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Google cancels Google Play publisher account and ends family’s source of income

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Re: Google cancels Google Play publisher account and ends family’s source of income

#11

Post by protomyth »

I still think some congress person needs to pass a consumer rights bill that forces companies like this to disclose the exact reason and data relating the account termination. The excuse of security practices should not come before consumer rights.

Frankly, we would ALL also be safer if the decision had to be made based on conduct on that specific service and could not include anything outside that service. There is a certain scale where your company is now an internet utility and you should have to act like every other utility.

Re: Google cancels Google Play publisher account and ends family’s source of income

#12

Post by WinterMount223 »

ShivShankaran wrote: post #2

It is well known that if Google bans your account it will ban any "related" account and that includes your immediate family including your spouse, parents, children and your official job/startup. I never understood this bizarre behaviour from Google. My colleagues got a taste of it when they shared their laptop and one of them had a banned account. It was a defence project and the work computers were not allowed to h…

Did their accounts end up permanently banned or could they recover them? Seems like something that could actually be abused if not. A weaponized banned Google account on a laptop. A laptop with cooties. The seven generations punishment.

Re: Google cancels Google Play publisher account and ends family’s source of income

#13

Post by 2OEH8eoCRo0 »

emptyparadise wrote: post #8
2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #5

What is the answer to this in a world of scammers, bad actors, etc? Perhaps it should be illegal to ban a user and if a user is truly abusive then sue them in court for damages. Speaking of suing, why has nobody sued Google or others for this behavior?

Google really should have a manual process with actual humans one can interact with when Google accounts that had enough money pass through them are involved.

I think if users could sue for this sort of thing Google would start doing that because it would be cheaper than fending off lawsuits.

Re: Google cancels Google Play publisher account and ends family’s source of income

#14

Post by MiddleEndian »

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #5

What is the answer to this in a world of scammers, bad actors, etc? Perhaps it should be illegal to ban a user and if a user is truly abusive then sue them in court for damages. Speaking of suing, why has nobody sued Google or others for this behavior?

Given the number of legit bad actors, I don't think it's reasonable to make it illegal to ban users.

If anything it should be made easier to install programs without a "store" at all. Operating systems worked fine without this concept, and the play store and ios store are functioning as rent-seeking middle men, taking money without offering anything of value in return.

Re: Google cancels Google Play publisher account and ends family’s source of income

#15

Post by WinterMount223 »

karmakurtisaani wrote: post #7
rvz wrote: post #3

Another day, another termination by Google Play. The reason? None. Just a generic response sent to the developers on Christmas Day. Might have been the grinch himself issuing those automated responses to others. This company and its services (including, YouTube) are run by bots and they are the ones doing the moderation and not even the humans running them care at all. Unless something completely fundamental happens,…

Not to really defend Google here, but how else would you do it? The amount of data on these platforms is enormous and having people review the videos/apps/whatever would be simply prohibitively expensive. I think they need to balance how strict their abuse detection is. Making it too strict will kick out legitimate users without mercy. Making it less strict will allow potentially harmful (for business) content to spr…

If you can’t scale customer support then you can’t scale the customer base.

Re: Google cancels Google Play publisher account and ends family’s source of income

#16

Post by asdfasgasdgasdg »

noneeeed wrote: post #4

Based on the frequency with which this sort of post gets significant traction it's pretty clear that no one at Google gives a crap about this issue. I find it hard to imagine that people in Google are unaware of this problem. I often wonder if this has happened to people with more clout who have managed to pull strings to get it sorted, or if Google have just got lucky and managed to avoid hitting someone who might a…

> Based on the frequency with which this sort of post gets significant traction it's pretty clear that no one at Google gives a crap about this issue.

Lots of other reasonable explanations that match the available evidence and involve Google caring about this issue. For example, their hands could be tied by legal forces beyond their control. Or they could care a great deal, but perhaps they have been unable to resolve this issue with an acceptable false-negative level on actual bad actors. Another possibility is that the ban was well-earned and the article's author knows this and simply has not disclosed the fact to the readership.

Re: Google cancels Google Play publisher account and ends family’s source of income

#17

Post by someotherperson »

karmakurtisaani wrote: post #7
rvz wrote: post #3

Another day, another termination by Google Play. The reason? None. Just a generic response sent to the developers on Christmas Day. Might have been the grinch himself issuing those automated responses to others. This company and its services (including, YouTube) are run by bots and they are the ones doing the moderation and not even the humans running them care at all. Unless something completely fundamental happens,…

Not to really defend Google here, but how else would you do it? The amount of data on these platforms is enormous and having people review the videos/apps/whatever would be simply prohibitively expensive. I think they need to balance how strict their abuse detection is. Making it too strict will kick out legitimate users without mercy. Making it less strict will allow potentially harmful (for business) content to spr…

> The amount of data on these platforms is enormous and having people review the videos/apps/whatever would be simply prohibitively expensive

Let people pay for a manual review (say $300) with Google refunding the amount if it's found to be erroneous.

Re: Google cancels Google Play publisher account and ends family’s source of income

#18

Post by cft »

As a small (or even medium) developer, relying on a Google Play app is very dangerous. Our app with user generated content was pulled from Google Play store, because they found one profile out of 36 million (!) that had a suggestive photo. They used our profile search functionality to find it, you could not get it just by scrolling profiles. We have a neural net that rejects anything resembling porn and extensive word vector based text filtering, that forbids searching for anything explicit (unlike their own Google search app). The app cost us about 1m. Appeals were rejected with template emails. The enforcement is clearly selective, because Twitter has plenty of much more explicit porn.

Re: Google cancels Google Play publisher account and ends family’s source of income

#19

Post by JumpCrisscross »

emptyparadise wrote: post #8
2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #5

What is the answer to this in a world of scammers, bad actors, etc? Perhaps it should be illegal to ban a user and if a user is truly abusive then sue them in court for damages. Speaking of suing, why has nobody sued Google or others for this behavior?

Google really should have a manual process with actual humans one can interact with when Google accounts that had enough money pass through them are involved.

> Google really should have a manual process with actual humans one can interact with when Google accounts that had enough money pass through them are involved

Flip side of this is compromised accounts, or those doing illegal or dangerous things would run far longer.

Re: Google cancels Google Play publisher account and ends family’s source of income

#20

Post by noneeeed »

asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #16
noneeeed wrote: post #4

Based on the frequency with which this sort of post gets significant traction it's pretty clear that no one at Google gives a crap about this issue. I find it hard to imagine that people in Google are unaware of this problem. I often wonder if this has happened to people with more clout who have managed to pull strings to get it sorted, or if Google have just got lucky and managed to avoid hitting someone who might a…

> Based on the frequency with which this sort of post gets significant traction it's pretty clear that no one at Google gives a crap about this issue. Lots of other reasonable explanations that match the available evidence and involve Google caring about this issue. For example, their hands could be tied by legal forces beyond their control. Or they could care a great deal, but perhaps they have been unable to resolv…

What sort of legal issues would prevent Google actually providing some information on the reason for the ban, of prevent it actually engaging in any kind of useful communication?

My issue with these bans is not the bans themselves, but the Kafkaesc process in which you are supposed to argue why you think their decision is wrong without knowing what they based the decision on.

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