Google disabled my husband's account • Hacker News Board

Re: Google disabled my husband's account

#121

Post by partiallypro » Thu, Oct 15, 2020, 6:33 PM UTC

breakingcups wrote: post #83

It's incredibly Kafka-eqsue that you get banned for a supposed violation that you're supposed to appeal, but you don't know what you're being accused of doing. This is exacerbated by the fact that 9 out of 10 times a story like this appears it's an algorithm gone rogue which its billion-dollar shepherd assumes is infallible. The remaining 1 time it's because someone knows how to abuse reporting systems to get someone…

It took 6 months for Facebook to get to an appeal of mine to unban a page. I was happy it was unbanned, but the ticket said "1-2 business weeks" in the turn around...I was never contacted for an entire 6 months. If that had been a crucial page for me that brought in revenue for me, I'd have been completely screwed. Google is also hard to get a hold of for anything unless you're a partner.

Re: Google disabled my husband's account

#122

Post by spidersouris » Thu, Oct 15, 2020, 6:33 PM UTC

kbenson wrote: post #40

zymhan wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would Google treat a TOS violation differently for a paid account?

I think the hope is that you'll have better customer support options if you're actually paying them money, rather than the block hole that is the support for their free tier of products.

To be honest, I don't understand this. Why should someone paying for a product get better support than someone who doesn't? I understand companies which sell plans so that some users can have priority support, but quality should not change according to how much money you give. It's absurd. Everyone should be in the same boat.

Re: Google disabled my husband's account

#123

Post by dade_ » Thu, Oct 15, 2020, 6:33 PM UTC

martinko wrote: post #15

This is one of the reasons why I've finally began migrating to a custom domain + proton mail. Can't imagine the time it would take me to get back all the accounts registered to my email, not to mention those to which access would be lost forever.

I switched to mailbox.org a few years ago. Service has been good and reliable at a good price.

Re: Google disabled my husband's account

#124

Post by mixmastamyk » Thu, Oct 15, 2020, 6:33 PM UTC

Reminds me of Amazon. After I listed my own book for sale there, the account can no longer go anywhere near any page related to sales of other products, returning a "Not Authorized". To even read about the subject, I have to log out first. My account with twenty years of trust history has been reduced to buy only. Should I abandon it? I'm not sure.

Re: Google disabled my husband's account

#125

Post by ffpip » Thu, Oct 15, 2020, 6:33 PM UTC

cycop wrote: post #69

ffpip wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

7 billion people use Google. If you look at the likeliness of it happening to one guy out of 7 billion, it would be very, very small. But the problem is, once it is banned, you will probably lose a lot of important stuff permanently.

lol , 7 billion is way too high of an estimate of people actually using their free services to store valuable information. I would say closer to 70 million

> I would say closer to 70 million

I want to negotiate, but since you started with such a low number, it won't be worth it.

700 million people only from my country (India) would be a good start if you want to continue.

Re: Google disabled my husband's account

#126

Post by dleslie » Thu, Oct 15, 2020, 6:33 PM UTC

martinko wrote: post #15

This is one of the reasons why I've finally began migrating to a custom domain + proton mail. Can't imagine the time it would take me to get back all the accounts registered to my email, not to mention those to which access would be lost forever.

I did it a few years ago and have been quite happy with the outcome.

I still use a Google account for my Android phone, but my PinePhone should be shipping in a few weeks.

I'm done with Google. Good riddance.

Re: Google disabled my husband's account

#127

Post by motoboi » Thu, Oct 15, 2020, 6:34 PM UTC

sim_io wrote: post #108

What is a good way to move from Google Photos to iCloud? i have a library over 300GB, is there any product that handles this?

If you have the space on your device, you can takeout.google.com the photos out of there and them upload to iCloud.

Re: Google disabled my husband's account

#128

Post by alpaca128 » Thu, Oct 15, 2020, 6:34 PM UTC

itg wrote: post #12

Right now I have everything tied up to my Google account (primary email, drive, photos). Has anyone moved away and if so, to what?

I use a more privacy-focused email provider, their lowest tier costs 1 Euro/month and is enough for me, which means I still have near free email with calendar sync.

I don't upload any photos or other files anymore, though. The problem is that you can never fully trust those cloud providers to keep the data safe, so you need other backups anyways. I was thinking about using a more trustworthy service for off-site backups though.

Re: Google disabled my husband's account

#129

Post by not2b » Thu, Oct 15, 2020, 6:34 PM UTC

cycop wrote: post #69

ffpip wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

7 billion people use Google. If you look at the likeliness of it happening to one guy out of 7 billion, it would be very, very small. But the problem is, once it is banned, you will probably lose a lot of important stuff permanently.

lol , 7 billion is way too high of an estimate of people actually using their free services to store valuable information. I would say closer to 70 million

This article claims 1.8 billion users (though some people have more than one account):

https://techjury.net/blog/gmail-statistics/

Re: Google disabled my husband's account

#130

Post by dredmorbius » Thu, Oct 15, 2020, 6:34 PM UTC

blunte wrote: post #72

martinko wrote: post #15

This is one of the reasons why I've finally began migrating to a custom domain + proton mail. Can't imagine the time it would take me to get back all the accounts registered to my email, not to mention those to which access would be lost forever.

Unfortunately Protonmail is not good for long term mail storage. Their web mail app has hardly improved in years, and it is abysmal in terms of search and handling thousands of emails. If you depend on PM, you may find some years later that your emails are trapped and incredibly difficult to access except painfully individually, with much manual effort.

Multi-year mostly-satisfied Protonmail user and ... can confirm this.

My gold standard is mutt with its powerful and fast search filters (gmail is a serious downgrade).

Protonmail's lack of search is crippling.

Email export ... I don't even want to think about.