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Gmail registration now requires scanning a QR code and sending a text message

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Re: Gmail registration now requires scanning a QR code and sending a text message

#411

Post by makeitdouble »

idle_zealot wrote: post #312
donkyrf wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

That our education system wasn't resilient to that well-funded propaganda machine is what reflects poorly on it. That such a machine is allowed to exist reflects poorly on our institutions more broadly. I'll never blame human greed. Systems are designed for humans, if they fail to account for human nature then they're bad systems. I'm not really interested in litigating whether humans as a species are bad.

> education system wasn't resilient

Fun little exercice: How is education funded (not just school, the rest as well) ? What does the salary scale look like ? Would you jump into that boat if had the qualifications ? (and probably: why haven't you jumped into it until now ?)

Once you've got through all of that, how resilient do you expect the system to be ?

Re: Gmail registration now requires scanning a QR code and sending a text message

#412

Post by orangebread »

idle_zealot wrote: post #312
donkyrf wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

That our education system wasn't resilient to that well-funded propaganda machine is what reflects poorly on it. That such a machine is allowed to exist reflects poorly on our institutions more broadly. I'll never blame human greed. Systems are designed for humans, if they fail to account for human nature then they're bad systems. I'm not really interested in litigating whether humans as a species are bad.

Human systems have a critical bottleneck, it's run by humans. That doesn't mean it's necessarily a flaw, but it means all systems are corruptible if it's run by corrupted humans.

And I mean this for any sort of system from corporate, nonprofits, dictatorships, oligarchs, and democracy. Democracy is still a human-run system and that people seem to think democracy is somehow this bastion of freedom is a delusion.

If we want better systems we need better people running them, but that's a conversation that's emerging so we'll see how it goes.

Re: Gmail registration now requires scanning a QR code and sending a text message

#413

Post by lofaszvanitt »

Night_Thastus wrote: post #177

People complain a lot about Gmail, but honestly I kind of understand Google's plight here. They've essentially gotten roped into maintaining a huge chunk of internet infrastructure, for free . If they ever shut it down the whole world would end up rioting because it's so widely used. But it's expensive, complicated and time-consuming to maintain - and both a source of and recipient of endless waves of spam and scams.…

Just watch when they squeezed everything out of the users they are going to slap a fee on them and tell them to fuck off otherwise. It's the same pattern repeated over and over with big tech.

Re: Gmail registration now requires scanning a QR code and sending a text message

#414

Post by scottyah »

jjordan wrote: post #385
benoliver999 wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember in the early days you could watch your storage quota go up in real time.

Back when Google was still fun and innovating. Enshittification consumes all.

also, people changed. Seems like nobody wants to see cute fun stuff anymore. I bet they'd get lawsuits of people claiming false advertising since the numbers aren't strictly true.

Re: Gmail registration now requires scanning a QR code and sending a text message

#415

Post by drnick1 »

s1mplicissimus wrote: post #323
WalterBright wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except gmail is hardly a cartel, etc. I've never had a gmail account.

I'd assume that you also never tried running your own email server and have the email actually delivered to a gmail address, then.

I self-host an email server and can definitely send email to Gmail addresses.

Re: Gmail registration now requires scanning a QR code and sending a text message

#416

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

bachmeier wrote: post #266
redserk wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They've essentially gotten roped into maintaining a huge chunk of internet infrastructure, for free. I’ll stop you here. Google offered it for free and, at the time, offered such an high amount of mail storage for free it sounded insane. At the time, my ISP gave me a 25MB or 50MB inbox and that was considered pretty decent, when Google was trying to get people in with 1-2GB. They absolutely have a right to take ant…

> and certainly aren’t obligated to provide it for free And I'll stop you here. It's less than obvious that there's no obligation. If you provide a critical service that folks rely on at a price less than your cost, you drive out competition, and it's a critical part of your own business model, dropping the service without warning is IMO on the border of what Google should be allowed to do.

There were plenty of free email services before gmail. Google isn't at fault here because they provided a better experience.

Re: Gmail registration now requires scanning a QR code and sending a text message

#417

Post by hardwaresofton »

It seems we're at a bit of a crossroads. It seems like the world both needs:

- Permissionless email (i.e. for agents, empowered users who can program now)

- Pervasive email allow listing

Wonder if these can both exist at the same time, i.e. having a "public" email that is read first by AI (let's imagine we're in a world where prompt injections weren't so possible) and heavily filtered, along with one that is private and allow-list gated (via some easier-than-gpg-to-use identity marker).

Re: Gmail registration now requires scanning a QR code and sending a text message

#418

Post by ulfw »

Night_Thastus wrote: post #177

People complain a lot about Gmail, but honestly I kind of understand Google's plight here. They've essentially gotten roped into maintaining a huge chunk of internet infrastructure, for free . If they ever shut it down the whole world would end up rioting because it's so widely used. But it's expensive, complicated and time-consuming to maintain - and both a source of and recipient of endless waves of spam and scams.…

They have gotten ROPED INTO? seriously?

The company that wilfully monopolised email somehow got involuntarily roped into running said email?

Do people love revising history like this?

Re: Gmail registration now requires scanning a QR code and sending a text message

#419

Post by nutjob2 »

torben-friis wrote: post #22
dvh wrote: post #4

Any Gmail person can tell me why Gmail is tolerating Gmail phishing emails that use Google's own services (e.g. https://storage.googleapis.com/savelinge/ ... ? More info here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46665414

Spam is getting horrible lately. I get all sorts of new techniques including: - using legitimate sites to bypass filters, like sending you a bill through a legitimate bill-creation site - pretending to be a tracking service for something you supposedly ordered, then over the course of days pretending the package got lost on the way and offering a discount code for the 'purchased' amount, expecting you to use it on th…

> like sending you a bill through a legitimate bill-creation site

Why aren't these things opt-in? Ditto for every other thing that sends you email. I reflexively mark anything I didn't sign up for as spam on principle.

Re: Gmail registration now requires scanning a QR code and sending a text message

#420

Post by fireant »

chrsstrm wrote: post #394
cube00 wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>find someone else to help you verify with their phone number Very risky, either of you gets banned (it's a risk given now ban happy Google are) you'll both lose your accounts.

The number is not associated with your account, it is just used to verify legit account creations. Retroactively nuking an account due to using a "banned" phone for account creation verification would be wild and not in Google's best interests.

You can totally get a random "we've detected a suspicious activity, please verify the phone number you've used during registration" form during login.
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