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How many more pleas like this will we see on HN? Or, hear from friends, colleagues, and relatives who have been locked out or denied access to an important serv

• Ekaros 5y ago
  We need education. Education to regular people that unless you have a contract with clear clauses and payments involved your data is worth what you pay. Your expectations from free service should be zero. It can go out of business at any time. Or they can stop offering it at anytime.
  • foxfluff 5y ago
    > Your expectations from free service should be zero. So it's ok if someone takes your car the next time you park on a free parking lot? It doesn't work that way in the physical world. I don't see why it should work that way in the digital world. Offering to hold your property for free isn't a license to steal or destroy it.
    • Ekaros 5y ago
      Cities already move your vehicle away if you leave it in free parking spot for years, even faster if it is unregistered for example. I don't see how that is any different from this case for example. There are similar analogies.
      • foxfluff 5y ago
        I think the difference is that the extent to which a city can do things with your property is governed by law. And it is not in any way similar analogy; this wasn't cleaning up an abandoned account taking up public space, this was a sudden takedown of an active account that did not violate any rules or laws.
        • Ekaros 5y ago
          And why shouldn't they have right to remove such content? Clearly it wasn't following intent of the site. And the user didn't really lose anything, as they still have the originals. Which in no way have been affected.
          • SamoyedFurFluff 5y ago
            My understanding is in this case the user doesn’t have the originals; they’ve truly lost 7 years of labor.
            • baash05 5y ago
              That's on them though. I mean a DVD burner and a shoe box would remove all backup issues here.
          • metabagel 5y ago
            You haven’t bothered to carefully read the post.
            • Ekaros 5y ago
              I did read it. And I consider value of data lost to be exactly zero as originals were not deemed worth saving. So I see no issues with Youtube's actions here. The user did not value their data so neither should Youtube.
          • foxfluff 5y ago
            > And why shouldn't they have right to remove such content? They should, but they should also clearly communicate what content they consider acceptable and I think they should also notify the user and give them time to move their things out if G decides the content is deemed unacceptable. Especially if the content is not obviously and egregiously violating the terms of service and hasn't been considered a problem for the past seven years. Pulling the rug like that all of a sudden isn't cool. If I offer to hold your grocery bag while you go to the restroom, do you think it's OK for me to throw it all away because after digging aronud a bit, I notice you have bought apples I don't like? What if I've been repeatedly extending the same courtesy for the past ten years and never had a problem with these apples until today? What if I advertise myself as a free bag holding service by the entrance to the restroom? I think people should have the expectation that if a company (or individual) offers a service and holds on to your property (be it digital or physical), they should treat it responsibly and not just trash it all out of the blue. > Clearly it wasn't following intent of the site. That does not seem clear at all based on a reading of youtube's policies. > And the user didn't really lose anything, as they still have the originals. That's not something Google can decide or verify. Instead, they could help the user move their stuff out and that would ensure they still have everything. But I like this line of arguing; I think copyright infringement is ok because the copyright holder still has their original copy which has in no way been affected.
    • softwarebeware 5y ago
      > So it's ok if someone takes your car the next time you park on a free parking lot? Not the best analogy since the parking lot is just an empty physical space. Taking it away wouldn’t also “delete” your car. The car is actually a separate physical object. But in a cloud drive, the file and the space are the same. Taking away the space is obviously going to take away the file. On top of all that, the file still exists elsewhere for most people.
    • yobbo 5y ago
      > next time you park on a free parking lot? The closest analogy is; if you park without paying, your car might get impounded.
      • iforgotpassword 5y ago
        So you are saying uploading to YouTube without paying is illegal? Nowhere on YouTube does it say that I have to pay anything.
      • Linosaurus 5y ago
        > impounded Not a bad analogy. Getting an impounded car back is often described as being abusively expensive beyond real costs. That would be a improvement for the OP. Though I don't think any of the giants have an incentive to offer this since might draw more attention than just telling them to fuck off.
    • tkiolp4 5y ago
      > Offering to hold your property for free isn't a license to steal or destroy it. Unless explicitly stated. And we all know that: 1) most of the internet users don’t read the Terms of Service, and 2) YouTube probably states in their Terms of Service doc that they can do whatever they want with your data (I don’t know this for sure because of point 1)
  • metabagel 5y ago
    This is completely wrong. We should expect more from business. You should always be able to extract your data, period. Let’s not defend customer-hostile business models.
    • Ekaros 5y ago
      So let's say some startup runs a back up service with unlimited data. How many exabytes should a user be able to upload random data to them? And how long should it be available?
      • ghusbands 5y ago
        Always jumping to the extreme is tiresome. Plenty of disclosure laws have facility for covering reasonable or excessive costs.
  • root_axis 5y ago
    I find it ironic that rather than avoid these pernicious companies people instead want to enshrine them as permanent fixtures into our society by legislating universal access to them. It would be analogous to passing a law that would guarantee free doses of heroin during the opioid crisis. We need to break the addiction, not exacerbate it.
    • foxfluff 5y ago
      Generally speaking I agree.. but having observed human behavior long enough, I don't think it's realistic to break that addiction. People are attracted to free services like flies are to manure, and often these free services are advertised with a huge budget and hype, and often come with network effects (~all of your friends and family are using said free service). Nobody reads the ToS, nobody cares about the implications of trusting their data to someone who doesn't care.. year after year we have these reports of people getting burned by the big G and still people keep using Google and acting surprised when they screw you over. It seems to be human nature, and also nature of the market. It's the digital equivalent of race to the bottom. The shortsighted, uninformed, apathetic, and irrational people outnumber those who care, by a huge margin. "Just educate people" isn't happening any more than we can just tell people to "git gud." And that is why, in the physical space, we have laws that offer people some protection against terrible products that are unfit for purpose, unsafe, broken, etcetra. We wouldn't need those laws if we could just fix people and make them informed & rational; in that case, the market would truly sort out itself. It's just not happening, and it's also not happening in the digital space, so it's very possible we're going to see the same laws in the digital space.
• jjcm 5y ago
  It'd be interesting what a technology bill of rights looks like, but one form I could easily support would be saying any account that acts as an identity provider (i.e. oauth) requires a judge ruling to be deleted. It'd require additional identification measures to prevent spam upon creation, but the tradeoffs might be worth it. One of the larger impacts of having your gmail deleted is how many other services likely rely on it - it doesnt just remove Google services, it often nukes an entire digital identity requiring months to fix.
  • B1FF_PSUVM 5y ago
    Yep, effectively Gmail is your internet driver license.
    • exikyut 5y ago
      TIL comments can be downvoted enough to be grey but upvoted enough to float to the top of the subthread. https://i.imgur.com/tqlQeTW.png https://i.imgur.com/tqlQeTW.png
    • arendtio 5y ago
      I would say Gmail is your auto pilot. If you have an internet driver license, you know how to operate your own mailserver ;-) Note: Yes it ain't easy and it ain't fun, just like driving a car during rush hour.
  • toss1 5y ago
    Also a key right must be that when an account is deleted, you have 60 days to download all your data. It'd their platform and a free service, so maybe it is fine to deactivate you and remove your content from the world. But to simultaneously remove your access so you lose everything is just a demonstration that they have zero care about your work or compassion that their customers are human beings. In other words, they are straight-up psychopaths If you care about anything, do NOT use these services for that. Great for junk accounts, but otherwise...
    • naasking 5y ago
• kingcharles 5y ago
  It's really disheartening that these support channels are so poor. I had my bank account terminated recently for a valid support request the bank didn't want to deal with as it would require a change to their concrete support script. My girlfriend had her Tumblr account terminated by some automated process and Tumblr won't respond to her. And this was devasting to her, because not only was it content she had spent a long time curating, but there were many friends of hers that she only had contact with through Tumblr due to her wish to protect her offline identity. To suddenly lose dozens of good friends overnight due to a software error was insanely depressing for her. The effects of these account terminations can be far-reaching. After watching the effect on my SO, I have to wonder how many suicides have been precipitated by an unfair account termination?
  • torstenvl 5y ago
    I wonder what the right rule is. I think if I were running a Web 2.0 site, a deactivated account would still allow log-in for, say, 60 days, but present only an account admin panel with four options: - Appeal the deactivation, with guaranteed human review of the account if above the, say, 20th %ile of account age - Download your text and media assets - Send a message to social connections with an e-mail where to reach you - Truly delete everything within the next 24 hours (right to be forgotten, etc.)
    • kingcharles 5y ago
      I think you present some excellent ideas. And I would guess some of them depend on the reason for termination (although often the reason selected by some automated processes makes no sense). In the OP's scenario, for instance, YouTube could have at least allowed his partner to export all the videos. There are some definite easy wins to be made by players in this space that don't even involve them having to hire more humans.
      • torstenvl 5y ago
        Thanks! For the things that do require human review, I wonder what the best way is to scale that. It actually might be a potential business opportunity. Gig economy social media moderation. Pay $50 and YouTube contracts out with a company for $40 to pay a subcontractor $30 to spend an hour reviewing your appeal and account history and making a recommendation. It has an icky protection racket feel to it and would incentivize YouTube to be more aggressive in deactivating accounts. But... maybe it's less icky than advertising, selling your privacy for pennies, and permanently deleting your stuff?
• oezi 5y ago
  I am wondering if some people could share that used the usually venues of recourse which are going through the legal system: 1.) Letting a lawyer contact Google and then suing them. 2.) Using regulations such as GDPR to ask for correction of data about yourself and/or challenging the automated decision about yourself.
• rapind 5y ago
  I'm not sure how this could work for a free service at scale. Treating a free youtube account as a video storage service is a really bad idea. I think the issue is that this works for most people most of the time, so we come to expect it. There are alternative paid options (vimeo, dropbox, S3) that should work fine. This is also a big problem with gmail, hotmail, and a thousand other email providers. Most people assume their data is permanent and safe in a free email account. That's probably true 99.99% of the time, but it's not guaranteed. If your data is important, you should really pay someone to host it, or back it up yourself.
  • kovac 5y ago
    Even if it's paid, you should back them up really.
• Havoc 5y ago
  >How many more pleas like this will we see on HN? Till the cost of bad press exceeds the cost of providing a usable support service.
  • hnfong 5y ago
    Not necessarily. The existing managers get their bonuses from the cost savings and move on to other things. 3 years later, a new generation of managers take over, realize the goodwill is already gone, and it would take an unrealistic herculean effort to reverse public sentiment. And it would take years. They take the easy route and try to squeeze even more money from the services by cutting more costs (yay AI!). That's how giant companies fail.
• ilaksh 5y ago
  The solution is decentralizing.
• Ataraxiaist 5y ago
  The current alternative to me is a form of digital Epicureanism or digital Stoicism in the sense of intentionally not putting any effort into any kind of online digital presence or content creation. I don't remember anyone being upset if they changed emails and started posting on usenet from a different email address. The discussion at hand was what was important. People are ultimately causing themselves all this stress and worry over absolutely nothing. All these make believe missed opportunities if you don't put in all this effort to get one of the lottery tickets.
  • novok 5y ago
    It's not about your posting identity, but missing important communications that was sent to an old address. Now your email is your authentication second factor in many cases, it's also lockout prevention.
• Tozen 5y ago
  And that's how they like it, extreme "techno-authoritarianism". Making as hard as possible to appeal decisions or access higher management, and the facade of customer service is usually into ignoring or gaslighting customers to the point of sadism. Ban or shadow-ban whenever Raise prices whenever Sell your private info to whomever Violate your privacy however
• Siira 5y ago
  Your suggestion might increase the costs so much that we will simply not have such free services. It’s best to limit expert support to actual purchases (like ebooks, apps, etc.) and services that have explicit guarantees.