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Comment by 67726e | Hacker News Reader

Then suspend the blog, and allow for some process to deal with the situation. Don't just torch everything on some suspicion of something going wrong. This isn't a new issue for Google. They're notorious for fucking with people's accounts and providing no recourse or customer support. Something happens? Better hope your uncle works at Google or your shit out of luck.

Hell, I've hosted most of my personal domains' email accounts via Google. A few months ago one of them was deleted. I never really used the email, but I certainly had things on their I would like to have for posterity. When Google deleted the account I was given no recourse or ability to appeal. It was just gone. It's not as if the account was even anything controversial, it was just my contact-me email for an old NES modding site I had.

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I mean, who's to say that isn't the case. The blog might still exist on Google's side, and it's just been quarantined or otherwise looks like it's been deleted from the outside.

The point is not the "soft delete" vs "hard delete" but their total lack of transparency or customer support. It doesn't matter to the end user the difference if all outward appearance is that the blog was deleted.

If there's any legal thing going on they wont be able to make any statements on it anyway...

"Due to ongoing litigation we are unable to comment" would still be valuable in that case. Radio silence on the other hand, is not acceptable.

In some jurisdictions it is illegal to let your client know they are being secretely investigated. Such statement may interfere with the investigation - they may destroy the evidence etc.

If that's actually what's happening. Google's policy seems to be radio silence in all cases.

> "Google's policy seems to be radio silence in all cases"

This may be an intentional decision to cooperate with law enforcement. If they only go silent in the case of ongoing investigations, then "Google went silent" functions in the same way as "the warrant canary disappeared" does for other sites, which could in theory jeopardize an investigation.

They don't say a damned thing anytime your account gets nuked. Hell, when I tried buying a Nexus 4 it mysteriously never shipped and I only could get in touch with a robot support person. I said fuck it, cancelled the order, and went to a T-Mobile store. Never bothered to deal with them again.

"Torch everything" is perhaps a poor way to convey you mean "soft delete".

>Don't just torch everything on some suspicion of something going wrong.

You can rest assured, if it was child porn, they'd be obligued to keep backups as proof for law enforcement. I doubt the material is actually deleted, just hidden until they sort it out with the feds.

>Hell, I've hosted most of my personal domains' email accounts via Google. A few months ago one of them was deleted. I never really used the email, but I certainly had things on their I would like to have for posterity.

That's what you get for not making backups. This isn't rocket science. You're using someone else's free service, and they have zero obligation to continue to provide that service to you. Even if they didn't intentionally delete your account, mistakes do happen sometimes. Who actually thinks it's a good idea to keep only one copy of data that you value? Especially on a site with the name "Hacker News"? Do hackers these days not understand backups?

Maybe I'm just a lazy fuck? I know backups, I get it, but you know what? I'm human.

A very very lazy human if you cant backup for 14 years....i hate mowing my lawn or doing my shopping but i have to do it. Going to work each day is a chore but somehow it happens...being lazy and human is the poorest excuse ive heard for not backing up over such a long period of time, and I deal with data loss whiners every day. If you dont want to lose it, make a copy, end of story.

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