Google reinstates account of thomasmonopoly

None of this is news. People complain about Google's lack of support all the time; it is a well known issue.

Also, complaining about having to use POP or IMAP to pull out your email? Seriously? It's a standard, it lets you import them into any email program you want, and just giving you a compressed archive of everything would be a nightmare of compatibility if you wanted to do anything with it but read the messages in a text editor.

It is absolutely true that Google has their support issues, and they should be criticized for them, but...

Do you seriously think there is any other US provider (i.e. subject to US child pornography laws) that would have behaved any better? Given the allegation, it probably was legally risky for Google to keep his data at all. There are laws that criminalize even the "innocent possession" of child pornography. Had things gone another way, I presume Google would have argued they were preserving evidence, but they have to be very, very careful regardless. I'm absolutely certain there are many providers who would have behaved worse (account closed, no comment, no investigation, no appeal, data given to the police then deleted).

In the alternative scenario, many of the things you want Google to do could easily be illegal. After an allegation, any warning, contact or access to data could easily have been construed as aiding and abetting a crime in progress and/or obstruction of justice (particularly by an ambitious, headline-seeking prosecutor). What you don't seem to understand is that, once the allegation was made Google couldn't do squat for @thomasmonopoly without risking criminal charges until they determined the allegation was false. And that determination was going to take time no matter how you slice it.

Personally, I find it hard to think of what Google could do better in this sort of situation. My two suggestions (and I'm not sure they're practical):

1. Commit to manually reviewing every automatic suspension for these kinds of potential criminal allegations.

2. Be clear about when an account is being suspended and investigated versus suspended with a final determination made.

I question that Google took the appropriate action. The default action for an apparently legitimate account[0] that violates the ToS in such a manner should be to block access to the content in question - perhaps even related content until a human can review it. It should never be to entirely disable the account without warning.

[0]I'd be shocked if Google doesn't use data mining and heuristics to discriminate between legitimate accounts and spammers, pornographers, etc....

Matt Cutts did look into it.

But he very specifically didn't say that he had "decided [Thomas Monopoly] can't have his account back".

This is presumably because that decision isn't even Matt's to make. (He is the head of the webspam team at Google.)

It's well established that Google's support system is close to non-existant for non-paying customers. Does it suck? Yes. There's definitely tons of room for improvement. But at the end of the day they're still providing you with tons of free, accessible products that are some of the best in the business (paid or not). This isn't much more than any other free service provider on the internet offers these days: half-official forums for free customers, direct support lines for the paying.

But regarding "freeing" your data from Google, it's hilarious trying to see people argue that it's somehow difficult or hidden. It's not. Takeout lets you grab all of your social information. Any popular desktop mail client can connect to Gmail over IMAP and automatically download every last e-mail in your account. I click one checkbox on Google Docs and then hit download to have a backup, or I can connect through WebDAV using a popular FTP client. There are similar easy solutions for Picasa, Calendar, and the rest. Just because they don't provide you with one shiny big button to do all the work for you doesn't mean they don't provide you with very accessible ways to backup your data offline.

At the end of the day, an automated system did what it was designed to do. Google should definitely work on it's customer service channels, but until then I'll happily continue to use their free services and backup on a scheduled basis.

Can you give us an idea of the scale of the problem? Is handling flagged accounts something that could plausibly be improved by creating a "large enough", dedicated team? Or do legal and/or practical constraints (e.g. too many cases to look at) prevent that?

> Google employs an automated system to scan user storage for violations of their ToS

So if I take pictures of my children in the bathtub with my Android phone, I am risking having my entire Google account deleted with no recourse except to try to 'make a stink on the internet'?

Because frankly, I would never take photographs to be developed at Walmart because they're well-known for calling the cops on parents who took pictures of their children.

Is Google the new Walmart?

Really? That slideshow is benign and I've never heard of someone having their Google account banned because of something like this.

I would have assumed AdWords a hundred times over.

That's like me telling you that certain food sucks and then you telling me "you do it then". The food sucks, I didn't say I could make it better. If I could I would. However, the food still sucks. Just because I cannot fix it doesn't mean that it doesn't suck.

Hey if you don't like the broken car that we sold you, go to an iron mine and mine yourself the materials to make one yourself! </sarcasm>

I've seen this false argument too many times on the internet. When can we be done doing this?

> "I'm wondering what type of system all the naysayers would have in place that would properly balance the requirements of google, the law, the community, and the individual users - and how they would scale that to ten million+ users."

This exists - it's called paying for something you use every single day, and is a core part of your existence (both online and off).

Why more people aren't self-hosting or purchasing email hosting services (and yes, that includes SLAs and proper customer support) is beyond me.

> If there was a crime, shouldn't it be the legal system that dealt with it, rather than some corporate entity, like Google?

Yes.

But corporate entities must handle these situations carefully. If your web host botches the DMCA process, they are liable. If Google's support technician accesses child pornography on Google, that technician risks child pornography charges.

It's an absolute case of a corporation covering their ass, but absolutely needed in this legal environment, especially around radioactive allegations like possessing child pornography.

That could be construed as assisting in the commission of a federal crime.

Google mistakenly flagged a legal image he uploaded as child pornography.

He explicitly states early in the post that the image in question is no longer uploaded to the picasa album.

"The Google Gods have banned you. You have 48 hours to collect your child pornography."

Yeah, that would be fantastic.

They should, however, tell you precisely which part of the TOS you violated - down to highlighting the specific words.