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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

#151
post #121

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.

Is the government allowed to shut them down without a court order? If not, why should you be able to? Do you feel you can do a better job? There's something to be said for not shutting down someone unless they break a law. I do acknowledge the court would need to be much faster and easier to access for these kinds of things though, you don't want to burden a provider with enormous legal bills just to deal with this k…

Setting "is it illegal?" as the bar would allow nigh any content whatsoever as creators could just go host-shopping until we found a country where our objectionable material was legal.

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

#152

Not saying Google is in the right here by any means, but I'm a bit suspicious of these complaints where the party curiously omits the details of why they were banned, the nature of their previous earnings, etc.

And the addition of the part with not being able to feed a family, smells very strongly of cheap manipulation and attempt to brigade.

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

#153

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

My concern is the hundreds of GB of photos I have saved with Google and Apple. I assume one day I will wake up and find I've lost access to them with no recourse, which means backing them up on a large hard drive is my only real option, exactly like 2010.

Nothing 2010 about it, 3-2-1 backup, you shouldn't be relying on any cloud provider holding your only copy.

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

#154
post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right I will build for iOS.... ohh wait.... Ok that is out... so what is the other platform?

Web. Your app almost certainly doesn't actually need to be an app anyway.

60% of mobile users in the US use iOS, and Apple has hobbled mobile Safari's browser and JavaScript engines in order to prevent web apps from implementing basic of features that native apps have had for a decade.

You can't even work around that problem because Apple bans any other browser or scripting engine from being distributed on iOS, so users are stuck with an intentionally limited browser for web apps, which makes web apps second-class citizens on the platform.

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

#155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Totally agree. I've been doing this for over a decade. I've barely used my actual Gmail address for anything. I've gone through many incarnations of email, but at some point Gmail was just a solid enough UI, had the best spam filtering, and so I switched. Everything just forwards to my Gmail address. I have a personal domain which is also setup as an outbound address. Several other domains/addresses also forward. I a…

So when you reply in gmail, that reply is sent using the smtp server for your custom email domain? Where do you host that?

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

#156
Have your lawyer write a letter.

As in, a real legal demand with a complaint attached that is addressed to their counsel and includes estimates of monetary damages and alludes (not threatens) to the specific jurisdiction and court it would be submitted to for adjudication.

Send copies of this letter, by registered/certified mail, to several contacts.

They will have to respond to this and these responses will be expensive.

If you are in the right - even marginally so - your account will get fixed because it will be much too expensive to continue to ignore you.

Filling in web forms and emailing form addresses costs google nothing. It makes perfect sense that these actions (appear) to have identical results as doing nothing.

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

#157
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.

Seems reasonable to make Google liable for your damages. They've incentivizing people to use their store, and then pulling the rug out from under them.

Similar logic has already been applied in the US for e.g. rapes that occur on a business' property. If they're incentivizing you to come their, they are liable for bad thing that happen to you.

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

#158
post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Seems reasonable to make Google liable for your damages. They've incentivizing people to use their store, and then pulling the rug out from under them. Similar logic has already been applied in the US for e.g. rapes that occur on a business' property. If they're incentivizing you to come their, they are liable for bad thing that happen to you.

I don’t want to be the one to pay for figuring out how to neutralize spammers on a global, free service with billions of users.

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

#159

The lack of due process and any real transparency is troubling. It's clearly a mistake to bet your livelihood on a platform that can act in an arbitrary and capricious manner.

We don't know the background, and the content of the previous mails Google has sent this developer prior to the alleged account disabling.

OP conveniently left that information out.

Without that, it's hard to draw any conclusions.

Some infractions are also difficult to convey back to the developer. For instance, I believe a business might not be allowed to communicate details, if account is under police investigation and there is suspicion that the developer might destroy evidence, that sort of thing. I'm not saying this developer has done something wrong, but we just don't know.

It's definitely infuriating if you are trapped like that.

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

#160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> They can fix their platform so this isn't possible without banning anybody. How? You can't preemptively determine the output of a Turing-complete program without solving the halting problem, so while Google will always try to do their damnedest to predict a bad actor before they get to the store, they will definitely always fail to find some. If they can't ban them when they find them, what should the alternative b…

Don't allow free-form communication and ban toxic users. That's what nintendo does.
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