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Comment by logic | Hacker News Reader

Matt, can you suggest a strategy for dealing with Google support issues that doesn't involve "get Matt Cutt's attention on Hacker News"?

I don't mean any snark with that question, for what it's worth, but I fear that you don't scale well. :)

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One thing that I love about Google+ is that a bunch of Google employees are feeling more comfortable interacting with the outside world.

For example, it looks like Amanda Walker from Google stopped by Ladyada's blog and left a comment just before me with even better advice than I gave: http://www.adafruit.com/blog/2011/07/23/google-suspended-lim... . Amanda pointed to the official way to appeal, and I believe that appeal would have gone through quickly. So I think the right thing would have happened in not that much more time.

that actually reinforces his point. If she didn't make that post, Amanda wouldn't have showed up to give her comment...neither would you.

And that's pretty weak "support", telling someone to go fill out a customer support form. Especially since it's Google we are talking about here, where the support is pretty much worthless.

Seriously, I hope you guys have some A/I handling support that's just isn't working properly yet...because if the support is handled by actual human beings, you must have an active policy of hiring the lowest common denominator.

vaksel, it looks like the profile was flagged when it was something more like "Adafruit Industries" and less like a person's name. If people want to appeal a suspension, we have a form to appeal that suspension; the form gets the right info to the right people to review. If people have a more complex question or issue, we have forums where people can post.

that's actually the big problem...the account doesn't get judged by the bot over it's current status...and is instead judged through it's entire history...that's a problem...since it means people aren't allowed to ever make a mistake.

this is the same exact reason why my adwords account was permanently suspended over a campaign that was disabled for more than 6 months(which was approved at the time I ran it), just because Google decided to change their rules midway through and apply them retroactively to all campaigns past and present.

"the account doesn't get judged by the bot over it's current status...and is instead judged through it's entire history"

I don't believe that's correct in this case. I believe that earlier today the profile didn't look like it had a real name.

And what would be wrong with a warning email (even an automated one), rather than going direct to execution?

That's an improvement that's scheduled to happen: https://plus.google.com/113116318008017777871/posts/VJoZMS8z... says one of the changes that's coming is "Giving these users a warning and a chance to correct their name in advance of any suspension."

I too think it is great that Google is improving here, but if Ladyada ( <hipster>I knew her back when she was called l3m0n</hipster> ) wasn't a relatively well known blogger this method of "support" wouldn't have worked. Clearly something needs to be done to make the appeal process more visible for average-joe/jane users whose accounts are shutdown.

So far, it seems the occurrence rate is 1 user in 19,000,000 users. If everyone on Earth joined Google+, then there would be a grand total of 316 similar incidents.

I think Matt will be able to handle that :)

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