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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”

#281

Post by CPLX »

anaccountexists wrote: post #163
CPLX wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In this scenario you would have access to due process. There are very specific rules when banks make decisions about credit worthiness, and for the part involving authorities you’d have access to a well developed legal system where you have rights.

Credit worthiness, yes, though that’s typically at approval time and not later on. Risk bans or bans for suspicious / illegal activity? Totally different story (see the stories of Stripe / PayPal / etc shutting down accounts). The government (at least in the US) will punish banks pretty hard if they don’t crack down on fraud hard, so banks tend to lean more towards over enforcement.

Indeed. Stripe and PayPal are tech companies that are part of the problem this post is discussing.

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

#282

Post by polski-g »

skrtskrt wrote: post #258
throwuxiytayq wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After reading so many posts like this, I decided to bite the bullet and start moving off-Google. Funny thing is, ProtonMail and Obsidian are much better than Gmail and Keep anyway. I'm still forced to use Google stuff here and there but I'm no longer dependant on them, and coincidentally I've been sleeping much better recently.

the editor for Google Docs is the one really good thing I can't get elsewhere, but I don't do that much important stuff in it - just like planning vacations, etc. Once I'm done editing something, if I want to back it up I can just export it elsewhere

DropBox has a hook into Office's editors.

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

#283

Post by rvz »

matsemann wrote: post #44
nightski wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are right, just don't do business with this evil company. Simple as that.

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

> So perhaps the real solution is to split up these giants..?

Yes.

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

#284

Post by KarlKemp »

miohtama wrote: post #231
kmeisthax wrote: post #59

Everyone here is commenting about overautomation, but this isn't an overautomation problem. It's a secondary sanctions problem. The developer isn't being banned for breaking Google's rules, he's being banned for having hired someone else who later broke those rules; and then that ban was transitively applied to their personal account as well. This is beyond the pale. Google should not have the power to decide who you…

GDPR Article 22 > The data subject shall have the right not to be subject to a decision based solely on automated processing, including profiling, which produces legal effects concerning him or her or similarly significantly affects him or her. > In the cases referred to in points (a) and (c) of paragraph 2, the data controller shall implement suitable measures to safeguard the data subject’s rights and freedoms and…

GDPR Art. 4:

„ personal data’ means any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person (‘data subject’)“.

This is a business, not a natural person.

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

#285

Post by Anthony-G »

lima wrote: post #178
throwaway82652 wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 i…

All good points.

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

Another Hacker News commentator¹ had a good suggestion for this problem:

> 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.

If users paid some up-front fee for the appeal, similar to the above, regular users would have the opportunity to appeal an automated ban (if the appeal was done properly). On the other hand, spammers and other malicious actors would have to pay money for the opportunity to attempt to game the system.

¹ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30855836

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

#286

Post by spookthesunset »

whoknew1122 wrote: post #261
kmeisthax wrote: post #59

Everyone here is commenting about overautomation, but this isn't an overautomation problem. It's a secondary sanctions problem. The developer isn't being banned for breaking Google's rules, he's being banned for having hired someone else who later broke those rules; and then that ban was transitively applied to their personal account as well. This is beyond the pale. Google should not have the power to decide who you…

I can feel the downvotes coming deep in my bones. But Google has its own reputation (and users) to protect. It's taking a risk whenever it allows a developer on its platform. If a developer with low name recognition uploads malicious software, it's not the developer's name that makes the headline. Crucially, there's no information on what the employee (and later contractor) 'H.' did to get themselves banned. Or fired…

Yes all large websites that provide financial incentives to run scams on them have this problem. Whenever there are $$$ to be made at scale the scammers will work very hard to get their cut.

The problem lies in the people who implement these anti-fraud measures forgetting that not every account their system flags is actually a scammer. The goal should always be to fuck over the scammer as hard as possible. However you must always make sure the real humans that get caught in the net can always get out of jail.

Assuming that the 1% of real humans that get flagged in your system don’t matter is how you piss people off. Always provide ways to get real people out of jail! Those people are honest people doing the right things. They are the ones you are trying to protect!

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

#287

Post by nperez »

In my current org, all developers, whether they're F/T or contractors, have a company account created for them and never get permissions on any other account. This is a good reminder on why I should adopt that practice I ever build a company of my own, no matter how small.

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

#288

Post by whoknew1122 »

jonathankoren wrote: post #274
whoknew1122 wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can feel the downvotes coming deep in my bones. But Google has its own reputation (and users) to protect. It's taking a risk whenever it allows a developer on its platform. If a developer with low name recognition uploads malicious software, it's not the developer's name that makes the headline. Crucially, there's no information on what the employee (and later contractor) 'H.' did to get themselves banned. Or fired…

There’s a difference between banning an app and banning an account.

Are you suggesting that Google ban all current apps in their account? Google has no idea which apps 'H.' contributed to. Or whether 'H.' still has a relationship with Raya Games.

If 'H.' is a malicious developer, then all apps that were extant while 'H.' was associated with Raya should be considered suspect. Google (and its user base) have no idea what apps 'H.' touched. The very least Google should do is ban all apps uploaded and/or updated during 'H.'s employment.

And even then Google has no way to know whether 'H.' still works at the company, or will work again there in the future. Google doesn't (and can't reasonably) have any insight into personnel decisions at Raya Games.

Is Google throwing the baby out with the bathwater? Yeah, probably. But Google can't differentiate between baby and bathwater when it comes to malicious developers. Google has an affirmative responsibility to protect its userbase. It doesn't have an affirmative responsibility to let any individual publisher sell apps on the Google Play store.

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

#289

Post by spookthesunset »

shadowgovt wrote: post #145
kmeisthax wrote: post #59

Everyone here is commenting about overautomation, but this isn't an overautomation problem. It's a secondary sanctions problem. The developer isn't being banned for breaking Google's rules, he's being banned for having hired someone else who later broke those rules; and then that ban was transitively applied to their personal account as well. This is beyond the pale. Google should not have the power to decide who you…

It's both (over-automation and secondary sanctions). The secondary sanctions exist because it's near-trivial to automatically create dozens of proxy accounts for a bad actor to launder reputation through. So in addition to direct fraud detection, Google has had to automate secondary "Is this account probably the same bad actor" detection. That system, like any such system (including human review), has false-positivie…

As somebody whose worked in the large scale anti-fraud area… I always make sure my team knows that the real people who fall through the cracks matter big time.

Anti-fraud is a tough space because you can never be 100% sure which actors are legit and which are scammers… after all if you knew who the scammers actually were you’d have blocked them all ready.

I always make sure there is some kind of escape hatch for legit users who get caught in our system. These escape hatches might not be super awesome for real users, especially if they fell into a bucket that strongly labels them as scammers, but at least they have an out.

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

#290

Post by gigel82 »

skrtskrt wrote: post #258
throwuxiytayq wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After reading so many posts like this, I decided to bite the bullet and start moving off-Google. Funny thing is, ProtonMail and Obsidian are much better than Gmail and Keep anyway. I'm still forced to use Google stuff here and there but I'm no longer dependant on them, and coincidentally I've been sleeping much better recently.

the editor for Google Docs is the one really good thing I can't get elsewhere, but I don't do that much important stuff in it - just like planning vacations, etc. Once I'm done editing something, if I want to back it up I can just export it elsewhere

Microsoft has a very usable online version that's free (with a bit of upsell here and there). Arguably more capable than Google Docs.
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