28 ms·

Google terminated our Developer Account, says it is “associated”

997 points by nadalizadeh 5y ago

fsflover 5y ago
See also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30771057 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30771057, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30811297 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30811297.
- testplzignore 5y ago
  Maybe we need a "Businesses/Lives Ruined by Google" site like the "Killed by Google" site.
  - ghoward 5y ago
    Not exactly what you want, but I run the Programmers Against Humanity account on Twitter (@software_crimes), and I collect stories like this. I'm going to be tweeting this story out as soon as I get to my computer.
rootusrootus 5y ago
How long until working for Google has the same stigma as working for Facebook? Doing it for the money while la-la-la plugging your ears about what you're creating. It already seems like the aspirational aspect of wanting to join Google has mostly been replaced by the greedy desire for FAANG money.
Dave3of5 5y ago
Google is it's own judge, jury and executioner on it's platform and they rule with an Iron fist. If you fall out of favour with them you're screwed. They know they have a monopoly on their platform and it's their house their rules. Remember this when making any business decisions about using their products
rbanffy 5y ago
One possible preventive measure could be to have separate developer accounts for each product and keep everything air-gapped between those accounts. I was banned from AdSense for a never disclosed reason. I guess I still am - never tried again, in part because the alternative I used after that paid better.
- mysterydip 5y ago
  What alternative did you end up using?
  - rbanffy 5y ago
    A local e-tailer affiliate program. It’s was a tech blog in Portuguese, so the audience was a pretty much match.
napoleoncomplex 5y ago
Upvoting just because Google's (and Apple's) app store processes are so horrible, and this is probably the best way the case gets noticed by someone human in a normal timeframe (according to the post, they've been going through it for 2 months already).
- bradrn 5y ago
  Upvoting for the same reason, although it does feel a bit counterintuitive to upvote such a horrible story.
- natch 5y ago
  Please don’t lump Apple with Google on this. Apple has humans that answer the phone and help.
  - pastage 5y ago
    Who can not help you. Appstore policies are rife with catch-22, personally I have never had problems with Google but Apple has been a pain every time. I am unable to update a ten year old app because Apple think they know the 10k daily users better.
    - natch 5y ago
      If they can’t help you frankly the problem is probably with you or your app. But who knows… what aspect of your users do you know about that Apple refuses to understand?
      - tenuousemphasis 5y ago
        > If they can’t help you frankly the problem is probably with you or your app. Fanboy logic.
        natch 5y ago
        Note they were not forthcoming with more details, so I’d say your conclusion is premature.
leros 5y ago
My website just got blacklisted from Google because a non-existent URL got flagged for social engineering. I'm still trying to figure what to do.
- MrVitaliy 5y ago
  What a time to be alive. Some people spend considerable amount of time and money to delist themselves from google, yet others get it with 0 effort.
- belter 5y ago
  Escalating to Google 2nd level support, ( a.k.a.: Hacker News ) is a starting point.
  - leros 5y ago
    We'll see. I "resolved" the issues and requested a site review a few days ago. I have very low expectations.
falcolas 5y ago
In the discussion of the last article, there was a discussion about weaponizing "associated accounts" when Google shuts things down. Looks like it's 100% a valid tactic. Looks like you need to make sure your employees all leave on good terms, and stay on good terms in the coming years. Otherwise, you too might find your Google accounts terminated with no recourse.
- mikece 5y ago
  This also suggests a need for app development companies to ban developers from using personal accounts to associate with a project. I realize this just sends more money in the direction of Google but if every app developer was set up with a G-Suite (or whatever it's called this week) account for developer access then there could be no question of actions a developer does on their own accounts coming back to bite the company. Likewise, there needs to be a mechanism for the company to mark a developer's account as "fired for cause" so that if they did anything toxic on the company-assigned account the company could pre-signal to Google that they are proactively taking care of things and following the rules.
  - Tijdreiziger 5y ago
    Wouldn't Google associate personal and work accounts by IP address?
  - falcolas 5y ago
    > ban developers from using personal accounts to associate with a project As I understand it, this may not be sufficient, since Google also looks at things like "logged in from the same browser" or "logged in via the same IP" to find associated accounts. > mark a developer's account as "fired for cause" Which, practically (and maybe legally) speaking is not something Google needs to know. Then again, in a world where Google can shut your company down arbitrarily, perhaps it is something Google needs to know...
    - kuschku 5y ago
      So you need to have separate WiFi networks, separate corporate devices that are so locked down that developers can never use their personal accounts from your devices or your corporate IP range (and ensure the same applies in reverse). To absolutely prevent any and all association.
gentleman11 5y ago
Googles dumb machine learning is destroying peoples lives and will continue to do so for decades unless somebody stops them. They control most of the internet and mobile space, it’s like having your water cut off permanently
- foolzcrow 5y ago
- savant_penguin 5y ago
  I'm really unsure why people still decide to build their companies under Google products
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  - carrolyda 5y ago
    Is there any cloud/PaaS/SaaS company without a "we can terminate your account at any time for any reason"-clause? Otherwise you still have the same problem wherever you go.
    - tedivm 5y ago
      Technically sure, but in reality that's not the case. I've personally seen people lose their GCP account for weeks over amazingly stupid stuff- if that same stuff happened at AWS I'd get a phone call from an account manager to clarify things and humans would be involved in the decision to shut things down. Google has a history of excluding humans from their processes, with no recourse for when their automation breaks except to complain online and hope someone important enough hears you. That's not something people can trust.
      - deleted 5y ago
CoastalCoder 5y ago
I seems "killed by Google" deserves a broader meaning.
mmastrac 5y ago
We cannot continue to allow big tech to provide these walled gardens with zero recourse. It's turning slowly into a Gibson-esque dystopia as they continue to set the rules under the guise of contracts and EULAs with a shadow legal system. If it needs to be more expensive to publish and buy apps, so be it. This is unsustainable.
lima 5y ago
We need legislation forcing companies to manually review algorithmic decisions that impact people's lives - there has to be a proper appeals process. It's simply not economical for many companies to deal with the long tail of false positives, so they don't. Google has billions of users, and if their algorithms are 99.999% right about bans, their metrics look great but that's still tens of thousands users wrongfully banned. I'm not usually a fan of government intervention but this is such a no-brainer for regulation. With how much our modern lives are dependent on services like Google's, they effectively become utilities and should be regulated as such.
- Symbiote 5y ago
  GDPR Art. 22: https://gdpr-info.eu/art-22-gdpr/ https://gdpr-info.eu/art-22-gdpr/ But that's only part of it. A business account might not fall within these rules, and Google can enforce them anyway (after human review) with very little recourse available. Breaking the App store duopoly is the solution.
  - Sebb767 5y ago
    > Breaking the App store duopoly is the solution. Not really. We a comparable situation in a lot of different industries; if a large companies serves tens of thousands of customers and get hundreds of thousands of malicious requests, they're going to do some filtering and it will lead to some people getting stuck in the cracks, even if it's just 0.01%. More app stores won't solve this; if enough developers would be burned, the problem would solve itself on its own. That's not to say that I like the current situation, but from what I see it's likely that the actual number of incidents is low (compared to the number of Google's customers) and a third or fourth store won't change this.
  - sschueller 5y ago
    It's coming but from the EU.
  - davidkuennen 5y ago
    Every day I'm more thankful to live in the EU.
bluescrn 5y ago
Another example of why we should be opposing app-store-centric computing.
rvz 5y ago
Here we go again. Another day, another termination by Google Play. The reason? None. The same as this one: [0]. Robots at Google once again de-platforming apps because they can and for no reason. Like YouTube, Google will not change and it will only get worse. [0] [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30824079 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30824079
rhacker 5y ago
6 degrees of separation. Everyone is associated with everyone else, so basically Google should shut down itself at this point.
pram 5y ago
4 Feb 2022 - Termination of my personal account (Ali Nadalizadeh) This is pretty horrific!
yellow_lead 5y ago
Welcome to FANG support forums, a human being should review your case shortly...
qalmakka 5y ago
I will say this once again: App Stores are too important in the current world to be left to the mercy of some big Internet company. I agree they should get a cut due to them being both the creators and maintainers of their platforms, but their ability to regulate what's in them should be left to a third party or government agency, just like trade is not left to its own devices and has regulators. Apple and Google are way too powerful for their own good.
- zivkovicp 5y ago
  hear, hear.
- bogwog 5y ago
  Figuring out a fair and effective set of laws/regulations to control how these companies run their app stores seems way too hard and unrealistic. The easier and more effective solution is to simply force them to allow alternative app stores (without suppressing competition, like Google currently does). A free market tends to correct itself in the long term, so that should solve the majority of problems plaguing the mobile software industry today.
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  - Aeolun 5y ago
    > Figuring out a fair and effective set of laws/regulations to control how these companies run their app stores seems way too hard and unrealistic Anything has to be better than what we have today…
    - EricE 5y ago
      Yes, competition is better. Force them to allow other app stores on the same footing with Google's and Apple's. See how fast both suddenly find resources to deal with issues like these. Sunlight (and competition) is the best disinfectant!
  - 5y ago
Shadonototra 5y ago
Share the "previous emails" they sent you, you either ignored them, or you know what you did wrong and are trying to play the innocent actor Hard to judge without having all the data in hand
- LanceH 5y ago
  Previous emails. That's funny. They don't send warnings and they don't allow appeals. It's 100% to done.
- mechanical_bear 5y ago
  It’s easier to feed the anti-Google circle jerk this way.
- ceejayoz 5y ago
  Where are you seeing that previous emails were sent? The screenshotted notice indicates it may be due to actions by the individual developer on their own account, for which the company would not necessarily have been notified.
  - encryptluks2 5y ago
    I think it is due to account level access. They tried claiming they hadn't been associated with them for 3 years but then admit that the developer had access to their account as recent as Dec 2021. Let's say this developer did something really dirty like stole user data and then Google finds out this developer still has app store permissions through this other company account. I think Google handles these situations terribly from a PR perspective, because the moment someone posts negative publicity would be the perfect time to Google PR to show their hand and say no they are misleading the public. There is probably a good reason they don't do that though. I could see how a company isn't really responsible for what another developer did that they may have not known about, but I don't think we are getting the full story here.
    - ceejayoz 5y ago
      An entire company shouldn't get wiped off the map because one contractor has been misbehaving on another gig.
mikece 5y ago
Cases like this make me wish Google could be sued for $100,000,000 because it's clear that are they not following their own rules when it comes to banning accounts. This has REAL business impact, not to mention the implication of libel that the holder of the account did something to deserve to be banned. Yeah, I know: the business entered into an agreement with Google to abide by their rules and terms of service but when Google doesn't follow those rules I think they open themselves up to massive liability.
- tempnow987 5y ago
  Um, they are following their rules. They make this very clear when you sign up. If you have a scammer working for you / linked to your account, your account is VERY VERY much at risk. Lesson is, don't hire scam artists, ask your employees not to scam while they work for you or are linked to your account.
- deleted 5y ago
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- voakbasda 5y ago
  They would happily pay that amount if they could continue business as usual. Add a couple of zeros and you might get their attention.
  - josephcsible 5y ago
    If they just had to pay it this once, I'd agree. But if they had to pay it every time they wrongly unpersoned someone, they'd change their ways really quickly.
    - phaistra 5y ago
      Another idea: For every repeated infraction of the same type, the fine doubles or triples.
chinathrow 5y ago
If you work at Google in this area (and I bet some of you will), then please, escalate this and please, fix your systems - as this is clearly something which destroys peoples lifes.
- belter 5y ago
  You don't get the 500K for your coding skills. Sounds like it's to soothe your conscience...
sccxy 5y ago
Always use different accounts for every Google Service. One "bad" Youtube comment can ban your Gmail account.
- belter 5y ago
  Or they will use your IP, say it was from the same device, or different IP same geo location...be afraid...be very afraid. "...Youtube Account Suspended" - "...All i do is watch videos and subscribe to my favorite youtube channels while sitting on the toilet!... I have no idea what to do." https://support.google.com/youtube/thread/21108892/youtube-account-suspended-all-i-do-is-watch-videos?hl=en https://support.google.com/youtube/thread/21108892/youtube-a...
  - andrekandre 5y ago
    "I am not a Google or YouTube employee - Product Experts are volunteers" wow, i must live under a rock, but is this how google does "support"... by volunteers?
faggot 5y ago
kmeisthax 5y ago
Everyone here is commenting about overautomation, but this isn't an overautomation problem. It's a secondary sanctions problem. The developer isn't being banned for breaking Google's rules, he's being banned for having hired someone else who later broke those rules; and then that ban was transitively applied to their personal account as well. This is beyond the pale. Google should not have the power to decide who you are and are not allowed to hire. It both goes against the basic concept of a limited-liability corporation, and harms worker rights.
- ceejayoz 5y ago
  > Google should not have the power to decide who you are and are not allowed to hire. Especially not retroactively. "Your former employee broke the rules at their next job, so you're banned" is just bizarre.
- shadowgovt 5y ago
  It's both (over-automation and secondary sanctions). The secondary sanctions exist because it's near-trivial to automatically create dozens of proxy accounts for a bad actor to launder reputation through. So in addition to direct fraud detection, Google has had to automate secondary "Is this account probably the same bad actor" detection. That system, like any such system (including human review), has false-positivies where two accounts are believed to be the same owner when they are not. But the automation-with-insufficient-human-review problem is specifically Google's mistake, and there's room for improvement.
  - spookthesunset 5y ago
    As somebody whose worked in the large scale anti-fraud area… I always make sure my team knows that the real people who fall through the cracks matter big time. Anti-fraud is a tough space because you can never be 100% sure which actors are legit and which are scammers… after all if you knew who the scammers actually were you’d have blocked them all ready. I always make sure there is some kind of escape hatch for legit users who get caught in our system. These escape hatches might not be super awesome for real users, especially if they fell into a bucket that strongly labels them as scammers, but at least they have an out.
ransom1538 5y ago
I have worked at four large scale mobile app companies [10 million downloads+]. All four were thrown out of the Apple store for various reasons. The real killer is the time between getting thrown out and finishing appeals. It's a real corrupt system too - like dealing with Russian oligarchs. You need to know the right people, know the right things to say, etc. If you don't you sort of play Russian roulette with the reviewer. That time between appeal and getting back in is usually enough to destroy all momentum - two of the companies just closed afterwards. I am still in mobile but in education teaching children to read [20+ million downloads]. I sleep well at night knowing we cannot be thrown out.... but any "phone call" from apple [they don't put anything in writing] I would probably throw up and have a full blown panic attack.
jordemort 5y ago
This kind of thing is why I would never try to build a company where the business model depended on being able to sell through Apple or Google's app stores, which is a shame because it ends up excluding several large categories of possibilities. I think there's probably a connection between the "bloat" and complexity of the modern web that the Gemini crowd rails against, and the draconian and wildly inconsistent gatekeeping that is applied to native apps for mobile platforms. It puts the Web platform in tight competition with native apps, because it is the only viable alternative; this causes developers to exert pressure to add more and more capabilities to browsers so that they can match native experiences without having to pass review or pay commissions. I wonder if browsers would have evolved in the same way if mobile devices were more open platforms.
zivkovicp 5y ago
I can't wait until the tipping point when people realize just how nasty Google is and start avoiding all of their services.
jmyeet 5y ago
I feel this user’s pain. Obviously we don’t know of food action was warranted in this case. Sometimes it isn’t and there being no recourse is unacceptable. Knowing someone at the company, having a sufficient Twitter audience or relying on posts like this getting attention should not be how this is resolved. Side note: I absolutely won’t use my Gmail account for any other Google service. It’s just too great a risk and it’s ridiculous that a developer ToS violation can also kill your Gmail access. I see a fundamental mistake these companies make with automation: optimizing for the wrong metric. The metric they seem to use is the number of cases handled by automated systems. What they should use is the number of cases their workers can deal with. The difference is that the second one doesn’t reward false positives. There are some cases that need human review. You should even be able to pay for expedited review (ideally refunding you if the decision is made in error). A good example of this is Tiktok’s reporting system. Like many such systems it’s clear that it just takes actions based on the number of reports. There is no penalty for fake reports. So people brigade creators they don’t like (typically politics and science) and those affected have to go appeals processes. It’s ridiculous. Put another way: automation shouldn’t replace people. It should augment their effectiveness.
- bnj 5y ago
  > What they should use is the number of cases tax workers can deal with. I'm curious about this and not completely sure I understand what it would look like in an example. Would you be willing to expand on the point?
  - jmyeet 5y ago
    Imagine someone working in support. When an activity gets flagged it gets assigned to someone. An automated system might take action (eg shadow banking). Given the automation that worked might process 5000 cases a day. If the automation can resolve more cases that figure might go up to 8000. But if there’s an appeal that takes manual review and resolution that might wear up a lot of time stick that the rate drops to 3000. This means two things: 1. There is an impact on the metric from false positives; and 2. Having human review is still part of the system ultimately. It rather it can always be escalated to such. Now you might say the worker might be motivated to take the least time consuming action possible even if wrong but an appeal might be escalated above then and further time spent rectifying their mistake still counts against them.
jddil 5y ago
These stories are always one sided and gloss over the minor policy violation parts. When we get the full story it's usually less black and white. Quick skim over the thread and it sounds like they let an ex-employee have access to one of their accounts and he committed multiple violations? Was he spamming? Was he uploading malicious content to the store? Also, don't build on others platforms if you want to control your destiny. You can't have it both ways.
- nadalizadeh 5y ago
  It is not black and white, as I mentioned in the post, the former employee had violations in his own developer account. But in case of our company? None! Our company account is assumed to be "associated" with wrongdoing of my former employee. This is the black side.
  - jddil 5y ago
    His own developer account was linked to yours ... that's how this works. In the future, fully control the accounts yourself or don't build in someones walled garden and then complain when they ask you to leave.
    - nadalizadeh 5y ago
      Sure, you are good in giving advice!
      - jddil 5y ago
        It's not for you, it's for the next tech entrepreneur who may stumble on this thread. It's a warning that if your livelihood or something is really important to you, you should not build it inside google or apples walled garden. Or if you do, know that for any reason they choose they can kick you off. Unfair as that is. Welcome to capitalism. Go host your own stuff if you don't like their rules.
LWIRVoltage 5y ago
This is the issue with data being tied and connected.... Not long ago, someone here raised similar concerns with Microsoft 's ecosystem It stemmed from their current underway process to force all Minecraft accounts to Microsoft accounts, and the current Microsoft account process, if you don't add a phone number during account creation, locks and bans the account automatically after a week with they only recovery option being to then give a phone number, and most voip ones are auto detected and not accepted. If you set up the account with an alternate email, that has no effect. Setting up TOTP has had scattered reports over sometimes allowing the account to not auto ban you, but recent reports are that this too often won't stop it. There are reports that using Microsoft s own authenticator app, does stop the account from auto banning you unironically, that I have not confirmed Of course this means they can then tie it to potentially your computer pending how you set up Windows, or Xbox live, etc. Which is a risk if you've been formerly banned from something like xbox- everything is now linked, and therefore subject to action automatically with no human team to talk to about the process. Also, if you then go and give it to them then afterwards try to remove it, the system will not let you without extreme effort, and more details. I worry greatly about this situation where our personal accounts are all tied together through hardware ids, mandatory phone numbers,IP addresses, and different accounts across systems, only to all get banned or locked out at once with no recourse - or demanding more data(like Minecraft indirectly giving Microsoft every single phone number for the biggest player base in the world, as mandatory(with specific exceptions for like one or two countries who's laws they are working around now, with Korea appears to be one) Also, so many companies use Amazon, Google, Microsoft company emails and systems- your full name is there, so there is a increasing risk that if something happens to your company account, the systems knows your personal accounts and by name, bans or affects them too. Privacy advocates are being proven right about the need to be able to not give info that ties everything together
- A4ET8a8uTh0 5y ago
  This. I genuinely wonder if people understand how much data is flowing about them on a daily basis and whether they would care if they did. I am just a guy at a place and I personally think I have way more insight in people's private lives than I should. I can't imagine how bad it is at a less regulated institution.
akomtu 5y ago
2045: "The DOJ algorithm has mistakenly declared me a felon. I've been trying to appeal to a human judge, while serving time in prison, but have been getting only automated responses so far."
g_p 5y ago
In Europe, the legislation to look at would be https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:32019R1150 https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:32... Specifically, article 4 covers termination of service, and the rules around this. It seems Google and other platform providers have no interest in following these rules though.
anaccountexists 5y ago
Before saying anything else: I’m sorry OP. This is miserable to deal with and I know you’re probably very upset right now. On the other hand- at every company I’ve worked at, this is why there’s clear onboarding and off boarding policies. Yes- if you have someone on your developer account violating terms of service, they’ll shut down the account. No, it doesn’t matter that it wasn’t you personally. To put this differently: if you had a bank account shared between your developers, and someone who left the company started using it for money laundering, the entire account would be shut down and you would not be getting that money back. In fact, you might even be investigated by authorities for money laundering since it ran through your account. As someone who works in FinTech, we deal with tons of people just trying to steal / defraud others on a daily basis, and we’re required but governments across the world to be on the lookout for people doing “fraudy” things and terminate their accounts ASAP. If we just said “oh, it’s fine, you’re not in trouble because your (insert X relative here) was the bad person, not you,” then social engineering fraud would be rampant everywhere. To me, the Google situation is identical to the bank situation. There’s not a good way to prove the bad account shouldn’t be associated with your Play store account. This is why you have to be diligent about who has access to these things.
- nerdawson 5y ago
  I may have misinterpreted the explanation given in the post. It sounded to me like a developer they'd employed violated the TOS on their personal Google dev account. Google then recognised a connection between the dev and another Google account belonging to a company and opted to suspend that as well. To use your example, that would be like an employee getting their bank account frozen for something they'd done in their personal life, and then the company having their bank frozen too for depositing money into the employee's account.
  - anaccountexists 5y ago
    I’d liken the latter to having a company credit card account. Regardless, in the bank case there’s a high chance adjacent / connected accounts would be frozen (at least for a time) because money laundering tends to happen in rings. I see your point, though.
cao_wang 5y ago
Windows 11 Mobile phone with its native support for Android apps can counter the monopoly of big G. Will Microsoft come to our rescue?
deleted 5y ago
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boredumb 5y ago
The discussion of "ethics" in ML tend to revolve around race and sex in order for large organizations to pretend they have some moral high ground when their models are being used to ruin peoples lives and enable billion dollar companies to not hire and manage non technical employees to make human decisions involving human problems. These people _are_ evil and their code and models are being used for destructive purposes, and so we are forced to read about their "ethics" applied to some obscure race, sex or "toxicity" problems as a way to cope with themselves. Banning someone on youtube for being racist is objectively less good than banning a team of people from pursuing their livelihoods, but focusing on the prior is a great way to distract from the fact that with a revenue over $50,000,000,000 they can't hire a small fleet of people to handle customer and partner relations. If it makes you feel better though, you don't have to see opinions on the internet that google data scientists deem toxic as often.
qwertox 5y ago
"Innocent until proven guilty"... This sentence has zero value in Google's enforcement of their ToS, even though it is a fundamental right.
duxup 5y ago
I know a group of devs collaborating on a side project. Same thing happened to them. They created a new developer account for this project, worked together on it, and the app vanished off the store and dev account terminated, along with one of the developer's personal developer account. They assumed, but don't know, it was because the developer who had his personal account suspended as well once worked for a company who was kinda scummy and went fully scummy a few years after that developer left. Somehow that was associated with him personally and then the chain of guilt made its way to them. This seems to re-enforce that this kind of chain of guilt is a thing.
- hbn 5y ago
  It's the new virus! Your account was terminated because you know a guy who knows a guy who worked at a company whose CEO is the cousin of a guy who broke Google ToS. 6 degrees of termination.
  - Topgamer7 5y ago
    > 6 degrees of termination. I died. This should be the term.
  - duxup 5y ago
    How soon until everyone at Facebook is associated? :O
  - ncann 5y ago
    Reminds me of Nine familial exterminations in China back in the days: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nine_familial_exterminations https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nine_familial_exterminations
    - duxup 5y ago
      In the Apple TV series Foundation they do that, including extending beyond the family to any kind of connections, friends and etc. Eventually including something around 1500+ individuals tied to one person. The point being to eliminate whatever impact that person had on the universe. Maybe Google's algorithm is more concerned with being a tyrannical emperor than we think ...
ComradePhil 5y ago
These fkers need to be brought down with much bigger lawsuits and regulations. They can't continue to operate like this. We can't have app distribution in these people's hands (both Apple and Google) unless they change fundamentally.
qwertox 5y ago
One of the comments on Reddit states that: > Develop for iOS. Apple has humans who answer phones and create support tickets and escalate issues and follow up and respond. Is this true? Because if it is, my next phone will be an iPhone and I will completely move into the Apple ecosystem and develop for publishing in the App Store instead of Google Play Store. Even though I don't do anything bad, these kind of news do have me absolutely scared that it's simply not worth it. It's beyond ridiculous how Google is treating developers. At least be precise in the cause of the termination, explain exactly what has happened.
- izacus 5y ago
  We had a fun merry go round with Apples humans just copy-pasting policy answers and refusing to actually understand the issue as well. They're not quite as bad as Google in this respect, but tying Apple chain over your neck for slightly less abusive system is a pretty Stockholm syndrome thing to do as well. You can't fix this by paying corporations more money.
  - natch 5y ago
    You can ask Apple people to escalate to second tier support and beyond that if warranted they will even pull in engineering (not to talk to you directly but to resolve the issues behind the scenes). And with Apple you are talking to humans who also happen to be good communicators in my experience. If you’re having trouble with Apple, it’s probably you.
    - izacus 5y ago
      That escalation only happens with a chosen few companies (which I've been part of as well, but please understand, this is not the usual experience for most). This experience is also available with Google - "you just need to know someone" or be a company they care about right now.
      - natch 5y ago
        That escalation has happened with me as an individual developer so it’s not at all only for a few chosen companies.
ranjitcool1 5y ago
Crosseye_Jack 5y ago
Starting a email regrading an account termination with "Hi" comes off as being a dick! (BTW, I'm talking about the email Google sent the dev's)
Lamad123 5y ago
i's kinda said when your livelihood is decided by dumb AI that can't tell the difference between a joke and a war declaration or some poor reviewer/customer support who needs to decode so much shit in 35 seconds and decide if you broke non-transparent terms.
FpUser 5y ago
Car repair shop used to treat customers like shit and hold them hostage. It ended up with the government stepping in and requiring them to adhere to a certain protocols (like showing parts changed). I think that Google has done enough damage. Government has to step in and smack hard in a teeth with a heavy fine and a requirement to introduce notices before doing any action (especially where money are involved) and mandatory appeal process with the human involved and obligation to answer direct questions (like giving detailed reason).
gambler 5y ago
To all the people who think this is some sort of accident that will get corrected. It is and it isn't. This particular manifestation of ban by association might be a corrected if it gets enough pushback. The general idea, however, is something Alphabet and the rest of Big Tech clearly like, because there are more and more cases of this sort. Moreover, you likely supported this when it manifested a bit differently. Most of HN seems to firmly believe in guilt-by-association as a way to control behavior, speech and thought. You get all preachy and act horrified when it goes "too far" (i.e. when it looks like something that might happen to you personally), but in general it's a concept endorsed or at least tolerated by the majority here. Well, you know what they say about Karma.
- dang 5y ago
  Generalizations about the community like that are basically spurious unless you have real data. People on all sides of every issue feel that HN is dominated by the view they happen to dislike. It's a mechanism of perception: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20dislike%20notice&sort=byDate&type=story&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=%22false%20feelings%20of%20generality%22&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
renewiltord 5y ago
Ah, interesting. I wonder if this means you can’t have your @company.com logged in at the same Chrome installation as your @personal.com. So the only safe way is for companies to say you have to have a separate browser for @company.com?
whymauri 5y ago
Once again, the resolution of this problem will come down to either the OP knowing a Google employee or a Google employee happening to see this and feeling pity. For the vast majority of people who deal with Google support and don't have access to Google employees how many of us on HN do, when the hammer strikes: they are completely out of options. I have such little trust in Google's automation for banning accounts that I don't even bother commenting on Youtube or uploading videos anymore. Who know when some innocuous footage that I have will trigger a cascade of copyright strikes and ban my personal GMail? It's like walking around glass.
- dandare 5y ago
  I don't understand why the fear of being sued is not preventing Google (and other big players) from misusing their position like this. Is it impossible to sue Google?
  - bogantech 5y ago
    It's possible to sue them but how deep are your pockets?
  - _fat_santa 5y ago
    > Is it impossible to sue Google? Theoretically no but practically yes. Even if they know they are in the wrong and would loose a court case, they still "win" by just dragging it out and making you go broke on legal fees.
    - School-Cotton 5y ago
      Do you really think they'd drag out the case endlessly rather than just having a human spend 5 minutes looking at your account, verifying that it's indeed not malicious, and reinstating it?
  - lkxijlewlf 5y ago
    Google is worth 1.8 TRILLION dollars. How much would you have to sue them for before they start to give a shit? 1.8T is an unimaginable amount of money.
pipeline_peak 5y ago
Sure are a lot of “innocent” accounts getting shutdown.
projectramo 5y ago
Not sure why people thing Google does not have a help function. I think it is obvious at this point that reddit and hacker news are Google's help desks but people do need to vote up the relevant tickets to get priority attention.
pipeline_peak 5y ago
> harms workers rights Isn’t that kind of the trade off of small entities doing business with a tech conglomerate? There’s not much government authorization with developing smart phone apps.
shdon 5y ago
15-20 years ago, I had a pretty good opinion of Google, as they seemed competent and true to their then motto "don't be evil". Now I avoid them wherever I can personally (unfortunately, and to my great dismay, my employer is fully dependent on Google cloud products). It seems they have become very evil. And what's worse... casually evil. The fact that these things happen is bad enough, but not having any recourse or a good way to resolve this is just unacceptable.
- kmeisthax 5y ago
  Even 15 years ago we were hearing stories of Google summarily terminating whole accounts without stating a reason beyond some business-ese for "You know what you did". They have always treated their anti-fraud teams as secret police rather than just a way to mitigate business risk.
  - ncann 5y ago
    10-15 years ago me and I assumed most people here viewed Google in a very positive light. At that time they seemed to be doing everything right and were somehow at the top of everything they did. Gmail was game changing, Search had no equal, Youtube was mind boggling, and Android and Chrome and so many other things. Somehow they lost their way in the process which is a shame.
flerchin 5y ago
I would like for Google to have a process whereby this type of story is not plausible. They are too big to not do business with.
im3w1l 5y ago
We used to live in a magical world, where your fate was governmened by fire spirits, by demons and by thunder gods. We tamed nature and learned a scientific worldview. What these algorithms are doing is turning back the clock. Undoing the science. It's bringing us a new world of superstitution, where you better don't anger the machine elves.
ultim8k 5y ago
We gave these mofos an ecosytem because they were hiding behind the label of "free and open source software". Now they can screw anyone and not even answer to emails. They are nothing but crooks. All software giants hold too much power in their hands and nobody can touch them. What can you do? They have at least 50% of the market.
- incrudible 5y ago
  For one, Apple has the better 50% of the market. You could do without Android. Secondly, being subservient to any app storefront policy is not a position you want to navigate into in the first place.
- fsflover 5y ago
  > What can you do? https://puri.sm/products/librem-5 https://puri.sm/products/librem-5 and https://pine64.org/pinephone https://pine64.org/pinephone.
  - dymk 5y ago
    I'd rather just carry around a laptop than use those phones
otterley 5y ago
OP: You don't happen to be an Iranian national, do you? Google's relationship with Iranians is... complicated, and likely influenced by the U.S.'s sanctions regime with respect to Iran and some of its nationals.
- ivanche 5y ago
  Hah, it seems you’re right! This is OPs LinkedIn profile https://www.linkedin.com/in/nadalizadeh/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/nadalizadeh/
  - tenuousemphasis 5y ago
    What on the profile are you basing OP's Iranian nationality?
    - ivanche 5y ago
      Speaks Persian, went to Tehran University, has Iranian name.
rosmax_1337 5y ago
I'm intrested in knowing what TOS the "associated" developer account broke?
dethos 5y ago
The need for alternatives to the PlayStore (and even AppStore) is real. Developers should start publishing to those alternatives to mitigate against these risks (even if they don't bring too much traffic/revenue at the moment).
nperez 5y ago
In my current org, all developers, whether they're F/T or contractors, have a company account created for them and never get permissions on any other account. This is a good reminder on why I should adopt that practice I ever build a company of my own, no matter how small.
CalChris 5y ago
A Google Developer account costs all of $25, one time. You really should scale your expectations of service based on that number. You will not be partying with Larry Page in Fiji for $25. https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answer/6112435?hl=en https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answ...
- josephcsible 5y ago
  No matter how cheap that is, I should not have to worry about losing my personal Gmail because one of my former co-workers broke one of Google's rules at a different job.
incrudible 5y ago
Never build on top of Google. Yes, this limits what you can do. No, that is not a bad thing.
- phendrenad2 5y ago
  Build on top of Google or Apple (or Microsoft or Amazon, you never know when they'll adopt this anti-user stuff too) only once you are big enough that they need you more than you need them.
at_a_remove 5y ago
I am struggling to remember the name of this sci-fi book I had read about twenty-five years ago. Someone encounters a civilization where things are going pretty darned well for the humans, and there are these spider-aliens who make sure that the trains are running on time. It's just that a small portion of the population is abducted by the spider-aliens, for a long period of agonizing torture before being consumed. Everyone knows and accepts this. Nobody knows who is going to get snatched and tormented and eaten. But otherwise things are just great! Omelas aside, I think of this every time I read about someone's work or life or memories or whatever just getting zapped by Google, for a reason that is probably contained in a 500kb EULA, but one you will never find. It's free! You can do all of this stuff! It's great! Except for when your stuff gets randomly eaten.
- josephcsible 5y ago
  Not the same book, but a similar story is The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas.
- tjalfi 5y ago
  TVTropes has lists of science fiction with insectoid aliens[0] and books with giant spiders[1]. [0] https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/InsectoidAliens https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/InsectoidAliens [1] https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/GiantSpider/Literature https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/GiantSpider/Literatur...
time4tea 5y ago
It's I guess tangentially related, but in terms of de-googling, I've been using docker mailserver https://github.com/docker-mailserver/docker-mailserver https://github.com/docker-mailserver/docker-mailserver for a few years now and it is great. Combined with bluemail, thunderbird clients, backblaze for backup, and solar panels, it runs in my house and is basically free. For resiliency I do pay for a backup MX, which is about $5/year per domain. It took a few hours to set up, supports many users (family and friends) and maybe 1h every 3 months to update and check all is good.
ketanip 5y ago
So should one stay away from GCP as google can associate their personal account and profession account, and if the system detect some action which triggers it in personal account it may block all accounts and so there could be a severe data loss and other reputational losses of the company ?
peeters 5y ago
Is anything stopping app developers from forming a (non-workers) union to collectively bargain and advocate for its members? This seems like something where if every app developer paid dues to a central body, with the insurance that each dispute had the resources and leverage of that body, then maybe they would take more care in the first place.
- phendrenad2 5y ago
  Maybe an ACLU-like legal org.
tasubotadas 5y ago
Could we stop sharing old reddit links? It works horribly on mobile.
- YATA0 5y ago
  Agreed. In a year the entire reddit thread will be [deleted] and [removed] and the post will be edited and completely redacted, etc. Reddit is cancer.
techaddict009 5y ago
Same happened with me once. And till date couldnt find out the association and what wrong we did or the association who they say we are associated with!
AtNightWeCode 5y ago
I hate Google Play. I have been insulted in public chats by Google staff insinuating that I tried to go around Google Play rules when fact is that I have tried to solve the demands Google Play puts in the first place when they removed the apps. Good luck fighting this as a small company.
brutal_chaos_ 5y ago
Just a friendly reminder for Google users, backup your cloud data before you can't. https://takeout.google.com/ https://takeout.google.com/
richardfey 5y ago
What if they were both doing something irregular, using the same malicious library, and that is why they were associated?
CursedUrn 5y ago
We need an online Bill of Rights to stop these huge companies destroying lives and businesses on a whim.
tediousdemise 5y ago
Two words: web app. We need to collectively abandon these walled gardens and reject putting all of our eggs into one company's basket.
Animats 5y ago
Google giveth, and Google taketh away. Blessed be the name of Google.
betwixthewires 5y ago
Suppose you were to make an f-droid like client without a source code requirement. A way for people to host their own proprietary applications, and a client app that can manage repositories the way f-droid does. How would you: - make applications/repositories discoverable without running a service, - allow developers to handle billing for paid apps themselves, again, no service, - have client side malware protection without playing a cat and mouse game, - prevent discoverability of pirate repositories without running a service? If these problems can be solved (or others I didn't think of, maybe you did?) you can basically get rid of monopoly curation of available applications on android (or anywhere for that matter).
nadalizadeh 5y ago
Update: Google reviewed our case and reinstated the accounts. I really appreciate your help and I'm extremely grateful to anyone in this community who helped us to reach a real representative in the policy team. Although our issue has been resolved (and we are really happy about that), there should not be a need for such a social media campaign in the first place and not all small businesses might have this chance to reinstate their accounts. I hope that the team at Google stops associating the accounts automatically and would improve their relationship with the developer community more than ever.
avierax 5y ago
Google issue escalation final stage is hackernews.

997 points by nadalizadeh 5y ago

See also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30771057 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30771057, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30811297 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30811297.

testplzignore 5y ago
Maybe we need a "Businesses/Lives Ruined by Google" site like the "Killed by Google" site.
- ghoward 5y ago
  Not exactly what you want, but I run the Programmers Against Humanity account on Twitter (@software_crimes), and I collect stories like this. I'm going to be tweeting this story out as soon as I get to my computer.

rootusrootus 5y ago

How long until working for Google has the same stigma as working for Facebook? Doing it for the money while la-la-la plugging your ears about what you're creating. It already seems like the aspirational aspect of wanting to join Google has mostly been replaced by the greedy desire for FAANG money.

Dave3of5 5y ago

Google is it's own judge, jury and executioner on it's platform and they rule with an Iron fist. If you fall out of favour with them you're screwed. They know they have a monopoly on their platform and it's their house their rules. Remember this when making any business decisions about using their products

rbanffy 5y ago

One possible preventive measure could be to have separate developer accounts for each product and keep everything air-gapped between those accounts. I was banned from AdSense for a never disclosed reason. I guess I still am - never tried again, in part because the alternative I used after that paid better.

mysterydip 5y ago
What alternative did you end up using?
- rbanffy 5y ago
  A local e-tailer affiliate program. It’s was a tech blog in Portuguese, so the audience was a pretty much match.

napoleoncomplex 5y ago

Upvoting just because Google's (and Apple's) app store processes are so horrible, and this is probably the best way the case gets noticed by someone human in a normal timeframe (according to the post, they've been going through it for 2 months already).

bradrn 5y ago
Upvoting for the same reason, although it does feel a bit counterintuitive to upvote such a horrible story.
natch 5y ago
Please don’t lump Apple with Google on this. Apple has humans that answer the phone and help.
- pastage 5y ago
  Who can not help you. Appstore policies are rife with catch-22, personally I have never had problems with Google but Apple has been a pain every time. I am unable to update a ten year old app because Apple think they know the 10k daily users better.
  - natch 5y ago
    If they can’t help you frankly the problem is probably with you or your app. But who knows… what aspect of your users do you know about that Apple refuses to understand?
    - tenuousemphasis 5y ago
      > If they can’t help you frankly the problem is probably with you or your app. Fanboy logic.
      - natch 5y ago
        Note they were not forthcoming with more details, so I’d say your conclusion is premature.

leros 5y ago

My website just got blacklisted from Google because a non-existent URL got flagged for social engineering. I'm still trying to figure what to do.

MrVitaliy 5y ago
What a time to be alive. Some people spend considerable amount of time and money to delist themselves from google, yet others get it with 0 effort.
belter 5y ago
Escalating to Google 2nd level support, ( a.k.a.: Hacker News ) is a starting point.
- leros 5y ago
  We'll see. I "resolved" the issues and requested a site review a few days ago. I have very low expectations.

falcolas 5y ago

In the discussion of the last article, there was a discussion about weaponizing "associated accounts" when Google shuts things down. Looks like it's 100% a valid tactic. Looks like you need to make sure your employees all leave on good terms, and stay on good terms in the coming years. Otherwise, you too might find your Google accounts terminated with no recourse.

mikece 5y ago
This also suggests a need for app development companies to ban developers from using personal accounts to associate with a project. I realize this just sends more money in the direction of Google but if every app developer was set up with a G-Suite (or whatever it's called this week) account for developer access then there could be no question of actions a developer does on their own accounts coming back to bite the company. Likewise, there needs to be a mechanism for the company to mark a developer's account as "fired for cause" so that if they did anything toxic on the company-assigned account the company could pre-signal to Google that they are proactively taking care of things and following the rules.
- Tijdreiziger 5y ago
  Wouldn't Google associate personal and work accounts by IP address?
- falcolas 5y ago
  > ban developers from using personal accounts to associate with a project As I understand it, this may not be sufficient, since Google also looks at things like "logged in from the same browser" or "logged in via the same IP" to find associated accounts. > mark a developer's account as "fired for cause" Which, practically (and maybe legally) speaking is not something Google needs to know. Then again, in a world where Google can shut your company down arbitrarily, perhaps it is something Google needs to know...
  - kuschku 5y ago
    So you need to have separate WiFi networks, separate corporate devices that are so locked down that developers can never use their personal accounts from your devices or your corporate IP range (and ensure the same applies in reverse). To absolutely prevent any and all association.

gentleman11 5y ago

Googles dumb machine learning is destroying peoples lives and will continue to do so for decades unless somebody stops them. They control most of the internet and mobile space, it’s like having your water cut off permanently

foolzcrow 5y ago
savant_penguin 5y ago
I'm really unsure why people still decide to build their companies under Google products
- deleted 5y ago
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- carrolyda 5y ago
  Is there any cloud/PaaS/SaaS company without a "we can terminate your account at any time for any reason"-clause? Otherwise you still have the same problem wherever you go.
  - tedivm 5y ago
    Technically sure, but in reality that's not the case. I've personally seen people lose their GCP account for weeks over amazingly stupid stuff- if that same stuff happened at AWS I'd get a phone call from an account manager to clarify things and humans would be involved in the decision to shut things down. Google has a history of excluding humans from their processes, with no recourse for when their automation breaks except to complain online and hope someone important enough hears you. That's not something people can trust.
    - deleted 5y ago

CoastalCoder 5y ago

I seems "killed by Google" deserves a broader meaning.

mmastrac 5y ago

We cannot continue to allow big tech to provide these walled gardens with zero recourse. It's turning slowly into a Gibson-esque dystopia as they continue to set the rules under the guise of contracts and EULAs with a shadow legal system. If it needs to be more expensive to publish and buy apps, so be it. This is unsustainable.

lima 5y ago

We need legislation forcing companies to manually review algorithmic decisions that impact people's lives - there has to be a proper appeals process. It's simply not economical for many companies to deal with the long tail of false positives, so they don't. Google has billions of users, and if their algorithms are 99.999% right about bans, their metrics look great but that's still tens of thousands users wrongfully banned. I'm not usually a fan of government intervention but this is such a no-brainer for regulation. With how much our modern lives are dependent on services like Google's, they effectively become utilities and should be regulated as such.

Symbiote 5y ago
GDPR Art. 22: https://gdpr-info.eu/art-22-gdpr/ https://gdpr-info.eu/art-22-gdpr/ But that's only part of it. A business account might not fall within these rules, and Google can enforce them anyway (after human review) with very little recourse available. Breaking the App store duopoly is the solution.
- Sebb767 5y ago
  > Breaking the App store duopoly is the solution. Not really. We a comparable situation in a lot of different industries; if a large companies serves tens of thousands of customers and get hundreds of thousands of malicious requests, they're going to do some filtering and it will lead to some people getting stuck in the cracks, even if it's just 0.01%. More app stores won't solve this; if enough developers would be burned, the problem would solve itself on its own. That's not to say that I like the current situation, but from what I see it's likely that the actual number of incidents is low (compared to the number of Google's customers) and a third or fourth store won't change this.
- sschueller 5y ago
  It's coming but from the EU.
- davidkuennen 5y ago
  Every day I'm more thankful to live in the EU.

bluescrn 5y ago

Another example of why we should be opposing app-store-centric computing.

rvz 5y ago

Here we go again. Another day, another termination by Google Play. The reason? None. The same as this one: [0]. Robots at Google once again de-platforming apps because they can and for no reason. Like YouTube, Google will not change and it will only get worse. [0] [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30824079 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30824079

rhacker 5y ago

6 degrees of separation. Everyone is associated with everyone else, so basically Google should shut down itself at this point.

pram 5y ago

4 Feb 2022 - Termination of my personal account (Ali Nadalizadeh) This is pretty horrific!

yellow_lead 5y ago

Welcome to FANG support forums, a human being should review your case shortly...

qalmakka 5y ago

I will say this once again: App Stores are too important in the current world to be left to the mercy of some big Internet company. I agree they should get a cut due to them being both the creators and maintainers of their platforms, but their ability to regulate what's in them should be left to a third party or government agency, just like trade is not left to its own devices and has regulators. Apple and Google are way too powerful for their own good.

zivkovicp 5y ago
hear, hear.
bogwog 5y ago
Figuring out a fair and effective set of laws/regulations to control how these companies run their app stores seems way too hard and unrealistic. The easier and more effective solution is to simply force them to allow alternative app stores (without suppressing competition, like Google currently does). A free market tends to correct itself in the long term, so that should solve the majority of problems plaguing the mobile software industry today.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- Aeolun 5y ago
  > Figuring out a fair and effective set of laws/regulations to control how these companies run their app stores seems way too hard and unrealistic Anything has to be better than what we have today…
  - EricE 5y ago
    Yes, competition is better. Force them to allow other app stores on the same footing with Google's and Apple's. See how fast both suddenly find resources to deal with issues like these. Sunlight (and competition) is the best disinfectant!
- 5y ago

Shadonototra 5y ago

Share the "previous emails" they sent you, you either ignored them, or you know what you did wrong and are trying to play the innocent actor Hard to judge without having all the data in hand

LanceH 5y ago
Previous emails. That's funny. They don't send warnings and they don't allow appeals. It's 100% to done.
mechanical_bear 5y ago
It’s easier to feed the anti-Google circle jerk this way.
ceejayoz 5y ago
Where are you seeing that previous emails were sent? The screenshotted notice indicates it may be due to actions by the individual developer on their own account, for which the company would not necessarily have been notified.
- encryptluks2 5y ago
  I think it is due to account level access. They tried claiming they hadn't been associated with them for 3 years but then admit that the developer had access to their account as recent as Dec 2021. Let's say this developer did something really dirty like stole user data and then Google finds out this developer still has app store permissions through this other company account. I think Google handles these situations terribly from a PR perspective, because the moment someone posts negative publicity would be the perfect time to Google PR to show their hand and say no they are misleading the public. There is probably a good reason they don't do that though. I could see how a company isn't really responsible for what another developer did that they may have not known about, but I don't think we are getting the full story here.
  - ceejayoz 5y ago
    An entire company shouldn't get wiped off the map because one contractor has been misbehaving on another gig.

mikece 5y ago

Cases like this make me wish Google could be sued for $100,000,000 because it's clear that are they not following their own rules when it comes to banning accounts. This has REAL business impact, not to mention the implication of libel that the holder of the account did something to deserve to be banned. Yeah, I know: the business entered into an agreement with Google to abide by their rules and terms of service but when Google doesn't follow those rules I think they open themselves up to massive liability.

tempnow987 5y ago
Um, they are following their rules. They make this very clear when you sign up. If you have a scammer working for you / linked to your account, your account is VERY VERY much at risk. Lesson is, don't hire scam artists, ask your employees not to scam while they work for you or are linked to your account.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
voakbasda 5y ago
They would happily pay that amount if they could continue business as usual. Add a couple of zeros and you might get their attention.
- josephcsible 5y ago
  If they just had to pay it this once, I'd agree. But if they had to pay it every time they wrongly unpersoned someone, they'd change their ways really quickly.
  - phaistra 5y ago
    Another idea: For every repeated infraction of the same type, the fine doubles or triples.

chinathrow 5y ago

If you work at Google in this area (and I bet some of you will), then please, escalate this and please, fix your systems - as this is clearly something which destroys peoples lifes.

belter 5y ago
You don't get the 500K for your coding skills. Sounds like it's to soothe your conscience...

sccxy 5y ago

Always use different accounts for every Google Service. One "bad" Youtube comment can ban your Gmail account.

belter 5y ago
Or they will use your IP, say it was from the same device, or different IP same geo location...be afraid...be very afraid. "...Youtube Account Suspended" - "...All i do is watch videos and subscribe to my favorite youtube channels while sitting on the toilet!... I have no idea what to do." https://support.google.com/youtube/thread/21108892/youtube-account-suspended-all-i-do-is-watch-videos?hl=en https://support.google.com/youtube/thread/21108892/youtube-a...
- andrekandre 5y ago
  "I am not a Google or YouTube employee - Product Experts are volunteers" wow, i must live under a rock, but is this how google does "support"... by volunteers?

faggot 5y ago

kmeisthax 5y ago

Everyone here is commenting about overautomation, but this isn't an overautomation problem. It's a secondary sanctions problem. The developer isn't being banned for breaking Google's rules, he's being banned for having hired someone else who later broke those rules; and then that ban was transitively applied to their personal account as well. This is beyond the pale. Google should not have the power to decide who you are and are not allowed to hire. It both goes against the basic concept of a limited-liability corporation, and harms worker rights.

ceejayoz 5y ago
> Google should not have the power to decide who you are and are not allowed to hire. Especially not retroactively. "Your former employee broke the rules at their next job, so you're banned" is just bizarre.
shadowgovt 5y ago
It's both (over-automation and secondary sanctions). The secondary sanctions exist because it's near-trivial to automatically create dozens of proxy accounts for a bad actor to launder reputation through. So in addition to direct fraud detection, Google has had to automate secondary "Is this account probably the same bad actor" detection. That system, like any such system (including human review), has false-positivies where two accounts are believed to be the same owner when they are not. But the automation-with-insufficient-human-review problem is specifically Google's mistake, and there's room for improvement.
- spookthesunset 5y ago
  As somebody whose worked in the large scale anti-fraud area… I always make sure my team knows that the real people who fall through the cracks matter big time. Anti-fraud is a tough space because you can never be 100% sure which actors are legit and which are scammers… after all if you knew who the scammers actually were you’d have blocked them all ready. I always make sure there is some kind of escape hatch for legit users who get caught in our system. These escape hatches might not be super awesome for real users, especially if they fell into a bucket that strongly labels them as scammers, but at least they have an out.

ransom1538 5y ago

I have worked at four large scale mobile app companies [10 million downloads+]. All four were thrown out of the Apple store for various reasons. The real killer is the time between getting thrown out and finishing appeals. It's a real corrupt system too - like dealing with Russian oligarchs. You need to know the right people, know the right things to say, etc. If you don't you sort of play Russian roulette with the reviewer. That time between appeal and getting back in is usually enough to destroy all momentum - two of the companies just closed afterwards. I am still in mobile but in education teaching children to read [20+ million downloads]. I sleep well at night knowing we cannot be thrown out.... but any "phone call" from apple [they don't put anything in writing] I would probably throw up and have a full blown panic attack.

jordemort 5y ago

This kind of thing is why I would never try to build a company where the business model depended on being able to sell through Apple or Google's app stores, which is a shame because it ends up excluding several large categories of possibilities. I think there's probably a connection between the "bloat" and complexity of the modern web that the Gemini crowd rails against, and the draconian and wildly inconsistent gatekeeping that is applied to native apps for mobile platforms. It puts the Web platform in tight competition with native apps, because it is the only viable alternative; this causes developers to exert pressure to add more and more capabilities to browsers so that they can match native experiences without having to pass review or pay commissions. I wonder if browsers would have evolved in the same way if mobile devices were more open platforms.

zivkovicp 5y ago

I can't wait until the tipping point when people realize just how nasty Google is and start avoiding all of their services.

jmyeet 5y ago

I feel this user’s pain. Obviously we don’t know of food action was warranted in this case. Sometimes it isn’t and there being no recourse is unacceptable. Knowing someone at the company, having a sufficient Twitter audience or relying on posts like this getting attention should not be how this is resolved. Side note: I absolutely won’t use my Gmail account for any other Google service. It’s just too great a risk and it’s ridiculous that a developer ToS violation can also kill your Gmail access. I see a fundamental mistake these companies make with automation: optimizing for the wrong metric. The metric they seem to use is the number of cases handled by automated systems. What they should use is the number of cases their workers can deal with. The difference is that the second one doesn’t reward false positives. There are some cases that need human review. You should even be able to pay for expedited review (ideally refunding you if the decision is made in error). A good example of this is Tiktok’s reporting system. Like many such systems it’s clear that it just takes actions based on the number of reports. There is no penalty for fake reports. So people brigade creators they don’t like (typically politics and science) and those affected have to go appeals processes. It’s ridiculous. Put another way: automation shouldn’t replace people. It should augment their effectiveness.

bnj 5y ago
> What they should use is the number of cases tax workers can deal with. I'm curious about this and not completely sure I understand what it would look like in an example. Would you be willing to expand on the point?
- jmyeet 5y ago
  Imagine someone working in support. When an activity gets flagged it gets assigned to someone. An automated system might take action (eg shadow banking). Given the automation that worked might process 5000 cases a day. If the automation can resolve more cases that figure might go up to 8000. But if there’s an appeal that takes manual review and resolution that might wear up a lot of time stick that the rate drops to 3000. This means two things: 1. There is an impact on the metric from false positives; and 2. Having human review is still part of the system ultimately. It rather it can always be escalated to such. Now you might say the worker might be motivated to take the least time consuming action possible even if wrong but an appeal might be escalated above then and further time spent rectifying their mistake still counts against them.

jddil 5y ago

These stories are always one sided and gloss over the minor policy violation parts. When we get the full story it's usually less black and white. Quick skim over the thread and it sounds like they let an ex-employee have access to one of their accounts and he committed multiple violations? Was he spamming? Was he uploading malicious content to the store? Also, don't build on others platforms if you want to control your destiny. You can't have it both ways.

nadalizadeh 5y ago
It is not black and white, as I mentioned in the post, the former employee had violations in his own developer account. But in case of our company? None! Our company account is assumed to be "associated" with wrongdoing of my former employee. This is the black side.
- jddil 5y ago
  His own developer account was linked to yours ... that's how this works. In the future, fully control the accounts yourself or don't build in someones walled garden and then complain when they ask you to leave.
  - nadalizadeh 5y ago
    Sure, you are good in giving advice!
    - jddil 5y ago
      It's not for you, it's for the next tech entrepreneur who may stumble on this thread. It's a warning that if your livelihood or something is really important to you, you should not build it inside google or apples walled garden. Or if you do, know that for any reason they choose they can kick you off. Unfair as that is. Welcome to capitalism. Go host your own stuff if you don't like their rules.

LWIRVoltage 5y ago

This is the issue with data being tied and connected.... Not long ago, someone here raised similar concerns with Microsoft 's ecosystem It stemmed from their current underway process to force all Minecraft accounts to Microsoft accounts, and the current Microsoft account process, if you don't add a phone number during account creation, locks and bans the account automatically after a week with they only recovery option being to then give a phone number, and most voip ones are auto detected and not accepted. If you set up the account with an alternate email, that has no effect. Setting up TOTP has had scattered reports over sometimes allowing the account to not auto ban you, but recent reports are that this too often won't stop it. There are reports that using Microsoft s own authenticator app, does stop the account from auto banning you unironically, that I have not confirmed Of course this means they can then tie it to potentially your computer pending how you set up Windows, or Xbox live, etc. Which is a risk if you've been formerly banned from something like xbox- everything is now linked, and therefore subject to action automatically with no human team to talk to about the process. Also, if you then go and give it to them then afterwards try to remove it, the system will not let you without extreme effort, and more details. I worry greatly about this situation where our personal accounts are all tied together through hardware ids, mandatory phone numbers,IP addresses, and different accounts across systems, only to all get banned or locked out at once with no recourse - or demanding more data(like Minecraft indirectly giving Microsoft every single phone number for the biggest player base in the world, as mandatory(with specific exceptions for like one or two countries who's laws they are working around now, with Korea appears to be one) Also, so many companies use Amazon, Google, Microsoft company emails and systems- your full name is there, so there is a increasing risk that if something happens to your company account, the systems knows your personal accounts and by name, bans or affects them too. Privacy advocates are being proven right about the need to be able to not give info that ties everything together

A4ET8a8uTh0 5y ago
This. I genuinely wonder if people understand how much data is flowing about them on a daily basis and whether they would care if they did. I am just a guy at a place and I personally think I have way more insight in people's private lives than I should. I can't imagine how bad it is at a less regulated institution.

akomtu 5y ago

2045: "The DOJ algorithm has mistakenly declared me a felon. I've been trying to appeal to a human judge, while serving time in prison, but have been getting only automated responses so far."

g_p 5y ago

In Europe, the legislation to look at would be https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:32019R1150 https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:32... Specifically, article 4 covers termination of service, and the rules around this. It seems Google and other platform providers have no interest in following these rules though.

anaccountexists 5y ago

Before saying anything else: I’m sorry OP. This is miserable to deal with and I know you’re probably very upset right now. On the other hand- at every company I’ve worked at, this is why there’s clear onboarding and off boarding policies. Yes- if you have someone on your developer account violating terms of service, they’ll shut down the account. No, it doesn’t matter that it wasn’t you personally. To put this differently: if you had a bank account shared between your developers, and someone who left the company started using it for money laundering, the entire account would be shut down and you would not be getting that money back. In fact, you might even be investigated by authorities for money laundering since it ran through your account. As someone who works in FinTech, we deal with tons of people just trying to steal / defraud others on a daily basis, and we’re required but governments across the world to be on the lookout for people doing “fraudy” things and terminate their accounts ASAP. If we just said “oh, it’s fine, you’re not in trouble because your (insert X relative here) was the bad person, not you,” then social engineering fraud would be rampant everywhere. To me, the Google situation is identical to the bank situation. There’s not a good way to prove the bad account shouldn’t be associated with your Play store account. This is why you have to be diligent about who has access to these things.

nerdawson 5y ago
I may have misinterpreted the explanation given in the post. It sounded to me like a developer they'd employed violated the TOS on their personal Google dev account. Google then recognised a connection between the dev and another Google account belonging to a company and opted to suspend that as well. To use your example, that would be like an employee getting their bank account frozen for something they'd done in their personal life, and then the company having their bank frozen too for depositing money into the employee's account.
- anaccountexists 5y ago
  I’d liken the latter to having a company credit card account. Regardless, in the bank case there’s a high chance adjacent / connected accounts would be frozen (at least for a time) because money laundering tends to happen in rings. I see your point, though.

cao_wang 5y ago

Windows 11 Mobile phone with its native support for Android apps can counter the monopoly of big G. Will Microsoft come to our rescue?

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

boredumb 5y ago

The discussion of "ethics" in ML tend to revolve around race and sex in order for large organizations to pretend they have some moral high ground when their models are being used to ruin peoples lives and enable billion dollar companies to not hire and manage non technical employees to make human decisions involving human problems. These people _are_ evil and their code and models are being used for destructive purposes, and so we are forced to read about their "ethics" applied to some obscure race, sex or "toxicity" problems as a way to cope with themselves. Banning someone on youtube for being racist is objectively less good than banning a team of people from pursuing their livelihoods, but focusing on the prior is a great way to distract from the fact that with a revenue over $50,000,000,000 they can't hire a small fleet of people to handle customer and partner relations. If it makes you feel better though, you don't have to see opinions on the internet that google data scientists deem toxic as often.

qwertox 5y ago

"Innocent until proven guilty"... This sentence has zero value in Google's enforcement of their ToS, even though it is a fundamental right.

duxup 5y ago

I know a group of devs collaborating on a side project. Same thing happened to them. They created a new developer account for this project, worked together on it, and the app vanished off the store and dev account terminated, along with one of the developer's personal developer account. They assumed, but don't know, it was because the developer who had his personal account suspended as well once worked for a company who was kinda scummy and went fully scummy a few years after that developer left. Somehow that was associated with him personally and then the chain of guilt made its way to them. This seems to re-enforce that this kind of chain of guilt is a thing.

hbn 5y ago
It's the new virus! Your account was terminated because you know a guy who knows a guy who worked at a company whose CEO is the cousin of a guy who broke Google ToS. 6 degrees of termination.
- Topgamer7 5y ago
  > 6 degrees of termination. I died. This should be the term.
- duxup 5y ago
  How soon until everyone at Facebook is associated? :O
- ncann 5y ago
  Reminds me of Nine familial exterminations in China back in the days: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nine_familial_exterminations https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nine_familial_exterminations
  - duxup 5y ago
    In the Apple TV series Foundation they do that, including extending beyond the family to any kind of connections, friends and etc. Eventually including something around 1500+ individuals tied to one person. The point being to eliminate whatever impact that person had on the universe. Maybe Google's algorithm is more concerned with being a tyrannical emperor than we think ...

ComradePhil 5y ago

These fkers need to be brought down with much bigger lawsuits and regulations. They can't continue to operate like this. We can't have app distribution in these people's hands (both Apple and Google) unless they change fundamentally.

qwertox 5y ago

One of the comments on Reddit states that: > Develop for iOS. Apple has humans who answer phones and create support tickets and escalate issues and follow up and respond. Is this true? Because if it is, my next phone will be an iPhone and I will completely move into the Apple ecosystem and develop for publishing in the App Store instead of Google Play Store. Even though I don't do anything bad, these kind of news do have me absolutely scared that it's simply not worth it. It's beyond ridiculous how Google is treating developers. At least be precise in the cause of the termination, explain exactly what has happened.

izacus 5y ago
We had a fun merry go round with Apples humans just copy-pasting policy answers and refusing to actually understand the issue as well. They're not quite as bad as Google in this respect, but tying Apple chain over your neck for slightly less abusive system is a pretty Stockholm syndrome thing to do as well. You can't fix this by paying corporations more money.
- natch 5y ago
  You can ask Apple people to escalate to second tier support and beyond that if warranted they will even pull in engineering (not to talk to you directly but to resolve the issues behind the scenes). And with Apple you are talking to humans who also happen to be good communicators in my experience. If you’re having trouble with Apple, it’s probably you.
  - izacus 5y ago
    That escalation only happens with a chosen few companies (which I've been part of as well, but please understand, this is not the usual experience for most). This experience is also available with Google - "you just need to know someone" or be a company they care about right now.
    - natch 5y ago
      That escalation has happened with me as an individual developer so it’s not at all only for a few chosen companies.

ranjitcool1 5y ago

Crosseye_Jack 5y ago

Starting a email regrading an account termination with "Hi" comes off as being a dick! (BTW, I'm talking about the email Google sent the dev's)

Lamad123 5y ago

i's kinda said when your livelihood is decided by dumb AI that can't tell the difference between a joke and a war declaration or some poor reviewer/customer support who needs to decode so much shit in 35 seconds and decide if you broke non-transparent terms.

FpUser 5y ago

Car repair shop used to treat customers like shit and hold them hostage. It ended up with the government stepping in and requiring them to adhere to a certain protocols (like showing parts changed). I think that Google has done enough damage. Government has to step in and smack hard in a teeth with a heavy fine and a requirement to introduce notices before doing any action (especially where money are involved) and mandatory appeal process with the human involved and obligation to answer direct questions (like giving detailed reason).

gambler 5y ago

To all the people who think this is some sort of accident that will get corrected. It is and it isn't. This particular manifestation of ban by association might be a corrected if it gets enough pushback. The general idea, however, is something Alphabet and the rest of Big Tech clearly like, because there are more and more cases of this sort. Moreover, you likely supported this when it manifested a bit differently. Most of HN seems to firmly believe in guilt-by-association as a way to control behavior, speech and thought. You get all preachy and act horrified when it goes "too far" (i.e. when it looks like something that might happen to you personally), but in general it's a concept endorsed or at least tolerated by the majority here. Well, you know what they say about Karma.

dang 5y ago
Generalizations about the community like that are basically spurious unless you have real data. People on all sides of every issue feel that HN is dominated by the view they happen to dislike. It's a mechanism of perception: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20dislike%20notice&sort=byDate&type=story&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=%22false%20feelings%20of%20generality%22&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

renewiltord 5y ago

Ah, interesting. I wonder if this means you can’t have your @company.com logged in at the same Chrome installation as your @personal.com. So the only safe way is for companies to say you have to have a separate browser for @company.com?

whymauri 5y ago

Once again, the resolution of this problem will come down to either the OP knowing a Google employee or a Google employee happening to see this and feeling pity. For the vast majority of people who deal with Google support and don't have access to Google employees how many of us on HN do, when the hammer strikes: they are completely out of options. I have such little trust in Google's automation for banning accounts that I don't even bother commenting on Youtube or uploading videos anymore. Who know when some innocuous footage that I have will trigger a cascade of copyright strikes and ban my personal GMail? It's like walking around glass.

dandare 5y ago
I don't understand why the fear of being sued is not preventing Google (and other big players) from misusing their position like this. Is it impossible to sue Google?
- bogantech 5y ago
  It's possible to sue them but how deep are your pockets?
- _fat_santa 5y ago
  > Is it impossible to sue Google? Theoretically no but practically yes. Even if they know they are in the wrong and would loose a court case, they still "win" by just dragging it out and making you go broke on legal fees.
  - School-Cotton 5y ago
    Do you really think they'd drag out the case endlessly rather than just having a human spend 5 minutes looking at your account, verifying that it's indeed not malicious, and reinstating it?
- lkxijlewlf 5y ago
  Google is worth 1.8 TRILLION dollars. How much would you have to sue them for before they start to give a shit? 1.8T is an unimaginable amount of money.

pipeline_peak 5y ago

Sure are a lot of “innocent” accounts getting shutdown.

projectramo 5y ago

Not sure why people thing Google does not have a help function. I think it is obvious at this point that reddit and hacker news are Google's help desks but people do need to vote up the relevant tickets to get priority attention.

pipeline_peak 5y ago

> harms workers rights Isn’t that kind of the trade off of small entities doing business with a tech conglomerate? There’s not much government authorization with developing smart phone apps.

shdon 5y ago

15-20 years ago, I had a pretty good opinion of Google, as they seemed competent and true to their then motto "don't be evil". Now I avoid them wherever I can personally (unfortunately, and to my great dismay, my employer is fully dependent on Google cloud products). It seems they have become very evil. And what's worse... casually evil. The fact that these things happen is bad enough, but not having any recourse or a good way to resolve this is just unacceptable.

kmeisthax 5y ago
Even 15 years ago we were hearing stories of Google summarily terminating whole accounts without stating a reason beyond some business-ese for "You know what you did". They have always treated their anti-fraud teams as secret police rather than just a way to mitigate business risk.
- ncann 5y ago
  10-15 years ago me and I assumed most people here viewed Google in a very positive light. At that time they seemed to be doing everything right and were somehow at the top of everything they did. Gmail was game changing, Search had no equal, Youtube was mind boggling, and Android and Chrome and so many other things. Somehow they lost their way in the process which is a shame.

flerchin 5y ago

I would like for Google to have a process whereby this type of story is not plausible. They are too big to not do business with.

im3w1l 5y ago

We used to live in a magical world, where your fate was governmened by fire spirits, by demons and by thunder gods. We tamed nature and learned a scientific worldview. What these algorithms are doing is turning back the clock. Undoing the science. It's bringing us a new world of superstitution, where you better don't anger the machine elves.

ultim8k 5y ago

We gave these mofos an ecosytem because they were hiding behind the label of "free and open source software". Now they can screw anyone and not even answer to emails. They are nothing but crooks. All software giants hold too much power in their hands and nobody can touch them. What can you do? They have at least 50% of the market.

incrudible 5y ago
For one, Apple has the better 50% of the market. You could do without Android. Secondly, being subservient to any app storefront policy is not a position you want to navigate into in the first place.
fsflover 5y ago
> What can you do? https://puri.sm/products/librem-5 https://puri.sm/products/librem-5 and https://pine64.org/pinephone https://pine64.org/pinephone.
- dymk 5y ago
  I'd rather just carry around a laptop than use those phones

otterley 5y ago

OP: You don't happen to be an Iranian national, do you? Google's relationship with Iranians is... complicated, and likely influenced by the U.S.'s sanctions regime with respect to Iran and some of its nationals.

ivanche 5y ago
Hah, it seems you’re right! This is OPs LinkedIn profile https://www.linkedin.com/in/nadalizadeh/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/nadalizadeh/
- tenuousemphasis 5y ago
  What on the profile are you basing OP's Iranian nationality?
  - ivanche 5y ago
    Speaks Persian, went to Tehran University, has Iranian name.

rosmax_1337 5y ago

I'm intrested in knowing what TOS the "associated" developer account broke?

dethos 5y ago

The need for alternatives to the PlayStore (and even AppStore) is real. Developers should start publishing to those alternatives to mitigate against these risks (even if they don't bring too much traffic/revenue at the moment).

nperez 5y ago

In my current org, all developers, whether they're F/T or contractors, have a company account created for them and never get permissions on any other account. This is a good reminder on why I should adopt that practice I ever build a company of my own, no matter how small.

CalChris 5y ago

A Google Developer account costs all of $25, one time. You really should scale your expectations of service based on that number. You will not be partying with Larry Page in Fiji for $25. https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answer/6112435?hl=en https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answ...

josephcsible 5y ago
No matter how cheap that is, I should not have to worry about losing my personal Gmail because one of my former co-workers broke one of Google's rules at a different job.

incrudible 5y ago

Never build on top of Google. Yes, this limits what you can do. No, that is not a bad thing.

phendrenad2 5y ago
Build on top of Google or Apple (or Microsoft or Amazon, you never know when they'll adopt this anti-user stuff too) only once you are big enough that they need you more than you need them.

at_a_remove 5y ago

I am struggling to remember the name of this sci-fi book I had read about twenty-five years ago. Someone encounters a civilization where things are going pretty darned well for the humans, and there are these spider-aliens who make sure that the trains are running on time. It's just that a small portion of the population is abducted by the spider-aliens, for a long period of agonizing torture before being consumed. Everyone knows and accepts this. Nobody knows who is going to get snatched and tormented and eaten. But otherwise things are just great! Omelas aside, I think of this every time I read about someone's work or life or memories or whatever just getting zapped by Google, for a reason that is probably contained in a 500kb EULA, but one you will never find. It's free! You can do all of this stuff! It's great! Except for when your stuff gets randomly eaten.

josephcsible 5y ago
Not the same book, but a similar story is The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas.
tjalfi 5y ago
TVTropes has lists of science fiction with insectoid aliens[0] and books with giant spiders[1]. [0] https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/InsectoidAliens https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/InsectoidAliens [1] https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/GiantSpider/Literature https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/GiantSpider/Literatur...

time4tea 5y ago

It's I guess tangentially related, but in terms of de-googling, I've been using docker mailserver https://github.com/docker-mailserver/docker-mailserver https://github.com/docker-mailserver/docker-mailserver for a few years now and it is great. Combined with bluemail, thunderbird clients, backblaze for backup, and solar panels, it runs in my house and is basically free. For resiliency I do pay for a backup MX, which is about $5/year per domain. It took a few hours to set up, supports many users (family and friends) and maybe 1h every 3 months to update and check all is good.

ketanip 5y ago

So should one stay away from GCP as google can associate their personal account and profession account, and if the system detect some action which triggers it in personal account it may block all accounts and so there could be a severe data loss and other reputational losses of the company ?

peeters 5y ago

Is anything stopping app developers from forming a (non-workers) union to collectively bargain and advocate for its members? This seems like something where if every app developer paid dues to a central body, with the insurance that each dispute had the resources and leverage of that body, then maybe they would take more care in the first place.

phendrenad2 5y ago
Maybe an ACLU-like legal org.

tasubotadas 5y ago

Could we stop sharing old reddit links? It works horribly on mobile.

YATA0 5y ago
Agreed. In a year the entire reddit thread will be [deleted] and [removed] and the post will be edited and completely redacted, etc. Reddit is cancer.

techaddict009 5y ago

Same happened with me once. And till date couldnt find out the association and what wrong we did or the association who they say we are associated with!

AtNightWeCode 5y ago

I hate Google Play. I have been insulted in public chats by Google staff insinuating that I tried to go around Google Play rules when fact is that I have tried to solve the demands Google Play puts in the first place when they removed the apps. Good luck fighting this as a small company.

brutal_chaos_ 5y ago

Just a friendly reminder for Google users, backup your cloud data before you can't. https://takeout.google.com/ https://takeout.google.com/

richardfey 5y ago

What if they were both doing something irregular, using the same malicious library, and that is why they were associated?

CursedUrn 5y ago

We need an online Bill of Rights to stop these huge companies destroying lives and businesses on a whim.

tediousdemise 5y ago

Two words: web app. We need to collectively abandon these walled gardens and reject putting all of our eggs into one company's basket.

Animats 5y ago

Google giveth, and Google taketh away. Blessed be the name of Google.

betwixthewires 5y ago

Suppose you were to make an f-droid like client without a source code requirement. A way for people to host their own proprietary applications, and a client app that can manage repositories the way f-droid does. How would you: - make applications/repositories discoverable without running a service, - allow developers to handle billing for paid apps themselves, again, no service, - have client side malware protection without playing a cat and mouse game, - prevent discoverability of pirate repositories without running a service? If these problems can be solved (or others I didn't think of, maybe you did?) you can basically get rid of monopoly curation of available applications on android (or anywhere for that matter).

nadalizadeh 5y ago

Update: Google reviewed our case and reinstated the accounts. I really appreciate your help and I'm extremely grateful to anyone in this community who helped us to reach a real representative in the policy team. Although our issue has been resolved (and we are really happy about that), there should not be a need for such a social media campaign in the first place and not all small businesses might have this chance to reinstate their accounts. I hope that the team at Google stops associating the accounts automatically and would improve their relationship with the developer community more than ever.

avierax 5y ago

Google issue escalation final stage is hackernews.