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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

#701

Post by gambiting »

cedws wrote: post #697

Maybe unrelated but I was pretty much banned from using Amazon for over two years through no fault of my own. I even asked here for suggestions on what I could do. Alt accounts just got immediately locked too. In the end, the only way I managed to get my original account unlocked again was by collecting a huge list of @amazon.com support addresses and writing a bot to spam hundreds of emails until someone competent p…

They are posting billion dollar profits year on year on year. There is literally no incentive to do this at all. For every customer wronged this way there are hundreds if not thousands who are extremely happy with the service.

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

#702

Post by [deleted] »

robotresearcher wrote: post #669
jennyyang wrote: post #658

We need regulations to enforce adequate customer service and SLAs in these huge companies. Google is getting away with this behavior because of their monopolistic behavior. If they had competition, they would be spending billions on customer support, but because they have a monopoly, they can get away with having virtually none. This is their way of saving money and taking advantage of their monopoly. It's a shadow v…

For counterpoint, they provide products like Gmail for free at point of use because the support costs are very low (amongst other factors). Would you prefer government change this balance by regulation, or let users decide what they want? Many users choose very cheap typical service with a small but real risk of misery. Perhaps it's because they don't understand how miserable it can get. It's important that the bad e…

[deleted]

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

#703

Post by dr_hooo »

iooi wrote: post #686
jennyyang wrote: post #658

We need regulations to enforce adequate customer service and SLAs in these huge companies. Google is getting away with this behavior because of their monopolistic behavior. If they had competition, they would be spending billions on customer support, but because they have a monopoly, they can get away with having virtually none. This is their way of saving money and taking advantage of their monopoly. It's a shadow v…

There are so many alternatives to email -- Outlook, Yahoo Mail, Proton, iCloud, etc. How can you argue with a straight face that Google has a monopoly on email?

Clearly Email is not the point of discussion here, as no one is building a business around it. It's Android with its app ecosystem, stadia, YouTube etc. Do you not see any problem with having effectively no support for these services?

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

#704

Post by happyopossum »

Personal Anecdote Time(tm).

I have (had?) a Google Voice number that I started using for work stuff about a dozen years ago. One day 8-9 years ago, it just disappeared from my google account. Like gone.

I go to google voice settings, and it's telling me to sign up for google voice. Nothing I do can get this back - my voice number is now just anchorless, floating in the digital sea.

The crazy thing is, it still forwards to my cell number to this day. I can't change most settings for it, so I stopped handing that number out, but every once in a while I'll get an email notification of a new voicemail or text message to that number...

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

#705

Post by diob »

jennyyang wrote: post #658

We need regulations to enforce adequate customer service and SLAs in these huge companies. Google is getting away with this behavior because of their monopolistic behavior. If they had competition, they would be spending billions on customer support, but because they have a monopoly, they can get away with having virtually none. This is their way of saving money and taking advantage of their monopoly. It's a shadow v…

This is going to be tough politically to fight. If I had to guess the tactic that would be used to fight it from the other side is something of the sort:

"If we force these regulations on Facebook / Google / etc. or break them up, the stock market will go down (aka your 401k)."

Whether that's true or not for the common folk, it's a surprisingly effective tactic.

And it's definitely true for those at the top of the economic food chain, who are likely invested in these companies.

Given they tend to have more power politically, I just don't see us touching this.

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

#706

Post by nvahalik »

newswasboring wrote: post #452
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…

> It is possible to drop Google and Facebook. Its also possible to live without electricity and running water. This disproportionate power model doesn't work there because some people implemented regulations on them. I am beginning to suspect we need similar laws for this.

Yes, but Google and Facebook are not public utilities, nor should they be.

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

#707

Post by syshum »

iooi wrote: post #686
jennyyang wrote: post #658

We need regulations to enforce adequate customer service and SLAs in these huge companies. Google is getting away with this behavior because of their monopolistic behavior. If they had competition, they would be spending billions on customer support, but because they have a monopoly, they can get away with having virtually none. This is their way of saving money and taking advantage of their monopoly. It's a shadow v…

There are so many alternatives to email -- Outlook, Yahoo Mail, Proton, iCloud, etc. How can you argue with a straight face that Google has a monopoly on email?

Where did the OP talk about gmail? Is it your opinion that Google is only Gmail? and that is the only service they offer?

Of all the services Google has, email is the least monopolistic, but simply because there is competition in email an open standard that many companies (including google) have tried to make less open does not change the Fact Google has market dominance in many other services

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

#708

Post by emidln »

strgcmc wrote: post #631
ativzzz wrote: post #630

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you mean google fiber? I've called fiber before I had an account there to ask some questions and I had 0 problems talking to a human immediately and they answered all my questions.

Think that story is about Google Fi. I'm a Fi user, but haven't had to try and reach a human to resolve a problem yet; I dread the day if/when that happens where I actually do need a human to solve something I encountered...

I attempted to be a Fi user. I was a Google Voice number, but apparently some small % of Google Voice numbers could not be ported into Fi at all. After a couple escalations the rep was very sorry but said their system was not able to handle my account unless I was willing to give up my Google Voice number. They suggested I create an alternate google account just for Fi, although Fi and Google Voice cannot front one another, so I end up with a separate phone number that nobody would know.

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

#709

Post by jamesrr39 »

Justsignedup wrote: post #619
blunte wrote: post #477

Google uses non-human automation to make some decisions, including banning accounts. As others have mentioned, this is not unreasonable as long as there is a reasonable (in terms of time and effort) path to disputing a ban - i.e., speaking to a human about the issue. But Google (and Facebook, and probably some other companies) don't have reasonable processes for disputing or resolving these situations. Some have said…

I remember someone had a post here a couple years back: - They bought google wireless. - Their charge was declined, whatever the reason, they wanted to correct that. Or possibly an accidental dispute. - Google disabled their account because of non-payment - Google's customer support couldn't help because they weren't a paying customer. - They literally couldn't do ANYTHING because google was ignoring every step of th…

> Same thing if Google was to ban my gmail today, I'd lose SO MUCH and worse is my photos, all my logins, etc. Their "loss" on me could be devastating to my life and not even a blip on their radar.

I have a monthly calendar reminder to do a GDPR export (Google Takeout, Facebook, etc), and I just save it to a big HDD. I keep the instructions to order exports for each service in the "event description" to make it as quick and as little effort for me as possible.

I know it's boring... but I read the article this thread is about and it just re-inforces that I am doing the right thing.

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

#710

Post by xhkkffbf »

Lammy wrote: post #599
umvi wrote: post #562

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well you can always just create your own courier. If you want true free speech these days you need to build your own stack from the ground up anyway.

We Await Silent Tristero's Empire

Beat me to it.

Paranoia is not new.

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