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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

#111

Post by kovvy »

Beltalowda wrote: post #43
asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not in a position to comment about what sorts of legal issues there might be. But Google is hardly the only company that hands down bans with scant explanation. It's endemic. I've actually not heard of a large company that gives detailed explanations in these sorts of situations. That leads me to believe there is a good reason for avoiding such explanations, since I would expect some variation in company behavior…

I suspect it's because a lot of these automated bans are done without any clear actual reason beyond "our machine learning model found something, but we can't really get a coherent picture of why". Last week I created a brand new Facebook account as I recently moved to a new city and am somewhat desperate to meet people, and Facebook events can be useful for this (as much as I loathe Facebook, my mental health is a b…

Was that a complete ban, or was it an attempt to get your phone number and other personal details?

Instagram has always banned my accounts for suspicious behaviour on whatever page is first used after the account is created - the only way they offer to progress is to give them a phone number. It's a pretty transparent grab for more info to sell.

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

#112

Post by janto »

WinterMount223 wrote: post #15
karmakurtisaani wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'd guess that Google's support for their ad services are good enough? The problem here is that Play publishers are not really Google's customers.

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

#113

Post by aaomidi »

devoutsalsa wrote: post #70
aaomidi wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually it should go one more step further. Companies making over a certain amount should be banned from outright removing your access to your account. At most it should be making the account read only. People have a right to their photos, emails, conversations, and data they have safeguarded to these companies.

I think I agree with you, but I will say I don’t envy Google’s position on this one. They have massive amounts of fraud and spam to contend with. Coming up with a system that allows them to retain legit uses but prevents them from shutting down naughty people doesn’t sound good. There need to be a mechanism that allows account recovery in a way that is actually sustainable.

Then just put these accounts in read only mode.

It's not like Google ever deletes the data these bad accounts made.

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

#114

Post by throwaway684936 »

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #80
throwaway684936 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Illegal to ban users? So a neo-nazi account spams, harasses, doxxes hundreds of users and spreads gore all over your platform, and you aren't allowed to shut them down unless you go through the court system first? This is one of the most absurd ideas I've ever heard.

Harassment is against the law. Maybe your platform shouldn't allow such abuse? They can fix their platform so this isn't possible without banning anybody. I'm just brainstorming here.

> Maybe your platform shouldn't allow such abuse?

Yes, perhaps we could come up with a set of rules that users must abide by to use the service, such as not being abusive. And if they're found to be breaking these rules, we could then restrict their access to the service. The worst actors would have their access restricted permanently.

If you're suggesting "stop 100% of all abusive content before it happens," that's just silly.

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

#115

Post by josephg »

adhesive_wombat wrote: post #107

Man, I really need to get off Gmail to reduce exposure to something like this, but there are sooooo many accounts to update.

The first step is moving to a custom domain. You can stay on gmail if you want; but set up a custom domain, and set up email on it and tell everyone to use your new email address.

Once you have a custom domain, it becomes way easier to change to another email service without losing any messages.

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

#116

Post by _vdpp »

adhesive_wombat wrote: post #107

Man, I really need to get off Gmail to reduce exposure to something like this, but there are sooooo many accounts to update.

My advice - just rip the bandaid off and do it. I had anticipated taking a whole weekend to update the email address on all my accounts, but it was a lot less painful than I had anticipated. Changing over ~50 accounts took me about 3 hours all told. Most services allowed me to change my email even if it used email as the “username.”

Using a password manager made this much easier, as I could easily keep track of which accounts I needed to update and which ones I still needed to do. I switched over to Fastmail and haven’t looked back.

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

#117

Post by [deleted] »

naoqj wrote: post #66
hwers wrote: post #27

For anyone curious about what kinds of apps this person developed, this is what I could find https://steprimo.com/iphone/ph/developer/1076545147/Roberto-... Seems like an app providing radio for free.

Looks like he had lots of radio apps, wallpapers, etc. Probably copyright-related problems.

[deleted]

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

#118

Post by ______-_-______ »

laurent92 wrote: post #99
someotherperson wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

That would incentivize Google not to find it erroneous.

If they blatantly lie to steal your money, you can now prove actual damages in court. That's an improvement over trying to sue over a lost free gmail account. Not that I think going to court is an ideal solution, but what other choice do you have as a lowly civilian without friends in Mountain View?

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

#119

Post by germinalphrase »

_vdpp wrote: post #116
adhesive_wombat wrote: post #107

Man, I really need to get off Gmail to reduce exposure to something like this, but there are sooooo many accounts to update.

My advice - just rip the bandaid off and do it. I had anticipated taking a whole weekend to update the email address on all my accounts, but it was a lot less painful than I had anticipated. Changing over ~50 accounts took me about 3 hours all told. Most services allowed me to change my email even if it used email as the “username.” Using a password manager made this much easier, as I could easily keep track of which…

Mind sharing why you choose Fastmail over alternatives?

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

#120

Post by causality0 »

_vdpp wrote: post #116
adhesive_wombat wrote: post #107

Man, I really need to get off Gmail to reduce exposure to something like this, but there are sooooo many accounts to update.

My advice - just rip the bandaid off and do it. I had anticipated taking a whole weekend to update the email address on all my accounts, but it was a lot less painful than I had anticipated. Changing over ~50 accounts took me about 3 hours all told. Most services allowed me to change my email even if it used email as the “username.” Using a password manager made this much easier, as I could easily keep track of which…

If you don't use a third-party password manager there's a good chance you're having Chrome remember your passwords and can just go down the list.
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