Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Google disabled my husband's account

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

341–350 of 499 posts

Re: Google disabled my husband's account

#341

Post by johnisgood »

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 remaining 1 time it's because someone knows how to abuse reporting systems to get someone locked out on purpose.

My Twitter account got disabled many months ago due to "suspicious activity". I did not do anything. At the time I talked to someone with whom I disagreed respectfully on a CS-related subject and was not political. Next thing that happens is that it asks me to verify via phone and only then I am able to use my account. I am not going to do that, so yeah.

What I believe happened is that he attempted to login to my account a few times, which triggered their bullshit...

Re: Google disabled my husband's account

#342

Post by cnst »

LurkersWillLurk wrote: post #296
Animats wrote: post #201

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…

Small claims only provides monetary relief, you can't get equitable relief. How exactly are you going to calculate your monetary damages? And quite frankly, why would Google reinstate your account over losing a maximum of potentially $7,500?

Correct. In order to get injunctive relief of having account access restored, you'd have to sue Google in a Superior Court.

The difference between Small Claims and Superior is that in the former you're generally not allowed to bring an attorney, whereas in the latter you may actually be required to bring one.

Does anyone know whether account suspension without a reason is actually something that a pro-se litigant has any chance of suing these big companies for, and winning at all?

Re: Google disabled my husband's account

#343

Post by bhaile »

Animats wrote: post #331
Animats wrote: post #201

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…

Someone who sued Google in small claims court over an account cancellation and won.[1] [1] https://www.huffpost.com/entry/why-i-sued-google-and-won_b_1...

The followup is equally interesting. Google filed an appeal and won. [1]

[1] https://www.huffpost.com/entry/why-google-bothered-to-ap_b_2...

Re: Google disabled my husband's account

#344

Post by mkl »

Daniel_sk wrote: post #314
_wldu wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it that easy to have someone locked out of Google? Just by reporting them for fake abuse? I'm sort of shocked if that is indeed true. It ought to be hard to do that. Otherwise, people who disagree with others may use that to get even or settle an online quarrel, etc.

I had a small website few years ago and I placed Google Ads on it. After few weeks my Google Ads account got banned forever (no appeal available) for fraudulent clicks. There is no way to reverse this ban. I am 100% sure I didn't click on my own ads. I guess someone could easily do some suspicious activity on your ads (or just extract your Ads ID from Android APK) and then get your account banned. Fortunately, they o…

> never ever open a Google Play developer account with your personal Google email. Create a new one for this.

That means having another phone number, right? I tried to make a Google account for this kind of purpose, but had no way to receive the text they insist on without linking the new account directly to the old one.

Re: Google disabled my husband's account

#345

Post by jeremyjh »

yorwba wrote: post #204
jeremyjh wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If it were spam I think they'd tell them that. If they don't tell you the reason, almost certainly its fraud, and the only way to win against fraudsters is not to play with them. Anything you tell them is just an invitation for them to argue with you and waste your time, or infer detection methods. It is very hard to control fraud costs without alienating your users, especially for a free service with low barriers to entry. That isn't an excuse for Google to be so terrible, but I do think people lack appreciation for the actual problems here.

Re: Google disabled my husband's account

#346

Post by paulcarroty »

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 be honest here: move moderation to AI/robots and sent automatic messages "go out here! we're so sorry.." in loop is completely bullshit and main reason to avoid Google.

And I'm definitely not "so sorry" about.

Re: Google disabled my husband's account

#347

Post by gowld »

cnst wrote: post #332
coder543 wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google decided that wasn't to their liking and disabled the Google account attached to the phone. Did you decide to go for Round 2 in small claims court and get the account un-disabled?

> Did you decide to go for Round 2 in small claims court and get the account un-disabled? Sadly, you cannot do it in Small Claims Court. SCC cannot provide injunctive relief -- you can only sue for monetary relief. To get an injunction to have the account unblocked, you'd have to sue Google in the big-boys Superior Court, and/or federal court, which may cost more and require having a proper lawyer.

Or go through arbitration.

Re: Google disabled my husband's account

#349

Post by gowld »

ProAm wrote: post #250
sct202 wrote: post #4

I hate that they don't even tell you what you violated, like I'm sure this just causes more escalation and worse negative feelings for basically getting no additional information.

This should be illegal if there is no way to contest/appeal.

It's the reverse. It's often illegal to divulge the content of a violation.

Re: Google disabled my husband's account

#350

Post by AnssiH »

Grollicus wrote: post #329
AnssiH wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If only it worked... https://i.imgur.com/FKFa2l7.png I probably could try to bisect if there is a specific type of data that prevents Takeout on my account, but I haven't bothered as I think I have all the important data otherwise backed up.

If you live in the EU just send them a GDPR request, they'll have to give you a dump within some timeframe. If their bots redirect you to their download UI, contact your regulator.

I do. Seems like that would not be too much work, so I think I'll do just that. I'll try Takeout one more time, and after it fails (it takes a few days) I'll submit a request via their data access request form.
Post reply on HN