5 ms·

My son pleasured himself on Gemini Live. Entire family's Google accounts banned

208 points by samlinnfer 6mo ago

testbjjl 6mo ago
Honestly, making the content unavailable for anyone who hasn’t already downloaded it by blocking the entire account is probably not the worst thing. Also, family account?
- falcor84 6mo ago
  >Also, family account? My understanding is that Google banned all users that had been logged into that family device.
  - tartoran 6mo ago
    Why not ban the offending account only? Is there a logic i'm missing?
    - dlenski 6mo ago
      From Google's point of view, very little downstairs to banning those other accounts. And the upside is that they reduce their legal risk: "We automatically blocked the account that was generating the kiddie porn, as well as the other accounts that had been logged into that device." It's probably as simple as that…
    - eviks 6mo ago
      Yes, the logic you're missing is "protect the children"
xvxvx 6mo ago
Mark my words: they’ll make a movie about this but change his age to 18. The whole family. Including his 2 sisters… what a nightmare.
- AtheistOfFail 6mo ago
  This Summer: Bad Wank, from the people who brought you Bad Blood.
- subscribed 6mo ago
  "What have you done, step bro?!"
0xy 6mo ago
[flagged]
- chung8123 6mo ago
  That feels a bit judgemental. Kids make mistakes despite how much good parenting you give them. It is not like he didn't take precautions with parental controls and at 14 you have to trust them a bit.
- sourcegrift 6mo ago
  [dead]
- nsingh2 6mo ago
  Really uncharitable take. I did stupid things at 14, and had more unrestricted internet access too. > absent parent more concerned with his business than his son I don't know how you came to this conclusion from the post.
- latentsea 6mo ago
  Parent of the year over here.
- smuhakg 6mo ago
  If a 14 year old engaged in erotic roleplay with a sexual predator over Google Meet, would you be saying the same thing?
  - tshaddox 6mo ago
    I would say that Google should not ban the victim’s family members’ account in that scenario.
neonstatic 6mo ago
The terrifying part is how much one can be dependent on services from a single company, that may at some point simply decide to not do business with you. Whether they have good reason for that is secondary. I moved away from relying on Google a while ago when I noticed, that I have zero recourse in case something happens. Turned out to be a sensible decision. I still use my google account, but only for things I wouldn't miss if I the account was nuked.
- tartoran 6mo ago
  Not everyone is aware how Google operates in cases like these until it happens. . Whether Google don't want to do business with people breaching some rules is one thing but to lock away all their data is something that does not make much sense to me, only highlights how their service should not be depended on. Also to ban all people who may have logged in from a device but who have done nothing wrong is bad policy. From do no evil to this...
  - neonstatic 6mo ago
    My comment focused on Google because that's what OP is about, but I wouldn't single them out here. I think it's largely a matter of scale / compliance. There have been many posts here on HN about individuals and companies "begging" (their words not mine) Apple to reconsider a decision regarding their account. I don't have any experience with Meta, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was also a fully automated, no recourse black box.
- robomartin 6mo ago
  I thankfully learned that lesson about twenty years go. Google had a product that allowed you to park domains with them for ad insertion to generate some revenue. Owning over 400 domains at the time I though, why not? The process through which you parked the domains with Google entailed loading a file with the list of domains, after which each one would, in turn, be approved or denied. All 400+ domains were approved. A few days later I received a cryptic message about unusual click activity on the domains and the Google account I had at the time was shut down immediately without recourse. I visited a few of the pages (not all 400, maybe a dozen) as they were approved to see what they put on them. Of course I did not click on anything. I might be accused of being stupid, but I am not an idiot. Besides, I pretty much knew the income would be a rounding error, maybe a few cups of coffee per year, maybe. Well, nobody to call, text, email or send smoke signals to. Nothing. That's when I decided I would never do business with Google. All I use from them is search. That's it. Nothing else. I can't trust them with anything that is business related and anything personally important. Gmail? No way. I pay for Zoho mail for all the email accounts for my businesses and I am very happy about the product, the service and the isolation from a despotic company that can shut down your life in a microsecond.
hyperhello 6mo ago
Where the hell is the open source app that downloads all your google stuff? There is a huge opportunity to be a hero.
- lkbm 6mo ago
  Google Takeout[0] seems to have basically everything selected by default, so I don't see a need for another tool. [0] https://takeout.google.com/ https://takeout.google.com/
  - mdni007 6mo ago
    Most people who use Google services don't know about this or simply do not have bare minimum technical knowledge required to set this up or even know why they would need to do backups
    - lkbm 6mo ago
      It doesn't require any technical expertise to set up--you click a button--unless you want to import into something else. I agree it should be more advertised, but I don't see how an open source tool would require less technical knowledge or be better known.
  - deleted 6mo ago
    [deleted]
- nosrepa 6mo ago
  Why do you need an app? https://takeout.google.com/ https://takeout.google.com/
  - buildbot 6mo ago
    Takeout always fails for me, with ~11TB of data in Google Drive.
    - xnx 6mo ago
sourcegrift 6mo ago
Google will be a better monopoly than Microsoft i promise. GitHub is great, I know it in the heart of my hearts. Steam is owned by literal reincarnation of Jesus Christ, they'll never turn on me. Loyalty is of course a quality of a decent human being. But not loyalty to corporations that you trade fair with, or worse, use YOU as a product. Only loyalty to people committed to you
iamnothere 6mo ago
This kind of thing is not the only modern example of guilt by association, but it’s probably the most common. (Not this specific event, I mean the banning of “cloud” accounts based on proximity.) There is a reason that we once eliminated this idea. It’s a stain on a free society and a constant drag on the economy. Corporations embracing this tactic are laying the groundwork for a terrible future.
nozzlegear 6mo ago
This was kind of an interesting comment from that thread. "Just invoke GDPR" is a refrain that's oft-repeated on Reddit (and, dare I say, HN), but it didn't seem to do much in this person's case: > I did an SAR with Google last year and it took over a month for a single account. It also ended up containing very little because of the way they decide what is and isn’t ‘personal data’, e.g. for the one I used for work, they outright refused to release most of it apart from specific emails and docs where I was mentioned by name because the email address was a standard contact@mywebsite.com (which to be fair is correct grounds for refusal). They were very helpful in padding out the SAR release by re-sending the emails of me requesting the SAR, and also redacted the data protection employee name whom I was conversing with though lol. > For SARs themselves there’s also grounds to refuse if they think it might interfere with potential future legal investigations, which given the ban reason I suppose isn’t an impossibility but unlikely.
1123581321 6mo ago
It sounds like the son was desperately using the linked family accounts he had access to as the previously used accounts became banned. But he only admitted to doing it on his own account. That would account for the time it took for the bans to spread, and for why the son came clean a few days later instead of right away or never. Brutal situation; hope the can restore access.
- Nevermark 6mo ago
  The common device would have been enough. Hosts feel like they have everything to lose by not banning problematic accounts, everything to gain by performatively burning anything “sketchy”, and nothing to lose by the inevitable automated over banning. I almost lost everything because I used a state ID that was not a drivers license (which i did not have at the time), in combination with another complication that was “caused” by a recent move between states. It made zero sense if you are not an automated system, and would have been devastating if I hadn’t figured out a path through it. I spent three weeks under enormous stress, as my savings, among other things, were needed to pay off the majority of my house right then. But despite the insanity, it was easy to see the pedantic digital “reasoning” that was happening. The mass centralization and automation of commerce is pushing us into dystopia. Brazil. We are not safe. I mean that. Until laws make corporations responsible for these kinds of harms, with fines on the order of historic fortunes, if they don’t, it is going to get worse. The “mind boggling fine” part makes for a hard sell. But it is the only way to create balance against the mind boggling levels of centralization and profits that insulate these companies of any personal individual level ethics.
Mistletoe 6mo ago
I’m just over here trying to understand why or how you would do that to Gemini Live. >Visual Context: On mobile, you can choose to share your camera feed or screen. This allows you to ask questions about what you are looking at in the real world or get help with tasks on your device. >Common Use Cases • Brainstorming: Talking through ideas for a project or event. • Role-playing: Practicing for a job interview or a difficult conversation. • Learning: Asking deep-dive questions about a complex topic while you're on the go. • Daily Tasks: Getting help with things like gift ideas, travel itineraries, or summarizing information from your screen.
- latentsea 6mo ago
  You underestimate people.
- deleted 6mo ago
  [deleted]
elephanlemon 6mo ago
Google really needs to do something about this. It’s one thing for them to stop doing business with you, it’s another to withhold your data from you (in particular after they set up their services such that you’re inclined to store everything with them). Every time I read one of these stories it reminds me that I really need to break away from them. I currently use Google Voice for almost all SMS 2FA after a nightmare scenario where I realized that the mobile carriers are entirely susceptible to social engineering and will happily port your number to an attacker’s phone. I planned to switch to Fi as they are probably the only one that this is not susceptible to… but if I were to lose both email and phone access I’d really be fucked.
- dlenski 6mo ago
  > I currently use Google Voice for almost all SMS 2FA Same. I have financial accounts in multiple countries, many using Google Voice for 2FA. However, whenever I create an account that allows anything other than SMS for 2FA, I immediately switch to that instead. I use an offline TOTP authenticator app, and backup the token secrets in something that's not linked to my Google account. This greatly limits my blast radius, I think, because I can access my most critical online services without access to my Google account. My Google Voice number is the only phone number I've used for 15+ years. It'd be a real nightmare if I lost access to my Gmail and/or Voice.
- subscribed 6mo ago
  I recall there are some providers resistant to this attack but also not Google. Best of luck. Its not a great situation to be in.
elevation 6mo ago
If I ever become a life coach for small business owners, I don't know how I can recommend GSuite. Horror stories of "I've lost everything I had with them" are so plentiful I've stopped saving them. Seems like even Microsoft is not as bad.
- orbital-decay 6mo ago
  What would Microsoft do in such a case? Unlikely to be any different.
  - 800xl 6mo ago
    No idea, but at least Microsoft has some semblance of support where you can talk to a person.
  - unethical_ban 6mo ago
    I have no context since the original post is deleted, but in general, it seems the supposed account of the son was not tied in any direct way to the other accounts... The solution is to use a true business-oriented provider and not an ad agency for one's file and email hosting.
- gwern 6mo ago
  The description by OP in comments like https://old.reddit.com/r/LegalAdviceUK/comments/1s92fql/my_son_pleasured_himself_in_front_of_gemini_live/odlduf9/ https://old.reddit.com/r/LegalAdviceUK/comments/1s92fql/my_s... seems to strongly imply that all the accounts were unconnected in a GSuite sense, and they are being slowly recursively banned by Google based on indirect connections like recovery emails or co-presence on a device. I don't see any reasonable way they could have saved themselves besides something crazy like requiring every family member use a different feudal lord - one person gets Google, one person gets Apple, one poor guy gets Microsoft...
  - Aurornis 6mo ago
    That detail is where I first paused and realize this story is more likely a creative writing exercise than a factual account They had a separate claim that after the bannings and after the son admitted what he did, they received an email confirming that the accounts were banned for “child protection” Received where? They just claimed all of their accounts were banned first, including linked recovery accounts. Also where is the text of that email? Communications like that are key to legal matters yet it was only shared as a passing comment
apt-apt-apt-apt 6mo ago
There's a story of an OnlyFans star who slept with Meta employees "in hopes" of getting her IG account unbanned, which worked.
- desultir 6mo ago
  [flagged]
- deleted 6mo ago
  [deleted]
- subscribed 6mo ago
  Congrats for them but that's also f** up - no recourse, but essentially being coerced into sex work to having a problem (often caused by the company) to be fixed.
  - derangedHorse 6mo ago
    > coerced into sex work That doesn't sound like what happened lol. I'm sure there were many other avenues she could have tried, she probably chose the one she preferred.
    - Henchman21 6mo ago
      Nonsense. Don't you know that all women hate sex and have to be tricked into it in the first place? Thank you for attending my TED Talk, where we examine beliefs held by foolish men in tech.
    - apt-apt-apt-apt 6mo ago
      Yeah, it was probably great for her– she used it as a shocking story that likely got her loads of new leads.
koolba 6mo ago
This is the exact scenario I described one month ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47195943 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47195943
- elephanlemon 6mo ago
  Jeez, really gives you incentive not to use Gemini.
- orbital-decay 6mo ago
  >Way too risky to use Google services like this tied to your primary account. Google has no problem correlating your accounts unless you know what you're doing and are ready to switch to the cypherpunk mode.
  - genidoi 6mo ago
    There is realistically no way to evade the account correlation systems that Google (likely) has.
    - orbital-decay 6mo ago
      It's not that hard actually, but separation has a maintenance/convenience cost and requires you to think before doing anything.
      - genidoi 6mo ago
        We're speculating here but between time correlation, browser fingerprinting and telemetry, the average user attempting to pull off a clean compartmentalisation of two accounts has no chance, even when they think they do.
        orbital-decay 6mo ago
        I'm not speculating, but yes, ordinary users won't be able do that, that's what my warning is about.
neko_ranger 6mo ago
yo I'm not an anxious person but this has set it off. If it truly is anyone who had logged into the same device, I wonder if a system reset keeps you clean from any bad accounts going forward. For example if I system reset and sold a tablet on craigs list
vessenes 6mo ago
Oooof. This is going to take a lawyer. A team of lawyers. Everything on that account has no doubt been LOCKED down for CSAM-grade review. I'm just imagining how you'd get a judge to help you here. You'd need to have found an acceptable third party that would do the data access, you'd have to agree on an attorney's eyes only list of data that you'd request.. Any chance anyone might possibly access CSAM = no. Any chance someone might possibly try and delete CSAM = absolutely no. I don't know what the OP does for work, but almost certainly it's going to be easier to just start over with a new website. Maybe get the daughter's laptop taken to a data recovery specialist and try and pull browser history for the thesis.
troad 6mo ago
God, this is a real nightmare. I'm pretty reticent to rush to regulation, but I really don't know what other solution is even possible here. The average person cannot realistically exist in a digital vacuum, self-hosting their entire online world. Google should not be able to do this to them. No one should have to rely on trying to whip up public mobs on Reddit or HN to get Google to give them access to their own freaking tax spreadsheets.
- eviks 6mo ago
  Are you not aware of a million of dedicated competitive services for each of this to jump to "self-hosting" as the only alternative? > All my emails, all my documents saved in Google Drive.
  - deleted 6mo ago
    [deleted]
  - simonw 6mo ago
    How many of those competitive services would also lock the account if something like this happened?
    - ryandrake 6mo ago
      Yes, these stories should scare you off of cloud services in general, not one particular vendor. The root problem is that you're storing valuable information on "someone else's computer." And that someone can decide to stop serving you for any or no reason at all, and you are without recourse. This should be totally unacceptable, but somehow the world has normalized it. Don't keep anything in a cloud service that you couldn't live with losing, unless you keep a local backup. Including and especially your identity (E-mail) which unlocks all your accounts.
      - eviks 6mo ago
        No, the root problem is you put all the eggs in one basket ignoring the folk wisdom that predates anything digital > Don't keep anything in a cloud service that you couldn't live with losing, unless you keep a local backup. Translated: so do keep everything in a cloud service, just backup it at a fraction of the effort with / insecurity / unreliability / unavailability of your own computer
ValveFan6969 6mo ago
[dead]
mjnews 6mo ago
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Aurornis 6mo ago
Reminder that Reddit is a hotbed for creative writing stories posted as pleas for advice. It’s a trend across all of the advice subreddits. They usually have rules that you’re not allowed to question the posts, only provide advice, so it’s a safe output for LARPing for attention, weirdly enough. This story is triggering a lot of my skepticism senses because it fits the mold of a typical creative writing Reddit post: - The OP claims Google just banned their account for CSAM content, yet nobody is considering the legal consequences of this? Their details would be referred to law enforcement and they could have police knocking on their door any minute. Why is the only thing anyone is talking about the access to their email? - OP is a helpless victim in a story where the world conspires against them - This is ostensibly a request for legal advice, but they didn’t post the one communication they claimed to have received in the matter (an e-mail explaining the reason for their bans, which they somehow received despite all accounts being banned) - A lot of unnecessary extra details about how the tragedy is amplified, like the doctor’s dissertation just happens to be due next week. Apparently she’s been writing this for so long but hasn’t shared a copy with anyone for review, editing, or feedback once? Right. - Villain is a safe target like an evil megacorp, with a guest villain of a teenage boy who is also safe to dislike - OP only responds to helpful suggestions with new facts that conveniently obviate those helpful suggestions, like the response explaining they have to use an obscure bank that doesn’t have any physical branches for reasons - OP completely ignores helpful responses that provide actionable advice. The real accounts are usually all over these comments with requests for additional detail. - OP has a strange timeline of events where the “AI” banned the first account, then Google manual review started banning accounts that had ever been linked to the tablet, but it did so in a weird way that happened in sequential order with each occurring several hours later. The timeline is oddly specific with these occurrences, too. The piece that really broke the story for me was this quote: > Son eventually comes clean and tells us what he was doing. We get the email informing us that accounts have been banned due to child protection reasons So they can’t access any of their accounts but they also received an email somehow? Details about that conveniently omitted despite the excessive detail in so many other things. They also only receive an explanation for why the accounts were banned after this long process where all accounts were banned one by one, and only after son “comes clean”? This seems like a detail that comes from a story where someone decided the plot point first and then needed some supporting details to try to minimize doubt. If you’re thinking that maybe the account ban email went to the recovery account, they claimed that their recovery accounts were also part of the lockout: > Shortly after, accounts which weren't on the tablet, but were used as recovery emails for those accounts also got hit. This feels like another red flag from someone who lost track of how their story’s facts intersected each other. These creative writing stories always rely on triggering your sense of “Well it could happen” combined with a set of acceptable villains (Google + “stupid” 14 year old boy) mixed with a set of details designed to amp up the sympathy factor (daughter’s dissertation due next week, no copies exist outside of Google Docs).
Fire-Dragon-DoL 6mo ago
This is terrifying (I have 2 young kids, but they'll get there). How do I avoid that? When is a Google account considered linked? If I log into 2 google accounts and swap between them, are the accounts considered linked? Also, I have plenty of photos of my kids naked when they were little (my son refused to wear anything for 1 year), do I have to be concerned?
- colechristensen 6mo ago
  >Also, I have plenty of photos of my kids naked when they were little (my son refused to wear anything for 1 year), do I have to be concerned? This is America, of course you have to be concerned. Google has family groups where you invite people to your family. I'm assuming they had that set up. I guess if you want to manage your children's accounts you have to do it from a burner Google account.
  - Fire-Dragon-DoL 6mo ago
    Which is insane. I already purchase my Pixel through a burner account due to this whole insanity... I do have backup of my photos and drive, but I appreciate Google Sheets and would like to keep using that.
    - colechristensen 6mo ago
      I keep coming across things and the conclusion is that Claude and I can come up with something better... GMail is one of them. (and Google Reader and GitHub and ...) I have my own git repo manager hosting several of my projects and reader up and running, mail is 80% to self hosting but I've been working on other things. Turns out in the new world we can just build all of the software we want to use. Right now it takes a bit of expertise and a lot of evenings, but in not so long...
- x0x0 6mo ago
  There was an instance of a parent taking pictures of an underage child's penis to show a rash to his pediatrician during covid who got his account hard banned. That said, I bet there's millions of parents with at least one pic of a naked kid. My bet is it's quasi-random, but if you get "lucky", nothing short of a extremely senior exec can reverse that decision. So probably we need to behave as if these accounts can just get yanked on a moment's notice at random. Fastmail is great, btw.
wotsdat 6mo ago
[dead]
apparent 6mo ago
> All my emails, all my documents saved in Google Drive. I would think someone whose business depends on gmail would use an email client, at least periodically, to download their emails.
- hsbauauvhabzb 6mo ago
  What an arrogant response. Do you think the average user understands where emails are stored or that google could rugpull at any moment?
  - apparent 6mo ago
    Even just for offline access when on airplanes, when the internet/power is out. It's not just about rugpulls. Honestly it's a bit insulting to non-HN people to assume that they'd never want offline access or realize that having a single point of failure is a bad idea.
    - hsbauauvhabzb 6mo ago
      It’s reasonable to assume that a subset of the population thinks of these things. It is not unreasonable to assume that >50% of Gmail users have never considered it.
      - apparent 6mo ago
        I didn't say anything about all or most gmail users. I specifically referred to a person who relies on gmail for his business, and who is apparently screwed without access to it. People who run businesses think through their risk exposure in general, and they get things like key man insurance policies to mitigate risks related to single points of failure. Anyone thinking through such things would realize that an email provider is a single point of failure. Completely aside from strategic business planning, plenty of people realize that gmail doesn't provide offline access. It's obvious if you try to get into your email when you're not online. This is not the sole province of experts.
NetOpWibby 6mo ago
Is this an AI post? The last few times something mind-blowing was shared from Reddit, it was later found to be fake.
- Aurornis 6mo ago
  I think it’s human written but there are details of the story that are self-contradicting, like receiving an email explaining why all of the accounts have been banned after all of their email accounts were banned. Including recovery accounts.
  - ziml77 6mo ago
    Maybe they reordered the list but when I saw it they listed getting the email before listing that the recovery accounts were banned. It was definitely fake though and it looks like the mods finally realized that (after deleting comments for calling out that it was fake)
anandbaburajan 6mo ago
https://theywillbanyou.com https://theywillbanyou.com
longislandguido 6mo ago
So we're just linking to random Reddit posts now?
- boca_honey 6mo ago
  Thank you. This really bothers me. The literal last phrase in the Hacker News Guidelines is: > Please don't post comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. It's a semi-noob illusion, as old as the hills. [1] Which is cute and all, but handwaves away a real problem. IMO we should always point out and ridicule when a post or comment is too Reddit because it is a real problem. So I try not to say anything when this happens, but I'm glad when someone still points it out. I'm not a programmer, not in tech, and not an Anglo... I come here because it's the last place on the internet aside from 4chan that is free from Reddit-like posting (I just ignore all the posts about Rust or whatever). Please, don't take this away from us. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html PS. This place is also becoming Bluesky, which is its own problem, but I guess that's another topic.
cobertos 6mo ago
Why does reddit end up deleting so many of the threads that end up receiving any attention? It's so hard to follow anything now when you go to the site and all there is is [removed]
- Aurornis 6mo ago
  Because it was obviously a creative writing exercise. I left another comment showing the contradictions in the post. The facts provided were self-contradicting and the story was full of the usual tells for creative writing posts. It was also oddly focused on email access instead of the obvious legal problems that would come from having your account flagged for CSAM. It’s like what someone would write if they were trying to imagine a story about getting locked out of their email but didn’t realize that their CSAM and child endangerment plot point would trigger much bigger legal concerns and consequences
  - troad 6mo ago
    You identify two inconsistencies, neither of which appear to actually be inconsistent. (One is just the observation that multiple accounts were banned, which is not actually an inconsistency? Just something you don't find likely?) It's possible that this is real, it's possible it's made up, but I'm not seeing much more evidence in your armchair scepticism than in the asserted facts. Last week everyone on HN was telling me that social media must immediately be regulated because it's 'directionally correct' to assert that teenagers are suffering, but this week we are to disbelieve that Google would ever arbitrarily close accounts, something it firmly asserts it has every right to do?
    - Aurornis 6mo ago
      > (One is just the observation that multiple accounts were banned, which is not actually an inconsistency? Just something you don't find likely?) I think you misunderstood. In one post they said all accounts were banned including their recovery accounts. They also said they were forced to create a new account on a different service just to have email. In another comment they said Google sent them an email saying their accounts were banned for “child protection”. This supposedly occurred after the son admitted what he had done, which was a detail that supposedly occurred much later in the process. Where did they receive that message if all of their email accounts were banned? These Reddit stories always get some people invested in the story before the inconsistencies show up. You have to read them with some skepticism. You can do enough mental gymnastics to convince yourself that all of the Reddit posts are true and accurate if you try hard enough.
maltris 6mo ago
Google some time ago deleted all my 13 years of location history while attempting to migrate it to local storage on users phones. I used it to keep track of business expenses for tax and had to collect the data someway else. Plus lost a lot of places i had kept track of in foreign countries visited. Desaster that showed I should not rely on them. Made that mistake there while self hosting and self backuping the whole other stuff. Oh well.
cletus 6mo ago
I worked at Google a long time ago now during the whole Google+ fiasco. One thing that was super controversial internally was the so-called Real Names policy. For those who don't know or remember, it was Vic Gundotra's idea that people should use their real identities. He kept using this weird example that he didn't want it filled with people named "Dog Turd". I don't know why. So there was this mysterious black box that decided if your name was "real" or not. At first this didn't support pseudonyms or any kind of anonymity and that's actually really important for any social network. Think of someone seeking help coming to terms with their sexual orientation, gender identity, addiction, eating disorder or whatever. Or simply going against their family's religious wishes. I later worked at Facebook and one thing I'll give them credit for is Groups. FB Groups had an identity that actually couldn't be tied by anyone else to your profile or identity in any other group. That was a good product decision. Anyway, if your name somehow failed the magic real names filter, your account got banned. Your entire Google account was banned and basically there was no recourse other than knowing someone who worked at the company or making a big enough fuss on Twitter. Many people, myself included, criticized and protested this decision. You should at least segment Google products. There's absolutely no reason to ban your Gmail account because an automated system decided your Google+ account name wasn't "real". But that feedback was ignored and this was well before the public launch. And the public backlash proved this position correct (IMHO). But the net effect was that I decided I can't use any other Google product. Let's say a system is launched to find offensive photos and there's a false positive on one of my images in Google Photos. Maybe it's just a hash collision with a known image. And then what? I lose my entire Gmail? Are you kidding me? It's wild to me that this is still an issue ~15 years later. I think my stance actually isn't strict enough anymore. You probably shouldn't use Gmail at all. I should really find a paid email provider hosted entirely in Europe, preferably Switzerland or some other country with strong pro-user regulation. So I have no idea if this Gemini story is true or not. I say that because 95% of the things on Reddit are completely made up. But it is plausible. I wouldn't be surprised if it's true. It means I wouldn't use Gemini at all if I used Gmail.
nikolay 6mo ago
Google is the most untrustworthy company I've dealt with. I have Google One, and pay $250/mo for Ultra, which I barely use, yet I literally have no support. They set a very dangerous precedent: tech companies can have absolutely no support, can close your accounts, and can ban you without any way to even dispute it. Facebook simply copied Google once the precedent was set. Although I hate regulation, Google, Facebook, etc., should be regulated! As consumers, our rights should be protected. These companies have immense profits and should allow basic dispute resolution. Their lack of support is preventing me from switching to Google Fi, because my life is in their hands - email, phone, Google Play, etc. Although these are completely separate legal entities, they treat them as one; if your Google account gets terminated, you won't be able to access Google Fi, Google Photos, Google Drive, etc.
- 72deluxe 6mo ago
  Why are you even paying them a single penny if they're the most untrustworthy company you've dealt with?! That seems a lot of money to be giving a company you don't trust.
pratyushsood 6mo ago
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keyme 6mo ago
Poor kid. The irony of scarring this kid for life over completely normal behavior, in order to "protect him from abuse", is hopefully not lost on all of you.
kulahan 6mo ago
Could you imagine if Microsoft decided to remotely revoke IBM's access to Outlook/all of their mail on their mail server without completely migrating to a new service? Oh, and there's no point of contact. The ensuing legal battle would be legendary. The only reason this is happening is because Google isn't beholden to the common people, despite running a utility.
maxglute 6mo ago
I feel like companies over certain size needs to have live support to pester. I had my youtube premium (back when it was red) banned for violating community guidelines - impossible since account was only used for viewing videos. Appeals got auto rejected... can only repeal every few weeks... oh at time account ban = cannot access accounts page so they kept charging for months while I appealed. Had to cancel credit card. For reference I also had wechat account blocked in PRC... and show how got to talk to a human being and sort it out within a few business days. Eventually youtube account restored... 2 YEARS LATER, OUT OF NOWHERE. I think maybe I posted on youtube google groups and someone eventually got to it, but who the hell knows.
- rationalist 6mo ago
  Same thing with Meta Verified. You can't cancel when it won't let you log in. If anyone works for FB/Meta, my email is in my profile. Thanks in advance.
  - rationalist 6mo ago
    I don't want to cancel, I just want to be able to log in and interact with my friends' posts.
theshrike79 6mo ago
Isn't that what Grok is for? It'll literally rate your schlong with the virtual avatar if you level it up enough. True story, look it up.
tsoukase 6mo ago
So many lessons from this. Never use Family Link, never keep multiple accounts on a device, always be prepared for the disaster. One must suffer for the rest to learn. Google is a shefferd for our digital life.
nipperkinfeet 6mo ago
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xnx 6mo ago
Fake! https://www.androidauthority.com/google-account-bans-3654171/ https://www.androidauthority.com/google-account-bans-3654171...
Jotalea 6mo ago
the post has been taken down, does someone have it archived?

208 points by samlinnfer 6mo ago

Honestly, making the content unavailable for anyone who hasn’t already downloaded it by blocking the entire account is probably not the worst thing. Also, family account?

falcor84 6mo ago
>Also, family account? My understanding is that Google banned all users that had been logged into that family device.
- tartoran 6mo ago
  Why not ban the offending account only? Is there a logic i'm missing?
  - dlenski 6mo ago
    From Google's point of view, very little downstairs to banning those other accounts. And the upside is that they reduce their legal risk: "We automatically blocked the account that was generating the kiddie porn, as well as the other accounts that had been logged into that device." It's probably as simple as that…
  - eviks 6mo ago
    Yes, the logic you're missing is "protect the children"

xvxvx 6mo ago

Mark my words: they’ll make a movie about this but change his age to 18. The whole family. Including his 2 sisters… what a nightmare.

AtheistOfFail 6mo ago
This Summer: Bad Wank, from the people who brought you Bad Blood.
subscribed 6mo ago
"What have you done, step bro?!"

0xy 6mo ago

[flagged]

chung8123 6mo ago
That feels a bit judgemental. Kids make mistakes despite how much good parenting you give them. It is not like he didn't take precautions with parental controls and at 14 you have to trust them a bit.
sourcegrift 6mo ago
[dead]
nsingh2 6mo ago
Really uncharitable take. I did stupid things at 14, and had more unrestricted internet access too. > absent parent more concerned with his business than his son I don't know how you came to this conclusion from the post.
latentsea 6mo ago
Parent of the year over here.
smuhakg 6mo ago
If a 14 year old engaged in erotic roleplay with a sexual predator over Google Meet, would you be saying the same thing?
- tshaddox 6mo ago
  I would say that Google should not ban the victim’s family members’ account in that scenario.

neonstatic 6mo ago

The terrifying part is how much one can be dependent on services from a single company, that may at some point simply decide to not do business with you. Whether they have good reason for that is secondary. I moved away from relying on Google a while ago when I noticed, that I have zero recourse in case something happens. Turned out to be a sensible decision. I still use my google account, but only for things I wouldn't miss if I the account was nuked.

tartoran 6mo ago
Not everyone is aware how Google operates in cases like these until it happens. . Whether Google don't want to do business with people breaching some rules is one thing but to lock away all their data is something that does not make much sense to me, only highlights how their service should not be depended on. Also to ban all people who may have logged in from a device but who have done nothing wrong is bad policy. From do no evil to this...
- neonstatic 6mo ago
  My comment focused on Google because that's what OP is about, but I wouldn't single them out here. I think it's largely a matter of scale / compliance. There have been many posts here on HN about individuals and companies "begging" (their words not mine) Apple to reconsider a decision regarding their account. I don't have any experience with Meta, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was also a fully automated, no recourse black box.
robomartin 6mo ago
I thankfully learned that lesson about twenty years go. Google had a product that allowed you to park domains with them for ad insertion to generate some revenue. Owning over 400 domains at the time I though, why not? The process through which you parked the domains with Google entailed loading a file with the list of domains, after which each one would, in turn, be approved or denied. All 400+ domains were approved. A few days later I received a cryptic message about unusual click activity on the domains and the Google account I had at the time was shut down immediately without recourse. I visited a few of the pages (not all 400, maybe a dozen) as they were approved to see what they put on them. Of course I did not click on anything. I might be accused of being stupid, but I am not an idiot. Besides, I pretty much knew the income would be a rounding error, maybe a few cups of coffee per year, maybe. Well, nobody to call, text, email or send smoke signals to. Nothing. That's when I decided I would never do business with Google. All I use from them is search. That's it. Nothing else. I can't trust them with anything that is business related and anything personally important. Gmail? No way. I pay for Zoho mail for all the email accounts for my businesses and I am very happy about the product, the service and the isolation from a despotic company that can shut down your life in a microsecond.

hyperhello 6mo ago

Where the hell is the open source app that downloads all your google stuff? There is a huge opportunity to be a hero.

lkbm 6mo ago
Google Takeout[0] seems to have basically everything selected by default, so I don't see a need for another tool. [0] https://takeout.google.com/ https://takeout.google.com/
- mdni007 6mo ago
  Most people who use Google services don't know about this or simply do not have bare minimum technical knowledge required to set this up or even know why they would need to do backups
  - lkbm 6mo ago
    It doesn't require any technical expertise to set up--you click a button--unless you want to import into something else. I agree it should be more advertised, but I don't see how an open source tool would require less technical knowledge or be better known.
- deleted 6mo ago
  [deleted]
nosrepa 6mo ago
Why do you need an app? https://takeout.google.com/ https://takeout.google.com/
- buildbot 6mo ago
  Takeout always fails for me, with ~11TB of data in Google Drive.
  - xnx 6mo ago

sourcegrift 6mo ago

Google will be a better monopoly than Microsoft i promise. GitHub is great, I know it in the heart of my hearts. Steam is owned by literal reincarnation of Jesus Christ, they'll never turn on me. Loyalty is of course a quality of a decent human being. But not loyalty to corporations that you trade fair with, or worse, use YOU as a product. Only loyalty to people committed to you

iamnothere 6mo ago

This kind of thing is not the only modern example of guilt by association, but it’s probably the most common. (Not this specific event, I mean the banning of “cloud” accounts based on proximity.) There is a reason that we once eliminated this idea. It’s a stain on a free society and a constant drag on the economy. Corporations embracing this tactic are laying the groundwork for a terrible future.

nozzlegear 6mo ago

This was kind of an interesting comment from that thread. "Just invoke GDPR" is a refrain that's oft-repeated on Reddit (and, dare I say, HN), but it didn't seem to do much in this person's case: > I did an SAR with Google last year and it took over a month for a single account. It also ended up containing very little because of the way they decide what is and isn’t ‘personal data’, e.g. for the one I used for work, they outright refused to release most of it apart from specific emails and docs where I was mentioned by name because the email address was a standard contact@mywebsite.com (which to be fair is correct grounds for refusal). They were very helpful in padding out the SAR release by re-sending the emails of me requesting the SAR, and also redacted the data protection employee name whom I was conversing with though lol. > For SARs themselves there’s also grounds to refuse if they think it might interfere with potential future legal investigations, which given the ban reason I suppose isn’t an impossibility but unlikely.

1123581321 6mo ago

It sounds like the son was desperately using the linked family accounts he had access to as the previously used accounts became banned. But he only admitted to doing it on his own account. That would account for the time it took for the bans to spread, and for why the son came clean a few days later instead of right away or never. Brutal situation; hope the can restore access.

Nevermark 6mo ago
The common device would have been enough. Hosts feel like they have everything to lose by not banning problematic accounts, everything to gain by performatively burning anything “sketchy”, and nothing to lose by the inevitable automated over banning. I almost lost everything because I used a state ID that was not a drivers license (which i did not have at the time), in combination with another complication that was “caused” by a recent move between states. It made zero sense if you are not an automated system, and would have been devastating if I hadn’t figured out a path through it. I spent three weeks under enormous stress, as my savings, among other things, were needed to pay off the majority of my house right then. But despite the insanity, it was easy to see the pedantic digital “reasoning” that was happening. The mass centralization and automation of commerce is pushing us into dystopia. Brazil. We are not safe. I mean that. Until laws make corporations responsible for these kinds of harms, with fines on the order of historic fortunes, if they don’t, it is going to get worse. The “mind boggling fine” part makes for a hard sell. But it is the only way to create balance against the mind boggling levels of centralization and profits that insulate these companies of any personal individual level ethics.

Mistletoe 6mo ago

I’m just over here trying to understand why or how you would do that to Gemini Live. >Visual Context: On mobile, you can choose to share your camera feed or screen. This allows you to ask questions about what you are looking at in the real world or get help with tasks on your device. >Common Use Cases • Brainstorming: Talking through ideas for a project or event. • Role-playing: Practicing for a job interview or a difficult conversation. • Learning: Asking deep-dive questions about a complex topic while you're on the go. • Daily Tasks: Getting help with things like gift ideas, travel itineraries, or summarizing information from your screen.

latentsea 6mo ago
You underestimate people.
deleted 6mo ago
[deleted]

elephanlemon 6mo ago

Google really needs to do something about this. It’s one thing for them to stop doing business with you, it’s another to withhold your data from you (in particular after they set up their services such that you’re inclined to store everything with them). Every time I read one of these stories it reminds me that I really need to break away from them. I currently use Google Voice for almost all SMS 2FA after a nightmare scenario where I realized that the mobile carriers are entirely susceptible to social engineering and will happily port your number to an attacker’s phone. I planned to switch to Fi as they are probably the only one that this is not susceptible to… but if I were to lose both email and phone access I’d really be fucked.

dlenski 6mo ago
> I currently use Google Voice for almost all SMS 2FA Same. I have financial accounts in multiple countries, many using Google Voice for 2FA. However, whenever I create an account that allows anything other than SMS for 2FA, I immediately switch to that instead. I use an offline TOTP authenticator app, and backup the token secrets in something that's not linked to my Google account. This greatly limits my blast radius, I think, because I can access my most critical online services without access to my Google account. My Google Voice number is the only phone number I've used for 15+ years. It'd be a real nightmare if I lost access to my Gmail and/or Voice.
subscribed 6mo ago
I recall there are some providers resistant to this attack but also not Google. Best of luck. Its not a great situation to be in.

elevation 6mo ago

If I ever become a life coach for small business owners, I don't know how I can recommend GSuite. Horror stories of "I've lost everything I had with them" are so plentiful I've stopped saving them. Seems like even Microsoft is not as bad.

orbital-decay 6mo ago
What would Microsoft do in such a case? Unlikely to be any different.
- 800xl 6mo ago
  No idea, but at least Microsoft has some semblance of support where you can talk to a person.
- unethical_ban 6mo ago
  I have no context since the original post is deleted, but in general, it seems the supposed account of the son was not tied in any direct way to the other accounts... The solution is to use a true business-oriented provider and not an ad agency for one's file and email hosting.
gwern 6mo ago
The description by OP in comments like https://old.reddit.com/r/LegalAdviceUK/comments/1s92fql/my_son_pleasured_himself_in_front_of_gemini_live/odlduf9/ https://old.reddit.com/r/LegalAdviceUK/comments/1s92fql/my_s... seems to strongly imply that all the accounts were unconnected in a GSuite sense, and they are being slowly recursively banned by Google based on indirect connections like recovery emails or co-presence on a device. I don't see any reasonable way they could have saved themselves besides something crazy like requiring every family member use a different feudal lord - one person gets Google, one person gets Apple, one poor guy gets Microsoft...
- Aurornis 6mo ago
  That detail is where I first paused and realize this story is more likely a creative writing exercise than a factual account They had a separate claim that after the bannings and after the son admitted what he did, they received an email confirming that the accounts were banned for “child protection” Received where? They just claimed all of their accounts were banned first, including linked recovery accounts. Also where is the text of that email? Communications like that are key to legal matters yet it was only shared as a passing comment

apt-apt-apt-apt 6mo ago

There's a story of an OnlyFans star who slept with Meta employees "in hopes" of getting her IG account unbanned, which worked.

desultir 6mo ago
[flagged]
deleted 6mo ago
[deleted]
subscribed 6mo ago
Congrats for them but that's also f** up - no recourse, but essentially being coerced into sex work to having a problem (often caused by the company) to be fixed.
- derangedHorse 6mo ago
  > coerced into sex work That doesn't sound like what happened lol. I'm sure there were many other avenues she could have tried, she probably chose the one she preferred.
  - Henchman21 6mo ago
    Nonsense. Don't you know that all women hate sex and have to be tricked into it in the first place? Thank you for attending my TED Talk, where we examine beliefs held by foolish men in tech.
  - apt-apt-apt-apt 6mo ago
    Yeah, it was probably great for her– she used it as a shocking story that likely got her loads of new leads.

koolba 6mo ago

This is the exact scenario I described one month ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47195943 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47195943

elephanlemon 6mo ago
Jeez, really gives you incentive not to use Gemini.
orbital-decay 6mo ago
>Way too risky to use Google services like this tied to your primary account. Google has no problem correlating your accounts unless you know what you're doing and are ready to switch to the cypherpunk mode.
- genidoi 6mo ago
  There is realistically no way to evade the account correlation systems that Google (likely) has.
  - orbital-decay 6mo ago
    It's not that hard actually, but separation has a maintenance/convenience cost and requires you to think before doing anything.
    - genidoi 6mo ago
      We're speculating here but between time correlation, browser fingerprinting and telemetry, the average user attempting to pull off a clean compartmentalisation of two accounts has no chance, even when they think they do.
      - orbital-decay 6mo ago
        I'm not speculating, but yes, ordinary users won't be able do that, that's what my warning is about.

neko_ranger 6mo ago

yo I'm not an anxious person but this has set it off. If it truly is anyone who had logged into the same device, I wonder if a system reset keeps you clean from any bad accounts going forward. For example if I system reset and sold a tablet on craigs list

vessenes 6mo ago

Oooof. This is going to take a lawyer. A team of lawyers. Everything on that account has no doubt been LOCKED down for CSAM-grade review. I'm just imagining how you'd get a judge to help you here. You'd need to have found an acceptable third party that would do the data access, you'd have to agree on an attorney's eyes only list of data that you'd request.. Any chance anyone might possibly access CSAM = no. Any chance someone might possibly try and delete CSAM = absolutely no. I don't know what the OP does for work, but almost certainly it's going to be easier to just start over with a new website. Maybe get the daughter's laptop taken to a data recovery specialist and try and pull browser history for the thesis.

troad 6mo ago

God, this is a real nightmare. I'm pretty reticent to rush to regulation, but I really don't know what other solution is even possible here. The average person cannot realistically exist in a digital vacuum, self-hosting their entire online world. Google should not be able to do this to them. No one should have to rely on trying to whip up public mobs on Reddit or HN to get Google to give them access to their own freaking tax spreadsheets.

eviks 6mo ago
Are you not aware of a million of dedicated competitive services for each of this to jump to "self-hosting" as the only alternative? > All my emails, all my documents saved in Google Drive.
- deleted 6mo ago
  [deleted]
- simonw 6mo ago
  How many of those competitive services would also lock the account if something like this happened?
  - ryandrake 6mo ago
    Yes, these stories should scare you off of cloud services in general, not one particular vendor. The root problem is that you're storing valuable information on "someone else's computer." And that someone can decide to stop serving you for any or no reason at all, and you are without recourse. This should be totally unacceptable, but somehow the world has normalized it. Don't keep anything in a cloud service that you couldn't live with losing, unless you keep a local backup. Including and especially your identity (E-mail) which unlocks all your accounts.
    - eviks 6mo ago
      No, the root problem is you put all the eggs in one basket ignoring the folk wisdom that predates anything digital > Don't keep anything in a cloud service that you couldn't live with losing, unless you keep a local backup. Translated: so do keep everything in a cloud service, just backup it at a fraction of the effort with / insecurity / unreliability / unavailability of your own computer

ValveFan6969 6mo ago

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mjnews 6mo ago

[dead]

Aurornis 6mo ago

Reminder that Reddit is a hotbed for creative writing stories posted as pleas for advice. It’s a trend across all of the advice subreddits. They usually have rules that you’re not allowed to question the posts, only provide advice, so it’s a safe output for LARPing for attention, weirdly enough. This story is triggering a lot of my skepticism senses because it fits the mold of a typical creative writing Reddit post: - The OP claims Google just banned their account for CSAM content, yet nobody is considering the legal consequences of this? Their details would be referred to law enforcement and they could have police knocking on their door any minute. Why is the only thing anyone is talking about the access to their email? - OP is a helpless victim in a story where the world conspires against them - This is ostensibly a request for legal advice, but they didn’t post the one communication they claimed to have received in the matter (an e-mail explaining the reason for their bans, which they somehow received despite all accounts being banned) - A lot of unnecessary extra details about how the tragedy is amplified, like the doctor’s dissertation just happens to be due next week. Apparently she’s been writing this for so long but hasn’t shared a copy with anyone for review, editing, or feedback once? Right. - Villain is a safe target like an evil megacorp, with a guest villain of a teenage boy who is also safe to dislike - OP only responds to helpful suggestions with new facts that conveniently obviate those helpful suggestions, like the response explaining they have to use an obscure bank that doesn’t have any physical branches for reasons - OP completely ignores helpful responses that provide actionable advice. The real accounts are usually all over these comments with requests for additional detail. - OP has a strange timeline of events where the “AI” banned the first account, then Google manual review started banning accounts that had ever been linked to the tablet, but it did so in a weird way that happened in sequential order with each occurring several hours later. The timeline is oddly specific with these occurrences, too. The piece that really broke the story for me was this quote: > Son eventually comes clean and tells us what he was doing. We get the email informing us that accounts have been banned due to child protection reasons So they can’t access any of their accounts but they also received an email somehow? Details about that conveniently omitted despite the excessive detail in so many other things. They also only receive an explanation for why the accounts were banned after this long process where all accounts were banned one by one, and only after son “comes clean”? This seems like a detail that comes from a story where someone decided the plot point first and then needed some supporting details to try to minimize doubt. If you’re thinking that maybe the account ban email went to the recovery account, they claimed that their recovery accounts were also part of the lockout: > Shortly after, accounts which weren't on the tablet, but were used as recovery emails for those accounts also got hit. This feels like another red flag from someone who lost track of how their story’s facts intersected each other. These creative writing stories always rely on triggering your sense of “Well it could happen” combined with a set of acceptable villains (Google + “stupid” 14 year old boy) mixed with a set of details designed to amp up the sympathy factor (daughter’s dissertation due next week, no copies exist outside of Google Docs).

Fire-Dragon-DoL 6mo ago

This is terrifying (I have 2 young kids, but they'll get there). How do I avoid that? When is a Google account considered linked? If I log into 2 google accounts and swap between them, are the accounts considered linked? Also, I have plenty of photos of my kids naked when they were little (my son refused to wear anything for 1 year), do I have to be concerned?

colechristensen 6mo ago
>Also, I have plenty of photos of my kids naked when they were little (my son refused to wear anything for 1 year), do I have to be concerned? This is America, of course you have to be concerned. Google has family groups where you invite people to your family. I'm assuming they had that set up. I guess if you want to manage your children's accounts you have to do it from a burner Google account.
- Fire-Dragon-DoL 6mo ago
  Which is insane. I already purchase my Pixel through a burner account due to this whole insanity... I do have backup of my photos and drive, but I appreciate Google Sheets and would like to keep using that.
  - colechristensen 6mo ago
    I keep coming across things and the conclusion is that Claude and I can come up with something better... GMail is one of them. (and Google Reader and GitHub and ...) I have my own git repo manager hosting several of my projects and reader up and running, mail is 80% to self hosting but I've been working on other things. Turns out in the new world we can just build all of the software we want to use. Right now it takes a bit of expertise and a lot of evenings, but in not so long...
x0x0 6mo ago
There was an instance of a parent taking pictures of an underage child's penis to show a rash to his pediatrician during covid who got his account hard banned. That said, I bet there's millions of parents with at least one pic of a naked kid. My bet is it's quasi-random, but if you get "lucky", nothing short of a extremely senior exec can reverse that decision. So probably we need to behave as if these accounts can just get yanked on a moment's notice at random. Fastmail is great, btw.

wotsdat 6mo ago

[dead]

apparent 6mo ago

> All my emails, all my documents saved in Google Drive. I would think someone whose business depends on gmail would use an email client, at least periodically, to download their emails.

hsbauauvhabzb 6mo ago
What an arrogant response. Do you think the average user understands where emails are stored or that google could rugpull at any moment?
- apparent 6mo ago
  Even just for offline access when on airplanes, when the internet/power is out. It's not just about rugpulls. Honestly it's a bit insulting to non-HN people to assume that they'd never want offline access or realize that having a single point of failure is a bad idea.
  - hsbauauvhabzb 6mo ago
    It’s reasonable to assume that a subset of the population thinks of these things. It is not unreasonable to assume that >50% of Gmail users have never considered it.
    - apparent 6mo ago
      I didn't say anything about all or most gmail users. I specifically referred to a person who relies on gmail for his business, and who is apparently screwed without access to it. People who run businesses think through their risk exposure in general, and they get things like key man insurance policies to mitigate risks related to single points of failure. Anyone thinking through such things would realize that an email provider is a single point of failure. Completely aside from strategic business planning, plenty of people realize that gmail doesn't provide offline access. It's obvious if you try to get into your email when you're not online. This is not the sole province of experts.

NetOpWibby 6mo ago

Is this an AI post? The last few times something mind-blowing was shared from Reddit, it was later found to be fake.

Aurornis 6mo ago
I think it’s human written but there are details of the story that are self-contradicting, like receiving an email explaining why all of the accounts have been banned after all of their email accounts were banned. Including recovery accounts.
- ziml77 6mo ago
  Maybe they reordered the list but when I saw it they listed getting the email before listing that the recovery accounts were banned. It was definitely fake though and it looks like the mods finally realized that (after deleting comments for calling out that it was fake)

anandbaburajan 6mo ago

https://theywillbanyou.com https://theywillbanyou.com

longislandguido 6mo ago

So we're just linking to random Reddit posts now?

boca_honey 6mo ago
Thank you. This really bothers me. The literal last phrase in the Hacker News Guidelines is: > Please don't post comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. It's a semi-noob illusion, as old as the hills. [1] Which is cute and all, but handwaves away a real problem. IMO we should always point out and ridicule when a post or comment is too Reddit because it is a real problem. So I try not to say anything when this happens, but I'm glad when someone still points it out. I'm not a programmer, not in tech, and not an Anglo... I come here because it's the last place on the internet aside from 4chan that is free from Reddit-like posting (I just ignore all the posts about Rust or whatever). Please, don't take this away from us. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html PS. This place is also becoming Bluesky, which is its own problem, but I guess that's another topic.

cobertos 6mo ago

Why does reddit end up deleting so many of the threads that end up receiving any attention? It's so hard to follow anything now when you go to the site and all there is is [removed]

Aurornis 6mo ago
Because it was obviously a creative writing exercise. I left another comment showing the contradictions in the post. The facts provided were self-contradicting and the story was full of the usual tells for creative writing posts. It was also oddly focused on email access instead of the obvious legal problems that would come from having your account flagged for CSAM. It’s like what someone would write if they were trying to imagine a story about getting locked out of their email but didn’t realize that their CSAM and child endangerment plot point would trigger much bigger legal concerns and consequences
- troad 6mo ago
  You identify two inconsistencies, neither of which appear to actually be inconsistent. (One is just the observation that multiple accounts were banned, which is not actually an inconsistency? Just something you don't find likely?) It's possible that this is real, it's possible it's made up, but I'm not seeing much more evidence in your armchair scepticism than in the asserted facts. Last week everyone on HN was telling me that social media must immediately be regulated because it's 'directionally correct' to assert that teenagers are suffering, but this week we are to disbelieve that Google would ever arbitrarily close accounts, something it firmly asserts it has every right to do?
  - Aurornis 6mo ago
    > (One is just the observation that multiple accounts were banned, which is not actually an inconsistency? Just something you don't find likely?) I think you misunderstood. In one post they said all accounts were banned including their recovery accounts. They also said they were forced to create a new account on a different service just to have email. In another comment they said Google sent them an email saying their accounts were banned for “child protection”. This supposedly occurred after the son admitted what he had done, which was a detail that supposedly occurred much later in the process. Where did they receive that message if all of their email accounts were banned? These Reddit stories always get some people invested in the story before the inconsistencies show up. You have to read them with some skepticism. You can do enough mental gymnastics to convince yourself that all of the Reddit posts are true and accurate if you try hard enough.

maltris 6mo ago

Google some time ago deleted all my 13 years of location history while attempting to migrate it to local storage on users phones. I used it to keep track of business expenses for tax and had to collect the data someway else. Plus lost a lot of places i had kept track of in foreign countries visited. Desaster that showed I should not rely on them. Made that mistake there while self hosting and self backuping the whole other stuff. Oh well.

cletus 6mo ago

I worked at Google a long time ago now during the whole Google+ fiasco. One thing that was super controversial internally was the so-called Real Names policy. For those who don't know or remember, it was Vic Gundotra's idea that people should use their real identities. He kept using this weird example that he didn't want it filled with people named "Dog Turd". I don't know why. So there was this mysterious black box that decided if your name was "real" or not. At first this didn't support pseudonyms or any kind of anonymity and that's actually really important for any social network. Think of someone seeking help coming to terms with their sexual orientation, gender identity, addiction, eating disorder or whatever. Or simply going against their family's religious wishes. I later worked at Facebook and one thing I'll give them credit for is Groups. FB Groups had an identity that actually couldn't be tied by anyone else to your profile or identity in any other group. That was a good product decision. Anyway, if your name somehow failed the magic real names filter, your account got banned. Your entire Google account was banned and basically there was no recourse other than knowing someone who worked at the company or making a big enough fuss on Twitter. Many people, myself included, criticized and protested this decision. You should at least segment Google products. There's absolutely no reason to ban your Gmail account because an automated system decided your Google+ account name wasn't "real". But that feedback was ignored and this was well before the public launch. And the public backlash proved this position correct (IMHO). But the net effect was that I decided I can't use any other Google product. Let's say a system is launched to find offensive photos and there's a false positive on one of my images in Google Photos. Maybe it's just a hash collision with a known image. And then what? I lose my entire Gmail? Are you kidding me? It's wild to me that this is still an issue ~15 years later. I think my stance actually isn't strict enough anymore. You probably shouldn't use Gmail at all. I should really find a paid email provider hosted entirely in Europe, preferably Switzerland or some other country with strong pro-user regulation. So I have no idea if this Gemini story is true or not. I say that because 95% of the things on Reddit are completely made up. But it is plausible. I wouldn't be surprised if it's true. It means I wouldn't use Gemini at all if I used Gmail.

nikolay 6mo ago

Google is the most untrustworthy company I've dealt with. I have Google One, and pay $250/mo for Ultra, which I barely use, yet I literally have no support. They set a very dangerous precedent: tech companies can have absolutely no support, can close your accounts, and can ban you without any way to even dispute it. Facebook simply copied Google once the precedent was set. Although I hate regulation, Google, Facebook, etc., should be regulated! As consumers, our rights should be protected. These companies have immense profits and should allow basic dispute resolution. Their lack of support is preventing me from switching to Google Fi, because my life is in their hands - email, phone, Google Play, etc. Although these are completely separate legal entities, they treat them as one; if your Google account gets terminated, you won't be able to access Google Fi, Google Photos, Google Drive, etc.

72deluxe 6mo ago
Why are you even paying them a single penny if they're the most untrustworthy company you've dealt with?! That seems a lot of money to be giving a company you don't trust.

pratyushsood 6mo ago

[dead]

keyme 6mo ago

Poor kid. The irony of scarring this kid for life over completely normal behavior, in order to "protect him from abuse", is hopefully not lost on all of you.

kulahan 6mo ago

Could you imagine if Microsoft decided to remotely revoke IBM's access to Outlook/all of their mail on their mail server without completely migrating to a new service? Oh, and there's no point of contact. The ensuing legal battle would be legendary. The only reason this is happening is because Google isn't beholden to the common people, despite running a utility.

maxglute 6mo ago

I feel like companies over certain size needs to have live support to pester. I had my youtube premium (back when it was red) banned for violating community guidelines - impossible since account was only used for viewing videos. Appeals got auto rejected... can only repeal every few weeks... oh at time account ban = cannot access accounts page so they kept charging for months while I appealed. Had to cancel credit card. For reference I also had wechat account blocked in PRC... and show how got to talk to a human being and sort it out within a few business days. Eventually youtube account restored... 2 YEARS LATER, OUT OF NOWHERE. I think maybe I posted on youtube google groups and someone eventually got to it, but who the hell knows.

rationalist 6mo ago
Same thing with Meta Verified. You can't cancel when it won't let you log in. If anyone works for FB/Meta, my email is in my profile. Thanks in advance.
- rationalist 6mo ago
  I don't want to cancel, I just want to be able to log in and interact with my friends' posts.

theshrike79 6mo ago

Isn't that what Grok is for? It'll literally rate your schlong with the virtual avatar if you level it up enough. True story, look it up.

tsoukase 6mo ago

So many lessons from this. Never use Family Link, never keep multiple accounts on a device, always be prepared for the disaster. One must suffer for the rest to learn. Google is a shefferd for our digital life.

nipperkinfeet 6mo ago

[dead]

xnx 6mo ago

Fake! https://www.androidauthority.com/google-account-bans-3654171/ https://www.androidauthority.com/google-account-bans-3654171...

Jotalea 6mo ago

the post has been taken down, does someone have it archived?