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Google+ Account Suspensions Over ToS Drawing Fire
ideonexus writes "Reports of Google+ deleting user accounts are all over, including Limor Fried — AKA Lady Ada / Adafruit Industries (recently featured in Wired Magazine) and former Google employee Kirrily 'Skud' Robert for violating Google's identity ToS. Other users are finding themselves locked out of their accounts without an explanation of how they violated the ToS. The worst part for these individuals is that a lock-out of Google+ includes being locked out of all Google services, including email, calendar, and documents."
Actually that reminds me of a commentary by Joss Whedon when he talked about writing evil characters. he said the trick was that nobody believes they are evil even when they are truly monstrous. He said "I have known people who have done truly vicious things, gone out of their way to cause pain and suffering to a fellow human being and they believed they were moral and just as they did it, for they always had a reason"
And that is the whole problem with that stupid "Do no evil" slogan as you can always find an excuse to justify almost any behavior. They broke the TOS, they threatened our business, they could have cost us contracts that would have cost people their jobs (I'm sure Intel used the last two when bribing OEMs to nearly put AMD out of business). Everyone has an excuse, everyone has a reason.
The fact that people here are actually arguing over what Google had in their hearts when they fucked those people over (how many of us have all our contacts in our email written down?) just shows what a brilliant piece of marketing "Do no evil" is. Makes Apple and MSFT look like little league, but it don't make it any less bullshit.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
A friend of mine had some twat post a blog on Google's Blogger, using their name and photo, impersonating them, claiming that they are the "number one pedophile rights activist" and other such things in that vein. He has been hounded by social services and questioned about it by his son's school (a picture of his son also features on the blog). If you Google his name, that blog is the first result.
This friend has now spent over a year trying to get Google to remove this blog. Despite being a clear victim of vindictive impersonation, and despite him REPEATEDLY faxing in copies of his driver's license and such as per Google's impersonation policy, it's still up there. And as previously noted, it has affected his wife and kid before, to the point of nearly getting his son taken away. And Google won't do anything.
Funny how when they're trying to launch a whole new social network, they suddenly spring into action.
I write bullshit
I was wondering about that. But for those of us who use Android phones, such a lockout could be a real show-stopper if one were reliant on a single gmail account for syncing emails, contacts and calendar. Since Google is a private company, and you don't pay for their services, you could be well and truly fucked if Google (for whatever reason) decides you are persona non grata. You would have absolutely no redress whatsoever, at least within any useful timescale.
Makes me sort of glad that I have insulated myself (somewhat) by using K9 mail as an interface to my (non-G)mail accounts and keep everything else backed up elsewhere.