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by lrei 1278 days ago
Yikes! good luck, hope it works out. This is scary. Gmail is still, by far, the best email app. Something like this could happen to me and, I suspect, a lot of other people.
5 comments

The best email app wouldn't ban you for an emoticon in Youtube chat or sending a medical photo to your doctor.
This is just crass. There's plenty of very good software with shitty T&C, this isn't anything new.
I dare you to find those examples in the Terms and Conditions.
These ToS, CSAM, moderation, etc are very orthogonal to the app itself. Why conflate them? Most non-hackernews people are completely unaware of them, so it won't be a factor in their choice of platform. Are we even sure other apps aren't doing similar things? Or have equally dangerous practices around password changes?
Because the user experience is that it doesn't work.
> Gmail is still, by far, the best email app.

I used to think so when I used Gmail.

But switching to Fastmail, I no longer agree that it is "by far" the best. Now I think Gmail is only better by a slight margin, and this margin is so small that it does not justify the drawbacks: Potentially getting locked out with no recourse, certainly getting everything you receive scanned to deliver you the best possible ads, contribute to the email monopoly where the big players decide the protocols.

I know it seems lo-tech, but it's a good idea to print out the ten Gmail recovery codes and keep them in a safe place. I've done the same for GitHub too.
We’ve gone full circle to the the idea of post-it note credentials
That's where 'safe place' comes in. It's the intended use of backup codes.
> Gmail is still, by far, the best email app.

I find this opinion absurd. It is an e-mail client. Even if it did perform the tasks that an e-mail client needs to perform somewhat better than all other clients, the loss of autonomy makes it a terrible deal, even for non-technical users.

>Gmail is still, by far, the best email app

True, no mails no problems, it's a feature not a bug.