141–150 of 236 posts
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At that point, Google and Apple should be legally barred from fully banning you if it impedes you identifying yourself unless your account is hacked.
Gov. logins and services should never depend on companies like Google.
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My mom’s Gmail account got banned for no reason whatsoever last week. Since then they removed her recovery number and 2FA as they ‘looked suspicious’. Access to nearly 20 years of emails, photos and docs gone in an instant. It’s been particularly painful because she used Google to log in to everything too, including for health records that she needs. There is no way of contacting anyone at Google about it and apparen…
I hope this page can provide some guidance in the appeal process https://transparency.google/intl/en-GB_in/tools-programs/rep... If not directly through what is offered there, under the DSA (eu citizens and residents) have further ways to appeal their decision, and also Google takeout should be a last option even for banned accounts. If you have any luck post a followup on HN to guide other users having a similar iss…
“”” Ask us to restore your account
If you own the account, you can request access to it again.
- Sign in to your Google Account on a browser, like Chrome. - Select Start Appeal. - Follow the instructions. “””
C’mon Google, if I could do step 1 then I wouldn’t be on this page.
I will absolutely post a guide if we can figure out a way out of this mess.
Appreciate you trying to help. I’ll do a bit more digging on that page and see if I can find anything.
Just for reference, stuff like this is exactly why some people oppose the forced Apple/Google requirement in government systems like the new eIDs (eIDAS) in Europe. If you're forced to use Apple/Google for digital identification, playing around with your Google account and get it banned can have disproportional consequences. Suddenly you're locked out of all online government systems.
Just for reference, stuff like this is exactly why some people oppose the forced Apple/Google requirement in government systems like the new eIDs (eIDAS) in Europe. If you're forced to use Apple/Google for digital identification, playing around with your Google account and get it banned can have disproportional consequences. Suddenly you're locked out of all online government systems.
Maybe we should reframe how we see the big gate keepers like Google and Apple as they seem to be a new concept. They are not governments but have properties of them. Governments are defined as having a monopoly on violence. And we, through a lot of struggles, were able to attenuate this power such that this power was not granted to a single person alone but both distributed to the judgement of many and codified so th…
Just for reference, stuff like this is exactly why some people oppose the forced Apple/Google requirement in government systems like the new eIDs (eIDAS) in Europe. If you're forced to use Apple/Google for digital identification, playing around with your Google account and get it banned can have disproportional consequences. Suddenly you're locked out of all online government systems.
Maybe we should reframe how we see the big gate keepers like Google and Apple as they seem to be a new concept. They are not governments but have properties of them. Governments are defined as having a monopoly on violence. And we, through a lot of struggles, were able to attenuate this power such that this power was not granted to a single person alone but both distributed to the judgement of many and codified so th…
While I agree with where you're coming from in spirit, if you want to push this then you've got to do the work of actually coming up with workable concrete approaches rather than hand waving against a whole general category of action. The problem is that digital communications lend themselves to centralized power, and power vacuums inevitably get filed by something, right?
I too would love to see the power of surveillance companies get magically reduced by something that isn't centralized government action. But that hasn't happened so far, right? If anything, they've grown stronger - sucked in ever more of our lives, sucked in technical communities who were culturally predisposed to and capable of resisting, and even taken over control of parts of the de jure government!
So barring that, government regulation (ie democratic accountability) seems like a necessary approach. This fails too of course (eg how all the natural rights referenced in the Bill of Rights are being infringed in one way or another). But once again what is the alternative to attempting to codify lofty ideals, writing them down, and then pushing to implement them wherever they're being infringed? Regulation like the GDPR and other EU directives at least attempt to draft rights-based paradigms, as imperfect as their implementation and enforcement may be.
The real problem would seem to be that we're soured on the idea of having reasonable laws in the US from every attempt at meaningful regulation ending up with a multitude of holes in it due to corporate lobbying. It seems like that is what needs to be focused on and addressed - thinking one can let the corpos run wild and then somehow outrun or individualistically push back on them is a pipe dream.
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I hope this page can provide some guidance in the appeal process https://transparency.google/intl/en-GB_in/tools-programs/rep... If not directly through what is offered there, under the DSA (eu citizens and residents) have further ways to appeal their decision, and also Google takeout should be a last option even for banned accounts. If you have any luck post a followup on HN to guide other users having a similar iss…
I had a look at the link and became hopeful when I clicked on “Appeal a disabled account”, but then the page loaded and said this - “”” Ask us to restore your account If you own the account, you can request access to it again. - Sign in to your Google Account on a browser, like Chrome. - Select Start Appeal. - Follow the instructions. “”” C’mon Google, if I could do step 1 then I wouldn’t be on this page. I will abso…
Otherwise the DSA approach, with whatever that may entail process wise.
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Gov. logins and services should never depend on companies like Google.
our govt farms the authorization out to banks (multiple of them), seems to work well. There is also a govt auth on top of that if you don't want that.
This is why PayPal for the longest time made it really clear that "we are not a bank". So that they wouldn't be subject to those regulations and could suspend accounts and keep the money.
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Maybe we should reframe how we see the big gate keepers like Google and Apple as they seem to be a new concept. They are not governments but have properties of them. Governments are defined as having a monopoly on violence. And we, through a lot of struggles, were able to attenuate this power such that this power was not granted to a single person alone but both distributed to the judgement of many and codified so th…
Cultural understanding without regulation is just serfdom. That's basically what we have now where most people aren't willing to fight Apple/Google/Meta/MS.
It's still about framing, though. It's not a fight. The gatekeepers, like governments, laws, and money are social constructs - shared fictions. They are not physical things but made agreements by society. We can't fight them anymore than we can fight ourselves. And they stop working the moment we stop believing in them.
The only way to fight a social construct is to create a new shared fiction that is more desirable and works better.
The machine created by the current social fiction is composed of people who would all be better off with a better narrative. We just don't have the imagination right now to see it. But it is there waiting for us somewhere. Like all the best ideas that transformed us for the better throughout history.
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Who gets the money shouldn't be your focus, it's that there's even talk of anyone building such a system at all that should be the focus. Europe has a long history of government abuses of human rights. There's absolutely no guarantee that such a system being designed and implemented by people in Europe as opposed to the US is a safeguard against any sort of human rights issues.
What do you mean, you don't think a party named the "Alternative for Deutschland" would make benevolent use of such systems when it gets into power?
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We should break these companies apart - they should not have that level of power.
Centralization of power at all levels is bad. I therefore agree in spirit. But who is the 'we' in that 'we'? If you defer to a politician, you simply centralize more power into a body of government constrained by only cultural norms and donor interests. Making a change requires the shifting of the overtone window of acceptability. At that point, it executes on it own regardless of mechanism. The cultural norms are th…