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Recently, Google suspended accounts for using Emoji comments on YouTube. This is the whole account, including Gmail access[1]. Now imaging your checking accoun

Recently, Google suspended accounts for using Emoji comments on YouTube. This is the whole account, including Gmail access[1]. Now imaging your checking account also got disabled because some bot decided that you looked suspicious. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWaz7ofl5wQ&feature=youtu.be https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWaz7ofl5wQ&feature=youtu.be

arcticbull 7y ago
Man I can't wait until they cancel this product too, and I have to migrate my money back to my current bank. I'll save myself the leg-work ;)
eloff 7y ago
And there is almost no way to talk to a human and get access back. I like Google's services, but I think their ability to deny service with no recourse is shameful. If I lost my gmail account with my last fifteen years of emails, linked to ask my other online accounts, plus all my documents and all my photos in drive, I'd be totally lost.
- izzydata 7y ago
  Perhaps it is time to export all your emails and start forwarding any new emails to a backup email service. As well as backup any documents regularly to another service or personal drive. As far as opening a google checking account goes I think I will be avoiding that one. Diversifying my critical online services might in some sense be a higher security risk, but safer from it all being wiped out in one go.
  - tracker1 7y ago
    Agreed... been giving more and more time for thought on how I want to handle this myself.
    - vorpalhex 7y ago
      I've already setup a domain in front of Protonmail so I have email under my control. My next step is to use an email client to fetch all my emails under IMAP so I have them outside of any cloud service.
    - bad_user 7y ago
      Fastmail's import tool worked well for me and I have a big archive.
  - jschwartzi 7y ago
    I'm working on this right now. Google's level of control over my ability to communicate online is really scary. If I lost my gmail account because of a perceived TOS violation I would lose access to many of my accounts, and have to go through a huge inconvenience of going to physical stores, calling during business hours and submitting ID, etc. to reset passwords. If I had known back in 2002 what I know now about what Google would become I never would have joined the Gmail beta.
    - xvector 7y ago
      > If I had known back in 2002 what I know now about what Google would become I never would have joined the Gmail beta. 100% agreed. It was cool at the time. Now Google has so fundamentally changed and I don’t trust them with my data anymore, but it is a Herculean task to move everything off Gmail. Literally hundreds of accounts are bound to my Gmail.
- crb002 7y ago
  I’d sue them next day in State court for interference with my business contracts. Having a billion dollar data center in Iowa the judge has a lot of leverage.
  - eloff 7y ago
    I don't think it would fly. Google would just argue you agreed to that in the terms of service. Plus it would be slower and more expensive than just getting Google to reinstate your access, even if you had to fly there in person to beg them.
    - rolltiide 7y ago
      > Google would just argue you agreed to that in the terms of service. and any judge can tear that to shreds if they are sympathetic to the implementation
    - skyyler 7y ago
      Any idea where I should go to do that? I've been unable to access my google account for over two years. Their automated processes are never able to confirm my identity, and any humans I do manage to communicate with tell me to use the automated systems. I don't even care about my dignity any more, I'll beg for it back in person.
  - daphneokeefe 7y ago
    But wouldn't they just delay the process, appealing forever?
    - jfoster 7y ago
      Wouldn't they just take a look at your account before deciding on their court battle strategy?
  - LegitShady 7y ago
    And years later in court you might get access maybe not. Or just go with an email provider that isn't auditing your behaviour
- craftkiller 7y ago
  At the very least, you should be running isync[1] to keep a local copy of your emails. Losing access to future emails would still be devastating though. [1] http://isync.sourceforge.net/ http://isync.sourceforge.net/
- KorematsuFred 7y ago
  It is a bad idea to use vanilla gmail account for critical purposes. I highly recommend coughing up some money and getting a gsuite account. Once you do that all these problems disappear. You also get support and the fact that you are spending money tells Google that you are a serious user.
  - joecool1029 7y ago
    > You also get support No, outsourced call center with no escalation path doesn't qualify as support for anything but the most basic issues. Google 'support' means bitching on HN, getting upvoted, and having an engineer take notice and actually poke at it. > the fact that you are spending money tells Google that you are a serious user. No, it signals that you are reliant on them. This means they can treat you as a second-class citizen from the free users! This recent issue happened to one of my clients (not anyone in this thread), https://support.google.com/voice/thread/3818693?hl=en https://support.google.com/voice/thread/3818693?hl=en . Note, paid users can't request a free Google Voice account, have to pay for the same thing on Cloud Voice now. We had similar issues in the past where we couldn't delegate users from a Google Business panel inside our G Suite domain, we had to maintain personal GMail accounts to add business managers. I've been a reseller of this shit, deeply regret it. When it works for our clients, it works fine. When it doesn't, we're just as screwed with getting support as anyone else. I switched my primary accounts to Fastmail and O365, and haven't looked back.
    - jdgoesmarching 7y ago
      As a Gsuite user for 4-5 years, it's funny when I run up against Google services that work for free personal accounts but not my paid account. I've been meaning to migrate to Exchange/o365, it's in my backlog of projects that I'm procrastinating.
      - benhurmarcel 7y ago
        G Suite is now clearly oriented to companies, and the differences in tools compared to free accounts make sense in that context. Google cannot deploy to corporate customers tools that are not properly tested yet, and that they cannot guarantee will be supported for a long time. They use free users as beta testers and to see if ideas stick. They can't deploy those to actual customers.
- djsumdog 7y ago
  I am so glad I transitioned from Google services in 2012 (mostly spurred on by the domestic spying stuff). I did a dump of all my Gmail account and could not be happier (Gmail's IMAP implementation is hopelessly broken rubbish). I used Dropbox and now MEGA to sync photos off my phone, but I copy all that stuff to my NAS and backups. I use Drive for some things, but I wouldn't be screwed if it went away. I disable almost all the major Google apps on my Android phone and hope to switch out to Lineage + miniG soon. I use a self hosted TTRss currently (Google Reader was garbage and it dying was really good as I realized what good RSS readers were actually like). I need to set a reminder to do more regular Facebook exports/backups. No one should be in the situation where a single provider killing your access means you loose a huge chunk of your content. Self hosting has its own problems and yes, a lot of people don't have the knowledge/means/time to do it, but man I'm glad I made it a priority. My phone number is still on Goolge Hangouts. I need to find a better solution for that as well.
  - ahsteele 7y ago
    What RSS reader are you using?
    - Semaphor 7y ago
      They said TTRSS, that’s this one: https://tt-rss.org/ https://tt-rss.org/ I use it myself :)
  - jeanofthedead 7y ago
    Not Google Voice?
    - djsumdog 7y ago
      Nope, still Hangouts. I'm so confused on the difference and their offerings now that I will probably avoid changing it until I can port my number off of it entirely.
- mehdix 7y ago
  Syncthing and DecSync have helped me a lot in this regard.
- ratsmack 7y ago
  I keep no email on Google. I have a Linux box that pulls down all email, for all my families email accounts, and stores it locally. Then we use Thunderbird and access it via IMAP. It is then easy to back it up with everything else onto external drives and my Backblaze account. With what is going on with big internet players censoring and deplatforming people, why would one trust these people with your money.
sneak 7y ago
I have had my current bank (Chase) steal all the money in my checking account for a lot less than an emoji comment, to be fair.
- cft 7y ago
  Can you explain what happened?
  - sneak 7y ago
    Zero-burden-of-proof state government edict (an Indiana tax warrant) based entirely in fiction caused them to throw up their hands and say “there’s nothing we can do!” as they took $150 for Chase’s lawyers’ time and handed the remainder over to Indiana in full.
    - pcwalton 7y ago
      > Zero-burden-of-proof state government edict (an Indiana tax warrant) "Zero-burden-of-proof state government edict" describes the property tax bills every single homeowner gets in the mail and is expected to pay. Pay your taxes.
      - sneak 7y ago
        No; property taxes require a burden of proof: you must own property. That property must be assessed in some way. In this instance I had no tax liability whatsoever. Zero. No business operations whatsoever in or touching or with their state. Indiana invented numbers out of thin air. Most of a year later I got the money back from Indiana as they agreed on this point (after they skimmed about $1k for “collections fees” incurred as a result of their illegal seizure). Chase was happy to oblige them with a rubber stamp.
    - delfinom 7y ago
      Unfortunately, even Google would concede and hand over the money because it's backed by Citi-Group. Financial institutions listen to court and state orders blindly.
xboxnolifes 7y ago
> Now imaging your checking account also got disabled because some bot decided that you looked suspicious. That's already how fraud protection works in the majority of banks.
- CapitalistCartr 7y ago
  With Google, there is no human recourse.
- daveFNbuck 7y ago
  It's pretty easy to resolve that with the bank. Google has notoriously bad customer service for people whose accounts it disables.
- stefano 7y ago
  But your bank will have humans making sure it's not a false positive. With google, you can appeal so a bot can tell you that your appeal was rejected.
- cscurmudgeon 7y ago
  Really? We know banks use machine learning models too but can you really get suspended for a comment on a video site? The surface area for misclassification is much larger in Google’s case as they close down the entire account without any mechanism for appeal.
- simion314 7y ago
  The bank won't close your account if your child put an emojy on a youtube comment while using a tablet. The proper response is to block your YT account but Google forced merged your accounts.
- arshbot 7y ago
  > That's already how fraud protection works in the majority of banks. Yes, but what bank has the surface area of google? If I do something in a an area that has _literally nothing_ to do with banking ( say google stadia ) that a bot thinks is fishy - will I have all of my funds locked up over that mistake?
tssva 7y ago
Having your checking account disabled because some bot decides you look suspicious already happens with traditional financial institutions.
- TuringNYC 7y ago
  If you typically have a help line, possibly also a physical bank to go to, and if not, you'd reach out to the OCC (https://www.occ.treas.gov/about/index-about.html https://www.occ.treas.gov/about/index-about.html) and your problem will get solved real fast
- wil421 7y ago
  Anytime I have issues with a bank account I walk into a brick and mortar and talk to someone in person. My Amex has a number on the back and I speak to a person. Not even sure how to call google. Google Maps has issues with father in laws address. They also have some made up city name near where Ive lived on and off for 30 years, not a single person calls it that. Amazon hides their number or changes the location on their website frequently.
privateSFacct 7y ago
I think it was more than just an emoji in a comment but happy to be shown otherwise. Someone was violating youtubes rules about posting repetitive comments. You can't post the same thing over and over on youtube without running into problems. They ban entire accounts that are not paying. We've had reasonable (not great by any means) service with some of their paying products. And paypal locked an account of mine for something like 10 years (based on nothing). Wasn't worth the fight, but was randomly contacted to claim my money oddly.
- wbronitsky 7y ago
  What point is being advanced here? That it is ok, or at least inconsequential that Google can lock you out of services that you rely on? Or that we should be happy because Google is "reasonable" here? I have purchased a domain and used it to underpin a fastmail account; personally, I don't share in your line of reasoning and don't want to continue to trust Google.
  - privateSFacct 7y ago
    There are two points. 1) The statement that google deleted someones accounts because they used emoji's in a comment or comments is 100% a lie. Let's be crystal clear about this. 2) If you aren't paying you are not the customer - you are the product. Is this not obvious to folks? If you pee in google's pool they are going to kick you out. You don't make them much money (they make money on volume) and if you annoy lots of their other users and violate their written policies they have an economic incentive to eject you from their ecosystem. Every MINUTE they spend dealing with you is profit lost - so they are probably NOT going spend a lot of time dealing with you. If you want control - buy your own domain and point it to where you want to. Or pay someone for email. Or do both, I think those are all great ideas. But the lies about an emoji in a comment being the reason someone's account is banned are very annoying.
- shadowgovt 7y ago
  "They ban entire accounts that are not paying" isn't a hard-and-fast rule either; I wouldn't risk anything you can't afford to be cut off from stored monoculture-style in Google's ecosystem, whether or not you're paying, if it's absolutely critical to you. Regardless of whether they apply a different account risk model, the checking thing is experimental and I definitely would recommend against handing it money you can't afford to lose. Your point on Paypal is valid, and people dealing with Google checking are making a risk calculation like people dealing with Paypal do (but of course, one would hope that over time, the offerings improve; Google entering this market new should be offering something better than Paypal).
adrianmonk 7y ago
The article says "with accounts run by Citigroup Inc. and a credit union at Stanford University". If the accounts are run by these partner banks, maybe that means you will be able to contact the partner bank's customer service when stuff like this happens.
- ProAm 7y ago
  Then what's the point? Just get a normal bank or credit union account and be done with it. Why leave your financial future in the hands of a company with zero customer support or care?
  - adrianmonk 7y ago
    Presumably they'll add some kind of innovative feature so it isn't just a traditional checking account. If you don't think those features will be worth it because you don't think Google is good at customer service, then I guess that's for you to decide for yourself. I don't really see how it's relevant to my comment, though.
kyrra 7y ago
Btw, Youtube replied here: https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/dtr6gi/youtube_suspends_google_accounts_of_markipliers/f6zbqka/ https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/dtr6gi/youtube_susp... And Markiplier posted an UPDATE video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mhb4CvOtEeo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mhb4CvOtEeo (I'm a googler, opinions are my own).
- papln 7y ago
  > The whole-account "ban" was a common anti-spam measure we use. It's strange to me when someone restates the misbehavior as though it's a justification. If someone is abusing commenting, block them from commenting, sure. Don't disable all their other products. If someone is abusing two products, disable their whole account, then? Sure, if you want. That reduces the false-positives by about a square factor (0.1% -> 0.0001%)
- cowmoo728 7y ago
  Would this have turned out well if Markiplier wasn't a well known streamer that had worked closely with google on an interactive youtube special? It's worth noting that the appeals were initially denied and the people banned got a "case closed, nothing we can do" response.
- LegitShady 7y ago
  YouTube is full of shit. They're in a hurry abandoning the unprofitable "you" in YouTube and replacing it with will smith driven garbage. YouTube's denials about why it happened are again dumb, and a chat ban in YouTube should in no way affect the rest of your Google account. Just acknowledging that it happened isn't a good explanation. "Ya our rules are dumb and on manual review we were still stupid assholes" It's also impossible to get ahold of anyone at YouTube and YouTube's "ya we manually reviewed it and fucked up" is just another admission that their pile of a system just doesn't work. I'm moving away from Google and any other provider like them. These incidents only impress the need to do it faster. I can't risk having my business and life ruined because of a youtube algorithm with no one behind the wheel. I recommend everyone else do the same. Just the idea that YouTube chat bans would connect to other portions of the account means google is not interested in you. Every interaction with them is a threat to your digital well being where your whole account can be banned. It's totally unacceptable given the position they're in. And it can all be manually reviewer and you'll be told to go fuck yourself and if you aren't markeplier or whoever you have no recourse. Fuck that shit.
cletus 7y ago
So I worked at Google when Google Plus rolled out. What was contentious at the time internally was the Real Names policy. This was all Vic Gundotra's doing. He routinely gave the example of not wanting to interact with someone called "Dog Turd". I think we have ample evidence that people want pseudonymity. People like to segment parts of their lives without their prospective employer being able to look up what you said and possibly take things out of context. So as much as people outside complained, trust me there was a ton of internal dissent about this too. This was back before leaking for a political agenda became widespread in the Trump era. Anyway, agree or disagree with the Real Names policy it presented a far larger problem. If some automated system decided your name was "fake" your entire account including Youtube, Gmail and so on got locked. Whoever signed off on this was utterly insane and should've been fired. While we're at it, fire anybody who suggested it as being a good idea. I remember looking for a photo storage solution for my sister at the time. Google Plus had unlimited storage but you had to "upgrade" your account to a Google Plus account. I, as a Google engineer, could not in good conscience recommend this approach because I had no idea what might trigger a global lock on her account. Google Photos came from the wreckage of this shit show and is actually a good product. This happens when you start addressing user needs and concerns rather than trying to push your own agenda. What agenda? Google wanted a single account for everything where everyone was logged into search as this would allow search to be personalized (better). Or at least that was the theory. Larry talked a lot about the desire to get people signed in to Google search. I'm utterly dependent on my Gmail address to the point where I probably won't use any future Google service just to diminish my risk of some new product triggering a global lockout, which as an ex-employee I now have limited ability to rectify. Google should NEVER have taken the route of a global lock out. Trust is broken. So my chances of using this banking service is literally zero.
- gitgreen 7y ago
  Yesterday I signed up for Proton mail to start splitting off my data from Google. The announcement that they are now vacuuming up health data without patient consent is unacceptable. Had Google made this announcement at the time of the Wells Fargo scandals they probably would've had my business but my trust in them is near zero at this point.
- 7y ago
pojzon 7y ago
This is China Social Credit System level of control. I would NEVER EVER use such a service. Its just too much of control in one place for a private company.
14 7y ago
This actually terrifies me and I have recently be pondering if I should switch from my gmail to something else to secure my accounts. I worry one day they will say something like, sorry you used an adblocker on Youtube that is against our terms now you are cut out from your gmail. I do hope one day legislation is made giving consumers some protections. Until then I would like to find an alternative email provider, even a paid one, and get off of gmail.
- jeanofthedead 7y ago
  I would highly recommend ProtonMail, Tutanota, Fastmail, or CripText. You can use Google Takeout to create an mbox file of your inbox, fwiw.
l4yao 7y ago
This already exists to an extent on the other end of the transaction. Payment processors like Stripe are too ubiquitous to not have some level of oversight. Some bot had flagged me as suspicious, and as a result - I couldn't take any Lyft rides, and my company only subsidizes lyft. - I couldn't rent a car on Getaround - I couldn't rent a scooter on Skip, one of two providers in SF at the time My mobility was severely hampered. I almost couldn't close on my house in time because my insurer of choice at the time also used Stripe. To add insult to injury, Stripe's customer service absolutely refused to address the issue, flat out ignoring it. They claimed the issue was on the vendor side and to follow up with the vendor directly. It was only when I left a poor review on Google did they follow up with me within 2 hours, lifting the ban. For someone unfamiliar with the idea of a "payment processor", this may have never been resolved since the company "Stripe" is never visible during the transaction.
BubRoss 7y ago
It is completely ridiculous if you think about the fact that they created a system where people can spam emojis, then banned them for doing it. If you don't want people to do something so easily filtered, just don't let them do it in the first place.
mrbonner 7y ago
I have my entire photo in my iPhone synced to Gphotos. I also ran the "Free space" in my iOS GPhotos app to free up space. Now I am afraid of locking out of Google and my photos are gone.

arcticbull 7y ago

Man I can't wait until they cancel this product too, and I have to migrate my money back to my current bank. I'll save myself the leg-work ;)

eloff 7y ago

And there is almost no way to talk to a human and get access back. I like Google's services, but I think their ability to deny service with no recourse is shameful. If I lost my gmail account with my last fifteen years of emails, linked to ask my other online accounts, plus all my documents and all my photos in drive, I'd be totally lost.

izzydata 7y ago
Perhaps it is time to export all your emails and start forwarding any new emails to a backup email service. As well as backup any documents regularly to another service or personal drive. As far as opening a google checking account goes I think I will be avoiding that one. Diversifying my critical online services might in some sense be a higher security risk, but safer from it all being wiped out in one go.
- tracker1 7y ago
  Agreed... been giving more and more time for thought on how I want to handle this myself.
  - vorpalhex 7y ago
    I've already setup a domain in front of Protonmail so I have email under my control. My next step is to use an email client to fetch all my emails under IMAP so I have them outside of any cloud service.
  - bad_user 7y ago
    Fastmail's import tool worked well for me and I have a big archive.
- jschwartzi 7y ago
  I'm working on this right now. Google's level of control over my ability to communicate online is really scary. If I lost my gmail account because of a perceived TOS violation I would lose access to many of my accounts, and have to go through a huge inconvenience of going to physical stores, calling during business hours and submitting ID, etc. to reset passwords. If I had known back in 2002 what I know now about what Google would become I never would have joined the Gmail beta.
  - xvector 7y ago
    > If I had known back in 2002 what I know now about what Google would become I never would have joined the Gmail beta. 100% agreed. It was cool at the time. Now Google has so fundamentally changed and I don’t trust them with my data anymore, but it is a Herculean task to move everything off Gmail. Literally hundreds of accounts are bound to my Gmail.
crb002 7y ago
I’d sue them next day in State court for interference with my business contracts. Having a billion dollar data center in Iowa the judge has a lot of leverage.
- eloff 7y ago
  I don't think it would fly. Google would just argue you agreed to that in the terms of service. Plus it would be slower and more expensive than just getting Google to reinstate your access, even if you had to fly there in person to beg them.
  - rolltiide 7y ago
    > Google would just argue you agreed to that in the terms of service. and any judge can tear that to shreds if they are sympathetic to the implementation
  - skyyler 7y ago
    Any idea where I should go to do that? I've been unable to access my google account for over two years. Their automated processes are never able to confirm my identity, and any humans I do manage to communicate with tell me to use the automated systems. I don't even care about my dignity any more, I'll beg for it back in person.
- daphneokeefe 7y ago
  But wouldn't they just delay the process, appealing forever?
  - jfoster 7y ago
    Wouldn't they just take a look at your account before deciding on their court battle strategy?
- LegitShady 7y ago
  And years later in court you might get access maybe not. Or just go with an email provider that isn't auditing your behaviour
craftkiller 7y ago
At the very least, you should be running isync[1] to keep a local copy of your emails. Losing access to future emails would still be devastating though. [1] http://isync.sourceforge.net/ http://isync.sourceforge.net/
KorematsuFred 7y ago
It is a bad idea to use vanilla gmail account for critical purposes. I highly recommend coughing up some money and getting a gsuite account. Once you do that all these problems disappear. You also get support and the fact that you are spending money tells Google that you are a serious user.
- joecool1029 7y ago
  > You also get support No, outsourced call center with no escalation path doesn't qualify as support for anything but the most basic issues. Google 'support' means bitching on HN, getting upvoted, and having an engineer take notice and actually poke at it. > the fact that you are spending money tells Google that you are a serious user. No, it signals that you are reliant on them. This means they can treat you as a second-class citizen from the free users! This recent issue happened to one of my clients (not anyone in this thread), https://support.google.com/voice/thread/3818693?hl=en https://support.google.com/voice/thread/3818693?hl=en . Note, paid users can't request a free Google Voice account, have to pay for the same thing on Cloud Voice now. We had similar issues in the past where we couldn't delegate users from a Google Business panel inside our G Suite domain, we had to maintain personal GMail accounts to add business managers. I've been a reseller of this shit, deeply regret it. When it works for our clients, it works fine. When it doesn't, we're just as screwed with getting support as anyone else. I switched my primary accounts to Fastmail and O365, and haven't looked back.
  - jdgoesmarching 7y ago
    As a Gsuite user for 4-5 years, it's funny when I run up against Google services that work for free personal accounts but not my paid account. I've been meaning to migrate to Exchange/o365, it's in my backlog of projects that I'm procrastinating.
    - benhurmarcel 7y ago
      G Suite is now clearly oriented to companies, and the differences in tools compared to free accounts make sense in that context. Google cannot deploy to corporate customers tools that are not properly tested yet, and that they cannot guarantee will be supported for a long time. They use free users as beta testers and to see if ideas stick. They can't deploy those to actual customers.
djsumdog 7y ago
I am so glad I transitioned from Google services in 2012 (mostly spurred on by the domestic spying stuff). I did a dump of all my Gmail account and could not be happier (Gmail's IMAP implementation is hopelessly broken rubbish). I used Dropbox and now MEGA to sync photos off my phone, but I copy all that stuff to my NAS and backups. I use Drive for some things, but I wouldn't be screwed if it went away. I disable almost all the major Google apps on my Android phone and hope to switch out to Lineage + miniG soon. I use a self hosted TTRss currently (Google Reader was garbage and it dying was really good as I realized what good RSS readers were actually like). I need to set a reminder to do more regular Facebook exports/backups. No one should be in the situation where a single provider killing your access means you loose a huge chunk of your content. Self hosting has its own problems and yes, a lot of people don't have the knowledge/means/time to do it, but man I'm glad I made it a priority. My phone number is still on Goolge Hangouts. I need to find a better solution for that as well.
- ahsteele 7y ago
  What RSS reader are you using?
  - Semaphor 7y ago
    They said TTRSS, that’s this one: https://tt-rss.org/ https://tt-rss.org/ I use it myself :)
- jeanofthedead 7y ago
  Not Google Voice?
  - djsumdog 7y ago
    Nope, still Hangouts. I'm so confused on the difference and their offerings now that I will probably avoid changing it until I can port my number off of it entirely.
mehdix 7y ago
Syncthing and DecSync have helped me a lot in this regard.
ratsmack 7y ago
I keep no email on Google. I have a Linux box that pulls down all email, for all my families email accounts, and stores it locally. Then we use Thunderbird and access it via IMAP. It is then easy to back it up with everything else onto external drives and my Backblaze account. With what is going on with big internet players censoring and deplatforming people, why would one trust these people with your money.

sneak 7y ago

I have had my current bank (Chase) steal all the money in my checking account for a lot less than an emoji comment, to be fair.

cft 7y ago
Can you explain what happened?
- sneak 7y ago
  Zero-burden-of-proof state government edict (an Indiana tax warrant) based entirely in fiction caused them to throw up their hands and say “there’s nothing we can do!” as they took $150 for Chase’s lawyers’ time and handed the remainder over to Indiana in full.
  - pcwalton 7y ago
    > Zero-burden-of-proof state government edict (an Indiana tax warrant) "Zero-burden-of-proof state government edict" describes the property tax bills every single homeowner gets in the mail and is expected to pay. Pay your taxes.
    - sneak 7y ago
      No; property taxes require a burden of proof: you must own property. That property must be assessed in some way. In this instance I had no tax liability whatsoever. Zero. No business operations whatsoever in or touching or with their state. Indiana invented numbers out of thin air. Most of a year later I got the money back from Indiana as they agreed on this point (after they skimmed about $1k for “collections fees” incurred as a result of their illegal seizure). Chase was happy to oblige them with a rubber stamp.
  - delfinom 7y ago
    Unfortunately, even Google would concede and hand over the money because it's backed by Citi-Group. Financial institutions listen to court and state orders blindly.

xboxnolifes 7y ago

> Now imaging your checking account also got disabled because some bot decided that you looked suspicious. That's already how fraud protection works in the majority of banks.

CapitalistCartr 7y ago
With Google, there is no human recourse.
daveFNbuck 7y ago
It's pretty easy to resolve that with the bank. Google has notoriously bad customer service for people whose accounts it disables.
stefano 7y ago
But your bank will have humans making sure it's not a false positive. With google, you can appeal so a bot can tell you that your appeal was rejected.
cscurmudgeon 7y ago
Really? We know banks use machine learning models too but can you really get suspended for a comment on a video site? The surface area for misclassification is much larger in Google’s case as they close down the entire account without any mechanism for appeal.
simion314 7y ago
The bank won't close your account if your child put an emojy on a youtube comment while using a tablet. The proper response is to block your YT account but Google forced merged your accounts.
arshbot 7y ago
> That's already how fraud protection works in the majority of banks. Yes, but what bank has the surface area of google? If I do something in a an area that has _literally nothing_ to do with banking ( say google stadia ) that a bot thinks is fishy - will I have all of my funds locked up over that mistake?

tssva 7y ago

Having your checking account disabled because some bot decides you look suspicious already happens with traditional financial institutions.

TuringNYC 7y ago
If you typically have a help line, possibly also a physical bank to go to, and if not, you'd reach out to the OCC (https://www.occ.treas.gov/about/index-about.html https://www.occ.treas.gov/about/index-about.html) and your problem will get solved real fast
wil421 7y ago
Anytime I have issues with a bank account I walk into a brick and mortar and talk to someone in person. My Amex has a number on the back and I speak to a person. Not even sure how to call google. Google Maps has issues with father in laws address. They also have some made up city name near where Ive lived on and off for 30 years, not a single person calls it that. Amazon hides their number or changes the location on their website frequently.

privateSFacct 7y ago

I think it was more than just an emoji in a comment but happy to be shown otherwise. Someone was violating youtubes rules about posting repetitive comments. You can't post the same thing over and over on youtube without running into problems. They ban entire accounts that are not paying. We've had reasonable (not great by any means) service with some of their paying products. And paypal locked an account of mine for something like 10 years (based on nothing). Wasn't worth the fight, but was randomly contacted to claim my money oddly.

wbronitsky 7y ago
What point is being advanced here? That it is ok, or at least inconsequential that Google can lock you out of services that you rely on? Or that we should be happy because Google is "reasonable" here? I have purchased a domain and used it to underpin a fastmail account; personally, I don't share in your line of reasoning and don't want to continue to trust Google.
- privateSFacct 7y ago
  There are two points. 1) The statement that google deleted someones accounts because they used emoji's in a comment or comments is 100% a lie. Let's be crystal clear about this. 2) If you aren't paying you are not the customer - you are the product. Is this not obvious to folks? If you pee in google's pool they are going to kick you out. You don't make them much money (they make money on volume) and if you annoy lots of their other users and violate their written policies they have an economic incentive to eject you from their ecosystem. Every MINUTE they spend dealing with you is profit lost - so they are probably NOT going spend a lot of time dealing with you. If you want control - buy your own domain and point it to where you want to. Or pay someone for email. Or do both, I think those are all great ideas. But the lies about an emoji in a comment being the reason someone's account is banned are very annoying.
shadowgovt 7y ago
"They ban entire accounts that are not paying" isn't a hard-and-fast rule either; I wouldn't risk anything you can't afford to be cut off from stored monoculture-style in Google's ecosystem, whether or not you're paying, if it's absolutely critical to you. Regardless of whether they apply a different account risk model, the checking thing is experimental and I definitely would recommend against handing it money you can't afford to lose. Your point on Paypal is valid, and people dealing with Google checking are making a risk calculation like people dealing with Paypal do (but of course, one would hope that over time, the offerings improve; Google entering this market new should be offering something better than Paypal).

adrianmonk 7y ago

The article says "with accounts run by Citigroup Inc. and a credit union at Stanford University". If the accounts are run by these partner banks, maybe that means you will be able to contact the partner bank's customer service when stuff like this happens.

ProAm 7y ago
Then what's the point? Just get a normal bank or credit union account and be done with it. Why leave your financial future in the hands of a company with zero customer support or care?
- adrianmonk 7y ago
  Presumably they'll add some kind of innovative feature so it isn't just a traditional checking account. If you don't think those features will be worth it because you don't think Google is good at customer service, then I guess that's for you to decide for yourself. I don't really see how it's relevant to my comment, though.

kyrra 7y ago

Btw, Youtube replied here: https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/dtr6gi/youtube_suspends_google_accounts_of_markipliers/f6zbqka/ https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/dtr6gi/youtube_susp... And Markiplier posted an UPDATE video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mhb4CvOtEeo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mhb4CvOtEeo (I'm a googler, opinions are my own).

papln 7y ago
> The whole-account "ban" was a common anti-spam measure we use. It's strange to me when someone restates the misbehavior as though it's a justification. If someone is abusing commenting, block them from commenting, sure. Don't disable all their other products. If someone is abusing two products, disable their whole account, then? Sure, if you want. That reduces the false-positives by about a square factor (0.1% -> 0.0001%)
cowmoo728 7y ago
Would this have turned out well if Markiplier wasn't a well known streamer that had worked closely with google on an interactive youtube special? It's worth noting that the appeals were initially denied and the people banned got a "case closed, nothing we can do" response.
LegitShady 7y ago
YouTube is full of shit. They're in a hurry abandoning the unprofitable "you" in YouTube and replacing it with will smith driven garbage. YouTube's denials about why it happened are again dumb, and a chat ban in YouTube should in no way affect the rest of your Google account. Just acknowledging that it happened isn't a good explanation. "Ya our rules are dumb and on manual review we were still stupid assholes" It's also impossible to get ahold of anyone at YouTube and YouTube's "ya we manually reviewed it and fucked up" is just another admission that their pile of a system just doesn't work. I'm moving away from Google and any other provider like them. These incidents only impress the need to do it faster. I can't risk having my business and life ruined because of a youtube algorithm with no one behind the wheel. I recommend everyone else do the same. Just the idea that YouTube chat bans would connect to other portions of the account means google is not interested in you. Every interaction with them is a threat to your digital well being where your whole account can be banned. It's totally unacceptable given the position they're in. And it can all be manually reviewer and you'll be told to go fuck yourself and if you aren't markeplier or whoever you have no recourse. Fuck that shit.

cletus 7y ago

So I worked at Google when Google Plus rolled out. What was contentious at the time internally was the Real Names policy. This was all Vic Gundotra's doing. He routinely gave the example of not wanting to interact with someone called "Dog Turd". I think we have ample evidence that people want pseudonymity. People like to segment parts of their lives without their prospective employer being able to look up what you said and possibly take things out of context. So as much as people outside complained, trust me there was a ton of internal dissent about this too. This was back before leaking for a political agenda became widespread in the Trump era. Anyway, agree or disagree with the Real Names policy it presented a far larger problem. If some automated system decided your name was "fake" your entire account including Youtube, Gmail and so on got locked. Whoever signed off on this was utterly insane and should've been fired. While we're at it, fire anybody who suggested it as being a good idea. I remember looking for a photo storage solution for my sister at the time. Google Plus had unlimited storage but you had to "upgrade" your account to a Google Plus account. I, as a Google engineer, could not in good conscience recommend this approach because I had no idea what might trigger a global lock on her account. Google Photos came from the wreckage of this shit show and is actually a good product. This happens when you start addressing user needs and concerns rather than trying to push your own agenda. What agenda? Google wanted a single account for everything where everyone was logged into search as this would allow search to be personalized (better). Or at least that was the theory. Larry talked a lot about the desire to get people signed in to Google search. I'm utterly dependent on my Gmail address to the point where I probably won't use any future Google service just to diminish my risk of some new product triggering a global lockout, which as an ex-employee I now have limited ability to rectify. Google should NEVER have taken the route of a global lock out. Trust is broken. So my chances of using this banking service is literally zero.

gitgreen 7y ago
Yesterday I signed up for Proton mail to start splitting off my data from Google. The announcement that they are now vacuuming up health data without patient consent is unacceptable. Had Google made this announcement at the time of the Wells Fargo scandals they probably would've had my business but my trust in them is near zero at this point.
7y ago

pojzon 7y ago

This is China Social Credit System level of control. I would NEVER EVER use such a service. Its just too much of control in one place for a private company.

14 7y ago

This actually terrifies me and I have recently be pondering if I should switch from my gmail to something else to secure my accounts. I worry one day they will say something like, sorry you used an adblocker on Youtube that is against our terms now you are cut out from your gmail. I do hope one day legislation is made giving consumers some protections. Until then I would like to find an alternative email provider, even a paid one, and get off of gmail.

jeanofthedead 7y ago
I would highly recommend ProtonMail, Tutanota, Fastmail, or CripText. You can use Google Takeout to create an mbox file of your inbox, fwiw.

l4yao 7y ago

This already exists to an extent on the other end of the transaction. Payment processors like Stripe are too ubiquitous to not have some level of oversight. Some bot had flagged me as suspicious, and as a result - I couldn't take any Lyft rides, and my company only subsidizes lyft. - I couldn't rent a car on Getaround - I couldn't rent a scooter on Skip, one of two providers in SF at the time My mobility was severely hampered. I almost couldn't close on my house in time because my insurer of choice at the time also used Stripe. To add insult to injury, Stripe's customer service absolutely refused to address the issue, flat out ignoring it. They claimed the issue was on the vendor side and to follow up with the vendor directly. It was only when I left a poor review on Google did they follow up with me within 2 hours, lifting the ban. For someone unfamiliar with the idea of a "payment processor", this may have never been resolved since the company "Stripe" is never visible during the transaction.

BubRoss 7y ago

It is completely ridiculous if you think about the fact that they created a system where people can spam emojis, then banned them for doing it. If you don't want people to do something so easily filtered, just don't let them do it in the first place.

mrbonner 7y ago

I have my entire photo in my iPhone synced to Gphotos. I also ran the "Free space" in my iOS GPhotos app to free up space. Now I am afraid of locking out of Google and my photos are gone.