[HN Gopher] Google cancels Google Play publisher account and end...
___________________________________________________________________
Google cancels Google Play publisher account and ends family's
source of income
Author : heavyset_go
Score : 199 points
Date : 2022-03-27 20:39 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (medium.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (medium.com)
| grujicd wrote:
| Google recently flagged downloads of my app as a malware for no
| reason whatsoever. It's a B2B software used in companies
| worldwide since 2005, digitally signed, virus checked, not a
| freeware with some stange business model. Nothing even remotely
| shady. As good as it gets when we're talking about downloadable
| stuff.
|
| When download gets flagged Chrome will block the download, but
| that's not all - Firefox is using Google's safe browsing service
| as well, meaning my Windows software was only available through
| Edge at that point. Essentially dead.
|
| Luckily, it was sorted out in a day or two but it was really
| scary. First request for review was even rejected, so I poured
| more info and arguments into second one, mentioned that we're
| advertising this software on Google Ads for all those years...
|
| If these requests were denied it would practically kill my
| company and the only source of income for my family. And I'm not
| even using their platform like Google Play where you're in
| contractual relation and they can argue you're breaching some of
| the clauses.
| [deleted]
| heavyset_go wrote:
| This also happens with websites that distribute application
| downloads. If one system flags your application download as
| malware and puts it on a list, those lists are shared to, and
| aggregated by, organizations that exist up and down the
| software and network stack. At no point does anyone actually
| verify if what is on those lists is actually malware.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| What is the answer to this in a world of scammers, bad actors,
| etc? Perhaps it should be illegal to ban a user and if a user is
| truly abusive then sue them in court for damages.
|
| Speaking of suing, why has nobody sued Google or others for this
| behavior?
| LargoLasskhyfv wrote:
| emptyparadise wrote:
| Google really should have a manual process with actual humans
| one can interact with when Google accounts that had enough
| money pass through them are involved.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| I think if users could sue for this sort of thing Google
| would start doing that because it would be cheaper than
| fending off lawsuits.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Google really should have a manual process with actual
| humans one can interact with when Google accounts that had
| enough money pass through them are involved_
|
| Flip side of this is compromised accounts, or those doing
| illegal or dangerous things would run far longer.
| cowpig wrote:
| Or they could invest in enough humans that it doesn't
| l-lousy wrote:
| You can still suspend an account immediately and wait for
| someone to appeal before engaging the expensive human
| support
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| Your account would get suspended, and google would contact
| you to verify what happened, that your account did whatever
| it did, and if it was you or someone else doing that.
|
| It's not the suspending that's the problem, it's the
| inability to find out why it was suspended, and the
| inability to get someone to reinstate your account.
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| This. Breaking these companies apart is pointless. Regulate
| the support experience. These developers are borderline
| employees.
| syshum wrote:
| We already have the answer. We do not really need new laws, or
| regulation
|
| We need enforcement of contract law (and maybe a prohibition on
| binding arbitration which would be a new law)
|
| However today these "Terms of service" are not really treated
| like a normal contract, in a few ways
|
| One most of them are massively one sided, which should make
| them unenforceable and disallowed. Also standard contracts most
| of the time require notification of specific violations with
| documentation of the violation that sever the contract, not
| these vague assertions that with no documentation of the
| violation. Also for the most part contracts do not allow these
| open ended catch all type of provisions most Terms of service
| have, there are exceptions of course but it seems to have
| enacted a completely different level of provisions for these
| "terms of service" agreements that would not be permitted in
| other contexts of contract law
| MiddleEndian wrote:
| Given the number of legit bad actors, I don't think it's
| reasonable to make it illegal to ban users.
|
| If anything it should be made easier to install programs
| without a "store" at all. Operating systems worked fine without
| this concept, and the play store and ios store are functioning
| as rent-seeking middle men, taking money without offering
| anything of value in return.
| izacus wrote:
| The same answer that existed in all other industries which do
| consumer services: proper customer services with humans and
| strong consumer protection law that stomps on the neck of
| corporations that abuse people without recourse.
| zackees wrote:
| throwaway684936 wrote:
| _Illegal to ban users?_ So a neo-nazi account spams, harasses,
| doxxes hundreds of users and spreads gore all over your
| platform, and you aren 't allowed to shut them down unless you
| go through the court system first? This is one of the most
| absurd ideas I've ever heard.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Harassment is against the law. Maybe your platform shouldn't
| allow such abuse? They can fix their platform so this isn't
| possible without banning anybody. I'm just brainstorming
| here.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| > They can fix their platform so this isn't possible
| without banning anybody.
|
| How? You can't preemptively determine the output of a
| Turing-complete program without solving the halting
| problem, so while Google will always try to do their
| damnedest to predict a bad actor before they get to the
| store, they will definitely always fail to find some.
|
| If they can't ban them when they find them, what should the
| alternative be?
| andybak wrote:
| > Maybe your platform shouldn't allow such abuse? They can
| fix their platform so this isn't possible without banning
| anybody.
|
| This feels more like handwaving than brainstorming ;-)
|
| It's a tricky problem and I think your suggestions should
| try and reflect that as much as possible.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Are all platforms equally abusable?
| throwaway684936 wrote:
| > Maybe your platform shouldn't allow such abuse?
|
| Yes, perhaps we could come up with a set of rules that
| users must abide by to use the service, such as not being
| abusive. And if they're found to be breaking these rules,
| we could then restrict their access to the service. The
| worst actors would have their access restricted
| permanently.
|
| If you're suggesting "stop 100% of all abusive content
| before it happens," that's just silly.
| ars wrote:
| Is the government allowed to shut them down without a court
| order? If not, why should you be able to? Do you feel you can
| do a better job?
|
| There's something to be said for not shutting down someone
| unless they break a law. I do acknowledge the court would
| need to be much faster and easier to access for these kinds
| of things though, you don't want to burden a provider with
| enormous legal bills just to deal with this kind of thing.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| This happened to the developers of Terraria last year.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26061935
|
| Modern Google is defined by Hypocrisy.
| abeppu wrote:
| The post author is from Spain.
|
| Does GDPR not give the author some rights? I'm in no way an
| expert in this area, but multiple seem to apply to this
| situation, but the most important ones here seems would seem to
| be the "right to explanation" to know how such a decision was
| made, a "right to rectification" to correct any data which is
| incorrect, and (given the magnitude of the impact) a right to
| avoid automated decision-making (though article 22 says this
| applies to decisions with a "legal effect"; does this qualify?).
|
| And if GDPR doesn't apply for some reason ... why not?
| alex-yark wrote:
| GDPR should help but if the apps were hosted on a developer
| account registered to a business entity, the majority of data
| will relate to the business rather than the individual, in
| which case GDPR may not throw up a huge amount. I don't believe
| the automated decision making parts of GDPR apply to businesses
| either.
|
| In the UK at least, if it wasn't a registered business (limited
| company) then there is no legal distinction between you and the
| trading name and hence all the rights under GDPR would be
| available to you.
| davidg109 wrote:
| Unfortunately, anytime you depend on a third party whether it be
| Google, Amazon, Facebook, etc., this is the exact risk you take.
| Don't feed the dragon.
| LinAGKar wrote:
| What's the alternative? Google essentially has a monopoly on
| distributing Android apps.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| The alternative is don't feed the dragon. There are already
| enough Android apps in the world; don't incentivize the
| ecosystem by building more.
|
| Build for another platform or build for something other than
| mobile devices.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| This. If you want to make any kind of mobile app, you have to
| deal with the Apple and Google duopoly that's had a
| stranglehold on the mobile app distribution market for over a
| decade now.
| skmurphy wrote:
| The lack of due process and any real transparency is troubling.
|
| It's clearly a mistake to bet your livelihood on a platform that
| can act in an arbitrary and capricious manner.
| protomyth wrote:
| I still think some congress person needs to pass a consumer
| rights bill that forces companies like this to disclose the exact
| reason and data relating the account termination. The excuse of
| security practices should not come before consumer rights.
|
| Frankly, we would ALL also be safer if the decision had to be
| made based on conduct on that specific service and could not
| include anything outside that service. There is a certain scale
| where your company is now an internet utility and you should have
| to act like every other utility.
| [deleted]
| aaomidi wrote:
| Actually it should go one more step further.
|
| Companies making over a certain amount should be banned from
| outright removing your access to your account. At most it
| should be making the account read only.
|
| People have a right to their photos, emails, conversations, and
| data they have safeguarded to these companies.
| devoutsalsa wrote:
| I think I agree with you, but I will say I don't envy
| Google's position on this one. They have massive amounts of
| fraud and spam to contend with. Coming up with a system that
| allows them to retain legit uses but prevents them from
| shutting down naughty people doesn't sound good. There need
| to be a mechanism that allows account recovery in a way that
| is actually sustainable.
| glitchc wrote:
| That just means they have to spend more money on the
| problem. Boo hoo.
| aaomidi wrote:
| Then just put these accounts in read only mode.
|
| It's not like Google ever deletes the data these bad
| accounts made.
| fredgrott wrote:
| problems:
|
| 1. How exactly do propose a bill to limit a company in how they
| use their property and enforce use of that property by an end
| user?
|
| 2. Bad actors out number good actors with honest accidents at
| over 1 million to one and obviously disclosing gives unequal
| advantage to the bad actors and harms the one accident good
| actor.
| markdown wrote:
| > 1. How exactly do propose a bill to limit a company in how
| they use their property and enforce use of that property by
| an end user?
|
| Is this a trick question? The same way all the other bills
| have been written. Most service providers have laws limiting
| how they can use their property in providing services. Banks,
| hotels, nightclubs, stadiums, taxis, etc.
| dboreham wrote:
| 1. Isn't that the typical purpose of a law?
| DoctorOW wrote:
| I feel like the answer to 1 is that it shouldn't be any more
| difficult than the GDPR. It's just asking for a publicly
| available reason and evidence for bans, not actually
| forbidding them?
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| A good reminder to everyone who ever works on a software product.
| Architects, Developers, QA, Security, Product Owners, Managers,
| Marketing, Sales, etc. Don't make your decisions based on what
| "the business" wants. Make your decisions based on the human
| lives that are impacted by your work. People are more important
| than money.
| timcavel wrote:
| butz wrote:
| If you are a business in EU you can request mediation (https://su
| pport.google.com/legal/answer/9792937#zippy=%2Creq...). In some
| cases filling an appeal might work. We usually get only "Google
| canceled account" part of the story, but no follow up how it
| ended. Recently was a similar case with Simple Keyboard app,
| where developer got account terminated, but it was re-instated
| after few weeks: https://github.com/rkkr/simple-
| keyboard/issues/333 . Makes me wonder how many incorrectly
| terminated accounts are actually recovered?
| caseysoftware wrote:
| It's a private company.
|
| If you don't like it, just build your own app store, phone,
| account management, email provider, search engine, web browser,
| ISP, payment processor, banking system, currency, DNS provider,
| registrar, colo facility, machines, chip fab, silicon wafers,
| electrons, and universe. Geez, don't be lazy.
| [deleted]
| adhesive_wombat wrote:
| Man, I really need to get off Gmail to reduce exposure to
| something like this, but there are sooooo many accounts to
| update.
| josephg wrote:
| The first step is moving to a custom domain. You can stay on
| gmail if you want; but set up a custom domain, and set up email
| on it and tell everyone to use your new email address.
|
| Once you have a custom domain, it becomes way easier to change
| to another email service without losing any messages.
| docandrew wrote:
| My advice - just rip the bandaid off and do it. I had
| anticipated taking a whole weekend to update the email address
| on all my accounts, but it was a lot less painful than I had
| anticipated. Changing over ~50 accounts took me about 3 hours
| all told. Most services allowed me to change my email even if
| it used email as the "username."
|
| Using a password manager made this much easier, as I could
| easily keep track of which accounts I needed to update and
| which ones I still needed to do. I switched over to Fastmail
| and haven't looked back.
| germinalphrase wrote:
| Mind sharing why you choose Fastmail over alternatives?
| docandrew wrote:
| I used ProtonMail a few years back, it was kind of
| "spartan".
|
| I had heard good things about Fastmail from other GMail
| switchers and signed up for their free trial account, and
| liked the experience.
|
| The mobile app is great, they support 2FA with hardware
| security keys, and the price seemed reasonable.
| causality0 wrote:
| If you don't use a third-party password manager there's a
| good chance you're having Chrome remember your passwords and
| can just go down the list.
| rvz wrote:
| Another day, another termination by Google Play.
|
| The reason? None. Just a generic response sent to the developers
| on Christmas Day. Might have been the grinch himself issuing
| those automated responses to others.
|
| This company and its services (including, YouTube) are run by
| bots and they are the ones doing the moderation and not even the
| humans running them care at all.
|
| Unless something completely fundamental happens, Google (and its
| services) don't care and they will _never_ change.
| karmakurtisaani wrote:
| Not to really defend Google here, but how else would you do it?
| The amount of data on these platforms is enormous and having
| people review the videos/apps/whatever would be simply
| prohibitively expensive.
|
| I think they need to balance how strict their abuse detection
| is. Making it too strict will kick out legitimate users without
| mercy. Making it less strict will allow potentially harmful
| (for business) content to spread on their platform, which could
| lead to lawsuits, loss of advertisers etc. You can see which
| direction is more appealing for a corporation.
|
| So concretely, now we complain about mistreated users, but if
| the automatic moderation was less strict, we'd complain about
| extreme content. It's not an easy problem.
| NKosmatos wrote:
| They don't need to filter and moderate everything, but they
| should at least have humans for taking care of escalations
| and issues like the one reported here. Sure 5hey have all
| sorts of AI/ML algorithms doing the automated banning and
| removal of apps but they could have real people taking care
| of the false positive cases.
| GeekyBear wrote:
| > Not to really defend Google here, but how else would you do
| it? The amount of data on these platforms is enormous and
| having people review the videos/apps/whatever would be simply
| prohibitively expensive.
|
| Google is not incapable of providing customer support.
| Netflix, Apple, and Amazon all manage to provide free, robust
| customer service.
|
| Google is simply unwilling.
| WinterMount223 wrote:
| If you can't scale customer support then you can't scale the
| customer base.
| janto wrote:
| I'd guess that Google's support for their ad services are
| good enough? The problem here is that Play publishers are
| not really Google's customers.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Play Store publishers pay Google $25 for access to the
| Play Store, and then pay them 15% to 30% of all revenue
| collected via the apps.
| someotherperson wrote:
| > The amount of data on these platforms is enormous and
| having people review the videos/apps/whatever would be simply
| prohibitively expensive
|
| Let people pay for a manual review (say $300) with Google
| refunding the amount if it's found to be erroneous.
| laurent92 wrote:
| That would incentivize Google not to find it erroneous.
| ______-_-______ wrote:
| If they blatantly lie to steal your money, you can now
| prove actual damages in court. That's an improvement over
| trying to sue over a lost free gmail account. Not that I
| think going to court is an ideal solution, but what other
| choice do you have as a lowly civilian without friends in
| Mountain View?
| criddell wrote:
| That's how Microsoft support worked, at least for a while.
| A support call was $99 and then if it was a problem on
| their end, they wouldn't charge you.
| butlerm wrote:
| If it is a service they provide for free, charging a fee to
| get something important (like a total account ban) fairly
| reconsidered would be perfectly reasonable. Google is big
| enough the government should require that sort of thing.
|
| "Let's be as evil as we want to be" is a fairly inappropriate
| guideline for a company like that.
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| Oh man... wait till some beancounter finds out that they
| can earn $X per every banned account,... that would be a
| pain in the ass for everyone.
| nyuszika7h wrote:
| Google can definitely afford it, except they won't because
| they prefer to be greedy and keep the money.
|
| In general though, if you really can't afford proper customer
| service, then you should simply not be providing services at
| that scale.
| kd913 wrote:
| They could begin by segmenting their accounts such that a
| trivial youtube ban doesn't result in a full google service
| account ban. That seems pretty damn basic right?
| 41b696ef1113 wrote:
| It is because of polices like that which guarantees I will
| never use Google Cloud. Why risk getting my email pulled so
| I can host cat videos when AWS will not dangle the sword of
| Damocles above my head.
| rodgerd wrote:
| > simply prohibitively expensive.
|
| No, it isn't. Google wouldn't go out of business. I doubt
| that they'd even take a hit of a few percent in profit.
| MaxGanzII wrote:
| In my experience, _all_ the major platforms eventually close
| _all_ accounts.
| pgt wrote:
| I de-Googled my life over this type of event.
| ncmncm wrote:
| Me too. Life is too short, etc.
|
| Still need a work account, but use it only for work mail.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| It's certainly indicative of why building your entire revenue
| stream on the good graces of a company that can shut you down
| at any moment is a bad strategy.
| cft wrote:
| As a small (or even medium) developer, relying on a Google Play
| app is very dangerous. Our app with user generated content was
| pulled from Google Play store, because they found one profile out
| of 36 million (!) that had a suggestive photo. They used our
| profile search functionality to find it, you could not get it
| just by scrolling profiles. We have a neural net that rejects
| anything resembling porn and extensive word vector based text
| filtering, that forbids searching for anything explicit (unlike
| their own Google search app). The app cost us about 1m. Appeals
| were rejected with template emails. The enforcement is clearly
| selective, because Twitter has plenty of much more explicit porn.
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| The irony here is Google hides behind Section 230 immunity to
| avoid any responsibility for bad actors on its platforms
| (claiming it's even vital that they are so immune), but it
| doesn't extend that idea to entities under it.
| Beltalowda wrote:
| Never mind the tons of porn on Reddit. They did ban the
| OnlyFans app though.
|
| How many people use their mobile phone as their only internet
| device? So we now have two companies with essentially identical
| policies deciding what is or isn't too sexy for us with
| essentially zero accountability...
| mohamez wrote:
| At this point competition is one of the great solution to this
| problem.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Unfortunately, as of September of last year, Google Play's
| terms and conditions match Apple's App Store's terms and
| conditions, in that apps must use Google's payment method and
| cannot advertise or include links to alternate methods of
| paying for the app or distributing it.
|
| Ultimately, these policies are meant to further restrict
| viability of competition by either company.
| nonbirithm wrote:
| Just a few days ago Google announced that you could use
| Spotify's payment method as an alternative to Google play.
| The top-rated HN comment for that article was: "As a user,
| why would I choose this?"[0]
|
| Competition only works if the competition is effective enough
| to change user habits. For the average person not educated in
| monopolies or tech regulation, is there any incentive for
| them to switch to paying Spotify instead?
|
| Other examples of frustration induced by competition are:
|
| - Epic Games Store timed exclusives (people would rather just
| use Steam)
|
| - The fragmentation of streaming video across a dozen
| different paid services, each with their own exclusive
| licensed content (people would rather just save money by
| paying for a single service with everything on it).
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30782735
| nyuszika7h wrote:
| > For the average person not educated in monopolies or tech
| regulation, is there any incentive for them to switch to
| paying Spotify instead?
|
| If it's 30% cheaper, that may be enough of an incentive.
| Though I don't know if that's the case here or if Spotify
| just eats the fee when you pay through Google.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| I'm not sure of Google's policy, but with Apple, after
| the court order, dating apps using alternative payment
| methods must give Apple a 27% commission on all purchases
| made using the method[1], so that there is little to no
| difference in cost to users choosing to use the non-Apple
| payment method.
|
| [1] https://techcrunch.com/2022/02/04/apple-to-
| charge-27-fee-for...
| zamalek wrote:
| > Google Play's terms and conditions match Apple's App
| Store's terms and conditions
|
| This is the type of damage the people who say "it's their
| store, they can do what they want" inflict. Apple got away
| with their dreadful behavior, Google would be foolish not to
| follow.
| ShivShankaran wrote:
| It is well known that if Google bans your account it will ban any
| "related" account and that includes your immediate family
| including your spouse, parents, children and your official
| job/startup.
|
| I never understood this bizarre behaviour from Google. My
| colleagues got a taste of it when they shared their laptop and
| one of them had a banned account.
|
| It was a defence project and the work computers were not allowed
| to have internet. One common computer away from work area and in
| a different lan was a designated internet computer. Unfortunately
| one dev with a banned account set a chain reaction of getting
| everyone else banned.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| WinterMount223 wrote:
| Did their accounts end up permanently banned or could they
| recover them? Seems like something that could actually be
| abused if not. A weaponized banned Google account on a laptop.
| A laptop with cooties. The seven generations punishment.
| notreallyserio wrote:
| I'm no longer doing android development, thankfully (never
| again!) -- I don't relish the thought of having to ask house
| guests if they or anyone they know have ever been banned from
| Google. I don't understand how Google can staff up their Play
| store with engineers given this keeps happening.
| dylan604 wrote:
| And we thought checking on COVID status was a problem,
| imagine if we now have to ask if someone has received a
| Google VAX
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| Maybe this is the key to actually getting Google to fix this.
| Weaponize Google bans to the point it's unsustainable for
| their business.
| abriosi wrote:
| It is unfortunate that this will eventually happen
| spoiler wrote:
| They are weaponised already unfortunately. There are HN
| stories of competitors reporting devs/apps and them getting
| irrevocably banned without a platform to complain on/to. I
| used to like/defend Google, but they keep disappointing.
|
| I even have Google-anxiety and am considering moving
| everything away before it becomes too late
| tablespoon wrote:
| > Did their accounts end up permanently banned or could they
| recover them?
|
| How could they recover them? The only support Google offers
| for situations like this is write a sob story on social
| media, and _hope_ it gets enough traction that a Google
| employee intervenes.
| throwaquestion5 wrote:
| > It is well known that if Google bans your account it will ban
| any "related" account and that includes your immediate family
| including your spouse, parents, children and your official
| job/startup.
|
| I find this behavior terrifying. Destroying people's accounts
| just for having the same blood as someone deemed ban-able.
|
| Guilt by association taken to the extreme
| koolba wrote:
| This sounds like a potent weapon. Figure out a way to share
| computer with your enemies / competitors and then get them
| banned by association.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| Forcing App Stores to have more clarity behind terminations is a
| missed opportunity for the EU's Digital Markets Act. This is
| absurd. #PlayFairGoogle #GoogleScrewsDevs
| shadowgovt wrote:
| Public disclosure of the reasoning behind the decision and an
| appeals process through an independent third party would be
| expensive but worth it.
|
| These are, hypothetically, things that could be demanded by
| law.
| noneeeed wrote:
| Based on the frequency with which this sort of post gets
| significant traction it's pretty clear that no one at Google
| gives a crap about this issue. I find it hard to imagine that
| people in Google are unaware of this problem.
|
| I often wonder if this has happened to people with more clout who
| have managed to pull strings to get it sorted, or if Google have
| just got lucky and managed to avoid hitting someone who might
| actually be in a position to fight back.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| misterbwong wrote:
| We should probably reserve judgement until the author reveals
| more details about the things they were doing on the app store.
| The article is suspiciously light on details on what exactly
| they were doing that could have justified it, citing only
| "teach[ing] people to create their own applications and create
| their own app business".
|
| To be clear, I'm not defending Google here. The "ban-you-and-
| everyone-that-has-ever-had-contact-with-you-without-telling-
| you-why" system is obviously nuts-o and has caught a bunch of
| innocent bystanders off-guard.
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| We can absolutely judge Google regardless, because even if
| their reasons for a ban could hypothetically be justified,
| their behavior in communication and appeal handling will
| never be.
| asdfasgasdgasdg wrote:
| > Based on the frequency with which this sort of post gets
| significant traction it's pretty clear that no one at Google
| gives a crap about this issue.
|
| Lots of other reasonable explanations that match the available
| evidence and involve Google caring about this issue. For
| example, their hands could be tied by legal forces beyond their
| control. Or they could care a great deal, but perhaps they have
| been unable to resolve this issue with an acceptable false-
| negative level on actual bad actors. Another possibility is
| that the ban was well-earned and the article's author knows
| this and simply has not disclosed the fact to the readership.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > Lots of other reasonable explanations that match the
| available evidence and involve Google caring about this
| issue...
|
| Or, more likely: they "care," but not enough to actually
| spend the money to fix the problem (e.g. quit relying so much
| on algorithms, and staff a department of real people to apply
| some human judgement).
|
| My understanding is there's a cultural _problem_ at Google,
| where they think stuff like this _must_ be done
| algorithmically, even if it 's not a actually a job for an
| algorithm.
| noneeeed wrote:
| What sort of legal issues would prevent Google actually
| providing some information on the reason for the ban, of
| prevent it actually engaging in any kind of useful
| communication?
|
| My issue with these bans is not the bans themselves, but the
| Kafkaesc process in which you are supposed to argue why you
| think their decision is wrong without knowing what they based
| the decision on.
| aaomidi wrote:
| If they receive a court order it generally comes with a gag
| order too.
|
| Theres nothing stopping them from coming clean after the
| period of that order has dropped though.
| VPenkov wrote:
| I think it's not strictly legal issues but one of two
| things.
|
| The first is what I've heard being called "a healthy dose
| of obscurity". With a large enough pool of users, there is
| a finite number of behaviors that would trigger a certain
| ban rule. To avoid having their triggers reverse-
| engineered, they say as little as possible.
|
| The second is is reasons being subject to interpretation.
| The risk there comes in a variety of flavors from PR risks
| to lawsuit risks when a developer are banned for X but
| there's an important nuance to X that the developer ignores
| by choice or otherwise.
|
| I don't mean to defend anyone here, I'm just hoping that
| someone smarter than me will tackle this somehow.
| asdfasgasdgasdg wrote:
| I'm not in a position to comment about what sorts of legal
| issues there might be. But Google is hardly the only
| company that hands down bans with scant explanation. It's
| endemic. I've actually not heard of a large company that
| gives detailed explanations in these sorts of situations.
| That leads me to believe there is a good reason for
| avoiding such explanations, since I would expect some
| variation in company behavior otherwise.
| [deleted]
| heavyset_go wrote:
| The reason is that it's expensive and companies don't
| want to waste resources verifying whether or not their
| bans followed their policy accurately or not.
|
| For every account banned, one million new users will
| enter the Google ecosystem. Bans cost them nothing in the
| long run, but having reviews to justify bans would.
| Beltalowda wrote:
| I suspect it's because a lot of these automated bans are
| done without any clear actual reason beyond "our machine
| learning model found something, but we can't really get a
| coherent picture of why".
|
| Last week I created a brand new Facebook account as I
| recently moved to a new city and am somewhat desperate to
| meet people, and Facebook events can be useful for this
| (as much as I loathe Facebook, my mental health is a bit
| more important right now). I got banned after about 2
| minutes. I didn't actually _do_ anything on the platform.
| I managed to click to about 2 or 3 pages.
|
| What set this off? Who knows. Maybe some browser
| settings? Previous user(s) of my IP address? Those pages
| I clicked on? Something else? It surely wasn't anything I
| actually _did_ as I didn 't really interact with the
| platform at all.
|
| I suspect that if I asked some high-up Facebook engineer
| to look in to it they wouldn't be able to actually give
| me an answer either beyond "The Algorithm determined
| there were risk factors".
| kovvy wrote:
| Was that a complete ban, or was it an attempt to get your
| phone number and other personal details?
|
| Instagram has always banned my accounts for suspicious
| behaviour on whatever page is first used after the
| account is created - the only way they offer to progress
| is to give them a phone number. It's a pretty transparent
| grab for more info to sell.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Twitter does this, as well.
| asdfasgasdgasdg wrote:
| I doubt it, personally. At least in the case of the
| article. I have no special knowledge of this, but tenure
| would be one of the first override parameters I would use
| to trigger human review. It seems unlikely to allow an
| account that has been active and making money for six
| years to be banned without a human analyst in the loop.
|
| As to your FB ban, I'm sorry that happened but I have no
| insight to share.
| vlunkr wrote:
| But you see these stories again and again about Google
| specifically. The creator of Terraria was banned a while back
| and was also unable to get it corrected or get a real human
| to respond. You'd think if they are terminating accounts that
| are bringing in money they could put down the automation for
| one second and actually do the right thing.
| dielll wrote:
| Maybe google only makes money from ads, other projects are
| hobby projects to them. hence why Admob has great customer
| service
| winrid wrote:
| The problem is they make everything powered by machine
| learning. Can you imagine getting such a thing to even 99%
| accuracy? Even if it was 99% accurate, that's still hundreds of
| thousands if not millions of mistakes.
| s17n wrote:
| I doubt there's much ML involved here. Have you tried getting
| humans to 99% accuracy?
| kevingadd wrote:
| I remember at least one case where a Google employee's spouse
| got banned by the company and he never was able to find out
| why. Your spouse got depersoned, get over it
| zackees wrote:
| [deleted]
| HNHatesUsers wrote:
| hwers wrote:
| For anyone curious about what kinds of apps this person
| developed, this is what I could find
| https://steprimo.com/iphone/ph/developer/1076545147/Roberto-...
| Seems like an app providing radio for free.
| KaoruAoiShiho wrote:
| Can't read spanish but possibly piracy problems?
| pollomonteros wrote:
| I can and it seems to be an app to listen to Latin American
| radios specialized in Cumbia music. I am not sure of the
| legality of it ,though,since there are already a handful of
| online radio players available and those seem to be doing
| just fine as far as I am aware. Maybe it gave access to some
| paywalled content ? Either that or some algorithm thought it
| was something illegal and flagged it as a such.
| [deleted]
| naoqj wrote:
| Looks like they had lots of radio apps, wallpapers, etc.
| Probably copyright-related problems.
| [deleted]
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