Terraria on Stadia cancelled after developer's Google account gets locked • Hacker News Board

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

#421

Post by kg » Mon, Feb 08, 2021, 1:59 PM UTC

londons_explore wrote: post #183

arnaudsm wrote: post #4

As usual, some Googler browsing HN will reactivate his account, everyone will forget and Google won't change a thing to his unbanning process.

People at Google really do want to fix this... But it's a minefield of: * Legal stuff (eg. some algorithm detected child porn in his account, is an employee legally allowed to look at it to confirm the algorithm was correct? no.) * Internal Politics (eg. one team has found this account DoSing their service, while the account is perfectly normal in all other ways, but due to Googles systems being so complex a single-s…

I'm no expert on Google and I don't have a PhD but from my time working there (and my time working at other internet services companies), multiple of your assertions here are false or absurd.

Child porn detection and enforcement literally does not work that way. I'm not sure how you even think that would work. How do you think the algorithm gets trained? Humans feed data into it. All the major social media companies (Facebook, etc) have paid human moderators that have to screen flagged content in many cases to determine whether it is illegal and then escalate to the relevant staff or authorities, and in some cases this is a legal requirement.

The GDPR one is especially ridiculous. Why would you be required to delete a user's data the moment you suspend their account? That's utterly absurd, it completely eliminates the user's recourse in the event of an error. No reasonable human being would interpret the laws that way and the relevant regulators (yes, GDPR is enforced by humans) would never require you to do that.

Google already has measures to deal with malware on machines, typically temporary or permanent bans of the hardware and/or IP address. They don't have to permanently delete your gmail account to lock out Chrome on a single malwared PC. If you've ever done any automation or browsed on a shared network you've probably seen Google Search throw up the 'automated traffic' warning and block you for a bit.

Being able to review conduct of an account (i.e. browse logs) is not "blanket access to your account" and neither is being able to examine the details on why the account was banned and reverse them. The account owner could also authorize the employee to access their data - any time you talk to a Customer Service representative for a company, you're doing this.

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

#422

Post by amelius » Mon, Feb 08, 2021, 1:59 PM UTC

koheripbal wrote: post #419

amelius wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Because honestly, the amount of spam and abuse that are likely happening on these platforms has to be mind boggling high. So hire more people. You can't argue that you can't do your work properly because your AI is not yet up to the task.

You think humans are better at spotting abuse? Mods on Reddit demonstrate that such systems can be worse.

Perhaps, but at least you can talk to a human, which is another aspect of the problem and probably requires a similar solution (more humans).

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

#423

Post by ConceptJunkie » Mon, Feb 08, 2021, 2:00 PM UTC

VLM wrote: post #382

_qulr wrote: post #285

It's painfully clear at this point that we need a consumer "bill of rights" to protect us from these giant tech companies. At the very least, companies must be legally required to present you in writing with the so-called violation of terms they're accusing you of, evidence of the violation, and a phone # or other immediate contact so that you can dispute the accusations. It's insane that these basic legal rights don…

The Kafka solution to this will be our terms of service prohibit single spacing after periods and you are in violation. Therefore we can terminate your account at any time of our choosing. Alternately we could prohibit posting in any language other than Latin and Klingon, or using the letter e, or accessing our services using any unapproved operating system (and our only approved OS is windows 3.11 with winsock drive…

Not just "can", but "will". And given how effectively these companies are using their size and power (and m-word) to crush the competition, it's long past time for some anti-trust action.

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

#424

Post by zitterbewegung » Mon, Feb 08, 2021, 2:00 PM UTC

ryanbrunner wrote: post #410

nvahalik wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's painfully clear at this point that we need a consumer "bill of rights" to protect us from these giant tech companies I get where you're going, but I think far more costly to them and advantageous for us is to simply show them that they are unnecessary. If we can drop them so easily, they can't pull stuff like this anymore. It is possible to drop Google and Facebook. They do this stuff because people _need_ the…

What's stopping the next Google from doing the same? Providing poor justification for bans and removal from platforms is by no means limited to the big companies - it's endemic throughout tech - we just hear about Google and Facebook more because they're higher visibility and are considered more essential.

Dropping Google / Facebook is not just signing up with another service. You could self host your own email and just quit Facebook entirely.

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

#425

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Feb 08, 2021, 2:00 PM UTC

nvahalik wrote: post #369

_qulr wrote: post #285

It's painfully clear at this point that we need a consumer "bill of rights" to protect us from these giant tech companies. At the very least, companies must be legally required to present you in writing with the so-called violation of terms they're accusing you of, evidence of the violation, and a phone # or other immediate contact so that you can dispute the accusations. It's insane that these basic legal rights don…

> It's painfully clear at this point that we need a consumer "bill of rights" to protect us from these giant tech companies I get where you're going, but I think far more costly to them and advantageous for us is to simply show them that they are unnecessary. If we can drop them so easily, they can't pull stuff like this anymore. It is possible to drop Google and Facebook. They do this stuff because people _need_ the…

[deleted]

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

#426

Post by killtimeatwork » Mon, Feb 08, 2021, 2:01 PM UTC

ashtonkem wrote: post #156

jug wrote: 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…

I started switching to ProtonMail for this exact reason. It’s not that I’m doing anything that would draw a purposeful or legitimate ban, but they’re so damn capricious that I fear getting my account locked because of a bug and not being able to undo it.

I switched to a combination of ProtonMail AND using a private domain in my email address AND regularly syncing entire mailbox with my desktop client (Thunderbird). This way, if ProtonMail gives me grief, I just set up a new email account with a different provider, point domain entries to it, import my mailbox in there, and can continue as if nothing happened.

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

#427

Post by michaelbuckbee » Mon, Feb 08, 2021, 2:01 PM UTC

_qulr wrote: post #285

It's painfully clear at this point that we need a consumer "bill of rights" to protect us from these giant tech companies. At the very least, companies must be legally required to present you in writing with the so-called violation of terms they're accusing you of, evidence of the violation, and a phone # or other immediate contact so that you can dispute the accusations. It's insane that these basic legal rights don…

This is in part what the GDPR mandates - that companies provide reasoning for how an automatic process works and also that there is a means to dispute that (Section 4 / Article 22) https://www.varonis.com/blog/gdpr-requirements-list-in-plain...

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

#428

Post by pastacacioepepe » Mon, Feb 08, 2021, 2:01 PM UTC

vonwoodson wrote: post #391

nvahalik wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's painfully clear at this point that we need a consumer "bill of rights" to protect us from these giant tech companies I get where you're going, but I think far more costly to them and advantageous for us is to simply show them that they are unnecessary. If we can drop them so easily, they can't pull stuff like this anymore. It is possible to drop Google and Facebook. They do this stuff because people _need_ the…

> drop them en mass The libertarian in me wants to believe that reputation is enough to make business act in the interests of the consumers and that personal responsibility would prevent customers from acting in their best interests: but we all know this is not true. And, I know enough to know that any public policy that essentially says “Everything will be fine if everyone just does [X]” is bad policy, regardless of…

> The libertarian in me wants to believe that reputation is enough to make business act in the interests of the consumers and that personal responsibility would prevent customers from acting in their best interests: but we all know this is not true.

And that's also why monopolies and giant corporations can and will always form in the current economic system. Crony capitalism is not a bug, it's a feature.

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

#429

Post by kevingadd » Mon, Feb 08, 2021, 2:04 PM UTC

jjcon wrote: post #405

suction wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Regulation != socialism Welfare != socialism

Got bad news for you about modern American political discourse. Just tune into one of the major right-leaning networks sometime, it's rough.

Just one random example of a high profile career lawmaker:

"The senator dismissed House Democrats proposals to boost paid sick leave and bolster safety net programs like unemployment insurance and food stamps as “wage controls and price controls and socialism.”" https://www.houstonchronicle.com/politics/texas/article/Ted-...

"Sen. Ted Cruz took aim Friday at socialism, which he blamed it for killing jobs in liberal cities.

“The blue states with high taxes, high regulation their people are fleeing because they don’t have jobs,” he said while speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Maryland’s National Harbor.

The Texas Republican said socialists effectively threw out thousands of jobs by pushed Amazon out of New York earlier this month." https://apnews.com/article/6d18da8f6b5ffc516bc23af722130a8b

Noted third-world socialist country New York, home to wall street.

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

#430

Post by kg » Mon, Feb 08, 2021, 2:05 PM UTC

delecti wrote: post #412

mabbo wrote: post #398

Always remember: if you aren't paying a company to use their services, you aren't a customer- you're the product. Google does not care about non-paying customers individually . They have literally billions of them. They're easily replaceable and provide roughly the same amount of value each- not much, but worth lots in aggregate. If Google were to have a human review all the complaints from the non-paying customers,…

He mentions having purchased thousands of dollars of apps on the play store. You're not wrong about nonpaying customers being the product, it's just not relevant to this story.

The catch is that having a Google Account is free. Whether or not you made Play Store purchases isn't relevant to the people who handle accounts or (for example) automated gmail bans. And as it happens, if the gmail team decides to ban you, it cascades to the services where you spent money.