11 ms·

This is genuinely scary. Photos, Yale locks, Fi, WiFi and Nest thermostat can all be poof gone because I made a silly YouTube comment? How is this not regulated

This is genuinely scary. Photos, Yale locks, Fi, WiFi and Nest thermostat can all be poof gone because I made a silly YouTube comment? How is this not regulated? Google photos also 'helpfully' offers to delete your uploaded photos with 'some guarantee'!!! If this isn't an indication of a giant shitty monopoly that doesn't care about its customers at all, I don't what is. They have some AI ML fucking crap but can't figure basic user trust because that won't get anyone promoted nor grow some Director-level person's headcount. Large promo-manufacturing teams that casually handle all your data. Pray to God that some L4 didn't get promoted doing some impactful work because they sure ain't gonna do maintenance work protecting your shit. Their motivations are not users, product nor team: manipulate some metrics to get promoted and move out. Horrible.

ben_w 6y ago
I agree; from my non-lawyer perspective, it is this sort of thing (rather than search results or Android App Store policies) which harms consumers.
roenxi 6y ago
I'm trying to not make this sound harsh; but you really don't need a government regulator to tell you that centralising all your data with Google, who are providing largely free services, is risky. It is like building a house on the edge of a cliff then falling off the cliff one day. It was always a real possibility. Being locked out of your stuff is quite a likely end of the story with Google.
- 411111111111111 6y ago
  I disagree actually. The issue seems to me that it's a global ban. If Google only locked you out of the functionality you seem to have violated somehow, it would still be a viable strategy to use their services. Imagine losing the ability to comment or upload videos on YouTube because you wrote something offensive or published a video with copyrighted materials. Potentially bad for YouTube creators, but definitely not dangerous for normal users which also use other services. Reports like this were the reason why I removed almost all Google services from my life a few years ago, but I wouldn't have done it if the bans had been granular.
  - _trampeltier 6y ago
    Google is a private company. So they can choose there customers. If they don't want you, they are free to throw you out.
    - TomSwirly 6y ago
      And steal your data? Bullshit. The worst is that they are certainly keeping your data, because they never throw anything out, while they are preventing you from getting to it. That is theft, pure and simple.
      - x86_64Ubuntu 6y ago
        That's not theft in the least. They kept the data that you gave them while using their service. Should banks throw out records for people who close accounts?
    - jpambrun 6y ago
      At some point companies are large enough that not having an account is an handicap. IIRC, the supreme court of Canada mentioned in a ruling that Facebook terms are unenforceable because they can't be negotiated and because not having an account in too consequential. In essence, it's not a agreement you freely enter in. It was about forced arbitration. My point is there are limits that what private companies can do. Stretching the boundaries like that is sure to cause a strong regulatory reaction at some point.
      - smabie 6y ago
        Lots of people don't have a FB acct or don't use it anymore. It's largely died off unless you are old.
        jpambrun 6y ago
        That's not really relevant to the argument, but just s/facebook/new_hip_site if it helps..
- friendlybus 6y ago
  Why should a customer be punished for buying products that are not banned by the government and for tripping up on an invisible tripwire within said product? If there were a definition for "set up to fail" it would be that customer... Or are we to assume google is a potentially hostile force, whenever it feels like being one. We used to ban the sales of products that harmed customers.
- TomSwirly 6y ago
  It's not just harsh, it's wildly unreasonable. What do you expect your average person to do? Set up their own mail provider? A tiny number of companies set out to have an unbreakable joint monopoly over the Internet, and succeeded. Now you're blaming the average person for this - like the average person has the skills or the time to do anything about it.
- prepend 6y ago
  You need a government regulator to stop large companies from buying up lots of small companies and adding them to this risk pool. I bought 3 Nest thermostats long before Google bought them. I wouldn’t have done so after the buyout. If google bricks my thermostats because my kid does something dumb on YouTube (through the linked tv accounts) that will suck. I suppose regulators could also prevent companies from bundling lockouts in that shutting down gmail for YouTube problems. Or shutting down Nest for gmail problems, etc. The phone company can’t just randomly cut off service and ghost me. Regulators are the reason for that, as I’m sure they’d love to if they could.
  - itsoktocry 6y ago
    >The phone company can’t just randomly cut off service and ghost me. Regulators are the reason for that, as I’m sure they’d love to if they could. If you're paying your bill, why would they care? Regulation is part of the answer, but it's also part of the problem. If a YouTube comment wasn't at risk of "being mean" or breaking arbitrary rules (pushed by regulators, Google isn't doing it on their own), you couldn't be locked out. Corporations don't gain by cancelling their customers.
    - lol636363 6y ago
      There are a lot of stories of people paying for Google Services getting locked out too. Personal experience, once I created an Adword ad using one of the image that Google Ad creator had suggested. It was nothing, just a woman in bikini. It was approved and then rejected with warning that I violated their guidelines. I wanted protest but thought probably not worth it. This could have perma banned me from Google, I stopped using AdWords.
      - wolco2 6y ago
        Adwords, youtube, adsense carry that danger. Setting up a youtube channel become risky.
      - itsoktocry 6y ago
        >It was nothing, just a woman in bikini. Do you think Google really cares about this, or do they get pressure from "outside" forces to impose such rules? I seriously doubt Google cares one wink about people posting bikini photos. These rules exist because activists put pressure on the company to enforce such rules, for better or worse.
- beowulfey 6y ago
  Google is huge and they run a vast portion of the internet now. If they were to suddenly decide that all FastMail accounts should go to spam tomorrow, any users of FastMail would be SoL—they would be unable to communicate with a huge majority of the internet. They could decide to randomly throw every 5th email that is not a gmail into spam and blame it on other providers having low reliability. Make it random enough to gently encourage you to get a gmail account again. These are extreme examples, but Google could easily do these kinds of things and there is nothing any of us could do whether we use Gmail or not; it will affect us because they control so much.
  - tetris11 6y ago
    Why are governments so slow in providing these essential services to their citizens? The scenario you describe does not seem so unlikely to occur...
  - megous 6y ago
    That would backfire spectacularly, and would probably kill gmail.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - bigwavedave 6y ago
      > That would backfire spectacularly, and would probably kill gmail. How would that kill gmail? It's not like they're going to lose any real part of their user base. Short of a press release from google confirming the behavior, the average user is not going to go through the hassle of finding a replacement provider and then changing every email address associated with every service they use (if it's even possible for the service) all for some nebulous and impossible-to-confirm conspiracy theory put forth by tech experts and security experts that don't get listened to even when there is proof. And it's not like other companies and services would take a stand by ceasing to offer service to customers with gmail accounts- that's an incredible way to lose a vast portion of your customer base. I wish it weren't this way, but I just can't see that bringing down gmail. Especially not when every google service requires a gmail account- probably the same one most people have had for years.
cm2187 6y ago
If you are a “customer”. How many people pay for google services? I know it’s kind of jerky but I still agree that if you aren’t paying for the service, you have no leg to complain about it.
- exo762 6y ago
  The thing is - google makes more per user than users are willing to pay for google services. Also, their totaling vertical integration makes things hard to disentangle. If Google were to introduce paying subscription tomorrow (just shooting, 60 USD per month), what what I would be paying? Youtube? Search? Everything? What if I were willing to drop youtube and just pay for search?
- raverbashing 6y ago
  I've heard bad stories from people that did pay for Google services. It seems they only get slightly less contempt (and maybe a phone number).
- beowulfey 6y ago
  We do not pay for a home address, and yet people can still reach us there. Email is just as important as physical mail -- the problem is that the economic model changed. This means there is no incentive to maintain service, even though (in my mind) in the modern era an email address is possibly more important to a person for day-to-day communication.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - slightwinder 6y ago
    > We do not pay for a home address What? You don't pay paxes in your country? No rent to the owner of your house or paid for owning the house yourself? What country is that?
    - beowulfey 6y ago
      I mean we do not pay the USPS or FedEx or UPS, etc. to agree to send mail to our address. I was making a comparison between mail and email services. Hopefully this clarifies what I meant.
fullstop 6y ago
I got gmail accounts for my kids after they were born. My youngest, 12, attempted to sign in from a Windows PC in our house and was told that they could not verify that it was her. Keep in mind, this is the same public IP address that we've had for ages. I am the recovery contact for the account since she is a minor, and have filled out the forms several times now, even giving the exact date and the "verification code" from when the account was created. We are now stuck in an endless loop. She can still access her account from a macbook and from a linux desktop, but I fear once she is signed out that she will be locked out forever. All of my important stuff (finance, etc) is in protonmail now, and I'm happy that I made that move.
- bigwavedave 6y ago
  I love protonmail! I made the switch a couple years back and haven't looked back, with one exception- my city's utilities company blacklists protonmail, so in the handful of times I've emailed them (specifically there were three times they've shut off my water because someone with a very similar looking address didn't pay their bill) with proof of something-or-other, it supposedly doesn't make it to their communal or "personal" inboxes. This is the only time I've had this kind of problem though- protonmail has served me well.
  - Fnoord 6y ago
    > with one exception- my city's utilities company blacklists protonmail Why do they do this? Did you contact them about it? I would say it seems, at face value, that your city's utilities company did not serve you while Protonmail did.
    - bigwavedave 6y ago
      > that your city's utilities company did not serve you while Protonmail did. That's fair- that's a better way of saying it. Every time I've had to email them (which admittedly has only been a handful of times) with proof of something, I always end up calling them up and they'll say "but protonmail isn't on the blacklist that IT posted, so you're lying or you sent it to the wrong place," then I'll send screenshots from a different email provider proving that I sent the protonmail email(s) to the right place, then they'll say "oh, I promise to talk to IT to get this straightened out." It's pretty obnoxious.
lordnacho 6y ago
This raises a question. If you're well marinated in Google services, like me, what do you do? Is there a comprehensive, simple, and easy way to port everything? Perhaps there's some authoritative site about what exactly you need to do?
- indigochill 6y ago
  I'm not sure there's an easy way to port everything (few services integrate across so many fields as seamlessly as Google does), but this Reddit post has a huge thread of alternatives to common Google services: https://www.reddit.com/r/degoogle/comments/g1yu01/google_alternatives_huge_list_restore_your_privacy/ https://www.reddit.com/r/degoogle/comments/g1yu01/google_alt... For me, I've switched to DDG full-time for search and I'm veeery gradually swapping over to Protonmail for email (using Thunderbird as the client to ease the transition). Once email's over, I'll be able to rest a lot easier. However, if you're a heavy Docs user, NextCloud is a Google-like suite with a few hosting options (self-hosted, third-party host, or enterprise).
- jabroni_salad 6y ago
  You can export a lot of your content at takeout.google.com. Debundling these into other services is the main challenge, you have to shop around. If nothing else you should set up your own email address, even if it is just a simple forward to your gmail. Google blocking access to your mailbox would be pretty bad, having control of your MX record gives you an out.
  - surajrmal 6y ago
    It might be useful to note that in the event that google does ban your account, you can still use the takeout service to retrieve your data.
    - anonymousab 6y ago
      You can lose access to takeout as well. Some users retain access, but for some of them, takeout will mysteriously never complete.
indigochill 6y ago
> How is this not regulated? It doesn't need to be (and shouldn't be). Just use an email provider that respects you as a customer and don't put all your eggs into one corporate basket (especially not one that treats you as nothing more than data cattle). Horror stories like this one will, over time, educate people that this behavior pattern is dangerous. IMO self-hosting is the ideal because that aligns responsibility with incentive (and it can be done extremely cheaply), but if not, there are paid email services that actually treat the user as a customer.
- feduphn 6y ago
  This victim-blaming needs to stop before the tech industry backlash hits. This is exactly why we need regulation. I swear, if "just go somewhere else" were good advice (and it's not), we wouldn't be having this conversation. How many years has it been, though, that Google and other consumer-ignorant companies have been able to get away with this, helped along by people who tell victims to just "go somewhere else"? Normal people will only put up with this for so long. Either regulate it intelligently now, or expect actually scary regulation a decade or two from now. There's nothing wrong with a law that says: "You cannot close a customer's account with no remediation, no recourse, and no explanation." What is Silicon Valley so afraid of there? How is that unreasonable?
  - indigochill 6y ago
    > Normal people will only put up with this for so long. Agreed. Then they will learn that Google is not to be trusted with email and move to a provider that is (sort of like how kids migrated away from Facebook when their parents showed up, even though Facebook remains a dominant brand). Disruption occurs when an incumbent is bad at something which the disruptor beats them at. In this case, there is an opportunity for an email provider to disrupt Google by providing actual customer service. Protonmail is already making waves in this space (in addition to the encryption). The reason I'm anti-regulation is that every law is a headache waiting to happen (and one more barrier to entry) where to me -the- beauty of the internet is that there's almost no barrier to entry once you have an internet-capable device. The more we regulate the internet, the more difficult doing something as simple as running a personal discussion forum becomes. Regulation is, at its best, a necessary evil, to be avoided until no other solution has proven viable. And there are plenty of other solutions for this particular problem. And to clarify, I'm anti-Silicon Valley (IMO venture capital's expectation of high returns is the direct cause of many of the "evils of tech"). But I do tend to agree with the anti-regulation stance. IMO the problems people want to solve with regulation (even including GDPR) are better solved by better tech and organizations that align their incentives with those of their users.
caseysoftware 6y ago
> How is this not regulated? Cue the "businesses can choose who they do business with!" and "if you don't like it, build your own!" people. We signed up for many of those things individually and they've connected them more and more. Now we have a single point of failure that can take down everything across all your sytems. And it's not just those. Don't forget about Google Voice, Android, and every service where you used "sign in with Google"
- a3n 6y ago
  How novel, for the "product" to demand rights and regulation. :-(
- hedora 6y ago
  In fairness, at least for consumers, the only hard to replace Google product is Android. eCommerce and ad supported businesses that want to avoid Google are screwed though.
- syshum 6y ago
  Business should be allowed to choose who they do business with, they already choose to do business with these people. The problem here is they want to unilaterally have the power to termination the business relationship This is a problem with one sided none negotiable terms of service being considered valid contracts under the law They should not be. We need to change data ownership laws, and force companies to do vetting on Account Creation, and put in provisions on how accounts can be terminated once a company accepts a user owned data. i.e Accounts must have a human reviewed appeal process, with full and articulated reporting as to exactly which rules were violated, and exactly what activity was the violation. And have a View Only data Take-Out period At a minimum
  - NeoFeznet 6y ago
    Exactly. This isn't so much an issue of "Companies have the right to do what they want (within reason)". It's a typical issue of monopolies and dealing with a large, faceless corporation. Anyone who's ever dealt with any corporation of any significant size can tell you similar stories to this.
antihero 6y ago
One of the big problems is that if you have all of your eggs in one basket, there are much more chances to fuck up and get banned. If I post some shit on YouTube, that is unconnected to my Fastmail account. However, it is connected to my Gmail account. If I get Zucked from Facebook for posting dumb shit, and dependent on Messenger to communicate with people, I'm fucked. By diversifying your compartmentalise your risk.

ben_w 6y ago

I agree; from my non-lawyer perspective, it is this sort of thing (rather than search results or Android App Store policies) which harms consumers.

roenxi 6y ago

I'm trying to not make this sound harsh; but you really don't need a government regulator to tell you that centralising all your data with Google, who are providing largely free services, is risky. It is like building a house on the edge of a cliff then falling off the cliff one day. It was always a real possibility. Being locked out of your stuff is quite a likely end of the story with Google.

411111111111111 6y ago
I disagree actually. The issue seems to me that it's a global ban. If Google only locked you out of the functionality you seem to have violated somehow, it would still be a viable strategy to use their services. Imagine losing the ability to comment or upload videos on YouTube because you wrote something offensive or published a video with copyrighted materials. Potentially bad for YouTube creators, but definitely not dangerous for normal users which also use other services. Reports like this were the reason why I removed almost all Google services from my life a few years ago, but I wouldn't have done it if the bans had been granular.
- _trampeltier 6y ago
  Google is a private company. So they can choose there customers. If they don't want you, they are free to throw you out.
  - TomSwirly 6y ago
    And steal your data? Bullshit. The worst is that they are certainly keeping your data, because they never throw anything out, while they are preventing you from getting to it. That is theft, pure and simple.
    - x86_64Ubuntu 6y ago
      That's not theft in the least. They kept the data that you gave them while using their service. Should banks throw out records for people who close accounts?
  - jpambrun 6y ago
    At some point companies are large enough that not having an account is an handicap. IIRC, the supreme court of Canada mentioned in a ruling that Facebook terms are unenforceable because they can't be negotiated and because not having an account in too consequential. In essence, it's not a agreement you freely enter in. It was about forced arbitration. My point is there are limits that what private companies can do. Stretching the boundaries like that is sure to cause a strong regulatory reaction at some point.
    - smabie 6y ago
      Lots of people don't have a FB acct or don't use it anymore. It's largely died off unless you are old.
      - jpambrun 6y ago
        That's not really relevant to the argument, but just s/facebook/new_hip_site if it helps..
friendlybus 6y ago
Why should a customer be punished for buying products that are not banned by the government and for tripping up on an invisible tripwire within said product? If there were a definition for "set up to fail" it would be that customer... Or are we to assume google is a potentially hostile force, whenever it feels like being one. We used to ban the sales of products that harmed customers.
TomSwirly 6y ago
It's not just harsh, it's wildly unreasonable. What do you expect your average person to do? Set up their own mail provider? A tiny number of companies set out to have an unbreakable joint monopoly over the Internet, and succeeded. Now you're blaming the average person for this - like the average person has the skills or the time to do anything about it.
prepend 6y ago
You need a government regulator to stop large companies from buying up lots of small companies and adding them to this risk pool. I bought 3 Nest thermostats long before Google bought them. I wouldn’t have done so after the buyout. If google bricks my thermostats because my kid does something dumb on YouTube (through the linked tv accounts) that will suck. I suppose regulators could also prevent companies from bundling lockouts in that shutting down gmail for YouTube problems. Or shutting down Nest for gmail problems, etc. The phone company can’t just randomly cut off service and ghost me. Regulators are the reason for that, as I’m sure they’d love to if they could.
- itsoktocry 6y ago
  >The phone company can’t just randomly cut off service and ghost me. Regulators are the reason for that, as I’m sure they’d love to if they could. If you're paying your bill, why would they care? Regulation is part of the answer, but it's also part of the problem. If a YouTube comment wasn't at risk of "being mean" or breaking arbitrary rules (pushed by regulators, Google isn't doing it on their own), you couldn't be locked out. Corporations don't gain by cancelling their customers.
  - lol636363 6y ago
    There are a lot of stories of people paying for Google Services getting locked out too. Personal experience, once I created an Adword ad using one of the image that Google Ad creator had suggested. It was nothing, just a woman in bikini. It was approved and then rejected with warning that I violated their guidelines. I wanted protest but thought probably not worth it. This could have perma banned me from Google, I stopped using AdWords.
    - wolco2 6y ago
      Adwords, youtube, adsense carry that danger. Setting up a youtube channel become risky.
    - itsoktocry 6y ago
      >It was nothing, just a woman in bikini. Do you think Google really cares about this, or do they get pressure from "outside" forces to impose such rules? I seriously doubt Google cares one wink about people posting bikini photos. These rules exist because activists put pressure on the company to enforce such rules, for better or worse.
beowulfey 6y ago
Google is huge and they run a vast portion of the internet now. If they were to suddenly decide that all FastMail accounts should go to spam tomorrow, any users of FastMail would be SoL—they would be unable to communicate with a huge majority of the internet. They could decide to randomly throw every 5th email that is not a gmail into spam and blame it on other providers having low reliability. Make it random enough to gently encourage you to get a gmail account again. These are extreme examples, but Google could easily do these kinds of things and there is nothing any of us could do whether we use Gmail or not; it will affect us because they control so much.
- tetris11 6y ago
  Why are governments so slow in providing these essential services to their citizens? The scenario you describe does not seem so unlikely to occur...
- megous 6y ago
  That would backfire spectacularly, and would probably kill gmail.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - bigwavedave 6y ago
    > That would backfire spectacularly, and would probably kill gmail. How would that kill gmail? It's not like they're going to lose any real part of their user base. Short of a press release from google confirming the behavior, the average user is not going to go through the hassle of finding a replacement provider and then changing every email address associated with every service they use (if it's even possible for the service) all for some nebulous and impossible-to-confirm conspiracy theory put forth by tech experts and security experts that don't get listened to even when there is proof. And it's not like other companies and services would take a stand by ceasing to offer service to customers with gmail accounts- that's an incredible way to lose a vast portion of your customer base. I wish it weren't this way, but I just can't see that bringing down gmail. Especially not when every google service requires a gmail account- probably the same one most people have had for years.

cm2187 6y ago

If you are a “customer”. How many people pay for google services? I know it’s kind of jerky but I still agree that if you aren’t paying for the service, you have no leg to complain about it.

exo762 6y ago
The thing is - google makes more per user than users are willing to pay for google services. Also, their totaling vertical integration makes things hard to disentangle. If Google were to introduce paying subscription tomorrow (just shooting, 60 USD per month), what what I would be paying? Youtube? Search? Everything? What if I were willing to drop youtube and just pay for search?
raverbashing 6y ago
I've heard bad stories from people that did pay for Google services. It seems they only get slightly less contempt (and maybe a phone number).
beowulfey 6y ago
We do not pay for a home address, and yet people can still reach us there. Email is just as important as physical mail -- the problem is that the economic model changed. This means there is no incentive to maintain service, even though (in my mind) in the modern era an email address is possibly more important to a person for day-to-day communication.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- slightwinder 6y ago
  > We do not pay for a home address What? You don't pay paxes in your country? No rent to the owner of your house or paid for owning the house yourself? What country is that?
  - beowulfey 6y ago
    I mean we do not pay the USPS or FedEx or UPS, etc. to agree to send mail to our address. I was making a comparison between mail and email services. Hopefully this clarifies what I meant.

fullstop 6y ago

I got gmail accounts for my kids after they were born. My youngest, 12, attempted to sign in from a Windows PC in our house and was told that they could not verify that it was her. Keep in mind, this is the same public IP address that we've had for ages. I am the recovery contact for the account since she is a minor, and have filled out the forms several times now, even giving the exact date and the "verification code" from when the account was created. We are now stuck in an endless loop. She can still access her account from a macbook and from a linux desktop, but I fear once she is signed out that she will be locked out forever. All of my important stuff (finance, etc) is in protonmail now, and I'm happy that I made that move.

bigwavedave 6y ago
I love protonmail! I made the switch a couple years back and haven't looked back, with one exception- my city's utilities company blacklists protonmail, so in the handful of times I've emailed them (specifically there were three times they've shut off my water because someone with a very similar looking address didn't pay their bill) with proof of something-or-other, it supposedly doesn't make it to their communal or "personal" inboxes. This is the only time I've had this kind of problem though- protonmail has served me well.
- Fnoord 6y ago
  > with one exception- my city's utilities company blacklists protonmail Why do they do this? Did you contact them about it? I would say it seems, at face value, that your city's utilities company did not serve you while Protonmail did.
  - bigwavedave 6y ago
    > that your city's utilities company did not serve you while Protonmail did. That's fair- that's a better way of saying it. Every time I've had to email them (which admittedly has only been a handful of times) with proof of something, I always end up calling them up and they'll say "but protonmail isn't on the blacklist that IT posted, so you're lying or you sent it to the wrong place," then I'll send screenshots from a different email provider proving that I sent the protonmail email(s) to the right place, then they'll say "oh, I promise to talk to IT to get this straightened out." It's pretty obnoxious.

lordnacho 6y ago

This raises a question. If you're well marinated in Google services, like me, what do you do? Is there a comprehensive, simple, and easy way to port everything? Perhaps there's some authoritative site about what exactly you need to do?

indigochill 6y ago
I'm not sure there's an easy way to port everything (few services integrate across so many fields as seamlessly as Google does), but this Reddit post has a huge thread of alternatives to common Google services: https://www.reddit.com/r/degoogle/comments/g1yu01/google_alternatives_huge_list_restore_your_privacy/ https://www.reddit.com/r/degoogle/comments/g1yu01/google_alt... For me, I've switched to DDG full-time for search and I'm veeery gradually swapping over to Protonmail for email (using Thunderbird as the client to ease the transition). Once email's over, I'll be able to rest a lot easier. However, if you're a heavy Docs user, NextCloud is a Google-like suite with a few hosting options (self-hosted, third-party host, or enterprise).
jabroni_salad 6y ago
You can export a lot of your content at takeout.google.com. Debundling these into other services is the main challenge, you have to shop around. If nothing else you should set up your own email address, even if it is just a simple forward to your gmail. Google blocking access to your mailbox would be pretty bad, having control of your MX record gives you an out.
- surajrmal 6y ago
  It might be useful to note that in the event that google does ban your account, you can still use the takeout service to retrieve your data.
  - anonymousab 6y ago
    You can lose access to takeout as well. Some users retain access, but for some of them, takeout will mysteriously never complete.

indigochill 6y ago

> How is this not regulated? It doesn't need to be (and shouldn't be). Just use an email provider that respects you as a customer and don't put all your eggs into one corporate basket (especially not one that treats you as nothing more than data cattle). Horror stories like this one will, over time, educate people that this behavior pattern is dangerous. IMO self-hosting is the ideal because that aligns responsibility with incentive (and it can be done extremely cheaply), but if not, there are paid email services that actually treat the user as a customer.

feduphn 6y ago
This victim-blaming needs to stop before the tech industry backlash hits. This is exactly why we need regulation. I swear, if "just go somewhere else" were good advice (and it's not), we wouldn't be having this conversation. How many years has it been, though, that Google and other consumer-ignorant companies have been able to get away with this, helped along by people who tell victims to just "go somewhere else"? Normal people will only put up with this for so long. Either regulate it intelligently now, or expect actually scary regulation a decade or two from now. There's nothing wrong with a law that says: "You cannot close a customer's account with no remediation, no recourse, and no explanation." What is Silicon Valley so afraid of there? How is that unreasonable?
- indigochill 6y ago
  > Normal people will only put up with this for so long. Agreed. Then they will learn that Google is not to be trusted with email and move to a provider that is (sort of like how kids migrated away from Facebook when their parents showed up, even though Facebook remains a dominant brand). Disruption occurs when an incumbent is bad at something which the disruptor beats them at. In this case, there is an opportunity for an email provider to disrupt Google by providing actual customer service. Protonmail is already making waves in this space (in addition to the encryption). The reason I'm anti-regulation is that every law is a headache waiting to happen (and one more barrier to entry) where to me -the- beauty of the internet is that there's almost no barrier to entry once you have an internet-capable device. The more we regulate the internet, the more difficult doing something as simple as running a personal discussion forum becomes. Regulation is, at its best, a necessary evil, to be avoided until no other solution has proven viable. And there are plenty of other solutions for this particular problem. And to clarify, I'm anti-Silicon Valley (IMO venture capital's expectation of high returns is the direct cause of many of the "evils of tech"). But I do tend to agree with the anti-regulation stance. IMO the problems people want to solve with regulation (even including GDPR) are better solved by better tech and organizations that align their incentives with those of their users.

caseysoftware 6y ago

> How is this not regulated? Cue the "businesses can choose who they do business with!" and "if you don't like it, build your own!" people. We signed up for many of those things individually and they've connected them more and more. Now we have a single point of failure that can take down everything across all your sytems. And it's not just those. Don't forget about Google Voice, Android, and every service where you used "sign in with Google"

a3n 6y ago
How novel, for the "product" to demand rights and regulation. :-(
hedora 6y ago
In fairness, at least for consumers, the only hard to replace Google product is Android. eCommerce and ad supported businesses that want to avoid Google are screwed though.
syshum 6y ago
Business should be allowed to choose who they do business with, they already choose to do business with these people. The problem here is they want to unilaterally have the power to termination the business relationship This is a problem with one sided none negotiable terms of service being considered valid contracts under the law They should not be. We need to change data ownership laws, and force companies to do vetting on Account Creation, and put in provisions on how accounts can be terminated once a company accepts a user owned data. i.e Accounts must have a human reviewed appeal process, with full and articulated reporting as to exactly which rules were violated, and exactly what activity was the violation. And have a View Only data Take-Out period At a minimum
- NeoFeznet 6y ago
  Exactly. This isn't so much an issue of "Companies have the right to do what they want (within reason)". It's a typical issue of monopolies and dealing with a large, faceless corporation. Anyone who's ever dealt with any corporation of any significant size can tell you similar stories to this.

antihero 6y ago

One of the big problems is that if you have all of your eggs in one basket, there are much more chances to fuck up and get banned. If I post some shit on YouTube, that is unconnected to my Fastmail account. However, it is connected to my Gmail account. If I get Zucked from Facebook for posting dumb shit, and dependent on Messenger to communicate with people, I'm fucked. By diversifying your compartmentalise your risk.