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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”

#331

Post by triyambakam »

brightball wrote: post #316
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.

I’m happy with Proton right now too. Really just need a mobile app for the calendar and I’ll be all set.

There is a mobile Proton calendar app.

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

#332

Post by withinboredom »

bogwog wrote: post #87
qalmakka wrote: post #22

I will say this once again: App Stores are too important in the current world to be left to the mercy of some big Internet company. I agree they should get a cut due to them being both the creators and maintainers of their platforms, but their ability to regulate what's in them should be left to a third party or government agency, just like trade is not left to its own devices and has regulators. Apple and Google are…

Figuring out a fair and effective set of laws/regulations to control how these companies run their app stores seems way too hard and unrealistic. The easier and more effective solution is to simply force them to allow alternative app stores (without suppressing competition, like Google currently does). A free market tends to correct itself in the long term, so that should solve the majority of problems plaguing the m…

I think that they’ve effectively become so rich they’d just buy any effective competition.

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

#333

Post by kmeisthax »

Pooge wrote: post #259
qalmakka wrote: post #22

I will say this once again: App Stores are too important in the current world to be left to the mercy of some big Internet company. I agree they should get a cut due to them being both the creators and maintainers of their platforms, but their ability to regulate what's in them should be left to a third party or government agency, just like trade is not left to its own devices and has regulators. Apple and Google are…

I would much rather have a repository system like F-Droid (or you could compare it to Debian/AUR/openSUSE) where the publisher has to create a repository that respects some kind of standard so that they can distribute their software. NewPipe does this for F-Droid in order to deploy the updates faster. Otherwise, F-Droid needs to very, compile and deploy themselves and it usually takes a few days.

F-Droid repositories are equivalent to alternative app stores, including all of the associated malware risks they bear, just with a nicer UI and lower barrier-to-entry than building your own app store.

F-Droid's rules exist specifically to ensure that an app's source code corresponds with it's binaries. This reduces the risk of using F-Droid because all source code is available and auditable. There is no guarantee that said source code has been audited, and FOSS malware does exist[0], but it makes it harder to hide such code.

I would personally prefer if Google Play had similar requirements, but the entire industry would be up in arms if Google started mandating source code escrow.

[0] Notably, the ironically-named `peacenotwar` package on npm, which is a cyberwarfare tool that attempts to wipe files on Russian and Belarusian machines.

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

#334

Post by falcolas »

spookthesunset wrote: post #301
falcolas wrote: post #4

In the discussion of the last article, there was a discussion about weaponizing "associated accounts" when Google shuts things down. Looks like it's 100% a valid tactic. Looks like you need to make sure your employees all leave on good terms, and stay on good terms in the coming years. Otherwise, you too might find your Google accounts terminated with no recourse.

> Looks like it's 100% a valid tactic. It is valid and I’m sure quite effective but it isn’t perfect. You need to provide escape hatches for real people in all anti-fraud systems you create. Even if those escape hatches sometimes let fraudsters through as well. I’m not Google and I don’t know the kinds of fraud they attract (note: probably all kinds of fraud imaginable) nor do I know the level of effort those fraudst…

> There has to be ways out.

It seems like there is: appeal your case in a public forum (HN, Reddit) and hope you catch the attention of a sympathetic Googler with the political clout to get the case reviewed.

But I can't imagine this will work forever. It certainly doesn't scale.

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

#335

Post by Quigglez »

triyambakam wrote: post #331
brightball wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m happy with Proton right now too. Really just need a mobile app for the calendar and I’ll be all set.

There is a mobile Proton calendar app.

There is an Android one, but not an iOS one (at least last time I checked a few weeks ago)

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

#336

Post by moralestapia »

throwuxiytayq wrote: post #234
TuringNYC wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a scare last year where Google supposedly gave me 30 days before they would shut off my Google account of 20yrs. Family photos, youtube videos, 20yrs of email, not to mention the treasure trove of personal documents on GDrive. It took two weeks to duplicate the content and back it up elsewhere. This is a paid tier Google account and I've yet to get an explanation on why this happened. It appears to be because o…

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.

Obsidian?

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

#337

Post by phaistra »

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…

Why not make it hard to create a Google account? Why is that not on the list of potential solutions? If you have bad actors that can make hundreds or thousands of bogus accounts in an automated way, it means the account creation process is too easy. Any legit user who actually wants a Google account already has one and those who don't but actually need one will jump through the necessary hoops. Google isn't a startup anymore.

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

#338

Post by kmeisthax »

shdon wrote: post #220

15-20 years ago, I had a pretty good opinion of Google, as they seemed competent and true to their then motto "don't be evil". Now I avoid them wherever I can personally (unfortunately, and to my great dismay, my employer is fully dependent on Google cloud products). It seems they have become very evil. And what's worse... casually evil. The fact that these things happen is bad enough, but not having any recourse or…

Even 15 years ago we were hearing stories of Google summarily terminating whole accounts without stating a reason beyond some business-ese for "You know what you did". They have always treated their anti-fraud teams as secret police rather than just a way to mitigate business risk.

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

#339

Post by Tozen »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #260
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.

In my case, I moved to Fastmail... and yeah, the hilarious thing is people remember moving from AOL to Gmail over a decade ago, and think Gmail is still so much better than everything else. Gmail is worst-in-class at this point. It's slow, it's bloated, it's bad at spam filtering compared to the alternatives. They've been riding on people remembering email before Gmail, but not really actually stayed competitive with…

Many people consider Gmail as consenting to spyware. Unfortunately, lots of people don't know any better or haven't bothered to take a good look at the account settings or Google's policies.

Anybody that knows better, will avoid Gmail like the plague or use it for only the minimum.

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

#340

Post by runnerup »

codegeek wrote: post #295
dotancohen wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Customer service? For a Google account?

For Google Workspace (previously called GSuite), you do get support. Anecdotal but I recently used their live chat and the person was very helpful and helped me figure out a weird issue with a lot of patience. I would say it was a pleasant experience but this was the only time I needed them so far so you never know :)

I've also reached reasonable-quality support due to being a paid consumer of GoogleOne, which includes phone support for most (all?) google consumer products.
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