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I winder if stories like that will ultimately be Google and other tech giants downfall. The idea is that you can get banned, you will never know why, there is

by GuB-42 6y ago

I winder if stories like that will ultimately be Google and other tech giants downfall. The idea is that you can get banned, you will never know why, there is no way to appeal, they won't give you a chance to fix things, and the only contact you will have will be robots, or if you are lucky, people completely dehumanized by the corporate structure. So simply, they are unreliable. Just like files stored in a hard drive. With the hard drive, you can lose data because of a power surge or a random bug, with Google, you can lose data because you ticked the algorithm the wrong way. The solution: backups. But that's the problem. These tech giants value proposition is that they do everything for you, including keeping your things safe, and they charge a premium for it. But if they can kill your account any moment, they are no better than your unreliable hard drive, so why pay the premium? If they don't change, I can see them slowly losing market share, companies start to understand that putting all your eggs in one basket is a bad idea. They may be attacked by smaller companies that, while also unreliable, are cheaper and more agile because of their size. Or companies that offer you real, competent people you can talk to. By tech giants, I mostly mean Amazon, Google and Facebook, I think (without being sure) that Microsoft knows better, and Apple is mostly a hardware company.

cyborgx7 6y ago
Another underappreciated danger is nationalization or regulation if google et all continue on the trajectory they are on now. As they strive to become more and more essential to participate in modern society, these opaque bans will become more and more devastating. There is a reason there is a justice system in place to create some kind of accountability and appeal process when cutting into the rights of people. If being able to interact with google service approaches being as essential as finding employment, they can't handle limiting access to their services in the way they have been doing forever.
lbriner 6y ago
I guess the $10B question is whether if someone could set up a competing app store that was available on all Android phones and could present some form of assurance that it wasn't full of malware, would Google lose the entire market or do they have special access to Android OS to prevent this happening?
- iagovar 6y ago
  For competing with google one would have to set up companies with proper humans in the loop, and in some neutral and stable jurisdiction. For non-US customers it would be also very helpful to tone down the heavy political patronizing that Silicon Valley/anglosphere has, which is ridiculous sometimes.

by GuB-42 6y ago

cyborgx7 6y ago

Another underappreciated danger is nationalization or regulation if google et all continue on the trajectory they are on now. As they strive to become more and more essential to participate in modern society, these opaque bans will become more and more devastating. There is a reason there is a justice system in place to create some kind of accountability and appeal process when cutting into the rights of people. If being able to interact with google service approaches being as essential as finding employment, they can't handle limiting access to their services in the way they have been doing forever.

lbriner 6y ago

I guess the $10B question is whether if someone could set up a competing app store that was available on all Android phones and could present some form of assurance that it wasn't full of malware, would Google lose the entire market or do they have special access to Android OS to prevent this happening?

iagovar 6y ago
For competing with google one would have to set up companies with proper humans in the loop, and in some neutral and stable jurisdiction. For non-US customers it would be also very helpful to tone down the heavy political patronizing that Silicon Valley/anglosphere has, which is ridiculous sometimes.