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  • Hacker News
  • A major downside of any service once it becomes too large is that the overall complexity introduces lower reliability. From Google's perspective perhaps each rule and feature makes sense, but from a customer perspective, there might be too much risk of who-knows-what issues coming up. I don't think this is limited to Google. I miss the older, less complicated versions of most bigtech services; Facebook, Instagram, Google, Amazon, etc. Even looking at Vercel's project settings the other day I found myself thinking "hmm this is getting a bit unwieldy."
    by jfoster
  • Perhaps if a company is providing a service that might be considered critical (e.g. primary email address / identity provider), then there should be regulations about the level of customer support, especially some sort of human response SLA.
    by hliyan
  • It just doesn’t make sense; they have so much money they are one of the few that can actually make slightly less profit and have good customer support. But they choose to treat everyone like a robot & allow scam ads
    by wouldbecouldbe
  • Also beware of having the owner for your Google Workspace be that of an employee who no longer works there. I was never able to fulfill all the "requirements" of Google support to get the Workspace back, despite the fact that it was linked to our domain... and we couldn't register a new Google Workspace to that domain. Ok, Google, I guess we just won't use your products, and we lose access to all our mail and files?
    by 0xbadcafebee
  • If you were running a business and suffered financial harm because of this, you're probably eligible to sue them to recover that financial loss. Don't let their ToS (where they can write anything they want and it often has no legal effect) scare you from consulting a lawyer.
    by immibis
  • I wonder if this is a situation where the right course of action is to sue Google and/or push for stronger regulation around suspension of customer accounts?
    by gwbas1c
  • Annecdotally you do stand a decent chance of winning if you take them to small claims, either because Google doesn't send someone or they try to argue their misbehavior is warranted per the TOS (apparently that doesn't go down well).
    by tjpnz
  • "Company declines to do business with me" isn't usually a cause of action you can sue over.
    by perihelions
  • So, what happens to an account that is registered with said suspended email account and with a passkey-only login?

    Does Google-synced passkeys on Google Password Manager still work even when your account is suspended?

    Can't recover your accounts because you can't access your email, unless Google still allows existing email client access even when suspended but I'm not unfortunate enough to test this out.

    by 8cvor6j844qw_d6
  • My AdSense account was suspended three times because I had an exclamation mark in my ad. I closed my account after that. I am certain Google still tracks my account as "potential fraud" to this day.
    by ph4rsikal
  • Mine was permanently suspended with no recourse for that reason. Many years ago though.
    by anonzzzies
  • are exclamation marks not allowed or is that just some absurd mistake by them?
    by thousand_nights
  • What is their reasoning? Exclamation marks are in almost every print ad since the invention of the exclamation mark.
    by ecshafer
  • It's insane. They have the tooling to automatically lock my account because an ad doesn't follow the rules, but can't tell me while I'm making the ad? Why even let people submit invalid ads? What is the point of making it easy to sign up for adwords if new users are automatically banned in an hour?
    by Sevii
  • We had ours unexpectedly blocked and we were just using it for a "Login with Google" button. The only explanation was the vague "You did something against our terms and conditions." We hadn't done anything. Our use case is nothing beyond the "Login with Google" button.

    We opened a case to appeal asking for more details or a review. Meanwhile, we're scrambling to implement some kind of workaround for our users that log in with their Google account.

    And then early the next day, we get the email that our appeal was granted. Just need to be sure we follow the terms and conditions in the future.

    I guess it could have been worse but still a bit of a slap in the face.

    by moduspol
  • Consider dropping social logins for only user/pass/MFA and Passkeys.
    by toomuchtodo
  • I would just stop supporting “login with Google”.
    by NetMageSCW
  • Android developer verification would end up just like this. Lots of people would be banned from developing for Android.
    by e145bc455f1
  • Isn't it already quite bad? I remember HN post about small company where employees' private accounts got terminated for "due to a prior violation or an association with a previously-terminated Google Play Developer account".
    by f4uCL9dNSnQm
  • How do you justify specializing in mobile development when it's very clear that you're just sharecroppers on someone else's land?
    by traverseda
  • This will probably become a major problem with the Gemini APIs in enough time.

    A customer does something crappy, e.g.: generates an image they aren't supposed to, and boom you're business Gmail and/or the recovery personal Gmail gone forever.

    by TIPSIO
  • there are built in moderation tools you should turn on if you have external customers generating images, or inputing data that might be sketch
    by strangescript
  • The problem here is not just Google, but huge companies in general that operate at a scale where algorithms are the only viable way to sufficiently keep abuse under control.

    Reddit recently shadowbanned me as my account was approaching 20 years old. There was no message about what violation had been committed, and attempts to appeal went unanswered. All posts started getting filtered at some point and all comments throttled.

    The Fediverse provides a template for a better way-- smaller connected services with better moderator to user ratios.

    by markstos
  • Algorithm isn't the only viable way. G has a massive amount of cash. Enough to employ 100 people to manage these edge cases. But that cuts margin.
    by edoceo
  • The problem here is not just Google, but huge companies in general that operate at a scale where algorithms are the only viable way to sufficiently keep abuse under control.

    The companies you speak of are billion- and trillion-dollar companies. Banning people is not the only viable way of doing things.

    They have the money. They choose not to spend it.

    by reaperducer
  • If your concern is being mysteriously cut off from communities by capricious and inscrutable moderators then all the Fediverse offers is an opportunity to experience that over and over indefinitely. I've never encountered a community less interested in accountable moderation.

    Is it still true that pretty much anyone can post your handle with #fediblock and get you and your entire instance sent to the cornfield automatically by hundreds of servers? This destroyed my city's mastodon instance and drove everyone I knew there to bluesky.

    by hamdingers
  • A few years ago google blocked my youtube red / premium account for spam even though the account was only used to watch videos. Not only did they wipe the account the wiped access to the payment page so I couldn't even cancel membership for months, dealing with robotic messages (you get to appeal every 3 weeks) all while being charged. Oh I also had Google One which promised in person support but they couldnt do shit because YT different team. I ended up cancelling the credit card. Earlier this year, I got a random message that my suspension was reversed and the original suspension was in error.

    Just anedotally, I've had my wechat account blocked before and it took less than a day to talk to a person to get it sorted. At least PRC censorship has good customer service.

    by maxglute
  • Google's consumer billing is a nightmare to manage and I've been fraudulently charged (in my opinion) without recourse at least once.
    by causal
  • All these platforms go for scale. They can't have individualized relations with people and have the rentability of a drug lord, especially when said people aren’t part of some world-scale enterprise who provides a sizeable chunk of their revenue. If they catch one good person for every bad one they eliminate, it’s seen as an unfortunate side-effect, a necessary cost, and they’re fine with it.

    Yesterday was a wise account(1), the week before was GitHub (2)

    Companies are fiefdoms, they’re not democracies with a judicial system. If one of the automated sheriffs identifies you as a criminal, it doesn’t put you on trial, but directly sentences you to jail. Your process from there is never clear and it's anyone's guess to what the outcome will be.

    1: https://shaun.nz/why-were-never-using-wise-again-a-cautionar...

    2: https://x.com/vmfunc/status/1978079375183536440

    by charles_f
  • This is so true. That's why I always say it's better to choose smaller companies with whom you can still get in touch with a human being, not just a chat bot. I went with Tuta Mail and haven't looked back: quantum-safe encryption, no tracking, no ads. Plus, with my domain I can have as many aliases as I like.
    by trubadors