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How likely is losing a Google account?

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Re: How likely is losing a Google account?

#241

Post by cycomanic »

jeffbee wrote: post #202
cycomanic wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I highly doubt that Google even tracks the error rate. I mean that you somehow need to make a viral post on HN to get your account back is evidence of that, they don't even know they made a mistake. Also based on the number of posts that we see here it's a nonneglible error rate. How many users does HN have a couple of 10thousand. So 32 posts makes it maybe 1 in a 1000, even if it is a 1 in 10000 or even 1 in 100000…

> I highly doubt that Google even tracks the error rate. Please. Google has an entire team devoted to account abuse quality research. https://storage.googleapis.com/pub-tools-public-publication-...

So if there is no way of contacting a human if you have been locked out of your account, how do they determine a false lock out? I am serious, every thread here on HN about being locked out said that the affected person tried all other avenues and did not get anywhere near a real human. So that would make all research flawed wouldn't it? Because it simply checks that the algorithm is consistent. Let's not assume malice. However, that doesn't make it much better because it means the account abuse quality research team is borderline incompetent.

Re: How likely is losing a Google account?

#242

Post by JohnFen »

sva_ wrote: post #210

It's kind of ironic, the US is often famed for having a great service sector (Germans love to say that we're comparably a "service desert"). Yet all these big tech companies have abysmal customer service. I wonder at what point exactly this disconnect appears.

That point is the point when a company feels like it can make an acceptable amount of money without worrying about satisfying customers. It's often a sign that the company is effectively a monopoly that people feel they have no option but to use.

Re: How likely is losing a Google account?

#243

Post by raylad »

kugelblitz wrote: post #219
Forgeties79 wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The amount of nonsense on my LG C1 is nonsense given what I paid for it. Seriously considering getting an Apple TV or Nvidia Shield to run all my stuff on. Their UI is so bloated with crap.

I got a Sony Bravia, but made sure never to enter the wifi password into the TV directly, but rather hook up an Apple TV and only use that. This way I still have a "dumb TV" (apparently impossible to get now). Second option would have been to get a projector.

I have a Sony Bravia, configured it on WiFi, and created a new gmail account to use with the built-in Android TV system.

It seems fine: no ads, nothing spamming, and it has an option to not share any data, which presumably (!) it pays attention to.

Re: How likely is losing a Google account?

#244

Post by remus »

nirvdrum wrote: post #192
Eisenstein wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The provide support for users that pay them, and for advertisers. Their business model is to sell things, and it is working pretty well. They can certainly 'afford' it, but they don't want to, and your complaint as a 'free' tier user means little to them. What is needed is legislation or some practiced standard regarding real-person online-id so that losing access to your email account doesn't nuke your ability to op…

I've managed a Google Workplace account (~30 paid users) for over a decade and have never had support respond in less than a week. And each time I got a canned response. I just don't even bother anymore, which is likely what they want. I don't think this is a free vs paid thing. It's just the way Google operates.

It depends how much money you spend with them. If you shell out for expensive support in GCP you get guaranteed response times, dedicated account reps and so on.

Re: How likely is losing a Google account?

#245

Post by berniedurfee »

morpheos137 wrote: post #231
c22 wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google has the same incentive to consider users. If your eyeballs go away they have no recourse for tomorrow. This is no doubt why they give their services away. If they thought they could achieve similar market share while also charging you they certainly would. (And they do whenever they see the chance.)

Google certainly could charge a very small fee for existing gmail, youtube, etc, accounts and make a bunch of money. In fact there is a pretty strong argument that they are leaving money on the table by not doing so. Imagine you like your gmail and you have had it for the past decade. If Google charges only $1 per year across say a billion users that is a billion dollars. Even if they lose some users at the margin it…

Charge for the service and show you ads and sell your data like cable. It’s a win, win, win!

I long for a post advertising world. What cataclysmic event or human evolutionary change could cause that, I wonder.

Is there any sci-fi that has a world without advertising or is that so far-fetched it’s unimaginable to even futurists?

Re: How likely is losing a Google account?

#246

Post by ziml77 »

AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #197
Forgeties79 wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The amount of nonsense on my LG C1 is nonsense given what I paid for it. Seriously considering getting an Apple TV or Nvidia Shield to run all my stuff on. Their UI is so bloated with crap.

Unfortunately, the Nvidia Shield hasn't been the community darling for some time. Ever since there was an OS update that started putting ads on the homescreen.

I stopped using the Shield when I realized that my LG C9 runs the streaming applications much better than the Shield. The Shield has always been slow for me and Hulu on it never worked right. Every time it went to the next episode of a TV show, the screen would be black while the audio played. I don't think it was consistent how long it stayed like that for but it could be up to a few minutes.

I'll just let LG collect my viewing habits if that's what it takes for a good experience. But I did decline all of the agreements that have anything to do with data collection, so hopefully they're not being overly intrusive anyway.

Re: How likely is losing a Google account?

#247

Post by remus »

cycomanic wrote: post #241
jeffbee wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I highly doubt that Google even tracks the error rate. Please. Google has an entire team devoted to account abuse quality research. https://storage.googleapis.com/pub-tools-public-publication-...

So if there is no way of contacting a human if you have been locked out of your account, how do they determine a false lock out? I am serious, every thread here on HN about being locked out said that the affected person tried all other avenues and did not get anywhere near a real human. So that would make all research flawed wouldn't it? Because it simply checks that the algorithm is consistent. Let's not assume mali…

> So that would make all research flawed wouldn't it? Because it simply checks that the algorithm is consistent. Let's not assume malice. However, that doesn't make it much better because it means the account abuse quality research team is borderline incompetent.

I don't think it follows that you need to speak to an affected user to confirm they were improperly locked out of their account. You could have a human review the account history and the steps that led up to the suspension and so on to make a decision about whether it was a good decision or not. No doubt you'd get more info if you spoke to the affected user, but that in itself is not perfect (a scammers whole game is trying to convince google they're someone else, after all.)

I guess what Im getting at is that I think there is a lot of grey areas when you're trying to do account recovery at scale. No doubt there are cut and dry cases where people are locked out of accounts they've used for a long time (and that's shit for the people affected), but there are also plenty of scammers who'd put a lot of effort in to convincing a support person that they should have access to an account. I just don't think having support staff is the panacea it is often portrayed as.

Re: How likely is losing a Google account?

#248

Post by ziml77 »

xeeeeeeeeeeenu wrote: post #190
garciansmith wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had an issue with the credit card used to renew a Fastmail account. Fastmail sent me emails about the issue, but it took a couple days to fix everything on my end. Even after the renew date passed my email functioned as normal, so there seems to be, at least, a grace period. Not sure what would have happened if it went on for longer though.

>Not sure what would have happened if it went on for longer though. When I missed the payment they sent me this: "You can still use your account for now. If the subscription is not renewed soon, sending and receiving email will be disabled. If the subscription is still not renewed after a few weeks, access will be disabled. Eventually, the entire account will be deleted, including all stored messages."

Specific timelines would be nice to know, but otherwise this sounds reasonable. If you stop paying, you have a grace period to download all of the messages before they stop you from using their service as a read-only archive. Then you have another grace period to pay before they clear out your data so they're not wasting space holding onto your junk and to avoid maintaining any liabilities that come with having your data stored on their servers.

Re: How likely is losing a Google account?

#249

Post by dirtyid »

Since last summer, I have two seperate Youtube PREMIUM accounts blocked for spam and deceptive practices, community violations for content makers. These accounts only view videos, doesn't even comment. Banned youtube account can't even access billing page to cancel, so Google's been robbing me every month until I change credit card no. Since then I've had two more new accounts banned. I don't know what's triggering these bans, but they happen every 3-4 months on a weekend so something is happening to just my hardware but not others in the house.

I'm still holding out for appeal process which can be done ever 2 weeks. But so far pattern seems to be automatic rejection. Also have Google One which should get you live person support, but they basically forwarded me to Youtube support who said they were not trained to resolve issue. lol. Only saving grace is I could take out all my data and intially even that wasn't possible on my main 10+ year old account for some reason. I guess my point is, even if chance of losing account is low, chance of recovering account is even lower.

For reference I've ranted about knowing people who lost Chinese social media access but actually got accounts retored by a person after submitting insincere self criticism. It's not ideal but still much more functional experience than what I'm going through with Google.

Re: How likely is losing a Google account?

#250

Post by vorpalhex »

rektide wrote: post #152
fencepost wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely correct. What would have happened to those banned accounts had it been a livestreamer with a small number of subscribers and a smaller number of viewers? Would any real human have ever looked at it - and would they have cared or been empowered to do anything? Obviously proving a negative is a problem, but would anyone be surprised if small bans like that had actually happened and never got fixed? I'd be su…

Yes, well, Google & all sites also has a right to defend the network against attackers, which these people constitute. They actively degraded the site's quality & looked like & were an attack. Ultimately I think it's the right of these sites to handle matters as they may, and to a large degree caveat emptor us users. But I also very much want there to be forgiveness somewhere in these systems. The historical, classic…

They posted an emoji in chat because the streamer told them to.

Of his own chat.

The chat has slow mode. Not like they can ddos the service.

That's not an attack.

Google should be ashamed of themselves for having an automated system that banned thousands without any kind of human loop review.

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