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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

#521

Post by saghm »

Night_Thastus wrote: post #330
applfanboysbgon wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The highest comment in the thread is somebody defending Google, a trillion dollar company that profits hundreds of billions of dollars per year, with a wide-ranging monopoly on tech services, as being a victim providing a free service for the public good. While stating that holding onto data is a liability. As though the data was not the point. As though the data was not the payment. I need to get off of this fucking…

I hate Google when they pull anti-consumer crap. I believe they're too big, too unaccountable, and something needs to be done about them. Their power rivals that of a country and that shouldn't be considered acceptable. But man, I would hate to be the one dealing with Gmail. It's a nightmare for the reasons I listed above. Someone can in fact hold both of those opinions. I was also actively telling people to de-Googl…

The comment is defending them on the basis that they got "roped into" it, which is nonsense. They intentionally went out of their way to make it enticing and got an absurdly large market share because of it. Doing something successfully isn't getting "roped into" it even if you change your mind later.

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

#522

Post by xp84 »

dotancohen wrote: post #172
xp84 wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an underrated distinction. Sadly, the line is so much more blurred now than even when I was a kid in the 90s. There are so many businesses now which exist mainly to cheat you, operating at the very edge of what’s technically legal, and relying on their customers not really understanding the full terms of the deals they’re agreeing to. It’s sickening.

Can you post an example? Thank you.

Here are a few that I'm most familiar with.

- Seniors are sold various quackish financial products like annuities which are a terrible deal for them.

- Timeshares, which nearly never work out in the favor of the consumer (and whose value collapses 50-80% instantly if you look at what they go for on the resale market)

- Prepaid card products that cost a bunch of money to load and then incur monthly fees too (exploiting those who have for whatever reason got blacklisted from banking)

- Every financial product that has a 25%+ interest rate, actually, which isn't limited to those with bad credit. Even if you have an 899 credit score, if you walk into Nordstrom and get their credit card, you will have a close to 30% rate on that. This whole business model is obviously built on tricking people into spending money they don't have and carrying a balance.

- Salesmen hawking solar panels that come to my front door and promise me all kinds of savings. Note: Probably only half these are scams! Just have to figure out which half.

- Health insurers, pretty much across the board. They do things like declare the most dominant ambulance service in San Francisco, the SFFD, "out of network", so the SFFD then sends you a bill for $1000 if you had to use an ambulance. The neat lifehack by the insurer is that most people will just curse, cry, maybe go into debt, and pay it. Only like 10-20% of patients will file a complaint with the insurer's state regulator, and those can just be quickly paid. Result: Savings of 80-90% for health insurance company! (If this one sounds oddly specific, you can guess why.)

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

#523

Post by donkyrf »

qsera wrote: post #466
donkyrf wrote: post #461

Earlier quoted context omitted.

right-wing ideologies are meant to augment concentrated wealth and power, which means there are incentives for the rich and powerful to create right-wing propaganda machines. left-wing ideologies are meant to create diffuse wealth and power, which means there's no incentive for individuals to create such propaganda machines. This is why there are enormous amounts of right-wing media, and almost no left-wing media in…

So all the media that Trump calls "Fake news" is not-left wing? > left-wing ideologies are meant to create diffuse wealth and power, which means there's no incentive for individuals to create such propaganda machines. Maybe this was true at some point. But I think today the left ideologies are used largely as a front, by the people who just want to "augment concentrated wealth and power". I think these are the truly…

Your response is _almost_ funny.

I asserted that there is very little left-wing media today, because it is far more profitable to make media intended to enrich specific individuals.

And your counter-argument was that... there is very little left-wing media today, because it has been hijacked by specific individuals who want to be enriched.

Cool.

Side note: your decision to claim that trump attacking something means it is left-wing shows both that you are completely detached from any sort of reality, and that you lack even the tiniest hint of thought.

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

#524

Post by denkmoon »

account42 wrote: post #508
vel0city wrote: post #506

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not able to continue to receive mail at the apartment I lived at a decade ago. It turns out after I stopped paying for the apartment I lost the ability to control that mailbox. This is a normal thing to happen in the physical world. We really shouldn't have such strict connections between email being a primary identifier for a user, requiring only a single one on an account, and not letting users change what they…

It's a giant pain in the ass in the real world. I don't think we should accept such friction for switching providers online just because we have such limits in superficially similar operations.

I don't disagree but how would that work given the existing internet infrastructure? The gmail domain and MX records will always necessarily be at the behest of google and so the label 'xyz@gmail.com' will always necessarily be 100% under their control.

The only real solution is to use your own domain and MX records, which anyone who cares about keeping a vanity email address should do. Which to me is the virtual equivalent of keeping a PO box or such.

Having migrated off an @gmail to a personal domain, yeah it's a pain, but you rip the bandaid off and you're free. Changing the address on my mail sucked when I bought a house, but it would be silly to never ever move because changing your mailing address is unpleasant.

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

#525

Post by wunderlotus »

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.…

Plight? Free? They have gotten billions (trillions?) worth of monetizable data. It's hardly a plight.

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

#526

Post by AnthonyMouse »

account42 wrote: post #474
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have a system for improving organizations. Competition. The actual problem is that our system for preserving competition is insufficiently effective.

Competition on its own is a very bad system for improving organizations as is selects for the most ruthless and underhanded, not the best for society. Unless you can 100% ensure that companies don't externalize their costs then the company that learns how to will win the competition game.

> Competition on its own is a very bad system for improving organizations as is selects for the most ruthless and underhanded, not the best for society.

If a company is ruthlessly screwing you but you have 50 other viable alternatives, nothing is forcing you to continue using them, which is a disadvantage for them, not an advantage.

If a company is lying to you, there are already laws against that, and on top of that actual competition means you also get to stop doing business with them.

Which companies screw people the most, the ones with limited competition (Comcast, Microsoft, Boeing) or the ones with lots of competition (Costco, Framework, IKEA)?

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

#527

Post by qsera »

donkyrf wrote: post #523
qsera wrote: post #466

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So all the media that Trump calls "Fake news" is not-left wing? > left-wing ideologies are meant to create diffuse wealth and power, which means there's no incentive for individuals to create such propaganda machines. Maybe this was true at some point. But I think today the left ideologies are used largely as a front, by the people who just want to "augment concentrated wealth and power". I think these are the truly…

Your response is _almost_ funny. I asserted that there is very little left-wing media today, because it is far more profitable to make media intended to enrich specific individuals. And your counter-argument was that... there is very little left-wing media today, because it has been hijacked by specific individuals who want to be enriched. Cool. Side note: your decision to claim that trump attacking something means i…

Ok so let me get this straight. According to you, the news channels that tries to make Trump administration and republicans look bad, is actually "right wing"?

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

#528

Post by petu »

dakolli wrote: post #349
petu wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it's only for receiving and you still need external mail server/address?

https://developers.cloudflare.com/email-service/get-started/...

That's not SMTP or other industry standard protocol, incompatible with any mail client out there (?) -- it's for sending mail from backend services, not using as personal email.

Even if you make it work with some SMTP adapter, you still need external mail server as on reception side Cloudflare don't provide storage/IMAP service, only route/redirect mail.

I use it (routing to Gmail, Mailgun SMTP for sending) and it works. But it's not really a mail service if it depends on some another mail service to work.

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

#529

Post by windexh8er »

SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #517
windexh8er wrote: post #507

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then I would gather you don't rely on mail like many of their customers. Just do a simple search of M365 outages and you'll get plenty just in the last year.

I would say we do rely on email. But that we have not noticed any interruption.

Just to put a pin in it, hard to argue with the official history [0].

[0] https://x.com/MSFT365Status

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

#530

Post by redeeman »

duskwuff wrote: post #212
traderj0e wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The stuff they've shut down has been nowhere near as important as Gmail.

Shutting down GMail would practically amount to shutting down email. It's by far the largest email provider in the US (and probably in the world but I don't have that data). There's no other provider who could take up the slack; if it were to abruptly shut down, a lot of users would simply lose access to email altogether.

bullshit, email exists outside of gmail, and email would continue to exist without it. many would have to get a new account somewhere, but that would be not a problem. there are shitloads of providers that would be quite happy
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