Google+ Account Suspended? You Won't Find Out Why 341
jfruh writes "Dan Tynan is a tech writer and blogger who discovered, while trying to post links to his writing on his Google+ profile, that his account had been suspended. This despite the fact that he used his real name and didn't violate the terms of service in any other way. Upon appeal his account was reinstated, just as mysteriously as it was shut down, but along the way he discovered a rash of people with suspended Google+ accounts who can't figure out what they did to anger the Google gods."
Just like the no-fly list? (Score:5, Funny)
Is Google acting like the TSA?
Re:Just like the no-fly list? (Score:5, Interesting)
One of the persons suspended by Google has an "unusual name". She didn't say what.... maybe Blossom or Flower or something. In any case she pointed-out the name on G+ is the same as the name on her credit card (which she registered to make paymentws), but that's not good enough for the Microsoft... Apple... ooops, I mean Google fuckup corporation. It deserves to be boycotted.
Just like MS... (Score:5, Interesting)
Same happens at MS.. upload a file that violates their code of conduct [microsoft.com] policy to MS sky drive, and your windows 7 phone account will be permanently blocked [tweakers.net] without telling what file caused it or getting any good response.
Note that that includes files that are not yet shared of, and includes partial nudity
Re:Just like MS... (Score:5, Informative)
Same happens at MS.. upload a file that violates their code of conduct [microsoft.com] policy to MS sky drive, and your windows 7 phone account will be permanently blocked [tweakers.net] without telling what file caused it or getting any good response.
Note that that includes files that are not yet shared of, and includes partial nudity
Not just like Google, then, because if Google blocks your Google+ account, only your Google+ account gets blocked, regardless of a bunch of widely-repeated erroneous reporting early on.
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What kind of violation are you talking about? Posting kiddie porn? Yeah, you'll get shut down completely. Same with any other serious criminal act. What other sorts of violations are there? Google's ToS don't include a lot of restrictions.
It was demonstrated that it is sufficient for one user to report something as offensive on G+ and the author's account gets disabled. The post or comment doesn't have to contain anything offensive - it just has to be reported by somebody as such - those are bots handling the clicks in the background, disabling accounts pronto.
So where is the protection against that? Where are the guarantees that I will not lose access to every Google service just because some [censored] for fun clicked a button on me, c
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That rules out half the movies and books on play (Score:3, Interesting)
"advocates, or expresses pornography, obscenity, vulgarity, profanity, hatred, bigotry, racism, or gratuitous violence."
That can describe 50% of the movies available on google play, and 100% of their rap music.
So does that mean google itself is violating its own policies.
Yep.
Douchbag Hypocrites.
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Such as?
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Ya there are so many things that could have happened that wasn't his fault. Spam filter wrongly flagging accounts (for god knows what reasons) would be the most obviously. It could be someone reported his account as spamming when it wasn't and the automated tools blocked it. It could be someone accidentally deactivated the wrong account, and so on.
They might not be telling him why his account was deactivated because there wasn't a reason. Mistakes do happen.
Re:Just like the no-fly list? (Score:5, Insightful)
If there is not apparent reason that anger the Google gods, the other thing that came to mind is that there is always a dumbass that deleted the wrong accounts by mistake. ..wait...wait... the conspiracy theories are always more fun.
That sure happens. Just today I had to find a new auto insurance company because Geico mistakenly sent a letter to the state DMV stating that I had canceled my car insurance. They kept insisting that it was no big deal because I was still covered. They could not understand that if I get pulled over and the cops think my car is uninsured, they impound my car. No big deal to them, big, big, deal to me.
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And you believe cops care about what someone on the other end of a phone call says?
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Over the years, the far more likely scenario that Ive seen is that people do something they KNOW is a violation of some ToS or another, and then claim innocence to the broader community in some vain hope of getting their account back. This happens ALL the time in gaming communities, where a botter / hacker claims "it must have been my G15 keyboard" or "it must have been my use of Wine"-- until everyone finds out that no, you really are just a dirty cheater.
I mean, heres the mental calculus I use. There is
Re:Just like the no-fly list? (Score:4, Funny)
Worse--like e-Harmony.
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This is old news. They took away mcgrew@gmail.com several years ago, and they didn't give a reason then, either.
Re:Just like the no-fly list? (Score:4, Funny)
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Oh, Google. (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Oh, Google. (Score:5, Informative)
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No, it doesn't. The GP's usage was correct. The word "thine" is also used instead of "thy" when the word after it begins with a vowel.
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My bad. There was an error; I missed the one word you were referring to. That word should have been thee, as you implied. But the point still remains that it does not quite follow the same rules.
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No, it doesn't. The GP's usage was correct. The word "thine" is also used instead of "thy" when the word after it begins with a vowel.
You can do that with "mine" too; it's just an older form that doesn't get used much anymore. If I want to sound archaic and formal, I can talk about "mine own laptop computer" and still be grammatically correct (though, again, sounding like a prick). Even if that weren't true, though, "cannot trust thy anymore" is not ever OK.
Great, and now I sound like a prick even arguing about it. Bah!
Re:Oh, Google. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Oh, Google. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Oh, Google. (Score:5, Funny)
They're, their. Take a deep breath and it will all be ok.
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Re:Oh, Google. (Score:4, Informative)
"Art thou not aware of thine own future? Art thou so evil, one cannot trust thee anymore? Woe is I. Woe is I..."
FTFY. The verb "to be" is a linking verb, and as such does not take an object.
Nonsense. It's not an object; if you compare it to analogous phrases in other languages (e.g., German "Weh (ist) mir"), you'll find that the "me" is dative. English doesn't have a clear accusative-dative distinction anymore (although we still generally call English objects accusative), but the OED confirms this history, and it certainly makes more sense in the typical dative sense of "woe is (un)to me" rather than your "I am woe." In any case, it doesn't really matter anymore--the syntax is odd in Modern English and it's just a fixed phrase that seems to have slipped through history without much change.
Shenanigans (Score:4, Interesting)
Honest question. How many of those banned users are fabricated by the facebook anti google pr machine?
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That's not an "honest question" at all.
It's an accusation without a shred of evidence to support it, clumsily disguised as a question to excuse said lack of evidence.
Despite what Glenn Beck may have told you, putting a question mark at the end of your lie does not make you less of a liar.
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Re:Shenanigans (Score:5, Funny)
You can get banned from slashdot?
[citation needed]
I was wrong. You don't get banned from /., they just make you moderate.
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And attack from below with laser equipped sharks.
I move... (Score:2)
I move that Google+ should be renamed Google+ RTM. Rush being the key word. Lack of planning and proper procedural modelling.
Re:I move... (Score:4, Informative)
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or- ;-)
Rush To Market (a play on 'Release To Manufacturing' and what the poster likely meant)
or-
Read The Manual (usually RTFM
my response to RTFM (Score:3)
other than "I will as soon as you F4ing write it!!" would be
"and what part of the Kama Sutra covers %product_or_service%"
I have an easy guess (Score:5, Insightful)
Even Google has bugs!
Re:I have an easy guess (Score:5, Insightful)
Never attribute to malice what could be attributed to incompetence... Google does go by the model of 'eventual consistency' with search, so perhaps some of that ethos spilled over into the G+ data handling.
Re:I have an easy guess (Score:5, Interesting)
Even Google has bugs!
Indeed.
BTW, I want to put in a plug for using Google's "Send Feedback" link. Not only is a pretty cool piece of work technically (it basically has to implement a full HTML rendering engine in Javascript in order to dynamically construct the image of the page you're seeing, with your problem areas highlighted), it actually does get a lot of internal attention. Feedback gets classified and similar comments tracked over time, with lots of pretty graphs and charts, and teams scrub their feedback regularly. Things that are bothering lots of people get bug reports generated and added to the internal bug reporting system, and they get prioritized and fixed.
The one failing of the Google feedback system, IMO, is that it lacks feedback. By that I mean that there's no response back to the submitter letting them know what's being done or when the problem is fixed. I think I'm going to submit feedback on feedback, pointing out that feedback needs feedback.
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I think I'm going to submit feedback on feedback, pointing out that feedback needs feedback.
Yo dawg...
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If you want recursive feedback, you need to specify a termination condition.
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The one failing of the Google feedback system, IMO, is that it lacks feedback.
Which means they're wasting your time. As a general policy, I never use "feedback" systems that don't generate a response, a public posting, or a ticket number.
the die hard versions of - 1984 (Score:4, Insightful)
the short, fun version
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ymyWS82NsY [youtube.com]
The long, serious version
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hATC_2I1wZE [youtube.com]
The original, analog version
http://www.amazon.com/1984-Signet-Classics-George-Orwell/dp/0451524934 [amazon.com]
this is what we're asking for (Score:3, Insightful)
By shifting our online communication to a few proprietary services like Facebook, Twitter, and G+, this is exactly what we're begging for: censored tweets, data-mining of everything we say for advertisement purposes, EULAs that grant ownership of our pictures and videos to those services, and more.
Collectively, internet users are *begging* for this kind of world, where we can only communicate at someone else's whim.
Re:this is what we're asking for (Score:5, Interesting)
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Hence why anyone with a bit of IT knowledge will not shift to such models save for throwaway accounts. (And will try, often in vein, to do the same for our users/friends/family. When it does not work, hey at least we tried.)
And the kicker is that ISPs offer webmail too. So it is not like users even need give that up by using an account that they pay for and thus will have a direct line to some sort of support.
Now as for social media sights...well that is a whole other can of worms. The only way I see a
I thought they stopped requiring real names? (Score:2)
I thought Google+ stopped requiring real names a while ago?
Once I heard they had stopped this requirement I reopened my G+ account. I've hardly used it, but haven't had any problems with it being suspended.
I wonder if this user's account was hacked and the hackers decided to stir up some shit? Though he'd probably notice this if it were the case.
Either way, I've not used G+ very much. After the whole real name debacle last year, it just felt like a less friendly place.
Re:I thought they stopped requiring real names? (Score:4, Informative)
No, still they require real names, unless you are already widely known by an established alias.
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Ahh, that would probably explain it. I've been Zorin since 1995 at least.
But that kind of sucks too, because it means someone can't *start* a new alias on G+.
Re:I thought they stopped requiring real names? (Score:4, Interesting)
Ahh, that would probably explain it. I've been Zorin since 1995 at least.
More likely it's just that no one has reported your account. There are probably some automated filters that look for really obvious fake names, but Zorin is a real name, though typically a surname. "Zorin Lynx" is obviously a pseudonym, but one that isn't likely to be flagged by an automated check. I suspect that if someone reported your account you'd have to send Google some documentation proving it's a well-established and well-known alias (and you might be unsuccessful).
Personally, I can see both sides of this debate. It appears that real name policies actually do improve the S/N ratio significantly, which makes for a better user experience. On the other hand, pseudonymity is important to some people. It will be interesting to see if the real names push on YouTube is successful at cleaning up a large portion of the crapflood which is the typical YouTube comment stream.
slight chance... (Score:2)
Perhaps they used Google to search for the Bing website?
Reminds me of a saying... (Score:2)
If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?
Considering leaving Google's services (Score:5, Insightful)
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I think, overall, that using any "cloud" is a terrible mistake.
There. Fixed that for you.
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I want to as well, but I haven't build a network to do so. I just get tired of having my data harvested and displayed. Images uses to be anonymous, now I find my Picasa Web pics are googlable with my *name*. Other annoyances like a strong suspicion that my mail is being parsed for advertising profilers.
Centralized systems (Score:5, Insightful)
Yet another example of how centralized systems are bad.
Social networks, torrent indexes, search engines, you name it. All of them censored and/or unreliable.
We need decentralization.
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Yet another example of how centralized systems are bad.
Social networks, torrent indexes, search engines, you name it. All of them censored and/or unreliable.
We need decentralization.
You must be meaning outsourced services/software as a service. There's nothing inherently wrong with centralizing your data, as long as you're not subjecting yourself to the moodiness of a handful of service providers.
Nice self reference article (Score:2, Insightful)
Step 1. Post links sure to get your self banned on G+
2. Don't actually attempt to contact anyone at G+ about your account; simply click "recheck link on profile"
3. Post on Slashdot notice of your banning - make sure to state you didn't break the rules ever, except for those times you did.
4. Tell visitors you didn't miss G+; but you still feel its worth wasting their time by having them read about your lack of missingness of G+
Yes, I just coined the term "missingness" when items aren't simply missing; but th
Lord of the Googles (Score:2)
“Do not meddle in the affairs of the Google, for it is not subtle and quick to anger.”
Google nailed me (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Google nailed me (Score:5, Informative)
You can of course pester them on these telephone numbers [google.de]. German laws require everyone doing business there to publish this type of information. Oh and it has to be correct and functional.
They will probably send you to hell anyway, of course.
Re:Google nailed me (Score:5, Interesting)
This would have been an amusing time to file a $100 claim against them in small claims court. There's nothing quite like forcing them to employ their $400/hr legal retainer in order to get some attention.
Pretty obvious, really (Score:2)
Google has a real name policy on Google+. However, Dan Tynan's profile wasn't using his real name. He was on G+ as Dan Tynan, whereas if you go to Wikipedia, you can see that his real name is Daniel Tynan.
Q.E.D. :)
(in all seriousness, I wouldn't be surprised if it was something as pedantic as this!)
Using Google+ is too dangerous (Score:5, Interesting)
I just don't post anything on my google+ account ever. If my google account was suspended i'd lose email, docs, drive, calendar etc.
Its too dangerous to use. Why risk it. F**k google+
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If my google account was suspended i'd lose email, docs, drive, calendar etc.
Have you ever heard of
- single point of failure
- making offline backups?
There is no way I would ever rely on an online provider for such services - let alone from the privacy risk..
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I just don't post anything on my google+ account ever. If my google account was suspended i'd lose email, docs, drive, calendar etc.
Its too dangerous to use. Why risk it. F**k google+
Me too, this is why I've never used Google+ -- after reading stories about people that have had all of their Google services do to violating some unwritten policy on Google+ without any warning or explanation, I've stayed away from Google+.
Facebook could delete my account and I wouldn't notice for weeks, but I count on Google services everyday, and though I have workarounds for most things, it would be severely inconvenient. Not worth the risk.
They need to be more clear on what the policy is for Google+ sus
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Bullshit and you know it. If your G+ account is suspended, you only loose G+. You still have access to email, drive, calendar and all the other services.
Problem of Free (Score:5, Insightful)
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Google has accounts? (Score:2, Insightful)
Why would you have an account on Google? Their search works fine without it. Their video streaming works fine without it. If your ISP has an IMAP server and maybe some form of webmail for emergencies, that takes care of mail. None of their other services are worth much.
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I change ISPs fairly often and wanted a stable email address. Of the available free email providers, gmail offered the best service/features.
Amusing (Score:2)
it's amusing how personally people take these things. I'm sure Google has millions of accounts, many of them fake, and they cannot commit great amounts of personal attention to investigate each one. So many likely get lumped in with some sort of an anti-spam or anti-abuse system. And do you figure Google can personally respond to each and every request for clarification? I dunno, people are just so personally tied to these online entities of themselves that they expect an equally personal treatment, but
Who uses Google+ for business? (Score:3)
You are putting your business at the mercy of an organization that has proven itself to be capricious, if not malicious. Not to mention their downtime. This is just more proof.
Get a clue.
If I want you to know me by it (Score:2)
He was Banned for Excessive Usage (Score:5, Funny)
Once again Slashdot links to a woefully inadequate article that only details one side of the story as a blatant attack on whatever service the author decides to pull out of his ass.
If you could anyone could actually be bothered to take a few minutes to find more informative articles, you'll come across Google's Official response:
"Google tries to provide a World-Class Social Networking Service. In order to meet the high standards of our users, we must be diligent in monitoring the behavior of our users to identify and block parties that may be a threat to the enjoyment of our site and safety to other users. In this case we saw that this particular user was using Google+ far too much, essentially using it for more than 5 minutes a day, which is a big red flag, since everyone knows that no one uses Google+ for anything. As such, he was blocked for being a spam bot. However, since receiving his butt-hurt email, we have reinstated his account, since spam-bots are incapable of getting their jimmies rustled."
Google's Not The Only One (Score:5, Interesting)
In fact, years ago when I was paying Yahoo for Web hosting and mysteriously lost access to my account, a Yahoo CSR told me I wasn't paying enough money for the privilege of talking to someone and hung up on me after I listened to hold music for three hours. I got an email form letter three days later telling me there was nothing they could do. And that was for a paid service. I was a little fish in a big pond. With non-paid services, you're not even a little fish. You're a speck of bacteria living on the algae in the pond. That's not to say that these services are bad, but you have to understand what they are, who you are to them and gauge the risks before you invest too much in them.
If you hate Googles way, tell them, not Slashdot! (Score:3)
If you, like me, disapprove of the way how Google deals with that matter, tell them! Send them your opinion as feedback. Rate down this page - http://support.google.com/plus/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1228271 [google.com] - and click "the solution is not ideal". Comment on posts of Google employees.
As long this is just a matter that affects a couple dozen people amont millions, Google won't give a shit, but if a large group of people complains, they will have start to start moving their asses.
So, it is the same effort but the effect will be bigger if you post/address Google instead of the Slashdot forums.
The problem with "don't be evil" (Score:3)
Nobody ever thinks of themselves as evil, except in the movies.
Re: Attention unemployed geeks! (Score:4, Funny)
I would publish all this golden info on your Google+ account, rather than SlashDot.
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Stop feeding it. Please.
Lost in America (Score:2, Offtopic)
Business isn't around to "hire", as every right winger I've ever met is so quick to point out, yet every time I hear one spouting tax cuts for business (so they'll hire) and less regulation (so they'll hire). It seems to me you right wing freaks should take your own advice. Business is there to make money.
You see, this is where we America in particular got lost. We lost sight of the fact that we are a society and that Capitalism was originally intended as a better system for encouraging everyone to collaborate for the common good of all citizens. Those that offer jobs and those that fulfill the needs of the jobs are in a symbiotic relationship. The executive boards of the corporations are small in numbers, not able to do the actual amount of work their companies need to bring in the revenue and everyone n
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"Mysterious and known moderations (mostly by editors) can't get you comment banned here and for some unknown length of time. As well as mod points given and taken away. Slashdot does shady stuff like this all the time, why is what google doing news?"
"Can't get you banned here"
WTF?
If you really do want to get banned, I am sure your IP address could get banned.
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Took long enough to ban MyCleanPC.
Oops, I used the keyword "MyCleanPC," will my account be banned next?
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I'd like to tell you that my IP address has been banned here before, but it's *not* *my* *IP address*. I share it with 6500+ users at any given time.
And some of them are truly morons. Not me of course.
Re:Just Like Slashdot's Moderation System (Score:5, Insightful)
"Mysterious and known moderations (mostly by editors) can't get you comment banned here and for some unknown length of time. As well as mod points given and taken away."
Have you read the TOS for moderators? ( http://tech.slashdot.org/moderation.shtml [slashdot.org] ) I'm not going into rant mode but go look at /. a little harder and you might see it for what it's for.
It sounds to me you are ungrateful.
Re:Uh, what? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:They all do this... (Score:5, Interesting)
Yahoo did this to me. The only Yahoo service I was actively doing anything with at the time was Yahoo Answers, so I assume it came from there. But no explanation, and in my case they didn't respond to a few attempts to ask why or reconsider. I couldn't login to my Yahoo mail or anything else controlled by Yahoo. But it was only Yahoo (nothing important), so I just gave up.
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