I had a strange and similar interaction with Google recently. I was asked to do the Android developer verification, but then I missed a deadline at some point. Support said that I would need to create a new Google account for all of this. I said this was unacceptable as this was a Google account I had for nearly 25 years and I didn't want to create another. They said tough luck, go make the new account. Luckily, I had recently married and was making a new account for the name change. I tried to use that account, but it wanted a different phone number to use for verification, but I only have one number and you can't use Google voice numbers. I went back and told Google I cannot use the same phone number to verify and I'm not buying a burner phone to do this with. Then they just said "Ah, ok, we'll fix your original account then" and fixed the original account. This was literally a week of back and forth. Pointless waste of time.
>I suspect the story is entirely made up, based on that detail alone.
... why?
Google has a zillion employees and the story didn't even end altruistically on their side, what the fuck would the point of fictionalizing this encounter be? typing practice?
I get that it's kind of supposed to be an advanced jab at google "The world will end before you speak to a human", but cast the shade on the perpetrators rather than saying that the victimized side is lying.
Last year our bakery business got blocked from Google Maps. Reason: Your business is not eligible...
Yep, apparently a brick and mortar bakery isn't eligible for Google Maps. Obviously bogus. I appealed over and over again, rereading the rules, watching every dumb YouTube video, fixing every minor imagined transgression I could think of and each time just got another BS automated "your business is not eligible...".
Pretty much gave up them my partner decided to try one more time. In Vietnamese.
We had both been trying, she in Vietnamese, me in English, but this time she tried it at about 10:30pm local time and apparently it got routed to a bored Vietnamese speaker in the California help center, who fixed it immediately.
So it is possible but it'll take some weird combination of luck and timing.
Damn! That is so dystopic to me. The future of businesses determined by the will of some customer support interpretations of bogus rules. Ain't that a bit black mirroresque?
I worked at a job where we had to maintain an app for Apple's platform. We would make some minor bugfix based on user feedback and submit the app. They would come back with a denial that was based on changes or features introduced years ago. We would go tweak that specific feature in some way, resubmit and it would pass.
It's also possible/likely they're using discrimination. It's cheaper to avoid lawsuits and PR disasters by ensuring they respond faster to minority customers. That and/or Vietnamese customers tend to have higher spend/conversion, so Google gives them better service. Or her husband's Google account had some kind of score based on previous spend/statistical probability that determined he deserved better service.
I think there is zero chance these companies aren't using LLMs to sort out the "desirable" customers from the undesirables. Google in particular knows almost everything about us.
Thanks to cumulative technical progress what used to be the domain of state actors has now trickled down to big business (on some level this is a joke, but also I'm dead serious). Someday it will trickle down to the bakery.
Several years ago, one of my Gmail accounts (mainly used for non-serious purposes, such as registering on gaming forums) was stolen due to a password leak. I received an login alert via a forwarded email, but since I hadn’t set up a recovery email address, I lost control of the account. I couldn’t even find any way to reach out to someone to take action and recover my email account.
All you can do it post a thread on the support forums, and nothing happen anymore;
I think for ordinary users (rather than developers or merchants), this is even worse.
When you are logged in to the Google Play Developer console there is an area to do the verification and once you get to a stage that breaks down (as explained) it just has a support form, which then happens via email.
The Amazon version of this story I heard was support advising to create a new account, and then the person got permabanned for creating multiple accounts which is against TOS.
Had similar experience. My best guess is that the account never went through the various age verification flows (since it was that old, it predated all that) and ended up being marked for deletion- I suspect that they had a bug (legal or in code) that prevented warning emails to get out. I got lucky to detect it early, since they disabled AI a few weeks before account deletion.
My gmail account still has the "First off, welcome. And thanks for agreeing to help us test Gmail." mail in it from June 2004. The account itself is over 21 years old. I wonder if I'll get forced to age verify myself any time?
As the owner of a GMail account which is also of legal adult age (and a Reddit account which will be 18 this year), I am morbidly curious what will happen once these mandatory "age verification" start to be enforced.
It should be trivial for Google and Reddit to grandfather-in accounts which are more than 18 years old (arguably less, who created their account when they were, e.g. 5 years old?). However, I'm betting they will come up with all sorts of rationalisations as to why this is not possible, anything from the bullshit ("not technically feasible" my ass) or the self-contradictory ("an account may have changed owner"... so in violation of the ToS? And what's to stop an account from changing ownership after age verification?).
I admit I am prematurely riling myself up with indignation for something which may never happen. Maybe I am wrong and Google, Reddit, etc. take the common sense approach, but I have no hope in it.
Mine did, once, and it hasn't been requested again. It was also, until recently, accepted by age verification services as indication of non-minor status.
For about 10 years, I have had a habit of creating a new, separate Google account for every new project I start, and then adding my personal account as a team member/collaborator. This way, the potential blast radius is (hopefully) limited.
This is the first and only time I've seen someone say they got a positive resolution. No joke, not a single post about Google account-lockouts (that I've seen) in more than a decade has had a happy ending. I'm happy for you. It's also surprising that this breaks the mold.
500000000th person discovers google is not creating youtube for you, but for them to make cash. Crazy story. Really shocking and definitely not one of the most standard complaints in existence.
Anyways, there's absolutely no such thing as "I can't stop paying for this". Just do a chargeback on your card. It's not a real problem.
Sad story but this has been written by an LLM (to original short story has been inflated by and LLM to turn into an "article").
Speak w/ your bank and ask them to block future charges - easy.
> That argument is not unreasonable on its face. Artists should have rights. Their work should not be scraped, repackaged, and turned into infinite output without consent. But that is not the whole story. These companies don’t want to stop AI Music generation, they want to own it.
I'm not sure I agree with that assumption - flooding the market with large amounts of generated music (regardless of who does it) will decrease the value of UMG's products (real artists and AI songs) drastically to a point where I'm not sure that they would still have a viable business. While I disagree with a lot of what they do, I do assume that they have an interest in protecting music made by artists, not music generated as a product (though of course they also produce music like products with a lot of their human "artists").
There are multiple topics mentioned in this article. One is quite curious, which I had missed before, I must admit:
Universal Music Group is currently at the center of a growing legal fight against AI music platforms like Suno and Udio, accusing them of training on copyrighted music without permission. [...] The claim is straightforward. These systems learned from real artists without paying for it, and now they can generate songs that compete with the originals
To be honest - I really doubt that Suno-like company created music they taught their systems on. The AI companies are usually using our property (text, music, code) to teach their models and then sell them to us. Quite different view than a constant admiration on how the AI helps us coding...
Was browsing when all of a sudden my account got suspended for no apparent reason.
This was a premium account too, and I had last posted a tweet last year. I would maybe comment here and there once a week.
Ok cool you suspended my account. But when I tried to access my billing details to cancel the premuim sub, I got a "Something went wrong" error.
All these big tech companies have the same billing issues after bans/suspensions. Once they decide you're persona non grata, they don't give a f about cancelling your billing.
This is why you only use virtual cards for subscriptions. I have never had this issue. Even adobe couldn't get a cent over what I was willing to pay. Didn't let me cancel the account, fine. Kill the card. You don't have to beg to these companies.
> I was told that if an account is linked to another account that receives copyright strikes,
I still remember how mad people were when that linkage between YT accounts and Google accounts took place, and, of course, it looks like they were right. Shitty behemoth of a company.
I use disposable digital debit cards for my subscriptions. These can be issued by fintech companies like Wise. If something like this happens to me I'll just delete the card.
Could not get through the article because it looks like LLM generated text squared.
But I assume people will have protections against this? One can just let their credit card company know to block out the next payment, or dispute the charges; I am assuming the user will have adequate proof that they aren't able to get to their subscription account.
While what Google is doing here is scummy, I'm assuming that multiple consumer reversals will make at least a minor dent to their financial reputation with the banks? Did this even need so much AI text?
This is the point where you send a letter to the company, stating both the situation and the remedy you want (e.g. refund of payments for inaccessible services, cancellation of the account, maybe a reasonably small amount as compensation for damages).
In that letter, you set a reasonable deadline.
If they don't respond within that deadline, you take them to a small-claims court.
I understand that us tech bros want to fix everything online, but sadly that doesn't always work. But that's not the end of all your options.
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>I suspect the story is entirely made up, based on that detail alone.
... why?
Google has a zillion employees and the story didn't even end altruistically on their side, what the fuck would the point of fictionalizing this encounter be? typing practice?
I get that it's kind of supposed to be an advanced jab at google "The world will end before you speak to a human", but cast the shade on the perpetrators rather than saying that the victimized side is lying.
Otherwise consider that you're fucking wrong and have little understanding of how communication with Google works?
Also go through my history and find the other times I have sharesd this same story. Do I get paid for each time?
Yep, apparently a brick and mortar bakery isn't eligible for Google Maps. Obviously bogus. I appealed over and over again, rereading the rules, watching every dumb YouTube video, fixing every minor imagined transgression I could think of and each time just got another BS automated "your business is not eligible...".
Pretty much gave up them my partner decided to try one more time. In Vietnamese.
We had both been trying, she in Vietnamese, me in English, but this time she tried it at about 10:30pm local time and apparently it got routed to a bored Vietnamese speaker in the California help center, who fixed it immediately.
So it is possible but it'll take some weird combination of luck and timing.
You get rejected, you can just increment the version number and resubmit. It will get assigned to a different person and maybe pass this time.
> The future of businesses determined by the will of some customer support interpretations of bogus rules.
That's the present. The future will be trying to cajole an LLM into interpretation of bogus rules. Not sure if that's better or worse.
I think there is zero chance these companies aren't using LLMs to sort out the "desirable" customers from the undesirables. Google in particular knows almost everything about us.
All you can do it post a thread on the support forums, and nothing happen anymore;
I think for ordinary users (rather than developers or merchants), this is even worse.
It should be trivial for Google and Reddit to grandfather-in accounts which are more than 18 years old (arguably less, who created their account when they were, e.g. 5 years old?). However, I'm betting they will come up with all sorts of rationalisations as to why this is not possible, anything from the bullshit ("not technically feasible" my ass) or the self-contradictory ("an account may have changed owner"... so in violation of the ToS? And what's to stop an account from changing ownership after age verification?).
I admit I am prematurely riling myself up with indignation for something which may never happen. Maybe I am wrong and Google, Reddit, etc. take the common sense approach, but I have no hope in it.
Put it in plain words. "I have been paying... they made it impossible to access stuff I paid for and made it impossible to unsubscribe."
That's textbook fraud. They'll be fined and give you your money back.
Anyways, there's absolutely no such thing as "I can't stop paying for this". Just do a chargeback on your card. It's not a real problem.
YouTube is clamping down on AI content because they know people hate it and leave YouTube.
There is no money in generative AI. Google needs to advertise to humans and not to Rathbun.
That is why Disney cancelled the Sora deal.
At least in Australia, this shouldn't be a problem.
> That argument is not unreasonable on its face. Artists should have rights. Their work should not be scraped, repackaged, and turned into infinite output without consent. But that is not the whole story. These companies don’t want to stop AI Music generation, they want to own it.
I'm not sure I agree with that assumption - flooding the market with large amounts of generated music (regardless of who does it) will decrease the value of UMG's products (real artists and AI songs) drastically to a point where I'm not sure that they would still have a viable business. While I disagree with a lot of what they do, I do assume that they have an interest in protecting music made by artists, not music generated as a product (though of course they also produce music like products with a lot of their human "artists").
Was browsing when all of a sudden my account got suspended for no apparent reason. This was a premium account too, and I had last posted a tweet last year. I would maybe comment here and there once a week.
Ok cool you suspended my account. But when I tried to access my billing details to cancel the premuim sub, I got a "Something went wrong" error.
All these big tech companies have the same billing issues after bans/suspensions. Once they decide you're persona non grata, they don't give a f about cancelling your billing.
> I was told that if an account is linked to another account that receives copyright strikes,
I still remember how mad people were when that linkage between YT accounts and Google accounts took place, and, of course, it looks like they were right. Shitty behemoth of a company.
with all the ai hype buzzing around, i'm too paranoid to link it to a bank account
these people this money grows on trees, and i suppose if you're google it does >.>
But I assume people will have protections against this? One can just let their credit card company know to block out the next payment, or dispute the charges; I am assuming the user will have adequate proof that they aren't able to get to their subscription account.
While what Google is doing here is scummy, I'm assuming that multiple consumer reversals will make at least a minor dent to their financial reputation with the banks? Did this even need so much AI text?
What a joke. People, start putting a license fee on your YouTube videos for AI training. Play their game.
In that letter, you set a reasonable deadline.
If they don't respond within that deadline, you take them to a small-claims court.
I understand that us tech bros want to fix everything online, but sadly that doesn't always work. But that's not the end of all your options.