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by antonkm 2656 days ago
These are becoming quite common. If my account would be terminated my business would be dead. How is Google not handling this better?
3 comments

> These are becoming quite common. If my account would be terminated my business would be dead. How is Google not handling this better?

After drilling down into these posts it's very common to find those developers stealing user data, using forbidden advertising techniques, infringing copyright or simply trying to scam around Google's 30% payment cut. Apple would kick them off the App store immediately as well (and even tell them directly that running to media won't help).

If anything, Google is finally starting to clamp down on malware and developers abusing user data.

If we stipulate that you are totally correct (which I sincerely hope you are), what about the effect that permanent blacklisting can have on an individual's life? And if somebody gets banned, apparently now they must become "unclean" and be kept far away lest they "infect" the company.
I wonder which is harder/takes longer, starting a new business after a SEC violation, or some othe serious misdoing, or getting back on the Play Store.
I find that problematic and Google should do better.
Which one was it in this case ?
I suspect that dealing with complaints or appeals does not scale well and therefore they just do not (or even can not) do it?
Sifting through valid and invalid complaints is hard if your goal is to please your customers, scale, and automate. Something has to give so vendors choose to optimize around one or two key metrics:

* Customers with high volume/spend/influence

* Loud/Viral complainers

At the expense of:

* Everyone else

This is a difficult problem that requires massive investment and dedicated care. I earnestly think Google is trying, maybe they're hiring more people, maybe they're investing dev time in better tooling, but its not cutting it as evidenced here.

You need to automate when your enemy is robot spammer.

Email spammer, page rank spammer, scam apps...

It's a matter of policy for them to never disclose anything but the vaguest possible details about the case if there's any suspicion of wrongdoing on the user's part.
And by suspicion they mean "our algorithms see something weird that might be a signal of wrongdoing or not. So just in case we shut you down"
This does not just apply to shutting down accounts - this also applies to whether to refund money due to borderline fraud by Google. Google is hostile to all customers, I do not trust them when it comes to monetary transactions based on my own experience.
GDPR actually asked for a "right to explanation" in these cases. The actual implementation is different from one country to another.
Of course, the actual practical translation of "matter of policy" is probably more like "way to save money on support staff".