether you can refactor to a better system. The point was the lack of a coherent model for what local changes would make it better or worse, and why.
It has little direct effect but draws attention to the issue.
And to the groups Google worked with.
One of which is also a prime backer of the active CA legislation to begin adopting the alternative model in CA.
> $1000 of bail means nothing to a billionaire and everything to someone living hand to mouth.
This is surely true, but also irrelevant since bail is set in relation to the individual's means. Pretending that a rich person could ever have such insignificant bail is disingenuous.
Pre-trial supervision instead of money bail when the community risk doesn't preclude release in the first place. This is, incidentally, already in place in DC.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/when-it-c...
This was undoubtedly also because she was a flight risk. But this is the case with all super-wealthy people who have means to flee the jurisdiction (private jets or access to other private transportation).
This doesn't mean a rich person will have a high bail amount for all types of crimes, but this would be taking into consideration their ties to the community (own a mansion in town? You're probably not going to leave it behind. Ditto for your high-paying job.) Not saying any of this is fair — just that this is how the bail-setting factors get applied.
I think the non-profit system might deserve some exploration. I posted above about a TED talk I watched recently on the subject and their numbers look quite interesting. It'd be great to see it replicated elsewhere.
It's probably a good idea for the penalties to be the same in society regardless of wealth.
It is important to be able to sufficiently deter people from committing various crimes/infractions, and this is one way to do it. In the US, we have "points" that go on your record, which means that rich people can't get speeding tickets that frequently — you eventually lose your license. And if you're going 25 over the limit, you can be charged with reckless driving.
It's reasonable to disagree.
Edit: Added website link.
[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3B24RaqA33k [2] - http://www.thebronxfreedomfund.org/
You could go completely cashless and say that most small offenses are just released on their own recognizance and everybody who IS a flight risk gets an ankle bracelet.
What do they expect is going to happen when you make it harder for potential customers to find alternatives to the loudest bail bondsman? You just make it easier for the fewer, established bondsmen to offer harsher terms.
With that said, there is a right way to approach problems like this[3]: actually help the ostensible victims find a good alternative that does care about not exploiting them.
For an example of the model, here's my experience when I visited a California check-cashing place (long story): before cashing the check, on ridiculous terms, they walk you through several cheaper alternatives (no idea if this is a legal requirement).
I don't see anything in their announcement[2] that suggests they'll take this approach, which would be something like: replace the "bad ads" with ones for the superior, non-profit alternatives that they want these communities to use. It's just unhelpful moralizing from advocates with a dubious model of the harm's causation.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10367855
[2] Warning: it will probably set off your add blocker: https://adwords.googleblog.com/2018/05/google-bans-ads-for-b...
[3] by "this", I mean a case where there's a bad system, and a for profit group that's offering a local improvement but seems slimy nonetheless
That the bail bondsman is also somehow involved in legal advice navigating pretrial conditions is a further crock of excrement upon the system.
Also I'm astounded the Koch brothers are involved in this, and I'm curious what their profit motive is as I don't believe they have a single bit of altruism in them.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2015/12/09/char...
The Koch brothers have a vested interest in pointing out examples (and this is one of them), where liberal feel-good policies make the lives of actual poor people worse.
The cash bail system and the bail bonds industry it supports are not “liberal feel good” policies.
Opposition to the cash bail system and the government-spawned industry it supports, while to be sure prominent on the left, also has notable support among (even right-)libertarians.
Perhaps, but your argument about their interest in the present issue only made sense if they were overt critics, when the only reason they are in the discussion isn't criticism of the policy but Google crediting Koch when announcing the policy.
are bail bonds a "liberal feel-good policy"?
If you can't put up the whole amount, you can pay a bail bondsman a fee and you become his problem.
Both these concepts are good things for the accused. What is your alternative? Fill up the jails? Just use the honor system?
Lots more here:
Bail, no, but money bail, yes; there is an active movement, at the federal level and within several states, to move away from, and ultimately eliminate, the system of money bail. Kamala Harris (D-CA) and Rand Paul (R-KY) introduced a bill last year with that aim; in California, SB 10 passed the Senate last year and is now in the Assembly.
For someone who is already comparatively poor (ie. no savings), why is "being a fugitive who also owes someone money" worse than "being a fugitive"?
This speaks more about what flavor of marketing you've bought into than any sort of real understanding.
Nobody thinks they themselves is a villain. The Koch brothers have become political figures because they believe what they're doing is morally right.
the stats on the freedom fund's site don't make it sound as though you're doing anyone any favors by leaving them in jail. owing money to the bail bondsman isn't great, but it sounds better than losing your job because you're stuck in jail for weeks awaiting trial.
As an example from my industry (full disclosure- as cofounder of an Obamacare-only startup, I am very biased here):
Search for 'Obamacare' on Google and you'll be presented with ads for sites that do not sell actual Obamacare plans, but use misleading language suggesting they do. The goal is to bait and switch - bring people in promising Obamacare plans, and then sell them plans that pay higher commissions but do not meet the requirements of the Affordable Care Act such as no restrictions on preexisting conditions, coverage of maternity services, paying for hospitalizion, etc etc. This is definitely unethical (people think they are covered for e.g. hospital visits and aren't) and in some cases illegal under state insurance law, but state enforcement personnel don't have the bandwidth to audit Google ads, and Google's auditors don't appear to have the industry-specific knowledge to catch that behavior.
Given this move with bail bonds, will Google seek to more broadly enforce an ethical standard on its platform (not to mention laws)? Or is this a one off? Note that insurance is a significant portion of Google's ad revenue, whereas bail bonds are negligible.
The case made for that is distinctly underwhelming.
> Bail bonds are a legal service.
That doesn't mean Google needs to carry ads for them.
> Indeed, they are a necessary service for the legal system to function.
No, they aren't. They are a necessary service for the abusive system of excessive cash bail to function, but the entire system of cash bail is facing widespread (and not along traditional party lines) criticism as being incompatible with the fundamental values of our legal system.
But even if this description was accurate, that doesn't mean Google carrying advertising for the industry is necessary.
> Whatever the cause, preventing advertising doesn’t reduce the need to pay bail it simply makes it harder to find a lender.
No, it doesn't, as doing a Google Search for “bail bonds <city>” and comparing the advertising results, map results, and organic web search results would show.
> Restrictions on advertising in the bail industry, as elsewhere, are also likely to reduce competition and raise prices.
The source cited for the argument for the general effect here studied effect of advertising taxes, which increase the price for equal visibility; whether the Google ban is in any way comparable really depends what the main mechanism is for people finding bail bonds through Google-placed ads. If it's mostly search advertisement on relevant terms, banning the ads gives organic results the same effect that paid ads use to have, and reduces the cost of visibility, which would have the exact opposite effect of an advertising tax. This would, therefore, be expected to increase competition and lower prices.
There is a good argument that the government should ensure adequate water supplies in the event of disaater. But if the government fails to do that, banning private businesses from “gouging” people by selling water at market rates feels good but actually hurts people. Targeting bail bondsmen in a world where the government abuses minority and low income communities by requiring excessive bail is likewise misguided.
Is exactly what lobbying to get rid of bail bonds is, but not what Google is doing.
Perhaps you meant “money bail”, not just “bail bonds”. But they are doing exactly that. Refusing to take money generated by that system and crediting people working to eliminate the system for that, directing media attention to the issue and established reform advocates, is a way of doing that.
> banning private businesses from “gouging” people by selling water at market rates feels good but actually hurts people
Yes, which is why it would be bad if Google, as you suggest, lobbied against bail bonds. But no one is banning bail bondsmen from selling their product, Google just isn't taking paid ads from the industry.
Your argument undermines itself. When the government fails to act, private parties may act in their own best interest. Private interests may be moral, not purely economical. Pushing Google to sell ads at a discount (compared to the cost of building a reputable website) is as bad as pushing a water dealer to cut their prices.
And finally, it's cold comfort to the thousands (millions?) of abused people for a rich elite to tell everyone else that they should merely lobby and wait until the government deigns to lift the yoke, instead of taking direct action to help.
The whole infraction -> arrest -> bail -> fines -> probation cycle in my state is highly punitive. Trivial things can lead to a warrant / arrest. Bondsman collect their fees, the courts get theirs. If they've sat in jail for a bit, they may be getting charged for the privilege. Afterwards the person ends up on probation, which collects more fees and produces more opportunity for someone to be arrested again over something trivial.
It's nuts, and that's just one tiny aspect of the policing-for-profit economy.
Then Google and Facebook use this and anything else to ask for regulation. Because regulation for entrenched players is just collusion to prevent disruption which will bump stock price.
Remember when their motto was “do no evil”... deciding they should defacto censor the Internet is evil.
Sure no one is going to go to war for ICO and bail bonds ads, but if anyone can’t see the precendent for why this is bad - well - I’m sure some people will jump to tell me why Google is good for “looking out for us” or some such nonsense.
Applying the equal opportunity rules to advertising networks in general would be the legal battle of a lifetime. Applying them for commercial ads is never going to happen.
Well, you could extend that further: governments and their so called "justice systems" penalize communities of color and low income neighborhoods when they are at their most vulnerable . . . . expensive defense attorneys, years of probation fees, court fees, supervisory fees, law enforcement budgets are among the highest costs for communities. Court appointed lawyers are almost a sure way these poor folks are going to serve time, while wealthy offenders do probation or walk.
Mixing profit and capitalistic incentives with criminal justice is fundamentally flawed.
This feels like Google inviting in regulation here so that lawmakers can feel like they've done something good and just, and that Google can later rely on this saying, "Hey now, we're not fighting regulation! We invited you in to look at the bail bonds thing!"