Japanese adult manga creator Masahiro Itosugi had his Google account permanently banned when he uploaded old manuscripts to Drive, reigniting debate over cloud moderation and the risks of centralizing your digital life.
The author’s own intellectual property was deemed a violation, and the appeal mechanisms turned out to be opaque—they formally exist, but in practice, getting a decision reversed with automated review is nearly impossible.
That sounds about right. Unlike brick-and-mortar stores of the past, no company needs to answer to you now. Doesn’t matter if you’re a paying customer, you can’t bribe Google to care about you. The only thing that could work is bad publicity on social media, at best.
Services like IFTTT allow Ring doorbells to sync footage directly to Google Drive, creating a potential attack vector that users rarely consider.
The theoretical scenario works like this: if a malicious actor wanted to trigger a Google account ban, they could expose an internet-connected camera to intentionally problematic content, knowing the footage would automatically upload to the target’s Drive.
Google has forever been notorious for “no support”. No number to call, no online agents, just help pages… which mostly redirect back to themselves. Even GCP, their cloud, does this. Unless you pay for premium top tier support you’re on your own. This scenario is that in practice. There is no one to appeal to, no one to talk to, there’s nothing. You build your life around something like an email address, then suddenly the entire ecosystem is gone.
When we talk about degoogling, it’s not just for tinfoilhat privacy/rights issues, it’s this case too. You literally cannot control your own fate. They can (and obviously do) take down accounts.
For anyone (I know probably not here, but think family and friends) who think that they would just appeal and somehow they would get a human, literally what is the benefit to Google to reinstate you? In their eyes you’re officially a risk, something that potentially governments, police departments, and lawyers would be interested in. It’s a risk they don’t want to take to allow you back on. Appealing even in the best cases will probably not go your way.
That sounds about right. Unlike brick-and-mortar stores of the past, no company needs to answer to you now. Doesn’t matter if you’re a paying customer, you can’t bribe Google to care about you. The only thing that could work is bad publicity on social media, at best.
I love how technology has made our lives easier.
Why should Google care about customer’s rants when it has the duopoly on mobile phones and contracts with governments?
Google is evil
Google has forever been notorious for “no support”. No number to call, no online agents, just help pages… which mostly redirect back to themselves. Even GCP, their cloud, does this. Unless you pay for premium top tier support you’re on your own. This scenario is that in practice. There is no one to appeal to, no one to talk to, there’s nothing. You build your life around something like an email address, then suddenly the entire ecosystem is gone.
When we talk about degoogling, it’s not just for tinfoilhat privacy/rights issues, it’s this case too. You literally cannot control your own fate. They can (and obviously do) take down accounts.
For anyone (I know probably not here, but think family and friends) who think that they would just appeal and somehow they would get a human, literally what is the benefit to Google to reinstate you? In their eyes you’re officially a risk, something that potentially governments, police departments, and lawyers would be interested in. It’s a risk they don’t want to take to allow you back on. Appealing even in the best cases will probably not go your way.