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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 wo

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..
- itsoktocry 6y ago
  >So they can choose there customers. And we are free to complain and vote to change those rules. Guess what happens then?
- goatinaboat 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. I do love these sorts of arguments. There is a modern expression that goes "f* around and find out". Like Standard Oil did. https://www.britannica.com/event/Sherman-Antitrust-Act https://www.britannica.com/event/Sherman-Antitrust-Act When you have governments using Google logins or schools communicating with parents via Facebook groups, or state broadcasters reporting on Twitter as news, then the line between private company and public utility has been crossed.
VLM 6y ago
> The issue seems to me that it's a global ban. Global bans "seem" to be new. I've read many stories of shell scripts randomly permanently banning android developers for life from their platform, but those stories always involved being banned from the play console and so forth, not being banned from search / maps / gmail / youtube / etc. It seems to be news that if you tell people in public youtube comments that you vote for Trump, or whatever it is they're enforcing today, google will fight back by disabling your thermostat or whatever.
- wolco2 6y ago
  Google+ banned accounts globally if they discovered a fake name. Fun way to roll out a facebook killer. Kind of killed Google+ but that's a story for another day.
- thu2111 6y ago
  I used to work at Google on stuff related to account bans. Global bans are not new. They were standard a decade ago. The reason is due to the structure of the various spam/abuse industries that plague any service that allows user generated content. What happens is this: 1. Accounts get harder to create as signup security improves 2. Black/grey-market account sellers come in and start creating accounts that get bought by spammers/fraudsters. 3. Spammer/fraudster abuses an account on service X, it gets locked for service X. They sell the accounts _back_ to the seller, who then resells the account once again with a note that it can't be used for YouTube or whatever. 4. Different spammer/fraudster buys the account, abuses it on a different service, goto step 3. Their systems have some notion of why accounts were suspended or blocked, and the tech does support individual service level blocks. But they weren't used much back then because the pattern of a user being bad on one service and then being bad on every other service was too strong. The problem of false positives was well known a long time ago, and the noise:FP rate is very good - if a script accidentally disabled good users with even quite low volume the people in question would be on Twitter or HN within hours making articles like this one, which did get noticed. So false account blocks were pretty rare. Back then and still now, I think Google need to make it easier to handle this situation. Strong end-user support in these situations is hard because genuine fraudsters will happily file support tickets and socially engineer support to get their accounts back - I even witnessed auto-generated pleas to support once. They were quite convincing individually, only when you saw a few thousand of them with re-arranged sentences all begging for help with identical language was it clear they were spam. However they could still make it a lot easier, and in particular, could improve Google Takeout to be easier to use (e.g. automatically uploading the backups to various non-Google services).

_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..
itsoktocry 6y ago
>So they can choose there customers. And we are free to complain and vote to change those rules. Guess what happens then?
goatinaboat 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. I do love these sorts of arguments. There is a modern expression that goes "f* around and find out". Like Standard Oil did. https://www.britannica.com/event/Sherman-Antitrust-Act https://www.britannica.com/event/Sherman-Antitrust-Act When you have governments using Google logins or schools communicating with parents via Facebook groups, or state broadcasters reporting on Twitter as news, then the line between private company and public utility has been crossed.

VLM 6y ago

> The issue seems to me that it's a global ban. Global bans "seem" to be new. I've read many stories of shell scripts randomly permanently banning android developers for life from their platform, but those stories always involved being banned from the play console and so forth, not being banned from search / maps / gmail / youtube / etc. It seems to be news that if you tell people in public youtube comments that you vote for Trump, or whatever it is they're enforcing today, google will fight back by disabling your thermostat or whatever.

wolco2 6y ago
Google+ banned accounts globally if they discovered a fake name. Fun way to roll out a facebook killer. Kind of killed Google+ but that's a story for another day.
thu2111 6y ago
I used to work at Google on stuff related to account bans. Global bans are not new. They were standard a decade ago. The reason is due to the structure of the various spam/abuse industries that plague any service that allows user generated content. What happens is this: 1. Accounts get harder to create as signup security improves 2. Black/grey-market account sellers come in and start creating accounts that get bought by spammers/fraudsters. 3. Spammer/fraudster abuses an account on service X, it gets locked for service X. They sell the accounts _back_ to the seller, who then resells the account once again with a note that it can't be used for YouTube or whatever. 4. Different spammer/fraudster buys the account, abuses it on a different service, goto step 3. Their systems have some notion of why accounts were suspended or blocked, and the tech does support individual service level blocks. But they weren't used much back then because the pattern of a user being bad on one service and then being bad on every other service was too strong. The problem of false positives was well known a long time ago, and the noise:FP rate is very good - if a script accidentally disabled good users with even quite low volume the people in question would be on Twitter or HN within hours making articles like this one, which did get noticed. So false account blocks were pretty rare. Back then and still now, I think Google need to make it easier to handle this situation. Strong end-user support in these situations is hard because genuine fraudsters will happily file support tickets and socially engineer support to get their accounts back - I even witnessed auto-generated pleas to support once. They were quite convincing individually, only when you saw a few thousand of them with re-arranged sentences all begging for help with identical language was it clear they were spam. However they could still make it a lot easier, and in particular, could improve Google Takeout to be easier to use (e.g. automatically uploading the backups to various non-Google services).