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by ilamont 1590 days ago
How many more pleas like this will we see on HN? Or, hear from friends, colleagues, and relatives who have been locked out or denied access to an important service, either through no fault of their own or by an innocent action, such as the OP logging into a second Google account that doesn't even use Adsense?

No warning.

No explanation other than "suspicious activity" or "violation of [vaguely worded] policy."

No human to call who can help troubleshoot, other than a tech-savvy friend or relative.

No recourse.

There needs to be a technology bill of rights, not just for people dealing with Google, Amazon, Apple, and Facebook, but also the myriad other technology operators which can disrupt our lives in an instant with some poorly programmed process or unanticipated edge case. Ultimately, the OP or my non-tech savvy employee or my mother should be able to get real answers and/or help from a human being when wronged by Google, a telco, or the local bank.

2 comments

How long until people get the message not to use Google products?
Main issue is that they control a lot (most? 99%?) of the video and webpage ad market. Dunno why nobody else is getting into those markets.

If you're not running a multi-million $ site, you're especially screwed for alternatives unless you're selling something and can get affiliate revenue.

If Bob wants to put up a video fixing vintage washing machines, he'll have to do it out of 100% altruism, because Google is going to take all the ad revenue.

If by some miracle you managed to start a successful business in that area, they would just buy you. Even with the new anti-trust scrutiny, they have no trouble buying small companies and startups.
Yes I'm sure you will make a lot of money releasing Android games on the Amazon app store and advertising them on Bing and Vimeo.

Google have a fair number of monopolies. Just not using Google products is obviously not a viable option in many situations.

Why not? Probably the cost of these occasional bans are nothing compared to the reach of the ad network.

(Not that I recommend using it. I recommend the old fashioned ways of knowing where your banner ends up. And make sure it doesn't become one of 344 on some random site. So build partnerships, etc. Yeah, it sucks, it's work.)

You're arguing with an "average return" but as a single person you only play once, or in any case a small number of times if you're willing to sign up for new accounts. So the variance of your results, paired with the impact of an unfavourable outcome, should probably figure into that decision...
I think you'll see similar problem in other similar growing or already big tech companies. It is important in that case to have the user's rights protected at a general -national- level.
>Google, Amazon, Apple, and Facebook

Does the Amazon belongs to that list? All I have heard about Amazon support was only positive. Did you had different experience with Amazon?