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]
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
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?
> (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.
The story as OP tells it is that they appealed the ban, and the ban was upheld. Logically, they appealed the ban from an email address they had access to. I don't know how you get from 'all of their Google accounts were banned' to 'they had no possible way to send and receive email whatsoever'.
> 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.
I get the feeling you've concluded that the OP's claims are unlikely and are now rationalising that conclusion by trying to construct some arguments to that effect, but I find the specific arguments you're giving to be fairly weak. That doesn't speak to the veracity of the original story, it just makes your attempted debunking unconvincing.
The mods of that subreddit appear to have come to the same conclusion.
If you go into Reddit believing all of the posts by default and forgiving inconsistencies you’re going to be duped by a lot of fake stories.
I think it’s interesting that someone posted a “my account just got busted for accidental CSAM” and nobody is concerned about the impending law enforcement consequences? Only about email access? If this really happened then it would be referred to law enforcement because companies don’t handle CSAM as internal matters that go through their appeals process. They get escalated to law enforcement.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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
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).
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?
165 comments
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
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?
> (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.
> 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.
I get the feeling you've concluded that the OP's claims are unlikely and are now rationalising that conclusion by trying to construct some arguments to that effect, but I find the specific arguments you're giving to be fairly weak. That doesn't speak to the veracity of the original story, it just makes your attempted debunking unconvincing.
If you go into Reddit believing all of the posts by default and forgiving inconsistencies you’re going to be duped by a lot of fake stories.
I think it’s interesting that someone posted a “my account just got busted for accidental CSAM” and nobody is concerned about the impending law enforcement consequences? Only about email access? If this really happened then it would be referred to law enforcement because companies don’t handle CSAM as internal matters that go through their appeals process. They get escalated to law enforcement.
- https://www.androidauthority.com/google-account-bans-3654171...
- https://x.com/NewsFromGoogle/status/2039536001186414760?s=20
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.
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.
>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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
The whole family. Including his 2 sisters… what a nightmare.
> 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.
True story, look it up.
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.
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
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).