5 ms·

I keep reading about all of these people who got their Google accounts nuked, both business and personal, and keep wondering how there hasn't been a class-actio

by franga2000 6y ago

I keep reading about all of these people who got their Google accounts nuked, both business and personal, and keep wondering how there hasn't been a class-action lawsuit yet. Their marketing says "your data in the cloud, safe", but then uploading a single copyrighted movie to GDrive (even if you don't share it) can result in not only losing access to all your other unrelated files, but also emails, app purchases, etc. And if you're really unlucky and administer a company's GApps, the entire company might get dragged down alongs with your personal account, despite there being no other connection than "administered by the same person". This is so unreasonable that even if it's in their ToS, that wouldn't be enough in court, and surely there's some law that's breaking somewhere...

cube00 6y ago
If they're banning a free account and you haven't suffered any monetary loss I doubt if the court will take kindly to its time being wasted with a case like this. Any argument about data loss would be put back on you with "back up better next time"
- franga2000 6y ago
  Many people have spent money with Google: Google Play purchases, Google One, Youtube Premium, whatever music service they're pushing these days, Google Domains, AdSense, a linked GApps account for your business... Some dude is already suing Apple for deleting his iCloud account that had a bunch of app purchases on it. But monetary loss is far from the only thing you can sue someone over. If you can sue a store that you never even went into because you walked past it an slipped on ice that was technically on their property, twisting your ankle (and in many places, you can), I see no reason why you shouldn't be a able to sue Google for deleting your entire digital life (keep in mind that basically everything is tied to your email), even if you were using their services for free. I know I'd much rather break my leg than have to deal with the disaster that would ensue if my Gmail were deleted, and I've been slowly migrating off of it for years now. Edit: I guess a better analogy would be a company providing free warehose space (maybe for a temporary opening promo). They market it as a safe warehouse so you put your stuff in there, then they take it and shred it. In response they say that their parent company also owns a convenience store chain and one time, you looked at a cashier there funny. They point you to the ToS that is printed on the roof of the warehouse in 12pt Comic Sans.
- e3bc54b2 6y ago
  That makes me wonder if Google has a whitelist of accounts, never to ban unless via manual intervention. Kind of like how Trump was not banned for years from Twitter despite breaking their policies multiple times. This way, Google can keep the general muck banned but the actual troublemakers or those capacity for such will stay up.
  - cube00 6y ago
    Considering they don't even whitelist their own critical internal services I doubt it https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25472455 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25472455 However I wouldn't be surprised as part of the profile they build on each user that there isn't some kind of influence metric they can use to work who the high profile people are. It could even be as simple as watching the inbox for when the "high profile verified social tick approved" emails arrive.

cube00 6y ago

If they're banning a free account and you haven't suffered any monetary loss I doubt if the court will take kindly to its time being wasted with a case like this. Any argument about data loss would be put back on you with "back up better next time"

franga2000 6y ago
Many people have spent money with Google: Google Play purchases, Google One, Youtube Premium, whatever music service they're pushing these days, Google Domains, AdSense, a linked GApps account for your business... Some dude is already suing Apple for deleting his iCloud account that had a bunch of app purchases on it. But monetary loss is far from the only thing you can sue someone over. If you can sue a store that you never even went into because you walked past it an slipped on ice that was technically on their property, twisting your ankle (and in many places, you can), I see no reason why you shouldn't be a able to sue Google for deleting your entire digital life (keep in mind that basically everything is tied to your email), even if you were using their services for free. I know I'd much rather break my leg than have to deal with the disaster that would ensue if my Gmail were deleted, and I've been slowly migrating off of it for years now. Edit: I guess a better analogy would be a company providing free warehose space (maybe for a temporary opening promo). They market it as a safe warehouse so you put your stuff in there, then they take it and shred it. In response they say that their parent company also owns a convenience store chain and one time, you looked at a cashier there funny. They point you to the ToS that is printed on the roof of the warehouse in 12pt Comic Sans.
e3bc54b2 6y ago
That makes me wonder if Google has a whitelist of accounts, never to ban unless via manual intervention. Kind of like how Trump was not banned for years from Twitter despite breaking their policies multiple times. This way, Google can keep the general muck banned but the actual troublemakers or those capacity for such will stay up.
- cube00 6y ago
  Considering they don't even whitelist their own critical internal services I doubt it https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25472455 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25472455 However I wouldn't be surprised as part of the profile they build on each user that there isn't some kind of influence metric they can use to work who the high profile people are. It could even be as simple as watching the inbox for when the "high profile verified social tick approved" emails arrive.