Google disabled my husband's account • Hacker News Board

Re: Google disabled my husband's account

#191

Post by naringas » Thu, Oct 15, 2020, 6:46 PM UTC

kodah wrote: post #168

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…

I don't think the internet was ever going to become regulated. What did occur post-2007 was that what made the internet work as a disparate ecosystem of loosely connected destinations (news groups, message boards, blogs, misc websites) that all played their own very important role, controlled and owned by their own communities became one platform under Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, etc... and was controlled and owned by…

imo the need for 'centralization' comes from the fact that in order for different people to understand each other, they must use the same dictionary (so to say). So the 'dictionary' is a centralized construction. It must be the same for everybody.

If our dictionaries vary to much in their definitions then our communication becomes more and more difficult.

Maybe dictionary is not the best analogy (this is just an analogy) but I hope I'm getting my point across with this example.

Re: Google disabled my husband's account

#192

Post by mdavidn » Thu, Oct 15, 2020, 6:46 PM UTC

daotoad wrote: post #165

So, the thing that google has that I value most is broad single sign-on support. Is there a service (other than Facebook) that has this capability? Is there a technology that we should be driving adoption of that would allow me to host my own SSO?

Use a password manager like 1Password instead. Don't tie your accounts together.

Re: Google disabled my husband's account

#193

Post by elyobo » Thu, Oct 15, 2020, 6:47 PM UTC

the8472 wrote: post #135

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…

> which its billion-dollar shepherd assumes is infallible. I think the "cattle, not pets" implications haven't quite sunken in yet. Stragglers get turned into mutton.

Well, presumably not straggling cattle.

Re: Google disabled my husband's account

#194

Post by ryandrake » Thu, Oct 15, 2020, 6:48 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 have my own domain, and run exim+dovecot on a Linux machine for E-mail. This setup has run solidly for years. I serve E-mail for family and friends. No reliance on some cloud account for what is essentially the gateway to all of your password reset functions. When I first set it up, I had some deliverability problems, but once I had DKIM and SPF set up, it's been rock solid.

Re: Google disabled my husband's account

#195

Post by bleepblorp » Thu, Oct 15, 2020, 6:48 PM UTC

lotsofpulp wrote: post #144

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…

> The only reason these tech companies managed to get so big is because they'll cheat at anything that requires human scale. Support, moderation, taking responsibility for the content they host. They somehow managed to skirt on that just as the web was transitioning from a wild west to a somewhat ingrained, regulated place and the world is worse off for it. People willingly chose the free option and chose to not pay…

The argument that customers chose to be ripped off by opting for 'free' is not supported by evidence that paid services are any more accountable.

Anyone who's had to deal with Google support for paid business accounts will tell you that the situation is barely any different for paying customers. Things might be different for very large businesses who are spending millions per month, but that's hardly relevant to how Google might handle email customers hypothetically paying $9.95 a month for a personal mailbox.

.

I do not understand why anyone defends consumer abuse by businesses. Unless they work for said businesses, or own their stock, there is absolutely nothing to gain by siding with an abusive business over an abused customer. The business isn't going to reward their supporters' loyalty by treating them better.

Collaborating with hostile entities is not a redeeming quality.

Re: Google disabled my husband's account

#196

Post by swiley » Thu, Oct 15, 2020, 6:48 PM UTC

theandrewbailey wrote: post #79

If anyone has a Google account, you need to Takeout regularly. https://takeout.google.com

You have a tiny window to download a huge archive and you can't restart the download.

In theory it's great in practice you don't have access to it.

Re: Google disabled my husband's account

#197

Post by Denvercoder9 » Thu, Oct 15, 2020, 6:49 PM UTC

daotoad wrote: post #165

So, the thing that google has that I value most is broad single sign-on support. Is there a service (other than Facebook) that has this capability? Is there a technology that we should be driving adoption of that would allow me to host my own SSO?

> Is there a technology that we should be driving adoption of that would allow me to host my own SSO?

OpenID was that technology, but it didn't really get any adoption. OpenID Connect seems to be the replacement based upon OAuth, and seems to be pretty easy to implement if you already support OAuth.

Re: Google disabled my husband's account

#198

Post by Daniel_sk » Thu, Oct 15, 2020, 6:49 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?

I have done this and it depends. There were several ways provided by Google how to export the pictures and upload them and they killed them all. The last good way was to link your Google Drive with Google Photos and then install it on desktop and let it download the whole library (and then install iCloud and let it upload everything). Google Takeout isn't without issues, a lot of people including me had problems generating the takeout link, it failed for several tries and took days. And then they break Live Photos take on iPhone which were backed up by Google Photos, Takeout doesn't export them in a proper way (maybe it does now, I don't know). There is just no simple way how download Google Photos. Compare this with iCloud which does this by default. So what I did was kind of stupid - but it allowed me to transfer all pictures from Photos to iCloud in full quality and including Live Photos. I downloaded Google Photos on iPhone and then I selected as many pictures as I could by dragging the finger and then click "Save to Photos". iCloud will back it up. Rinse and repeat. You can't select more than few hundred, so it took me a while to upload 70 GB. Totally worth it - I am never going back to Google Photos.

Re: Google disabled my husband's account

#199

Post by ocdtrekkie » Thu, Oct 15, 2020, 6:49 PM UTC

daotoad wrote: post #165

So, the thing that google has that I value most is broad single sign-on support. Is there a service (other than Facebook) that has this capability? Is there a technology that we should be driving adoption of that would allow me to host my own SSO?

Sure, there are standards for SSO, like OpenID Connect. Your biggest problem is just that most websites and apps refuse to support open standards, preferring to give people the choice of Google, Facebook, or Twitter.

So you can easily set up your own SSO, but nobody will let you use it to log in.

Re: Google disabled my husband's account

#200

Post by bilalq » Thu, Oct 15, 2020, 6:49 PM UTC

actuator wrote: post #14

I have been thinking about this for a while. Considering I prefer to keep the important data/emails on Gmail or Google drive for security and I really consider it important. Would it help if Google had a paid tier? Say, if you can get into an annual plan, similar to what's there for hardware devices like Apple Care+. Just that, in this there is someone to help you through issues. We used to pay 10% of our AWS bill fo…

I've been a Google customer paying thousands per month and support was nothing more than lipservice. None of the support agents could do anything and I had to wait for an "account specialist" to reply every 24-48 hours with non-answers and requests for documents that I'd already sent 3-4 times again and again.

Support and customer experience is an afterthought for Google. They probably don't set out to be cruel, but they're very cavalier about incidental casual cruelty.