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

Google terminated our Developer Account, says it is “associated”

old.reddit.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 501 posts

Re: Google terminated our Developer Account, says it is “associated”

#101

Post by reaperducer »

epolanski wrote: post #52
matsemann wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except they are so big it's hard to avoid. So perhaps the real solution is to split up these giants..?

Is that their fault? There's other operating systems one can install on mobile, they can even argue Android is open source and no one is stopping you from installing a different OS on your phone.

There's a lot more to it than just that.

A couple of years ago, the New York Times ran an interesting article where someone tried to live an ordinary day without interacting in any way with Google. The result was that it simply wasn't possible.

Re: Google terminated our Developer Account, says it is “associated”

#102

Post by g_p »

In Europe, the legislation to look at would be

https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:32...

Specifically, article 4 covers termination of service, and the rules around this.

It seems Google and other platform providers have no interest in following these rules though.

Re: Google terminated our Developer Account, says it is “associated”

#103

Post by rootusrootus »

How long until working for Google has the same stigma as working for Facebook? Doing it for the money while la-la-la plugging your ears about what you're creating. It already seems like the aspirational aspect of wanting to join Google has mostly been replaced by the greedy desire for FAANG money.

Re: Google terminated our Developer Account, says it is “associated”

#104

Post by anaccountexists »

Before saying anything else: I’m sorry OP. This is miserable to deal with and I know you’re probably very upset right now.

On the other hand- at every company I’ve worked at, this is why there’s clear onboarding and off boarding policies. Yes- if you have someone on your developer account violating terms of service, they’ll shut down the account. No, it doesn’t matter that it wasn’t you personally.

To put this differently: if you had a bank account shared between your developers, and someone who left the company started using it for money laundering, the entire account would be shut down and you would not be getting that money back. In fact, you might even be investigated by authorities for money laundering since it ran through your account.

As someone who works in FinTech, we deal with tons of people just trying to steal / defraud others on a daily basis, and we’re required but governments across the world to be on the lookout for people doing “fraudy” things and terminate their accounts ASAP. If we just said “oh, it’s fine, you’re not in trouble because your (insert X relative here) was the bad person, not you,” then social engineering fraud would be rampant everywhere.

To me, the Google situation is identical to the bank situation. There’s not a good way to prove the bad account shouldn’t be associated with your Play store account. This is why you have to be diligent about who has access to these things.

Re: Google terminated our Developer Account, says it is “associated”

#105

Post by bitxbitxbitcoin »

reaperducer wrote: post #92
toomuchtodo wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Call your congressional rep [1]. That's what it takes; to get policymakers to write and pass the law. I imagine there's bipartisan support at the moment for reining in Big Tech [2]. Google is never going to improve the situation out of the goodness of their corporate heart (if such a thing were even to exist). [1] https://www.commoncause.org/find-your-representative/ [2] https://nypost.com/2022/03/29/biden-doj-backs-…

I don't know if it's still true, but pre-pandemic I used to have occasional contact with legislative types, and they regularly told me that physical letters carry more weight than phone calls, and email was a distant third. Pretty much, the amount of effort you put into your communication is a reflection of how important the issue is, and how important it is to you. Which kind of goes hand-in-hand with lobbyists. Com…

Can confirm, worked as a Congressional intern.

Order of importance was (at least in 2011):

1. In person meeting 2. Physical letter 3. Phone call

Re: Google terminated our Developer Account, says it is “associated”

#106

Post by croes »

Shadonototra wrote: post #24

Share the "previous emails" they sent you, you either ignored them, or you know what you did wrong and are trying to play the innocent actor Hard to judge without having all the data in hand

Maybe you should reply to my previous post first.

Re: Google terminated our Developer Account, says it is “associated”

#108

Post by reaperducer »

yunohn wrote: post #61
lima wrote: post #7

We need legislation forcing companies to manually review algorithmic decisions that impact people's lives - there has to be a proper appeals process. It's simply not economical for many companies to deal with the long tail of false positives, so they don't. Google has billions of users, and if their algorithms are 99.999% right about bans, their metrics look great but that's still tens of thousands users wrongfully b…

> It's simply not economical for many companies to deal with the long tail of false positives, so they don't. This happens everywhere, not just Big Tech. Even as humans, we try to handle the 99% and ignore the 1%. I still don’t understand what anyone is proposing - force companies to provide support against their will?

force companies to provide support against their will?

Yes. This happens all the time in all sortes of industries. But people on HN think that tech companies are somehow different and shouldn't be held to the normal rules that other companies have adhered to for decades, generations, and centuries.

Re: Google terminated our Developer Account, says it is “associated”

#109

Post by jahnu »

lima wrote: post #7

We need legislation forcing companies to manually review algorithmic decisions that impact people's lives - there has to be a proper appeals process. It's simply not economical for many companies to deal with the long tail of false positives, so they don't. Google has billions of users, and if their algorithms are 99.999% right about bans, their metrics look great but that's still tens of thousands users wrongfully b…

Microsoft have a better solution, or at least one of their departments does. You pay for support questions and if it turns out it’s actually Microsoft’s fault they refund you the fee. It’s great and most of the time I never had to pay. When I did it was still money well spent as I got good support.

There have been a few occasions where I would gladly have paid Google/Twitter/Apple to answer my questions.

Re: Google terminated our Developer Account, says it is “associated”

#110

Post by yunohn »

browningstreet wrote: post #82
yunohn wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's simply not economical for many companies to deal with the long tail of false positives, so they don't. This happens everywhere, not just Big Tech. Even as humans, we try to handle the 99% and ignore the 1%. I still don’t understand what anyone is proposing - force companies to provide support against their will?

You'd be amazed at how a little regulation right-sizes things in corporations. I work in banking -- there's no grumbling about our regulatory landscape. We just have teams of people who make sure we're compliant, and we get through our audits. So, to answer your question: yes.

Why are you comparing banking regulations to tech support? The former is crucial to trust in money, governance, and societal functioning. Tech support is easily overrun and exploited by bad actors, and the upside for the company is very minimal.
Post reply on HN