331–340 of 720 posts
Tip: Get your own domain from a non-google registrar, then connect to Gmail if you prefer. If you ever are locked out, you can just move the address to another email-provider. Another trick is to use always have forwarding enabled in Gmail, to Outlook.com or another provider. All email will be forwarded despite your account being locked, so you will not miss out on important info. And use Google Takeout for backing u…
> They don't know why they've been banned. The absence of reason makes me wonder a lot of possibilities. Maybe google bans people who use ad-blockers, maybe they didn't explicitly set that way but some of their algorithms must have figured out these users should go. I know, it is extremely unlikely but we're free to come up with reasons if google doesn't give one. Don't sit there thinking it won't happen to you(I was…
I must have gotten through to a person eventually because I was unsuspended with the message:
> We’re writing to let you know that we've unsuspended your account. We’re sorry for the inconvenience and hope to see you back on Twitter soon.
> A little background: we have systems that find and remove multiple automated spam accounts in bulk, and yours was flagged as spam by mistake. Please note that it may take an hour or so for your follower and following numbers to return to normal.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You need a government regulator to stop large companies from buying up lots of small companies and adding them to this risk pool. I bought 3 Nest thermostats long before Google bought them. I wouldn’t have done so after the buyout. If google bricks my thermostats because my kid does something dumb on YouTube (through the linked tv accounts) that will suck. I suppose regulators could also prevent companies from bundli…
> The phone company can’t just randomly cut off service and ghost me. Regulators are the reason for that, as I’m sure they’d love to if they could. If you're paying your bill, why would they care? Regulation is part of the answer, but it's also part of the problem. If a YouTube comment wasn't at risk of "being mean" or breaking arbitrary rules (pushed by regulators, Google isn't doing it on their own), you couldn't b…
Sure they do. If a certain customer's behaviour is alienating or obstructing other customers, then that customer gets cancelled, because they are having a negative impact (on the business - not the users!) that is larger than the benefit they provide.
That's a net positive result.
Ignoring your whole concept of "mean", it is 100% up to the company to decide what the negative behaviour is, which is part of the problem.
Sure some of it might be "mean behaviour" and so we look at it as Google doing a good thing perhaps.
But what if you went around Google's services and informed people of better alternatives to their services, and you started to actual gain traction and cause people to stop using Google?
There's nothing mean about that, in fact you're providing a good service to those people. But in Google's eyes your actions are negative, and they could just cancel your account at their discretion because they don't like what you're saying.
That is the kind of thing that regulation protects from, when dealing with essential services - and I think there's a stronger and stronger case to be made that these large providers are in fact essential services.
p.s. Devil's advocate: the theoretical actions I described above (recommending alternatives) could so easily cross the line into spam. But who decides where that line is, if Google was to be regulated?
I recently deleted my last Gmail account (that I had since 2001). Before doing it, I tried Google's Checkout to get the data, but it was adking me for "verification" (i.e. more info about me) to finish the download.
I just fired up Thunderbird, configured a IMAP account and... done. Almost 20 years of e-mais are now backed up at home and on a Nextcloud instance I keep on a Linode VPS.
Web is not the only way to read e-mails, friends. Use a proper client and back it up.
This terrifies me. I recently signed up for Google One just to mitigate the lack of support if I were to lose access to my account. Perhaps the other thing to do is not comment using my account, which feels very wrong. All of the other options have drawbacks too. With Fastmail or another provider, you're trusting another corp. Setting up your own involves a bunch of work and difficult to solve drawbacks like spam fil…
> With Fastmail or another provider, you're trusting another corp. You're trusting another corp that only handles your email. Not your photos, videos, notes, phones, thermostats, doorbells(?), security cameras, speakers, TVs, youtube income/career... China has a state issued social credit score. We have a social credit score via megacorps.
https://www.wired.com/story/china-social-credit-score-system...
I'm not sure that drawing a parallel here is actually helping the discussion.
Anyhow yeah: megacorps control is dangerous and frustrating. Unfortunately, splitting all services across several different providers is something that requires lots of conscious effort from all users. And even after you split out everything that you use, you might suddenly realize that there is now a new service provided by one of these megacorps, which you started to use without realizing that it's linked to your main account.
This is genuinely scary. Photos, Yale locks, Fi, WiFi and Nest thermostat can all be poof gone because I made a silly YouTube comment? How is this not regulated? Google photos also 'helpfully' offers to delete your uploaded photos with 'some guarantee'!!! If this isn't an indication of a giant shitty monopoly that doesn't care about its customers at all, I don't what is. They have some AI ML fucking crap but can't fi…
If you are a “customer”. How many people pay for google services? I know it’s kind of jerky but I still agree that if you aren’t paying for the service, you have no leg to complain about it.
Yeah I'm always worried about this. I have a paid Microsoft office 365 account with all my email and a lot of data on it. I backup my OneDrive regularly using an rsync-style tool. But the email is more difficult now that it's all in exchange format. I could use IMAP die the backup but Microsoft is going to block basic authentication soon.
I use my e-mail with Outlook exclusively and what I did was creating a new local Outlook account, in which I move all my e-mails from time to time. That way, there's an offline mailbox you cannot loose in case of a ban or anything like that. Just make sure you set your Outlook to download everything, not just last year or so.
My motivation was a bit different, I didn't like the idea that someone could make it to my account and see literally all my e-mails sent and received in last 15 years. I mean I do have 2FA setup, but I don't trust MS over my offline backup stored on an encrypted device.
This is genuinely scary. Photos, Yale locks, Fi, WiFi and Nest thermostat can all be poof gone because I made a silly YouTube comment? How is this not regulated? Google photos also 'helpfully' offers to delete your uploaded photos with 'some guarantee'!!! If this isn't an indication of a giant shitty monopoly that doesn't care about its customers at all, I don't what is. They have some AI ML fucking crap but can't fi…
If you are a “customer”. How many people pay for google services? I know it’s kind of jerky but I still agree that if you aren’t paying for the service, you have no leg to complain about it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I disagree actually. The issue seems to me that it's a global ban. If Google only locked you out of the functionality you seem to have violated somehow, it would still be a viable strategy to use their services. Imagine losing the ability to comment or upload videos on YouTube because you wrote something offensive or published a video with copyrighted materials. Potentially bad for YouTube creators, but definitely no…
Google is a private company. So they can choose there customers. If they don't want you, they are free to throw you out.
I do love these sorts of arguments. There is a modern expression that goes "f* around and find out". Like Standard Oil did.
https://www.britannica.com/event/Sherman-Antitrust-Act
When you have governments using Google logins or schools communicating with parents via Facebook groups, or state broadcasters reporting on Twitter as news, then the line between private company and public utility has been crossed.
So they end up with the choice of "google lost data" or "customer did something wrong"