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My son pleasured himself on Gemini Live. Entire family's Google accounts banned

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Re: My son pleasured himself on Gemini Live. Entire family's Google accounts banned

#101

Post by apparent »

hsbauauvhabzb wrote: post #74
apparent wrote: post #60

> All my emails, all my documents saved in Google Drive. I would think someone whose business depends on gmail would use an email client, at least periodically, to download their emails.

What an arrogant response. Do you think the average user understands where emails are stored or that google could rugpull at any moment?

Even just for offline access when on airplanes, when the internet/power is out. It's not just about rugpulls.

Honestly it's a bit insulting to non-HN people to assume that they'd never want offline access or realize that having a single point of failure is a bad idea.

Re: My son pleasured himself on Gemini Live. Entire family's Google accounts banned

#102

Post by eviks »

ryandrake wrote: post #63
simonw wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many of those competitive services would also lock the account if something like this happened?

Yes, these stories should scare you off of cloud services in general, not one particular vendor. The root problem is that you're storing valuable information on "someone else's computer." And that someone can decide to stop serving you for any or no reason at all, and you are without recourse. This should be totally unacceptable, but somehow the world has normalized it. Don't keep anything in a cloud service that you…

No, the root problem is you put all the eggs in one basket ignoring the folk wisdom that predates anything digital

> Don't keep anything in a cloud service that you couldn't live with losing, unless you keep a local backup.

Translated: so do keep everything in a cloud service, just backup it at a fraction of the effort with / insecurity / unreliability / unavailability of your own computer

Re: My son pleasured himself on Gemini Live. Entire family's Google accounts banned

#103

Post by apparent »

kulahan wrote: post #87
apparent wrote: post #60

> All my emails, all my documents saved in Google Drive. I would think someone whose business depends on gmail would use an email client, at least periodically, to download their emails.

Why? You're going to reference them from Google Drive. Google has 400 trillion gazillion servers with copies of it. There's no way you can lose it! You wouldn't do anything weird, so there's absolutely no reason to think you'd lose your account. And honestly, we're all humans here - surely you can reach out to a company as large as Google and speak to a human if there's an issue this significant. Another consideratio…

Even if you don't think you're at risk of permanently losing access, you would want to have access during power outages or other internet outages. Or even just when you're on a plane and want to look up an old email.

Re: My son pleasured himself on Gemini Live. Entire family's Google accounts banned

#104

Post by Aurornis »

troad wrote: post #100
Aurornis wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it was obviously a creative writing exercise. I left another comment showing the contradictions in the post. The facts provided were self-contradicting and the story was full of the usual tells for creative writing posts. It was also oddly focused on email access instead of the obvious legal problems that would come from having your account flagged for CSAM. It’s like what someone would write if they were try…

You identify two inconsistencies, neither of which appear to actually be inconsistent. (One is just the observation that multiple accounts were banned, which is not actually an inconsistency? Just something you don't find likely?) It's possible that this is real, it's possible it's made up, but I'm not seeing much more evidence in your armchair scepticism than in the asserted facts. Last week everyone on HN was telli…

> (One is just the observation that multiple accounts were banned, which is not actually an inconsistency? Just something you don't find likely?)

I think you misunderstood. In one post they said all accounts were banned including their recovery accounts. They also said they were forced to create a new account on a different service just to have email.

In another comment they said Google sent them an email saying their accounts were banned for “child protection”. This supposedly occurred after the son admitted what he had done, which was a detail that supposedly occurred much later in the process.

Where did they receive that message if all of their email accounts were banned?

These Reddit stories always get some people invested in the story before the inconsistencies show up. You have to read them with some skepticism. You can do enough mental gymnastics to convince yourself that all of the Reddit posts are true and accurate if you try hard enough.

Re: My son pleasured himself on Gemini Live. Entire family's Google accounts banned

#105

Post by Aurornis »

troad wrote: post #97
Aurornis wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm pretty reticent to rush to regulation, but I really don't know what other solution is even possible here. Before rushing to assume regulation is necessary, we should question if this story is real at all. It has a lot of signs of being a creative writing exercise like the conflicting details about all of their accounts being banned, including recovery emails, but then later they received an email explaining the…

> but then later they received an email explaining the reason for the ban Presumably this was in response to an appeal, which would have required an email, which would obviously have been a non-Google email given the wider context? I'm not seeing the inconsistency.

I think you’re stretching. You can’t just send an email to Google from a new email address claiming you were associated with an unrelated Google account and then receive information about that account.

Re: My son pleasured himself on Gemini Live. Entire family's Google accounts banned

#106

Post by neonstatic »

tartoran wrote: post #28
neonstatic wrote: post #6

The terrifying part is how much one can be dependent on services from a single company, that may at some point simply decide to not do business with you. Whether they have good reason for that is secondary. I moved away from relying on Google a while ago when I noticed, that I have zero recourse in case something happens. Turned out to be a sensible decision. I still use my google account, but only for things I would…

Not everyone is aware how Google operates in cases like these until it happens. . Whether Google don't want to do business with people breaching some rules is one thing but to lock away all their data is something that does not make much sense to me, only highlights how their service should not be depended on. Also to ban all people who may have logged in from a device but who have done nothing wrong is bad policy. F…

My comment focused on Google because that's what OP is about, but I wouldn't single them out here. I think it's largely a matter of scale / compliance. There have been many posts here on HN about individuals and companies "begging" (their words not mine) Apple to reconsider a decision regarding their account. I don't have any experience with Meta, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was also a fully automated, no recourse black box.

Re: My son pleasured himself on Gemini Live. Entire family's Google accounts banned

#107

Post by neonstatic »

eviks wrote: post #48
robomartin wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thankfully learned that lesson about twenty years go. Google had a product that allowed you to park domains with them for ad insertion to generate some revenue. Owning over 400 domains at the time I though, why not? The process through which you parked the domains with Google entailed loading a file with the list of domains, after which each one would, in turn, be approved or denied. All 400+ domains were approved.…

> I would never do business with Google. All I use from them is search. That's it. Nothing else. Given that's their main business and they are likely to graveyard whatever domain penny business you've got burnt by anyway, you're still doing a lot of business with them

But it's the kind of business, where recourse is not needed

Re: My son pleasured himself on Gemini Live. Entire family's Google accounts banned

#108

Post by troad »

Aurornis wrote: post #104
troad wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You identify two inconsistencies, neither of which appear to actually be inconsistent. (One is just the observation that multiple accounts were banned, which is not actually an inconsistency? Just something you don't find likely?) It's possible that this is real, it's possible it's made up, but I'm not seeing much more evidence in your armchair scepticism than in the asserted facts. Last week everyone on HN was telli…

> (One is just the observation that multiple accounts were banned, which is not actually an inconsistency? Just something you don't find likely?) I think you misunderstood. In one post they said all accounts were banned including their recovery accounts. They also said they were forced to create a new account on a different service just to have email. In another comment they said Google sent them an email saying thei…

The story as OP tells it is that they appealed the ban, and the ban was upheld. Logically, they appealed the ban from an email address they had access to. I don't know how you get from 'all of their Google accounts were banned' to 'they had no possible way to send and receive email whatsoever'.

> These Reddit stories always get some people invested in the story before the inconsistencies show up. You have to read them with some skepticism. You can do enough mental gymnastics to convince yourself that all of the Reddit posts are true and accurate if you try hard enough.

I get the feeling you've concluded that the OP's claims are unlikely and are now rationalising that conclusion by trying to construct some arguments to that effect, but I find the specific arguments you're giving to be fairly weak. That doesn't speak to the veracity of the original story, it just makes your attempted debunking unconvincing.

Re: My son pleasured himself on Gemini Live. Entire family's Google accounts banned

#109

Post by ryandrake »

eviks wrote: post #102
ryandrake wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, these stories should scare you off of cloud services in general, not one particular vendor. The root problem is that you're storing valuable information on "someone else's computer." And that someone can decide to stop serving you for any or no reason at all, and you are without recourse. This should be totally unacceptable, but somehow the world has normalized it. Don't keep anything in a cloud service that you…

No, the root problem is you put all the eggs in one basket ignoring the folk wisdom that predates anything digital > Don't keep anything in a cloud service that you couldn't live with losing, unless you keep a local backup. Translated: so do keep everything in a cloud service, just backup it at a fraction of the effort with / insecurity / unreliability / unavailability of your own computer

Yes, and, importantly, have a plan to be able to log in to and reset your passwords through e-mail, on all your other services, if you suddenly lose you@yourcloudemail.com

I consider “cloud” to be a single (unreliable) basket. If you have your online stuff spread across 5 cloud providers, than any of them locking you out will disrupt you in some way.

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