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

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

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

711–720 of 1001 posts

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

#711

Post by cedws »

gambiting wrote: post #701
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.

That's what made it so daunting. I was completely powerless to argue against this massive, faceless corporation. I imagine for those who store their whole lives on Google, this feeling is amplified 100x.

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

#712

Post by edejong »

Chazprime wrote: post #670

We really need regulation for the large tech monopolies like Google. There’s no recourse if you’re suddenly locked out of your account short of making the news or attracting attention on social media.

From which legislation? The faltering nation-states?

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

#713

Post by bluefirebrand »

strombofulous wrote: post #690
bluefirebrand wrote: post #673

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Counter-counterpoint They provide products like gmail for free because it allows them insight into people's communication which they can then leverage with search and ad networking to make way more than they could simply selling email services.

Google has not done that in many years. "These ads are shown to you based on your online activity while you're signed into Google. We will not scan or read your Gmail messages to show you ads." https://support.google.com/mail/answer/6603?hl=en

All this shows me is that Google pinky promises that they don't do that.

Even if they don't scan the contents of your email bodies, you don't think they know who you are getting emails from, who you are emailing, and a boatload of info about who you do business with and such as a result?

I'm betting they do.

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

#714

Post by mithr »

strombofulous wrote: post #690
bluefirebrand wrote: post #673

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Counter-counterpoint They provide products like gmail for free because it allows them insight into people's communication which they can then leverage with search and ad networking to make way more than they could simply selling email services.

Google has not done that in many years. "These ads are shown to you based on your online activity while you're signed into Google. We will not scan or read your Gmail messages to show you ads." https://support.google.com/mail/answer/6603?hl=en

The sentence right before the one you quoted is

> When you open Gmail, you'll see ads that were selected to show you the most useful and relevant ads. The process of selecting and showing personalized ads in Gmail is fully automated.

They created that page in order to highlight that there are no humans reading your mail, but OP's point that "it allows them insight into people's communication which they can then leverage with search and ad networking to make way more than they could simply selling email services" is still true to this day. It's just that it's all automated.

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

#715

Post by nvahalik »

whimsicalism wrote: post #511
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…

Oh yeah, far more easy than the government taking regulatory action is coordinating a massive consumer choice boycott. Sometimes, it is so abundantly clear to me that this site is full of former teenage libertarians who grew up and still haven't shed all of those ideals.

If all of the latest Facebook news can get my family to start questioning their usage/dependency on Facebook—I think it's fairly possible.

There have been a number of really great projects coming through HN and other sites recently that are aimed at solving some problem that people on Facebook have: photo sharing, event planning, etc.

Discoverability is really the only problem left.

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

#716

Post by skissane »

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…

> We need regulations to enforce adequate customer service and SLAs in these huge companies.

Poland is introducing a law [0] to provide a right of appeal to the courts if a person is banned by social media platforms. The law's intention is to limit the platform's ability to remove content that they claim violates their policies, but which doesn't violate Poland's laws. Depending exactly on how that law is worded and implemented, it might provide protection for people banned for non-content reasons as well, including the inscrutable "we claim you broke our rules but we refuse to tell you which rule you broke". Of course, this doesn't do anyone outside of Poland any good, but other countries might copy Poland's law.

The downside is that Poland's law is inspired by the banning of Donald Trump and other right-wingers, and being associated with that political context is going to discourage people on the left from supporting it, even though I think people on the left could benefit from it as well.

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jan/14/poland-plans-t...

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

#717

Post by username90 »

cycloptic wrote: post #683
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…

>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. I can't agree with this, there is so much competition in this field already and and it doesn't seem to make a difference. There will always be ad-supported free services with minimal support and few security/privacy guarantees, that is the entire low end of the…

There is no competition if you want to sell phone apps. You have to sell via google store and apple store. Foregoing one of the stores drops 50% of your userbase that you can't reach with the other store, so you have to do both or leave money on the table.

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

#718

Post by spullara »

shakezula wrote: post #672
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…

I agree, we need better laws around customer service and data handling, absolutely. For (as far as I could ever tell) no reason, Facebook marked my account as a bot in roughly 2015 and refused to let me access any of my account data until I proof of identity. They wanted a picture of my driver's license and a picture of me to confirm. I never sent it in, instead emailing and asking if there was any other way to get v…

For better or for worse, that is good customer support with clear remediation procedures.

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

#719

Post by craftinator »

strombofulous wrote: post #690
bluefirebrand wrote: post #673

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Counter-counterpoint They provide products like gmail for free because it allows them insight into people's communication which they can then leverage with search and ad networking to make way more than they could simply selling email services.

Google has not done that in many years. "These ads are shown to you based on your online activity while you're signed into Google. We will not scan or read your Gmail messages to show you ads." https://support.google.com/mail/answer/6603?hl=en

> Google has not done that in many years.

I love that you post a copy of the Google PR written help documentation to support this claim. Also, "I have never lied. Ever!".

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

#720

Post by mrmonkeyman »

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…

Citizens of the free world, you actually have a choice in the matter. Don't use facebook. Never did, no one cares.

Stop relying on "gubmint" to handle your diaper changes. Think for and act by yourselves.

Post reply on HN