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Comment by Ardon | Hacker News Reader

If anything the threat to Android developers is much worse, because of Google's habit of banning entire google accounts for any infraction.

Recently, hundreds of people had their entire Google accounts banned (with that ban upheld on appeal) because they were sending a lot of emotes (By request!) to a streamer's chat.

These people lost everything. Emails. Everything in their Google Drive. Over totally normal behaviour.

Using a separate Google account to do your app development doesn't help, because they ban accounts they suspect to belong to the same person as well.

So yes, the danger exists for Android developers too, and is much larger in scope.

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That's a crazy incentive to split your information across multiple services. These read like horror stories. I'd be in so much trouble if I got locked out of my google accounts.

> I'd be in so much trouble if I got locked out of my google accounts.

I’d say then it’s time to start migrating everything to any kind of trustworthy entity. Google is the opposite as they’ve shown time and time again.

Yes, that case was a final wake-up call for me to start migrating as much as I can away from Google. Phone is the hardest part - I do like Android much more than iOS, but the risk of getting randomly banned by some deep neural net without any recourse is something that I can't accept anymore.

Sometimes I wonder who are the developers that coded that and if they're proud of their work, destroying a not so insignificant part of many people's live.

Consent is an active process. Either party can revoke consent at any time without cause without being an asshole; future consent thus cannot reasonably be assumed in perpetuity.

Use offlineimap; make backups.

Google is running a service that is practically the most important service, for millions of people. If they get locked out of their email, they could potentially lose access to everything.

To ban people flippantly and then hide behind automated customer service is inexcusable.

Yes you can legally revoke consent, but if you are a global oligopolist and your revoking consent wipes out people's digital identity, personal data and professional existence, then you should not be surprised if you get crushed by regulators eventually.

Developers in particular have nowhere else to go. Backing up your code doesn't help if you get locked out of one of the 2.5 app stores on planet earth. Your skills are worthless.

"Make backups" doesn't quite cover it - not even for consumers. How do you keep up-to-date backups of your Google Docs & Sheets? How do you restore an Android backup including all your purchases after getting banned by Google?

The principle of "either party can revoke consent" is based on the assumption that both parties have other realistic options. But that is no longer the case. This market has become completely dysfunctional.

It seems currently the only hope would be some EU regulation about it.

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