zlacker

>>benhur+(OP)
Google uses non-human automation to make some decisions, including banning accounts. As others have mentioned, this is not unreasonable as long as there is a reasonable (in terms of time and effort) path to disputing a ban - i.e., speaking to a human about the issue.

But Google (and Facebook, and probably some other companies) don't have reasonable processes for disputing or resolving these situations.

Some have said that we should consider Google's challenge: lots of users/activities that need to be monitored and policed. The assumption is that Google could not afford to do this "reasonably" with humans instead of automated systems because the volume is high.

But Google certainly could hire and train humans to follow a process for reviewing and assisting in resolving these cases. They don't. It is doubtful that they cannot afford to do this; I haven't checked their annual report lately, but I'm guessing they still have a healthy profit.

In the unlikely event that involving more humans would be too expensive, then Google should raise their prices (or stop giving so much away for free).

To summarize, there is no excuse for Google to operate this way. They do because they can, and because the damage still falls into the "acceptable losses" column.

>>blunte+xU
I remember someone had a post here a couple years back:

- They bought google wireless. - Their charge was declined, whatever the reason, they wanted to correct that. Or possibly an accidental dispute. - Google disabled their account because of non-payment - Google's customer support couldn't help because they weren't a paying customer. - They literally couldn't do ANYTHING because google was ignoring every step of the way. - Their account was blocked from making any payments and couldn't contact someone until they made a payment. - Eventually their phone was disabled, and they lost the phone number because... no payment!

And once the phone number was released / re-used there was nothing they could do.

Same thing if Google was to ban my gmail today, I'd lose SO MUCH and worse is my photos, all my logins, etc. Their "loss" on me could be devastating to my life and not even a blip on their radar.

>>Justsi+6w1
What I don't understand is why they lock you out of your data when they ban you. For IRL evictions, they'll give you notice to start moving your belongings or, worst-case, dump them on the curb. Sucks, but you still ostensibly have access to them. If Google bans you, they should provide avenues to permanently move data out of their services. Not providing this is tantamount to theft, since I sincerely doubt that the data is straight-up thrown out; it's still used for and tangled up in their ad and machine learning algos.