[HN Gopher] Addressing Antigravity Bans and Reinstating Access
___________________________________________________________________
Addressing Antigravity Bans and Reinstating Access
Author : RyanShook
Score : 180 points
Date : 2026-02-28 13:50 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| cogman10 wrote:
| This is the correct way to handle this situation.
| iepathos wrote:
| Refreshing response from Google especially given the incompetence
| with which Anthropic has handled bans.
| xrd wrote:
| Another recent concern on other posts here on HN is whether a
| private company should have veto power over the US government.
| Or, another way to look at it, whether the US government should
| be able to designate a company as a supply chain risk and ban
| them from most business in the host country.
|
| If I squint at the conversation, it doesn't seem that different
| from a behemoth company taking an employee of a private company
| and forcing them to still stop working for arbitrary reasons.
|
| I'm giving agents and coding tools wide berth here, but if AI is
| going to replace all employees, what guarantees do you have as
| the employer that your employees will do your bidding, and not
| the bidding of enterprises with a shifting moral landscape?
|
| Once we have tooling wrapped around specific agents, it'll be
| hard to rehire. What will we do then when our "employees" are
| furloughed?
|
| This will be especially relevant when the big AI labs decide they
| need to enter a market to justify an obscene valuation. Or, when
| the sovereign wealth fund decides they don't like the direction
| of a business.
|
| This is a good and honorable decision by Google. But it also
| brings up scary times ahead.
| jascha_eng wrote:
| I still kinda wish that the subscriptions would just allow you to
| use the tokens however you wish. I get that they rely on people
| not using all of their quota. But e.g. with open code it doesn't
| really matter if I use antigravity or gemini-cli the usage should
| be about the same.
|
| What they are actually trying to force you to do is to pay for
| the tokens that you don't use in their applications to increase
| their revenue and/or give their in-house tools an "unfair"
| advantage. But this is bad for the consumer because it means that
| there is less competition between coding agents and unless I'm
| willing to pay per token I have to take one of the model labs
| agents.
|
| Anticompetitive behaviour imo they could just ban reselling
| tokens or something like that instead of locking your
| subscription in like this.
| NitpickLawyer wrote:
| > I get that they rely on people not using all of their quota
|
| They have no problem with users using their quota on their own
| software. Because they get the signals. They do have a problem
| with users using the API in 3rd party software, because they
| don't get the signals.
| falcor84 wrote:
| Well ... the clear signal is that people want to use Google's
| models but not Google products
| theblazehen wrote:
| Most people have actually just been using Opus through
| antigravity
| falcor84 wrote:
| That's very different from what I'm seeing around me, but
| yes, I suppose that happens to. And I guess Google
| wouldn't have as much of an issue with that, right?
| theblazehen wrote:
| Ah, in my spaces (Involved in the proxy dev), most people
| have been using it for Opus. I suspect they may even have
| more of an issue with it, as they don't get the cost
| advantage of serving an in-house model
| xiphias2 wrote:
| I don't really understand this reasoning actually:
|
| if OpenClaw usage go up, and a service (OpenAI it looks like)
| gets lots of usage data for personal assistent usage, they
| can optimize to make it better for people who get a $200
| subscription just because of that use case.
| smashah wrote:
| I turned off tracking on Antigravity. Do I deserve to get my
| account banned from a service I pay for now? Silly.
| Analemma_ wrote:
| > But e.g. with open code it doesn't really matter if I use
| antigravity or gemini-cli the usage should be about the same.
|
| This is not at all true. What is prompting this behavior from
| Google and Anthropic is that people are using their oauth
| creds/API keys to run OpenClaw bots that use orders of
| magnitude more tokens than the IDEs. The official clients also
| can use a lot more prompt caching because they have expected
| workflows.
|
| And like, if you want to run OpenClaw, they're not saying you
| can't do that: use the API pricing, that's what it's for. But
| people are getting mad that they're not allowed to roll their
| pickup truck up to the all-you-can-eat buffet table and fill
| it.
| gruez wrote:
| >I still kinda wish that the subscriptions would just allow you
| to use the tokens however you wish. I get that they rely on
| people not using all of their quota. But e.g. with open code it
| doesn't really matter if I use antigravity or gemini-cli the
| usage should be about the same.
|
| This is almost as realistic as "I wish netflix or youtube
| allowed me to use VLC to watch their content".
| nottorp wrote:
| Haha maybe that would reduce piracy.
|
| The easiest way to watch a movie in the player of my choice -
| even if i have legal access to it because it's in my netflix
| subscription - is to download it off piratebay.
|
| Add to that Netflix's shitty discovery system, I'm pretty
| sure I watched some downloaded movies in spite of actually
| having legal access to them.
|
| Oh, remember when PC games used to come on disks? For the
| Netflix example I can only guess, but I'm 100% sure I
| downloaded isos for games I had actually bought and had the
| physical disc... somewhere.
| throawayonthe wrote:
| i don't believe this is a significant driver of piracy tbh,
| normal people don't care about that kinda thing :P
|
| especially considering most modern movie/tv piracy is free
| streaming websites - shitty quality and awkward player
| controls, definitely no choice of player here
| plagiarist wrote:
| I do wish that though. I have given up on streaming services,
| I am not paying for this bullshit experience. We used to have
| all the content unlimited on one service for like $10/mo. I
| can accept prices increasing with inflation but society
| should not accept such a backslide in service quality.
| raincole wrote:
| This is almost as realistic as "I wish OpenAI supports using
| OpenCode with ChatGPT subscription account."
|
| Oh, except they do[0].
|
| [0]: https://x.com/thsottiaux/status/2009742187484065881
| NewsaHackO wrote:
| Yea, there are the last to the party (have they even
| arrived?), so they are going to have to make some
| concessions. I wonder if they at rollout will have a third-
| party subscription token service in addition to their
| first-party one.
| raincole wrote:
| > there are the last to the party
|
| Anecdotally, I'm having a _very_ hard time imagining
| there are more Gemini Cli users than Codex users.
| smashah wrote:
| Why is that unrealistic?
|
| Think of it like the digital right-to-repair.
|
| I pay for it, I get to use it with any client I want. Simple.
| bluecalm wrote:
| I think the deal is quite clear: subscription for personal
| usage in their products, API token for everything else. You get
| a rebate for subscription because they get the data. I would be
| quite sad if they removed the subscription option just to not
| be "anticompetitive".
| cube00 wrote:
| _Over the past week,_
|
| A week? Try at least 16 days
|
| https://discuss.ai.google.dev/t/account-restricted-without-w...
|
| The danger here is they'll ban you with no specific reason, fill
| out the form and you get an automatic unban and then something
| else automatically flags and you're banned the second time
| permanently.
|
| Support bot will then say "you were warned, read the TOS" and you
| get to guess what you did wrong.
|
| You'll notice there are no appeals or reviews in this workflow.
|
| Google has no creditability when it comes to handling account
| bans.
| clickety_clack wrote:
| People are crazy to use Google as the core of their online
| identity.
| elAhmo wrote:
| Not crazy, it is just convenient. Constant pushes with
| Android, Chrome, random websites asking for Google login.
|
| Google wasn't always like this, and moving of from an email
| address isn't technically hard, but something that 99% of the
| people will be very very reluctant to do.
| oofbey wrote:
| Ex googler here. It is based on Google's fundamental disdain of
| customers. Googlers are repeatedly told by management that they
| are the smartest people in the world and that their time is too
| valuable to spend on silly things like helping customers.
| jijji wrote:
| Google has zero customer service. using them for anything
| serious makes no business sense. the only thing that they're
| good for is serving ads to people, and they have a support team
| for that, but only if you're spending a lot of money, and even
| then good luck finding it
| consumer451 wrote:
| Just wanted to say that Windsurf is chugging along just great. No
| drama for users, excellent outputs at low cost. I am confused why
| they are not used more widely.
| johnebgd wrote:
| We use them as well. Great product.
| WarmWash wrote:
| The problem wasn't antigravity, the problem was funneling
| clawdbot tokens through it (with a 3rd party plugin) to skirt
| API costs.
| koolba wrote:
| Way too risky to use Google services like this tied to your
| primary account. There's too much risk of cross damage. Imagine
| losing access to your Gmail because some Gemini request flags you
| as an undesirable. The digital death sentence of losing access to
| your email with a company that notoriously has no way for the
| average human to contact a human is not worth the risk.
| gman83 wrote:
| This wasn't due to some random Gemini request. Users were using
| sketchy antigravity auth plugins to use their antigravity
| tokens on things like OpenClaw, clearly against ToS. It's great
| that Google is giving these users a second chance.
| johnebgd wrote:
| It's be great if Google just revoked antigravity access if
| terms were violated. No need to disable the entire account.
| dangus wrote:
| I'll go further: there should be laws addressing account
| consolidation. Getting banned from an Apple or Google
| account is an incredibly wide blast radius. It would be
| like being banned from buying Unilever or Nestle food from
| your grocery store.
| plagiarist wrote:
| Email providers should be utilities and also legally
| require a warrant before disclosing any information
| whatsoever to the government.
|
| Unfortunately the government is full of corrupt
| geriatrics who do not understand technology and are paid
| to continue not understanding technology as they sign
| bills prepared for them by ALEC.
| LiamPowell wrote:
| > just revoked antigravity access
|
| That's exactly what they did, plus Gemini CLI and Code
| Assist, which are the same product in different formats.
| TGower wrote:
| Only Antigravity and Gemini access was banned, not email or
| other google account stuff.
| NewsaHackO wrote:
| No Google account has been banned for this. People just
| keep spreading this lie because no one agrees that they
| have the right to steal the OAuth token.
| sneak wrote:
| It's _their_ OAuth token, it 's not being stolen. It's
| just being copied from one place on their computer to
| another. This is no different than a competing browser
| importing your localStorage and cookies from Chrome on
| first launch.
| NewsaHackO wrote:
| No, the OAuth token is supposed to be used solely with
| the context of a first-party app only. Clearly, if you
| need to extract the key by reverse engineering or set up
| a proxy to spoof requests to a service, you're doing
| something shady.
| sneak wrote:
| > No, the OAuth token is supposed to be used solely with
| the context of a first-party app only.
|
| The web doesn't work like that. The operators of
| google.com saying you must only use Chrome to load it is
| a ridiculous concept. It's not spoofing to use your own
| access credentials on your own computer to access your
| own account on an HTTP API.
| NewsaHackO wrote:
| >The web doesn't work like that. The operators of
| google.com saying you must only use Chrome to load it is
| a ridiculous concept.
|
| I have no idea what you are talking about. Chrome? Are
| you sure you are replying to the right thread?
| joquarky wrote:
| "steal" is semantically incorrect here.
| crawshaw wrote:
| The concern is not losing access to some new IDE for
| operating outside the terms of service. The concern is when
| you lose access to the IDE, you also lose access to your 20
| year old Gmail account.
|
| A general problem for Google products is that everything is
| mixed together.
| BoredPositron wrote:
| But that's not what happened.
| amiga386 wrote:
| Yes, our masters once again embarrass us unworthy peons with
| their endless grace, generosity and forebearance. How lucky
| we are to entrust our data and our lives to them!
| WarmWash wrote:
| Anyone can buy the tokens via the API and do whatever they
| want with them.
|
| Its not evil of Google to say "Here is an allotment of
| steeply discounted tokens, but you can only use them with
| our services."
| fooker wrote:
| It is evil to block your email and hold your photos
| hostage over it though :)
| ZekeSulastin wrote:
| Didn't they only block Antigravity though, leaving other
| services available?
| WarmWash wrote:
| They only blocked access to Antigravity and GeminiCLI for
| the offense.
| joquarky wrote:
| I would question the judgment of anyone who thought they
| would maintain "don't be evil" beyond IPO.
| GaryBluto wrote:
| https://youtu.be/ntICHMV-WMA?t=40
|
| "Google Shuts Down Gmail For Two Hours To Show Its Immense
| Power"
| zarzavat wrote:
| Okay but they were paying customers paying $$$ for the
| service. Banning your customers without prior warning is not
| right, however sketchy their behaviour might appear. Even if
| it's obvious to Google that there's a difference between a
| Gemini API key and an Antigravity API key, it's not
| necessarily obvious to others.
|
| The correct and sane thing to do is to send them an email,
| with _at most_ a 24 hour suspension. If they keep doing it
| despite being warned then by all means fire them.
| exitb wrote:
| If a 3rd party product advertises compatibility with a Google
| service and you use it to login via a first party Google
| login page, doesn't the responsibility fall somewhere between
| the offending product and Google itself? In practice it's
| structured pretty much like a phishing attempt.
|
| Notably some model providers explicitly allow that very flow,
| while others will ban you without notice.
| n8m8 wrote:
| If the "3rd party product" is you selfhosting FOSS, then
| that's you (OpenClaw users)
| exitb wrote:
| Why do you call it self-hosting? It appears to be
| installable app with a fancy homepage. At what point does
| the software being covered by an open license changes the
| responsibility model?
| NicuCalcea wrote:
| When's the last time you read the ToS of a service you signed
| up for?
| jamesnorden wrote:
| >It's great that Google is giving these users a second
| chance.
|
| I hope this is sarcasm. A permaban as the first action is
| never a good idea.
| 982307932084 wrote:
| "Hey Gemini, write a short blurb casting our capriciousness
| in a good light."
| sneak wrote:
| Telling your users they can't use certain software to access
| your HTTP API is exactly the same as telling people they
| can't use certain browsers to load https://google.com.
| theturtletalks wrote:
| They were banning people and those people couldn't even
| cancel their subscription. That's a rookie mistake and you
| expect the same company to have a flawless ban system?
| HardCodedBias wrote:
| AFAIK it has clearly been a ban of Gemini and not of all
| people's Google accounts.
|
| However many stories appeared where people tried to claim that
| their whole Google account was banned to gain traction.
|
| Unless it is clear that a full Google account has been banned
| we should push back on any story that claims this.
| nottorp wrote:
| Why? Google has been doing automated bans for ages, even
| before "AI".
|
| By now they lost any trace of goodwill they ever had and are
| guilty until proven innocent.
| tjoff wrote:
| Use a custom domain and don't use google for email.
|
| And if you do use your gmail address just forward it and start
| to transition to something else. With time everything of
| importance has been transferred.
| aliljet wrote:
| How do you even pull away from a Gmail address? I'm nearly
| twenty years into that service. Getting banned would be
| absolutely devastating...
| calcifer wrote:
| Use your own domain to sign up for a paid email service,
| provided by a company that focuses on email. I use
| Fastmail, but there are many other options.
|
| Set up forwarding in Gmail to your new address.
|
| Then, whenever you log in to a website or app with your
| Gmail, take a moment to change it to your new address. In a
| few weeks, most of your important accounts will be covered.
| In a few months, almost everything you still actively use
| will be done.
|
| I did this ~5 years ago and the only thing that still
| arrives at my Gmail is spam.
| genxy wrote:
| Solid advice, but I want to double, watch out for things
| you only log into once a year.
|
| Making a new local account on your machine is a good
| first step.
| caseysoftware wrote:
| Same here but ~8 years.
|
| You can mitigate/speed the process using your password
| manager too.
|
| I still use a filter in my email so that if something
| comes in under my Gmail, it gets a special tag that I can
| filter on and treat those as a todo list. Rarely happens
| beyond the occasional Google Meet connection.
| wafflemaker wrote:
| For quite some time (approx 8 years) I've used an email
| forwarding (Blur, but any works) to avoid spam.
|
| This looks like perfect case for change of email, since
| lot of these accounts can be moved out from Gmail by
| changing the address that email is forwarded too.
|
| Looks like all this hassle with generating a new email
| for each service pays for the second time (by ease of
| changing the main mail), in addition to spam and privacy
| protection.
| hogwasher wrote:
| ^this is the way.
|
| You can buy a domain name for like $10 per year; I
| recommend getting it from porkbun.com.
|
| Cloudflare.com is good too, EXCEPT if you buy your domain
| from them, you'll be required to use their nameservers
| until and unless you transfer your domain elsewhere
| (which you won't be able to do for a while). Though to be
| fair, their free DNS is good and lots of people use it
| anyway. It makes email setup slightly more complicated,
| but it's still doable.
|
| Spaceship.com also has a pretty good reputation, but I
| think their customer service isn't as good, they're quite
| new, and they're owned by Namecheap (a bigger domain
| registrar with a much worse reputation).
|
| Whatever you do, DO NOT buy from GoDaddy. Do not even
| search for the domain you're considering on GoDaddy.
| Literally any option is better than GoDaddy.
|
| By far the most reliable TLD options are .com, .net, and
| .org. These will look relatively trustworthy for email,
| and the price stays very very stable from year to year.
| If you don't want to think about it, just get one of
| these. You can even still find single dictionary word
| domains for .org or .net relatively easily.
|
| Do not buy any domain marked "premium". This means the
| owner of the TLD can change the price at renewal as
| dramatically as they want, for any reason (e.g. if you
| have a website hosted at that domain that becomes
| popular). Your $20 per year domain might suddenly become
| a $300 or $3000 per year domain for no reason but greed,
| and you wouldn't be able to do anything about it.
|
| Non-premium nTLD's (.club, .horse, .rocks, .theater, etc)
| can increase quite dramatically in price, BUT the price
| is required to be set the same for all domains using that
| nTLD, so they can't target any individual person for
| having a successful website or whatever. Also, you can
| pre-buy up to 10 years, which locks in your price for
| those 10 years. I'd still not recommend them for a
| primary email, but it's better than buying a "premium"
| domain. Just be aware that the yearly price might
| unexpectedly increase in the future.
|
| Some country code TLD's are also good, but for email,
| probably stay away from the ones that spammers like to
| use.
|
| ___
|
| Anyway, what I actually originally meant to comment about
| is: if you set up forwarding from gmail and don't check
| that account regularly anymore, I recommend setting up a
| gmail filter rule that forwards all your gmail spam to
| you (their regular forwarding setting leaves it out and
| just sends it to the gmail spam folder). It's a little
| annoying to have to re-flag some of the spam as spam in
| your new email, but gmail has a habit of marking non-spam
| as spam for me, and if you're not regularly checking that
| spam folder you can easily miss important email.
| dwedge wrote:
| Porkbun have started demanding ID verification for
| registrations, which depending how you feel about current
| events might make you reconsider having them on your list
| hellojesus wrote:
| I did this but don't forward. Instead, every new email in
| Gmail I got would prompt me to go update that service's
| contact info for me.
|
| It probably doesn't matter, but it made me feel a little
| better because that way Google wouldn't have direct info
| on to which email/domain I transfered (ignoring other
| Gmail contacts that start emailing me at my new
| address(es) ).
| cube00 wrote:
| Get your own domain so you can easily change providers in
| the future. Start with your password manager and change the
| address on all the accounts you have in there.
|
| After a few years you'll notice you stop bothering to check
| your Gmail and you can delete it to close the address.
|
| If you need motivation, skim the /r/GMail subreddit and see
| how many people are getting locked out daily.
| 8cvor6j844qw_d6 wrote:
| Do you have a recommendation for a major email provider
| as a fallback if you have to pick one?
|
| I vaguely recall encountering a service that only
| accepted addresses from a whitelist of big providers
| (Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook, etc.), even @icloud did not
| qualify.
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| That's a service that doesn't want your business. If you
| care, message them about it
|
| I've never once run into a service with such a
| restriction, but I can imagine someone being that short-
| sighted. I _have_ seen services that only support "log
| in with Google or Facebook", which is comparably
| terrible.
| genxy wrote:
| Discogs will not let me login with my own domain (of 30
| years) and required one of the big providers. It kept
| complaining about "risky domain". But that is the only
| incident I can think of.
| sir0010010 wrote:
| I've run into services that will flag specific tlds as
| invalid.
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| I have heard of that, yeah. It's still busted, but
| marginally more understandable if they're dealing with a
| lot of scams. For instance, `.xyz` and some others have
| bad reputations. I've never seen something that'll reject
| an arbitrary self-owned `.org`, by way of example.
| 8cvor6j844qw_d6 wrote:
| Same. I still have an old Gmail address that receives
| forgotten but still considered important emails from
| various services.
|
| What's the playbook for migrating away in this situation?
| cube00 wrote:
| Companies need to allow you update your personal
| information including your email. It may need tickets to
| support but it's doable.
| Hikikomori wrote:
| Just have to get started and suffer for a while and make it
| a practice to switch emails when you log into places.
|
| I switched to fastmail with my own domain.
| 8cvor6j844qw_d6 wrote:
| I went with SimpleLogin.
|
| Although I am increasingly concerned with its longevity
| since there's a non-zero risk that Proton might shut down
| SimpleLogin since Proton Pass has its own alias feature.
| ikidd wrote:
| I just sold a domain I had for 25 years and used for
| everything including API endpoints, email, authentication,
| etc. It took a couple weeks to transition myself and my
| family/friends.
|
| Pretty sure just moving emails would have take a lot less
| effort. I had the advantage of keeping the domain until I
| was ready to move, now imagine Google just turned it off
| one day and what your workload would be. I shudder to think
| about having to deal with that.
| gmerc wrote:
| took about 30 minutes to switch to proton mail
| Xevion wrote:
| This service is basically a nightmare to export/move away
| from. 30 minutes to switch to, maybe 30 hours to switch
| away from.
| ptero wrote:
| Register your own domain, use a third-party provider to
| handle actual sending and receiving (I use proton, which
| makes the setup very easy), forward your Gmail to your
| personal domain address and as renewals and reminders come
| in switch your email on services to your personal domain.
|
| After a year or two losing Gmail becomes an inconvenience;
| after a few more years it is nothing. As everything is now
| on your own domain name you can switch providers without
| affecting anything.
|
| That's what I did about 5 years ago and my only regret is
| not doing it earlier.
| ok_dad wrote:
| Just start changing addresses. Forward the rest. It takes
| about a year. Changing your name is way harder and tons of
| folks do that all the time.
| ForHackernews wrote:
| Sign up at fastmail.com, set up forwarding, change your
| "reply-to" address. A year later, you'll have nothing
| arriving in gmail except marketing cruft.
| simonjgreen wrote:
| It will never be easier than right now. Every day you stay,
| you dig their moat around you even deeper
| benhurmarcel wrote:
| I just went through all accounts in my password manager,
| logged in and changed my email. It takes a little while but
| not that much.
| bhuga wrote:
| I moved away from a gmail address that was that old, dating
| back to the invitation-only days. It had become more spam
| than not, mostly other people who share my initials not
| knowing their own email addresses. But the possible
| devastation you mention was more worrying. It had become
| too much of a risk for my banking and identity generally to
| not own my email address.
|
| I got a custom domain. I still host it on google, because I
| know how impossible it is for small companies to have a
| reasonable program to deal with insider threats. Because of
| that, I think only one of the giant companies can
| realistically provide secure email. And the google app
| suite is great. Now that I pay for google workspace,
| there's support and appeals available, and if they ban me
| anyway, I still control the domain and can regain access to
| everything.
|
| I have not been able to delete the old address, even after
| 3 years. There are some things like Google Fi that can only
| use a non-workplace google account. Very, very rarely, I
| still get an email that matters on it. But I got to the
| point where I could stop checking it in about 2 months, and
| now I look at it about once a week quickly, more out of
| habit than anything else.
|
| The switch was annoying, but not "hard". It was worth it.
| svilen_dobrev wrote:
| gmail uses IMAP.
|
| make another mailbox (another provider - migadu, fastmail,
| proton, whoever) that has IMAP as well. (selfhosting.. is
| PITA. only if u _really_ need it).
|
| install some standalone mail-client - thunderbird,
| clawsmail, applemail, or k9 , aqua on android, whatever.
| Attach both mailboxes into that. Find out how to copy an
| e-mail from one folder into another.
|
| Folder by folder, select all mails, copy from one mailbox
| into the other. Will take time.
|
| (Beware, some clients (apple) will fuckup the mail-date,
| anything older than 5 years becomes 5 years old. or it
| shows like that. YMMV.)
|
| i have made this multiple times, for 20+ years of mails...
| rzerowan wrote:
| There was a time back when we could get generic LoginWIth
| OAUTH butons along with the social media roster , allowing
| one to use whichever provider they wanted.
|
| Current state of OIDC should be pretty much standard across
| most providers - it put it that devs need too make the push
| to support alt login providers for preventing vendor lockin
| in identity like were currently barreling towards in
| hardware/software.
| jijji wrote:
| yeah exactly have you ever tried to call Google support? it
| doesn't exist. the only way to contact Google is by posting
| something on news.ycombinator.com and then hoping that some
| person who works at that company actually responds to you and
| logs in somewhere and then changes your access.
| jauntywundrkind wrote:
| It's not 100% clear to me, but supposedly it was just access to
| Antigravity that was shut off.
|
| If people lost access to their whole accounts that would be a
| major crisis for Google users. But it doesn't seem that that
| was actually the case.
|
| This doesn't make it super clear, but, the submission from a
| week ago when bans got handed out:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47115805
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| > The digital death sentence of losing access to your email
|
| I agree that the digital death sentence is really bad and
| doubly so seen that many are using single-sign on tied to their
| Google identity but...
|
| > with a company that notoriously has no way for the average
| human to contact a human is not worth the risk
|
| There's definitely phone support for paying Google Workspace
| users: don't tell me there's not, my wife got Google support on
| the phone more than once and they've been helpful.
|
| And it's not a crazy expensive subscription either.
| ithkuil wrote:
| This remains a problem for the personal account though
| (arguably what "primary account" meant in GP)
| stavros wrote:
| Can that account be upgraded to Workspace just to get the
| support?
| rootnod3 wrote:
| Here's an idea: run your digital life away from a corporate
| shitbucket like Google. Don't run your email there. Plenty of
| good other options.
| aprentic wrote:
| That's a big part of why I switched to paid email.
|
| I'm the customer, not the product.
| baby_souffle wrote:
| > Way too risky to use Google services like this tied to your
| primary account
|
| As a hedge, you can google.com/takeout on a monthly cadence.
|
| At least a few years ago when raspberry pi nodes were cheap,
| you could set up rClone to sync the `TAKEOUT` folder of your
| gdrive account locally and then encrypt it and shove it into
| backblaze. Then set up a monthly reminder to quickly request a
| takeout and make sure that you choose the "deliver to google
| drive" option.
| joe_the_user wrote:
| Using Gmail as your primary email has become a serious risk.
| Email was once a distinct thing but Google tying it to your
| everything-account makes gmail terrible.
| fsalbrechter wrote:
| Still no clarification if they block your whole Google account or
| just Gemini?
| Thorrez wrote:
| Not the entire Google account.
|
| > bans for Antigravity usage also blocked access to Gemini CLI
| and Gemini Code Assist.
|
| Disclosure: I work at Google, but not on anything related to
| this.
| RyanShook wrote:
| What I don't understand about policy violations is why Google
| never warns the user before banning. A simple alert or email
| would reduce so much frustration on the part of users and so much
| overhead for Google.
|
| ToS change frequently and it's not really fair to assume the user
| knows what is and is not correct use of tokens.
| solfox wrote:
| Not just Google. This seems to be the default for most tech
| giants. I was banned on Facebook for an unknown reason, not
| provided any explanation, and given zero recourse. Had to
| resort to reaching out to a friend who worked there.
| sheept wrote:
| I think from their end, they see a lot more malicious users
| (e.g. spam accounts) that it's not worth providing a gentle
| warning before a ban. There might've been thousands more
| accounts created for Chinese companies for distillation[0],
| that Google didn't think of/weren't able to initially
| distinguish genuine user accounts just using a third party tool
| on their Antigravity token.
|
| Like in a similar vein, Instagram sometimes randomly bans
| genuine users without appeal, probably because they deal with
| thousands more spam accounts that don't deserve a
| warning/appeals process.
|
| [0] Like as Anthropic reported:
| https://www.anthropic.com/news/detecting-and-preventing-dist...
| MiscIdeaMaker99 wrote:
| I feel dumb. I've never heard of Antigravity until now.
| gozzoo wrote:
| Good for you :)
| oofbey wrote:
| Welcome to the singularity, now in progress. One of its
| defining features is that things move too fast for people to
| keep up.
| pocksuppet wrote:
| By this logic though JavaScript frameworks were the
| singularity
| oofbey wrote:
| lol. True. I guess the difference is "things that matter to
| technological progress" move too fast to keep up.
| esskay wrote:
| All this whole thing did is ensure I never, ever use any google
| AI service. The fact that they didn't instantly comprehend what a
| total account ban means when they've got people with 20+ years
| worth of personal data in those accounts is incredibly
| concerning.
| narmiouh wrote:
| I see a lot of comments in googles defense, part of me wonders
| whats the split between google employees(even so people in teams
| related to these products) and normies who ignore the true
| underlying issue here...
|
| Google consistently fails to provide a process to deal with user
| issues. You donot see many reports of these at Amazon, Microsoft,
| Apple, and many more providers. Though Meta learns from google I
| think.
| cube00 wrote:
| Microsoft has a had a few high profile cases of locking people
| out and taking their OneDrive with it with no ability to get
| support.
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| > Microsoft has a had a few high profile cases of locking
| people out and taking their OneDrive with it with no ability
| to get support.
|
| Yes but as we're talking about Microsoft, these cases are
| probably explained by incompetence.
| marcd35 wrote:
| cool. now do something about the hundreds/thousands of people
| getting rate limited on Antigravity even after upgrading their
| plans, even on their $250 /month plan.
|
| https://discuss.ai.google.dev/c/antigravity/64
| sergiotapia wrote:
| Complete risk to use google products like this with your real
| account. My youtube is still banned over uploading two clips of
| Dexter's Laboratory over 15 years ago.
|
| Today I could have uploaded them fine, and let whoever owns the
| cartoon make money I was just a fan of the show.
| jijji wrote:
| this is the long-standing problem with using Google services.
| either they become deprecated and removed without notification,
| or they outright ban you for using tools as intended. either way,
| using Google tools for anything doesn't make business sense to
| anybody who's seen the history of this.
| writeslowly wrote:
| It's interesting that with both Anthropic and Google we're seeing
| them develop agentic models that are supposed to do anything a
| human can do on computers without human intervention, but at the
| same time, if you plug one program into another of their programs
| or APIs in a way that wasn't preapproved you may be blocked or
| banned.
|
| To be charitable, maybe they're expecting AI agents to eventually
| start reading the ToS docs
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| Why is this published on github.com? Is google somehow incapable
| of making official announcements through their own web
| properties?
| gck1 wrote:
| > Using third-party software, tools, or services to harvest or
| piggyback on Gemini CLI's OAuth authentication to access our
| backend services is a direct violation of Gemini CLI's applicable
| terms and policies.
|
| It's been 2 months since these bans have started, first
| Anthropic, then Google. And their wording is still so confusing
| that I can't get a simple answer to a simple question:
|
| Is piggybacking on headless 'gemini-cli -p' or 'claude -p' a TOS
| violation? Because there's really no reason why you can't do
| exactly what these tools did that caused these two companies to
| start giving out bans.
|
| Unless you're in for a very specific configuration of models for
| some niche concern, CLIs give you nearly exact same access to the
| backend that snatching an OAuth token from them does. They give
| you JSONL for stdin, JSONL for stdout, and if you spin up a local
| proxy, you even get the same exact API contract in responses that
| you get from public APIs.
|
| In fact, I already built a small tool for myself that does
| exactly that, to allow usage of alternative harnesses I prefer.
| Once I release it to the public, will -p be banned too?
| blainm wrote:
| I think the issue is people are using tools in an automated
| fashion and running up a compute bill for free when they were
| only meant to be used by humans in a more limited capacity (for
| companies to gather data on how to improve their products for
| humans). I think the correct way to use these models in an
| automated fashion is via the APIs and even then they might also
| worry about things like abuse/distillation type attacks still
| if the volume is too high. I think the lack of transparency
| might actually be by design so that people abusing their
| services don't figure out what triggers them losing their
| accounts. I could be wrong of course, this is just speculation
| on my part.
| gck1 wrote:
| > I think the issue is people are using tools in an automated
| fashion
|
| But that's the sole reason why all of the tools have headless
| modes. Headless mode is textbook definition of supporting
| automation.
|
| From gemini docs: [1]
|
| > Headless mode allows you to run Gemini CLI programmatically
| from command line scripts and automation tools without any
| interactive UI.
|
| And claude code:
|
| > Use the Agent SDK to run Claude Code programmatically from
| the CLI, Python, or TypeScript
|
| Why does headless mode exist if using it is a bannable
| offense?
|
| [1] https://google-gemini.github.io/gemini-
| cli/docs/cli/headless...
|
| [2] https://code.claude.com/docs/en/headless
| szmarczak wrote:
| Headless is fine as long as there's a human in the loop.
| Remove the human, their bills skyrocket.
| NewsaHackO wrote:
| Have you read the website?
| https://platform.claude.com/docs/en/agent-sdk/overview
|
| >Unless previously approved, Anthropic does not allow third
| party developers to offer claude.ai login or rate limits for
| their products, including agents built on the Claude Agent SDK.
| Please use the API key authentication methods described in this
| document instead.
|
| Seems clear-cut to me.
| gck1 wrote:
| Yes, I have. And it's obvious that restriction was put there
| for a reason. The most obvious possible reason is that
| snatching OAuth made it possible for third party tools to
| utilize subscription to the fullest - like OpenClaw.
|
| But these tools, including openclaw, didn't have to snatch
| the OAuth tokens, they could have used claude code built in
| headless stdio and consequences for Anthropic would be
| exactly the same. OAuth was just faster to plug in.
|
| So if I open source my solution that allows opencode &
| openclaw to go through claude cli's headless mode, is this
| allowed? Is this a product that allows claude.ai login?
|
| What if I open source a 1 line bash loop (e.g. ralph loop)
| that does the same?
|
| What if I build a more complex bash loop that goes through my
| tasks in a text file, and calls claude cli for each?
|
| I don't know at which point this becomes "offering claude.ai
| login" or a "product", or "building agents".
|
| Here's my product:
|
| while :; do cat PROMPT.md | claude ; done
|
| Am I blacklisted now?
| NewsaHackO wrote:
| Before I use time responding, I want to ask again: Did you
| actually read the website, especially the "Compare the
| Agent SDK to other Claude tools" section? It answers your
| question pretty thoroughly.
| gck1 wrote:
| For the second time, yes. And it's still not clear at
| what point does a wrapper around claude cli running in
| headless mode become a 'product' that is going to get my
| account banned.
|
| My guess is, and others have said this as well in the
| thread: "when you start utilizing your weekly quotas
| fully".
|
| But obviously, they can't put "you can't use your weekly
| allocated quota fully". That would be way too honest and
| we can't accept that.
| NewsaHackO wrote:
| No, the link clearly says that if you are not using the
| harness provided by Claude for the Agent SDK (such as for
| making tool calls), you have to use the Client SDK. So
| attempting to prompt the Agent SDK with a third-party app
| so that the third-party app can then call a tool with the
| output is not allowed in the Agent SDK. You have to use
| the Client SDK (API).It even gives an example in the
| section I asked you to read, which is why I am seriously
| doubting whether or not you read it.
| gck1 wrote:
| > the link clearly says that if you are not using the
| harness provided by Claude for the Agent SDK (such as for
| making tool calls), you have to use the Client SDK
|
| But you just made this up? There's no text on the page
| that says this. What the linked page does is explain
| technical differences between Agent SDK and Client SDK,
| and Agent SDK and cli (Agent SDK is just a wrapper around
| cli anyway).
|
| Neither tab says anything remotely like "if a third-party
| app prompts the Agent SDK and uses the output for tool
| calls, that's not allowed." You entirely fabricated this
| from the comparisons.
|
| And your assumption is wrong on another level. The Agent
| SDK specifically exists so that you can write your own
| harness and give it custom tools - that's its entire
| purpose. It's even documented in their custom tools guide
| [1]. So not only "using a third-party harness with the
| Agent SDK" isn't forbidden, it's the product's primary
| use case. There's no such thing as "harness provided by
| claude for the agent SDK" - _you_ bring the harness.
|
| The _only_ policy statement on that page is this:
|
| > Unless previously approved, Anthropic does not allow
| third party developers to offer claude.ai login or rate
| limits for their products..
|
| But I've already addressed this, so it seems we're going
| in circles.
|
| [1] https://platform.claude.com/docs/en/agent-sdk/custom-
| tools
| NewsaHackO wrote:
| >And your assumption is wrong on another level. The Agent
| SDK specifically exists so that you can write your own
| harness and give it custom tools - that's its entire
| purpose. It's even documented in their custom tools guide
| [1].
|
| Yea, you don't seem to even understand what you are
| writing. This in no way contradicts any statement I or
| Anthopic has said.
|
| >Neither tab says anything remotely like "if a third-
| party app prompts the Agent SDK and uses the output for
| tool calls, that's not allowed." You entirely fabricated
| this from the comparisons.
|
| From: https://platform.claude.com/docs/en/agent-
| sdk/overview#agent...
|
| >The Anthropic Client SDK gives you direct API access:
| you send prompts and implement tool execution yourself.
| The Agent SDK gives you Claude with built-in tool
| execution.
|
| >With the Client SDK, you implement a tool loop. With the
| Agent SDK, Claude handles it:
|
| Python # Client SDK: You implement the
| tool loop response = client.messages.create(...)
| while response.stop_reason == "tool_use":
| result = your_tool_executor(response.tool_use)
| response = client.messages.create(tool_result=result,
| \*params) # Agent SDK: Claude handles tools
| autonomously async for message in query(prompt="Fix
| the bug in auth.py"): print(message)
|
| At this point, it's clear that you either have
| questionable reading comprehension skills, are being
| willfully ignorant, or are arguing in bad faith because
| it even says that tool calls outside of the Agent SDK
| harness has to use the Client SDK as the comments to the
| code used in the examples.
| szmarczak wrote:
| They just want people to pay more via API. Technically,
| your example would violate ToS, because the purpose
| matters. Like a license file may allow personal use and
| prohibit commercial use (unless you obtain a commercial
| license).
| ankit219 wrote:
| this is good.
|
| problem is google's security concerns. when people connect gmail
| to openclaw, google flags the activity as weird and suspend the
| account because of unusual activity. Many whose accounts got
| locked because of this and they thought it was because they
| connected it to antigravity use against the policy (which
| happened in some cases). We will still see google account
| suspensions, and that would keep making news. and it wont be
| because of antigravity usage.
| cat_plus_plus wrote:
| The problem is that Google treats its customers as college kids
| who can be banned from a college maker lab for using too much 3D
| filament rather than entrepreneurs who are trusting their
| livelyhood to a service provider that promises to be reliable. If
| War Department uses too many Gemini tokens, do they cut them off,
| make them go through recertification process and permaban the
| next time around?
|
| Which means that anyone serious about AI and not going local
| route should be using a provider with better reputation. I don't
| know if Alibaba, Z.ai or moonshots AI are also known for hair
| trigger responses, could be decent options for coding AI
| otherwise? If not, time to look for smaller providers with good
| reputation?
| hsaliak wrote:
| The Gemini-CLI situation is poor. They did not communicate that
| AI Pro or AI Ultra accounts cannot be used with this API broadly
| earlier. I specifically remember searching for this info. Seeing
| this made me wonder if I had missed it. Turns out it was added to
| the TOS 2 days ago - diff https://github.com/google-
| gemini/gemini-cli/pull/20488/chang.... I'd be happy to stand
| corrected here.
|
| Anti Gravity I understand, they are subsidizing to promote a
| general IDE, but I dont understand constraining the generative AI
| backend that Gemini CLI hits.
|
| Finally, it's unclear what's allowed and what's not if I purchase
| the API access from google cloud here
| https://developers.google.com/gemini-code-assist/docs/overvi...
|
| The Apache License of this product at this point is rich. Just
| make it closed source and close the API reference. Why have it
| out there?
| tempest_ wrote:
| I have a Code Assist Standard license to evaluate gemini-cli
| (and the new models)
|
| To this day I cannot coax the gemini-cli to allow me to use the
| models they claim you have access to. Enabled all the preview
| stuff in cloud etc etc.
|
| Still I mostly get 2.5 and rarely get 3 or 3.1 offered.
|
| The gemini-cli repo is a shit show.
|
| I can seem to access the new models using opencode, but am 429
| rate limited almost immediately such that its like 5 minutes
| between calls.
| hsaliak wrote:
| It takes your query, computes the complexity of the request,
| and tries to route it to the appropriate model. There is a
| /manual command i think, to pick the right model.
|
| They mask the 429s well in Gemini-Cli - if an endpoint is
| rate limited, they try another, or route to another model,
| etc to keep service availability up.
|
| Your experience on the 429s is consistent with mine - the
| 429s is the first thing they need to fix. Fix that and they
| have a solid model at a good price point.
|
| I use my own coding agent
| (https://github.com/hsaliak/std_slop) and not being able to
| bring my (now cancelled) AI account with Google to it is a
| bummer.
|
| I'd still use it with the Code Assist Standard license if the
| google cloud API subscription allows for it but I have no
| clarification.
| tempest_ wrote:
| > It takes your query, computes the complexity of the
| request, and tries to route it to the appropriate model.
| There is a /manual command i think, to pick the right
| model.
|
| That is what is should do, but there is no > 2.5 model
| shown in /model and it always picks a 2.5 model. Ive
| enabled preview models in the google cloud project as well.
|
| If I pass the 3 model in start param it shows 3 in the
| lower right corner but it is still using 2.5.
|
| I know google has issues dealing with paying customers but
| the current state is a shit show. If you go to the gemini-
| cli repo its a deluge of issues and ai slop. It seems there
| is a cadre of people jumping to be the first person to pump
| an issue into claude and get some sort of PR clout.
|
| It might be good but it needs more time to cook, or they
| need to take a step back and evaluate what they should
| consider a paid product.
| TiredOfLife wrote:
| Incompetence of Google is amazing. They take an existing thing
| like Windsurf and somehow make it constantly coredump. And can't
| fix it for months.
| chaostheory wrote:
| > to address violations of the Antigravity Terms of Service
| (ToS), specifically the use of 3rd party tools or proxies to
| access Antigravity resources and quotas
|
| Translation: Google doesn't want you using Gemini oauth with
| openclaw
| zero0529 wrote:
| I am sick and tired of companies forcing a shitty fork of vscode
| down my throat. If I am paying let me use your api how I wish to.
| Most people aren't malicious and just want to use their own
| workflow.
| wiskinator wrote:
| Without the context of "Antigravity" being a product name this
| headline is science fiction gold.
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