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Comment by inerte | Hacker News Reader

If you're trying to do anything in terms of official documents, there's a middleman charging more. I searched for "passport application" the other day and it was 4 ads of people offering this service.

My dad was trying to get an ESTA visa a couple years ago and ended up paying twice the actual price, because he can't discern what's the official site or not.

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That's down to US Government policies. If you tried middle-manning any for-profit like that, you'd get a cease and desist letter really quickly. But USG doesn't seem to care. We can't reasonably expect Google to be a gatekeeper here.

That's not just the US. I've seen that myself with Vietnam and Seychelles, and I'm sure it's a problem with any other country where a visa or other documents are required

Last time i had to get a visa through these kind of channels, it looked almost deliberate. Outright bribing is now frowned upon, so they make the visa process as frustrating and opaque as possible. So that people have to either waste several days at the embassy, or go through one of those visa agencies instead. You pay for a totally legit above-the-table service, but it is effectively a "socially accepted bribe". And the administrative problem magically disappears.

Yes, it's the same everywhere. In any country with byzantine and convoluted visa and immigration procedures (i.e. most of them) there's a thriving industry of people who will eat the turds for you for a fee.

>If you tried middle-manning any for-profit like that,

I think that is called affiliate marketing.

We can absolutely expect Google to be a gatekeeper for advertisements they run on their platform. These aren't just middlemen, they're scams.

We shouldn't just be used to Google being allowed to essentially run infinite scams. Remember, they directly profit off the scams.

Its like if I had a billboard and then let someone put an ad up that said "give me all your money and you'll live forever!"

Am I off the hook? Why, lil ole me? I just run the billboard!

You might then say, well, obviously looking at every ad you accept is far too onerous! Its not like a billboard, because the billboard owner must see all the ads!

Which then I would reply - why is Google entitled to a business model like that? If they can't reasonable run their business in an ethical way... Perhaps they shouldn't run it all.

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