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Terraria on Stadia cancelled after developer's Google account gets locked

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Re: Terraria on Stadia cancelled after developer's Google account gets locked

#121

Hey Google here is a feature: account reputation, anyone doing business with you, has that flag enabled and human reviewers will be supporting them

The implication here is that the fix for this problem is to make sure it doesn't happen to anyone who does business with Google, as if other people aren't important enough to concern yourself about. That is 1000% the wrong approach, and exactly the sort of thinking that gets tech businesses in to this sort of mess.

The correct approach is to make sure it doesn't happen incorrectly in the first place, and that it can be resolved quickly and easily if it ever does.

Re: Terraria on Stadia cancelled after developer's Google account gets locked

#122

Hey Google here is a feature: account reputation, anyone doing business with you, has that flag enabled and human reviewers will be supporting them

This is the exact opposite of what Google/Apple want to do. Why pay a human to do something? Let the computer do the thing, and a Google-human will listen only of the victim-human will yell loud enough. This is their tiering system. On the other side though, Google cannot have 1 FTE per 1000 'clients' (paying-humans and/or product-humans). As a 'father' here wrote, you stay or you go. Or at least keep the personal st…

>Why pay a human to do something? Let the computer do the thing

This is why I think Google/Twitter/FB were not that vocal about the section 230 business. Honestly if they got brought through it would be expensive for them but they have the money and tech potential to automate any problems that arise from it which would just extends their moat from any potential competitors even more.

Re: Terraria on Stadia cancelled after developer's Google account gets locked

#123
post #55

This makes me anxious about my long time Gmail address. Back then I got it just because it and Google was cool, and their services had a good reputation. It was a different Google back then. If they had launched it this year I would never have got one because chances are it would have been cancelled by 2025. Gmail is really the only valuable thing that actually ties my life to Google. And it's not that hard to replac…

> It was a different Google back then.

No it has always been the same company, and we tried to tell you.

Re: Terraria on Stadia cancelled after developer's Google account gets locked

#125
post #9

This happens again and again. I have had that happen to my twitter account. I see this regulary on HN. My suspicion is that this is mostly happening because platforms that big like google or twitter rely very heavily on machine learning and other AI related technology to ban people. Because honestly, the amount of spam and abuse that are likely happening on these platforms has to be mind boggling high. So I get why t…

My suspicion is that this is mostly happening because platforms that big like google or twitter rely very heavily on machine learning and other AI related technology to ban people Most likely yes. And the annoying thing is that they don't take into account different languages. The AI can recognize words, but not meaning. A while ago some Dutch person tweeted: "Die Bernie Sanders toch." Die = that, in Dutch. But the A…

Yes and it's proof there is no such thing as "AI", just stupid pattern matching programmed by not very brillant people.

Re: Terraria on Stadia cancelled after developer's Google account gets locked

#126
post #9

This happens again and again. I have had that happen to my twitter account. I see this regulary on HN. My suspicion is that this is mostly happening because platforms that big like google or twitter rely very heavily on machine learning and other AI related technology to ban people. Because honestly, the amount of spam and abuse that are likely happening on these platforms has to be mind boggling high. So I get why t…

I think there is a simple solution: the "fail2ban" approach. Instead of banning, lock out users for some times (1 day). An AI system should make temporary changes to your IAM, and then report too often disabled guys to a human being

Re: Terraria on Stadia cancelled after developer's Google account gets locked

#127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd easily pay for a personal gmail account which has all the privacy protections on and also 24/7 access to customer support via chat and phone. Sadly most of that is only provided for business accounts.

I pay $6/month for a single user workspace to get that peace of mind. I don't understand why someone would entrust their digital live to a free service.

You have to understand that this is SINO (service in name only), an offering that is there on paper to satisfy procurement requirements of businesses ("Does this product offer this service with that SLA? If yes, you can buy it. If not, you can't"). That doesn't say anything about the efficacy of this service. In fact you will find that it isn't very useful (I've only had to use it once, but still, useless and frustrating, not much different from talking with GPT3). Many if not most enterprise software vendors have SINO offerings, Microsoft and VMware are just two I experienced personally that provide you with certain 24/7 telephone support lines which will not do anything but waste time until the next morning (if you're lucky) where you might be able to get an escalation. So if you're buying ESXi hoping that VMware might help you fix a pink screen at 2 in the morning, you are mistaken. But management will be able to tell everybody "yes, we have a 30 minute SLA on this with the vendor". Sure.

Lastly, you might also find that you will not be able to access the support options anymore if you have real problems or once your account has been locked for whatever reason. There are several services like this out there and I have seen it happen once at an old company: Provider locked a whole group of users out of the platform because of "suspicious login activity" on the admin account (admin was overseas). To access the support page you had to login first. Which you couldn't. Because it was locked. Took three weeks and snail mail (!) to get access to the platform back. Cancelled right after.

I would be extremely surprised if paying $6/month meant that your experience was different. Not that it shouldn't be, mind you, of course it should. I'm just saying it likely won't, so don't bet on it...

Re: Terraria on Stadia cancelled after developer's Google account gets locked

#128
post #55

This makes me anxious about my long time Gmail address. Back then I got it just because it and Google was cool, and their services had a good reputation. It was a different Google back then. If they had launched it this year I would never have got one because chances are it would have been cancelled by 2025. Gmail is really the only valuable thing that actually ties my life to Google. And it's not that hard to replac…

This is why I use one of the new, privacy-focused email providers instead. It feels like the sweet spot between starting my own server (headache, dropped messages) and being one of a billion Gmail/Outlook users (no-one cares if I don't get email)

Re: Terraria on Stadia cancelled after developer's Google account gets locked

#129
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My suspicion is that this is mostly happening because platforms that big like google or twitter rely very heavily on machine learning and other AI related technology to ban people Most likely yes. And the annoying thing is that they don't take into account different languages. The AI can recognize words, but not meaning. A while ago some Dutch person tweeted: "Die Bernie Sanders toch." Die = that, in Dutch. But the A…

These are exactly the cases that worry me. ML / AI is not ready to be used like that. IDK if it ever will be, but they are already using it in production anyways.

It reminds me of when powerful institutions treat lie detectors or facial recognition systems as infallible.

Re: Terraria on Stadia cancelled after developer's Google account gets locked

#130
post #9

This happens again and again. I have had that happen to my twitter account. I see this regulary on HN. My suspicion is that this is mostly happening because platforms that big like google or twitter rely very heavily on machine learning and other AI related technology to ban people. Because honestly, the amount of spam and abuse that are likely happening on these platforms has to be mind boggling high. So I get why t…

It won't change until they start bleeding enough users that it actually starts hurting them. In other words, when they mess up with someone "important enough" prepared to hold a serious grudge.

[EDIT: I still hold a grudge against DHL for 20 years ago listing my credit cards as "in transit to South Korea" while I was in Santa Cruz, waiting for them. If Google hits someone with an actual large following or sufficient clout in a large company, then they might just find that one day they do so to someone prepared to hold a 20 year grudge even if they eventually fix the immediate issue -- I'm not mad at DHL for the initial mistake, but for the amount of trouble and lies I had to deal with before they took it seriously]

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