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Google disabled my husband's account

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Re: Google disabled my husband's account

#201

Post by Animats »

Sue in small claims court. Costs about $50 to file, plus $100 or so for a process server.

Check Google's terms of service.[1] They're not too bad. There's no forced arbitration. You can go to Small Claims Court in Santa Clara County, CA.

Google lists the reasons they can terminate an account. It's not a "sole discretion" thing; they have specific reasons listed. So Google will have to show in court that you violated those terms.

Definitely go. Google will have to send someone, or they lose.

In practice, you'll probably have your problem fixed shortly after your process server delivers the subpoena to 1600 Amphitheater Parkway.

California small claims court instructions: [2]

[1] https://policies.google.com/terms

[2] https://www.courts.ca.gov/1007.htm

Re: Google disabled my husband's account

#202

Post by neltnerb »

naringas wrote: post #191
kodah wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 anal…

I used the internet without facebook before it existed. I had a Facebook account for over a decade. I haven't had a Facebook account in two years.

To the extent that what you are saying is true, it is only true because these companies have walled themselves off. You used to be able to chat with Facebook users over XMPP even.

Re: Google disabled my husband's account

#203

Post by kodah »

naringas wrote: post #191
kodah wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 anal…

I understand the motivation. I work on platforms teams internally for companies (and have for a number of years). In smaller scale, this concept largely makes sense because developers at a single company come from a single culture which those developers largely have already bought into or are actively being shoveled into by corporate work. This is the role a lot of developer advocates play at companies who don't have external developer customers.

In large scale, what you're asking is more dubious. If you concede that the United States alone has 11 major cultures, then you have to begin a process of "on-boarding" everyone onto your new, structured culture that your platform is designed around. That's why these debates about who is represented in the building of the platform come about, because under that model those concerns take center stage and they should.

I guess what I'm saying is the whole problem never needed to exist. There's better ways to share information than being on one platform.

Re: Google disabled my husband's account

#204

Post by yorwba »

jeremyjh wrote: post #96
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…

Its only 9 times out of 10 when the story is escalated to the front page of Hacker News. For all we know, 99,999 times out of 100,000 its a case of fraud or law enforcement action that is completely correct and valid, and you do not give those actors information on how you detected them.

> you do not give those actors information on how you detected them.

Not about how you detected them, but you should tell them what you detected. E.g. if you're using a spam filter, you don't want spammers to know which exact keywords triggered the classification, but it wouldn't hurt much to let people know that their account was locked for sending spam instead of some other reason.

Re: Google disabled my husband's account

#205

Post by x87678r »

imhoguy wrote: post #119
x87678r wrote: post #55

My Dad has all his photos on a PC and HD backup. If something happens to him I know I can recover it all, I'm glad he doesn't rely on Google Photos, dropbox or similar.

Unless the disk is stored offsite then better install him some simple automated backup anyway. I keep such in case of theft or fire, hope it is never needed.

If something happened to him, how would I get access?

Re: Google disabled my husband's account

#206

Post by reaperducer »

sangnoir wrote: post #178
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'll play the devils advocate: moderating any platform is a challenging endeavor, mostly because of malicious users. Having all the rules broken down in detail allows bad actors to either get close to the line but not cross it, or abuse the system while technically not breaking any rules. As such, having very broad rules (read TOS) helps. Additionally, not having to explain exactly what was violated means that people…

I'll play the devils advocate

Why?

Re: Google disabled my husband's account

#207

Post by kodah »

neltnerb wrote: post #202
naringas wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 anal…

I used the internet without facebook before it existed. I had a Facebook account for over a decade. I haven't had a Facebook account in two years. To the extent that what you are saying is true, it is only true because these companies have walled themselves off. You used to be able to chat with Facebook users over XMPP even.

Yeah, I agree. If I remember XMPP was dropped while using that old adage of "scale", which maybe was real, but in the end the net effect is the same. Advanced users know a broader breadth of the internet while most internet users only know the depth of Facebook and other various platforms.

Re: Google disabled my husband's account

#208

Post by reaperducer »

vessenes wrote: post #116
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…

One thing that is tough about these stories is that there a class of US enforcement responses for which it is illegal to disclose why you responded. For instance, it is a prison-time offence for an individual employee of a financial institution to tell a customer they filed a SAR on them. The way you get kafka is BSA compliance officers have personal liability for this reporting, so they prefer not to have customers…

Google is not a government. It just acts like one.

Re: Google disabled my husband's account

#209

Post by jrockway »

Eyas wrote: post #171
goldcd wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would have thought ensuring that workers at google, getting absolutely no special access to specific other accounts, is pretty much the most sacrosanct rule. i.e. Google's unlikely to hand over the dossier they've assembled on 'what your husband has been up to that we considered bad enough to shut down their account' Most definitely not saying this isn't a false positive - but the handling process for it it must as…

Sure, to me the ridiculous part is: - it's weird to be mistreated by your employer's own product (just the irony bend to it) - if you want to appeal after a dead end, your choice is to make a huge public PR nightmare, or try to make an internal post/plea that gains traction. you'd be doing your own employer a service if you could have this issue resolved without a PR nightmare

I guess Google's ToS is between the employee's husband and Google and not the employee, the employee's husband, and Google. So there is no authorization for some random employee to "check up" on their partner, even though it sounds like escalating internally should help. (It should at least trigger, "we'd better look into this very carefully", though. If it didn't, that sounds like a problem. If it did, and the result is "yeah, this is legit", that's a very awkward position for everyone.)

I was in a similar situation when I worked at Google. My brother kind of disappeared, and my family asked if we could at least check if he logged into Gmail. I asked and was told no, and I understood why -- it's up to my brother to share what he's up to, not Google. (My brother was fine; just didn't like replying to email or answering his phone.)

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