81–90 of 501 posts
Cases like this make me wish Google could be sued for $100,000,000 because it's clear that are they not following their own rules when it comes to banning accounts. This has REAL business impact, not to mention the implication of libel that the holder of the account did something to deserve to be banned. Yeah, I know: the business entered into an agreement with Google to abide by their rules and terms of service but…
We need legislation forcing companies to manually review algorithmic decisions that impact people's lives - there has to be a proper appeals process. It's simply not economical for many companies to deal with the long tail of false positives, so they don't. Google has billions of users, and if their algorithms are 99.999% right about bans, their metrics look great but that's still tens of thousands users wrongfully b…
> It's simply not economical for many companies to deal with the long tail of false positives, so they don't. This happens everywhere, not just Big Tech. Even as humans, we try to handle the 99% and ignore the 1%. I still don’t understand what anyone is proposing - force companies to provide support against their will?
When we get the full story it's usually less black and white. Quick skim over the thread and it sounds like they let an ex-employee have access to one of their accounts and he committed multiple violations? Was he spamming? Was he uploading malicious content to the store?
Also, don't build on others platforms if you want to control your destiny. You can't have it both ways.
Not long ago, someone here raised similar concerns with Microsoft 's ecosystem
It stemmed from their current underway process to force all Minecraft accounts to Microsoft accounts, and the current Microsoft account process, if you don't add a phone number during account creation, locks and bans the account automatically after a week with they only recovery option being to then give a phone number, and most voip ones are auto detected and not accepted.
If you set up the account with an alternate email, that has no effect. Setting up TOTP has had scattered reports over sometimes allowing the account to not auto ban you, but recent reports are that this too often won't stop it. There are reports that using Microsoft s own authenticator app, does stop the account from auto banning you unironically, that I have not confirmed
Of course this means they can then tie it to potentially your computer pending how you set up Windows, or Xbox live, etc. Which is a risk if you've been formerly banned from something like xbox- everything is now linked, and therefore subject to action automatically with no human team to talk to about the process.
Also, if you then go and give it to them then afterwards try to remove it, the system will not let you without extreme effort, and more details.
I worry greatly about this situation where our personal accounts are all tied together through hardware ids, mandatory phone numbers,IP addresses, and different accounts across systems, only to all get banned or locked out at once with no recourse - or demanding more data(like Minecraft indirectly giving Microsoft every single phone number for the biggest player base in the world, as mandatory(with specific exceptions for like one or two countries who's laws they are working around now, with Korea appears to be one)
Also, so many companies use Amazon, Google, Microsoft company emails and systems- your full name is there, so there is a increasing risk that if something happens to your company account, the systems knows your personal accounts and by name, bans or affects them too.
Privacy advocates are being proven right about the need to be able to not give info that ties everything together
We need legislation forcing companies to manually review algorithmic decisions that impact people's lives - there has to be a proper appeals process. It's simply not economical for many companies to deal with the long tail of false positives, so they don't. Google has billions of users, and if their algorithms are 99.999% right about bans, their metrics look great but that's still tens of thousands users wrongfully b…
> We need legislation forcing companies to manually review algorithmic decisions that impact people's lives, and have a proper appeals process. What you want is human judgement, but it will be hard to legislate that. What can easily happen is the human parroting back the underlying reasons for the decision. In this case "We have reviewed your case, and according to our records the account is associated with the probl…
We need legislation forcing companies to manually review algorithmic decisions that impact people's lives - there has to be a proper appeals process. It's simply not economical for many companies to deal with the long tail of false positives, so they don't. Google has billions of users, and if their algorithms are 99.999% right about bans, their metrics look great but that's still tens of thousands users wrongfully b…
I will say this once again: App Stores are too important in the current world to be left to the mercy of some big Internet company. I agree they should get a cut due to them being both the creators and maintainers of their platforms, but their ability to regulate what's in them should be left to a third party or government agency, just like trade is not left to its own devices and has regulators. Apple and Google are…
The easier and more effective solution is to simply force them to allow alternative app stores (without suppressing competition, like Google currently does). A free market tends to correct itself in the long term, so that should solve the majority of problems plaguing the mobile software industry today.
Cases like this make me wish Google could be sued for $100,000,000 because it's clear that are they not following their own rules when it comes to banning accounts. This has REAL business impact, not to mention the implication of libel that the holder of the account did something to deserve to be banned. Yeah, I know: the business entered into an agreement with Google to abide by their rules and terms of service but…
We need legislation forcing companies to manually review algorithmic decisions that impact people's lives - there has to be a proper appeals process. It's simply not economical for many companies to deal with the long tail of false positives, so they don't. Google has billions of users, and if their algorithms are 99.999% right about bans, their metrics look great but that's still tens of thousands users wrongfully b…
GDPR Art. 22: https://gdpr-info.eu/art-22-gdpr/ But that's only part of it. A business account might not fall within these rules, and Google can enforce them anyway (after human review) with very little recourse available. Breaking the App store duopoly is the solution.
I think that forcing human recourse _is_ the solution. This problem is much bigger than just the “App store duopoly” axe. A law that required the ability to perform all account actions/appeals/etc realtime with another human (phone, chat, etc) would’ve also minimized the need for the recent unsubscription laws as well since the hassle would’ve been much less in the first place. These are the kind of foundational human-centric business laws we need instead of the reactionary hyper-focused ones that don’t address root problems and usually just wind up further cementing incumbents.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> We need legislation forcing companies to manually review algorithmic decisions that impact people's lives, and have a proper appeals process. I don't think this is enforceable nor I think it's even possible to have such legislature. At the end of the day Google has every right to decide what they put and what they don't put on their store, with whom they do business and with whom they don't. > With how much our mod…
Apps are effectively utilities today. Apps have replaced taxis and phones. Order food through an app. Transfer money and buy things through apps. Find jobs and work those jobs through apps. Pay parking with apps. A lot of the developing world don't have a web app for certain things. Refusing to have say, Telegram, on your app store is similar to not allowing a telco to operate. Also as much as I dislike Meta, if Appl…
In the US at least, where these companies are headquartered, every example you gave has an alternative that doesn't require an app.
There might be an argument for more regulation, but calling apps utilities most definitely is not one.