Terraria on Stadia cancelled after developer's Google account gets locked • Hacker News Board

Re: Terraria on Stadia cancelled after developer's Google account gets locked

#461

Post by newswasboring » Mon, Feb 08, 2021, 2:41 PM UTC

zitterbewegung wrote: post #424

ryanbrunner wrote: post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's stopping the next Google from doing the same? Providing poor justification for bans and removal from platforms is by no means limited to the big companies - it's endemic throughout tech - we just hear about Google and Facebook more because they're higher visibility and are considered more essential.

Dropping Google / Facebook is not just signing up with another service. You could self host your own email and just quit Facebook entirely.

That is a very, very limited scope for Google/Facebook. Almost to the point of me suspecting you are strawmanning it. In fact, google/facebook is so endemic to our infrastructure that you can literally delete you google account. Get it scrubbed from the internet, they will still track you. Identify you. And show you ads. If you try to block their services, some pages stop functioning. It is on the verge of impossible to escape them

Re: Terraria on Stadia cancelled after developer's Google account gets locked

#462

Post by swiley » Mon, Feb 08, 2021, 2:42 PM UTC

p410n3 wrote: post #9

This happens again and again. I have had that happen to my twitter account. I see this regulary on HN. My suspicion is that this is mostly happening because platforms that big like google or twitter rely very heavily on machine learning and other AI related technology to ban people. Because honestly, the amount of spam and abuse that are likely happening on these platforms has to be mind boggling high. So I get why t…

I just gave up the last time my google account died. There's really little value in it at this point if you're not publishing apps and I would never build a business on one of their platforms for this reason anyway.

Re: Terraria on Stadia cancelled after developer's Google account gets locked

#463

Post by KMag » Mon, Feb 08, 2021, 2:43 PM UTC

Hamuko wrote: post #293

_qulr wrote: post #285

It's painfully clear at this point that we need a consumer "bill of rights" to protect us from these giant tech companies. At the very least, companies must be legally required to present you in writing with the so-called violation of terms they're accusing you of, evidence of the violation, and a phone # or other immediate contact so that you can dispute the accusations. It's insane that these basic legal rights don…

> You could of course sue Google Unless you've waived that right when you agreed to the Terms of Service.

I'm not a lawyer, but my understanding is that U.S. courts have found that suing is a right that can't be waived by contract. Certainly an agreement to enter arbitration can be introduced as evidence against you in a a lawsuit, but any decent lawyer should be able to prevent an arbitration agreement from getting your lawsuit thrown out.

Re: Terraria on Stadia cancelled after developer's Google account gets locked

#464

Post by swiley » Mon, Feb 08, 2021, 2:44 PM UTC

krajzeg wrote: post #186

I just wish that regulation would step in and make behavior like this illegal for the corporate giants. It is definitely possible to limit the power of the TOS, and it's already done in some cases in Europe (certain common TOS clauses are just void and do nothing). One simple thing I'd really like to see is forbidding companies from terminating service without stating a reason, which seems like a really basic require…

I'm hoping they don't and Google just dies.

Re: Terraria on Stadia cancelled after developer's Google account gets locked

#465

Post by MaxBarraclough » Mon, Feb 08, 2021, 2:48 PM UTC

koheripbal wrote: post #419

amelius wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Because honestly, the amount of spam and abuse that are likely happening on these platforms has to be mind boggling high. So hire more people. You can't argue that you can't do your work properly because your AI is not yet up to the task.

You think humans are better at spotting abuse? Mods on Reddit demonstrate that such systems can be worse.

You've shown that it's possible for human moderation to be awful, you haven't shown that it's impossible for human moderation to work well. It is possible. HackerNews is a fine example.

Paid moderators can have their work supervised (a 'meta-moderation system') akin to Slashdot.

Re: Terraria on Stadia cancelled after developer's Google account gets locked

#466

Post by dathinab » Mon, Feb 08, 2021, 2:50 PM UTC

p410n3 wrote: post #9

This happens again and again. I have had that happen to my twitter account. I see this regulary on HN. My suspicion is that this is mostly happening because platforms that big like google or twitter rely very heavily on machine learning and other AI related technology to ban people. Because honestly, the amount of spam and abuse that are likely happening on these platforms has to be mind boggling high. So I get why t…

> So I get why they would try to automate bans.

The problems are less the automated bans but the missing human support after you got automated banned.

I you got banned go through a reasonable fast human review process then temporary reinstated a day later and fully reinstated a view days later it would be super annoying comparable with all google services being down for a day, but no where close to the degree of damage it causes now.

And lets be honest google could totally affort a human review process, even if they limit it to accounts which have a certain age and had been used from time to time (to make it much harder to abuse it).

But they are as much interested in this as they are in giving out reasons why you are banned, because if they would do you might be able to sue them for arbitrary discrimination against people who fall into some arbitrary category. Or similar.

What law makers should do is to require proper reasons to be given on service termination of any kind, without allowing an opt. out of this of any kind.

Re: Terraria on Stadia cancelled after developer's Google account gets locked

#467

Post by thesuperbigfrog » Mon, Feb 08, 2021, 2:51 PM UTC

The focus on customer service and customer care is what sets Amazon apart from Google.

Amazon will bend over backwards to ensure that the customer is taken care of and will even eat some costs or make concessions to make sure that the customer experience is top-notch.

By comparison, Google's customer service is absent. Google has plenty of money that they could spend to hire customer support teams and boost the customer experience so that incidents like these do not happen or at least get resolved quickly, but that does not appear to be a priority for them.

Re: Terraria on Stadia cancelled after developer's Google account gets locked

#468

Post by sundvor » Mon, Feb 08, 2021, 2:54 PM UTC

lima wrote: post #233

PixyMisa wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's SUPPOSED TO BE pay-to-play. Google is a business. That's how businesses work. That's the entire point.

Exactly. I pay for internet, water and power - I happily pay for my Google account if that means I'm treated as a customer. In fact, you can pay for your Google account with Google One, and I do, but it may or may not stop The Machine from accidentally banning my account.

Good point! I also subscribe to Google One; does that in any kind of fashion lower the chances of being hit by an auto ban?

Re: Terraria on Stadia cancelled after developer's Google account gets locked

#469

Post by FlownScepter » Mon, Feb 08, 2021, 2:55 PM UTC

falcolas wrote: post #460

zitterbewegung wrote: post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dropping Google / Facebook is not just signing up with another service. You could self host your own email and just quit Facebook entirely.

> You could self host your own email You can. I might be able to (there’s a lot of crap around spam filtering and SPF that I’d have to fight with). My mother, father, sister, cousins, nieces and nephews? Not a chance in hell.

The only people who recommend self-hosting email are ones that haven't tried it.

We have an admin who spends a good 40% of his workweek doing just our email servers. They are a massive PITA.

Re: Terraria on Stadia cancelled after developer's Google account gets locked

#470

Post by mchusma » Mon, Feb 08, 2021, 2:56 PM UTC

My list to improve the play store process that requires $0 additional dollars from google and would fix 99% of issues: 1) give developers a period to respond to the complaint before takedown (maybe 1 week) 2) if they respond, make a decision within 1 week. 3) show all this information in a portal to see basic information like your app is facing a review, pending google response, etc. Really basic stuff. 4) allowing you to attach information in responses (one situation I have been in, the trademark office had ruled in my favor but I literally didn't have a way to provide that ruling in the appeal). 5) having a premium developer support program that provides good support. I think most serious devs would prefer to pay $300/yr to have good support vs what they have now (zero support).