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

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

#171

Post by freedomben »

kuu wrote: post #128
anaccountexists wrote: post #104

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 differ…

The main difference is that with your bank, in case you get locked out, you can call them or even go to a physical office where they'll attend you, and you, maybe, are able to fix this false positive case, even if from detection point of view is a justified one. For Google, good luck if you get in contact with a person.

Unless your bank account balance is at least $50,000, I doubt the bank will do anything about it besides have a manager tell you "I'm sorry there's nothing we can do" which is little better than an automated email.

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

#172

Post by A4ET8a8uTh0 »

LWIRVoltage wrote: post #84

This is the issue with data being tied and connected.... Not long ago, someone here raised similar concerns with Microsoft 's ecosystem It stemmed from their current underway process to force all Minecraft accounts to Microsoft accounts, and the current Microsoft account process, if you don't add a phone number during account creation, locks and bans the account automatically after a week with they only recovery opti…

This. I genuinely wonder if people understand how much data is flowing about them on a daily basis and whether they would care if they did. I am just a guy at a place and I personally think I have way more insight in people's private lives than I should.

I can't imagine how bad it is at a less regulated institution.

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

#173

Post by Gareth321 »

voakbasda wrote: post #78
bluescrn wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Android has a ~70% share of the mobile device market, that seems reason enough. (Although more focus on the mobile web rather than apps might be a good thing)

They only have that share because developers continue to support their platform. Too bad developer greed prevents an effective boycott of their ecosystem. If enough people stopped giving them money, they would change.

I think it's a bit more complicated than greed. Remember that the only mobile development shops in town are iOS and Android, and they're both run by tyrants. There are millions of developers who only know mobile development. Giving up their skillset to learn a whole new profession is difficult.

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

#174

Post by antattack »

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…

There is a (state level) legislation proposed to 'open source' algorithms used for hiring[1]. Makes sense to expand it to all decision making processes.

[1]https://www.brookings.edu/blog/techtank/2021/12/20/why-new-y...

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

#175

Post by cptaj »

jahnu wrote: post #139
boredumb wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honest question, why on earth would you ever have a question for twitter so important that you'd consider paying them to answer it?

The algorithm banned our first company account. Nothing could get them to respond, including the appeal form. We want to switch now to professional and can’t despite fulfilling all the criteria they tell you need. I would like to see legislation forcing detailed explanations of bans though.

Not explanations. We need due process.

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

#176

Post by jddil »

nadalizadeh wrote: post #169
jddil wrote: post #83

These stories are always one sided and gloss over the minor policy violation parts. When we get the full story it's usually less black and white. Quick skim over the thread and it sounds like they let an ex-employee have access to one of their accounts and he committed multiple violations? Was he spamming? Was he uploading malicious content to the store? Also, don't build on others platforms if you want to control yo…

It is not black and white, as I mentioned in the post, the former employee had violations in his own developer account. But in case of our company? None! Our company account is assumed to be "associated" with wrongdoing of my former employee. This is the black side.

His own developer account was linked to yours ... that's how this works.

In the future, fully control the accounts yourself or don't build in someones walled garden and then complain when they ask you to leave.

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

#177

Post by anaccountexists »

GordonS wrote: post #157
anaccountexists wrote: post #104

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 differ…

This is a bad take - the person who violated ToS hadn't worked at the OP's company for 3 years! In addition, it hardly seems relevant that a ToS violation from an employee's personal account should result in effectively destroying a business. Something really has to change with how Google handles this kind of thing. At the very least they need to have a working appeals process handled by people .

That’s exactly my point though. If they hadn’t worked there in 3 years, why were they still associated with the developer account in the first place?

There’s a couple of ways (that are best practices for any company) to avoid this problem: - Have separate Google accounts for work / personal use - Remove old employees from the developer account when terminated

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

#178

Post by lima »

throwaway82652 wrote: post #167
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…

>We need legislation forcing companies to manually review algorithmic decisions No, I'm sorry, this is a horrible, horrible idea. As long as these companies are targeted by automated spambots, they need automated systems to counteract and remove spam accounts. That's just the reality of the internet arms race in the last 20 years. If you make them manually review everything, you hand a victory over to the spammers an…

Fully agreed - I wasn't suggesting they review every manual decision, but do it as part of a proper appeals process. Google, for instance, is likely seeing abuse on a scale where they have to have automated bans - for everyone's benefit! - and there's nothing fundamentally wrong with that as long as you can escalate to a real human.

Edited the comment to reflect this - thanks!

I worked on an abuse prevention system in the past and know the challenges very well, except my company actually put in the effort to respond to every appeal and compensate affected customers for their troubles.

Yes, humans are expensive, and spammers will try to game the appeals process, too - but it's simply a cost of doing business.

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

#179

Post by Lamad123 »

i's kinda said when your livelihood is decided by dumb AI that can't tell the difference between a joke and a war declaration or some poor reviewer/customer support who needs to decode so much shit in 35 seconds and decide if you broke non-transparent terms.

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

#180

Post by anaccountexists »

hbn wrote: post #132
anaccountexists wrote: post #104

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 differ…

> 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. I don't see how that analogy applies here. It would be more like if someone who had access to…

My impression from the article is that they were still linked (directly) to the company’s developer account.

If that’s wrong, and they were removed, then you’re completely right and everything I said is very wrong.

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