I moved away from Google two years ago after using it for close to 7 years. Still didn't manage to move away from Google Photos.
Google disabled my husband's account
281–290 of 499 posts
Re: Google disabled my husband's account
#282Earlier quoted context omitted.
It absolutely is, which is why what they're doing looks fine on internal metrics. Imagine I make a laser bug zapper and install them at every fast food joint in the US. 9999 out of 10000 times it zaps an insect. 1 out of 10000 times the laser fires it blinds a child. I could wax all I want want about the 99.99% accuracy, the _relative_ accuracy won't mean a thing to the million people blinded by it. When there is a m…
Something about this argument doesn't smell right. I care about the crime rate , or car accident rate , or botched surgery rate , because it tells me the odds that something bad will happen to me. Given a stable rate of bad things, population growth alone causes more bad things to happen. If we took your argument about absolute harm seriously, then we should, say, encourage population reduction until there are only 1…
Humans are notorious for under estimating routine hazards, and overestimating things that are rarer. We worry about strangers in deep dark alleys trying to rob/rape/beat/kill us, when in fact, most crime is perpetrated by someone the victim is familiar with.
Re: Google disabled my husband's account
#283The entire thread is full of people jumping on the hate train, did anyone even stop to consider that Google is right on this? https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/40695?hl=en There are two points here: first, they claim to provide a reason for closing your account when you log in to your google account (not google service). The OP provided what looks like google service notification on his mobile, but could be…
> The OP did not provide this, only the generic google service notification on his mobile
Are you sure? The image in the tweet linked seems to me like the login screen you get on desktop, not a mobile notification.
Re: Google disabled my husband's account
#284Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
If you want to become a platform that everyone in the world uses and reap those billions in profits that come with that, maybe... just maybe you should be responsible for sane, humane moderation as well. Don't build something that's manageable and then complain when people ask you to manage it. I've said this before here, I'm pretty libertarian, and very much in favor of small gov, but at this point its become clear…
> I've said this before here, I'm pretty libertarian, and very much in favor of small gov, but at this point its become clear that anyone who strives to become an internet platform where market dominance equals monopoly or duopoly, should be held to strict regulatory standards, re: free speech, appeals, etc. similar to what a gov entity is held to.
About that - the government can be pretty opaque. I too would like some strict regulatory standards to apply to the CBP.
Re: Google disabled my husband's account
#285Sue 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…
Maybe a good idea for most of us, probably a bad idea if you work there.
Why?
Re: Google disabled my husband's account
#286Re: Google disabled my husband's account
#287Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 resul…
Oh certainly not "check up", but try to get a human to look at it and respond to the appeal with more than boilerplate.
Re: Google disabled my husband's account
#288I had a Google Pixel phone. Less than a year old old. Treated with kid gloves. Always kept in a case. Pristine condition. An approved Google software update bricked it. This was, by all accounts, a known issue. The phone was under warranty. I sent it back. They shipped me a scratched up refurbished phone. It ran fine for a week then bricked itself due to the same software update. I sent that back. They sent me anothe…
That's honestly unacceptable. Google deserves whatever anti-trust action comes their way. It's absolutely insane that they can lock you out of your phone, email, youtube, password manager, business, and everything you've ever used sign in with google for on the whims of some buggy algorithm.
Stuff like this isn't the result of some faceless software algorithm that's only harming people because of 'bugs.'
Consumer abuse isn't an emergent property of algorithms. They're designed, by people, to abuse consumers.
Re: Google disabled my husband's account
#289The entire thread is full of people jumping on the hate train, did anyone even stop to consider that Google is right on this? https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/40695?hl=en There are two points here: first, they claim to provide a reason for closing your account when you log in to your google account (not google service). The OP provided what looks like google service notification on his mobile, but could be…
> "Google decided to arbitrarily ban a specific account among billions in order to target one of their employees."
Nobody is claiming that. Malice is not the issue here; the issue is the effect of having an account banned without recourse or transparency.
Re: Google disabled my husband's account
#290Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
What seems novel here is that the author _actually works_ at Google and still can’t help despite being an insider. Although, not sure if that says more about Google or more about the banned account.
As a Google employee, I don't expect to have any special privileged access to Google customer support and I think if we did have it, wouldn't you think that would be unjust?
Disclaimer: not saying anything about the qualities of said services.