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Comment by steampilot | Hacker News Reader

I'm not saying that Google was right to do this, but this has to be taken with a grain of salt because we don't really know what the circumstances were. Can the user prove his claims that he wasn't notified about violations in the past? No he can't (more info here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burden_of_proof_(philosophy)#P...). In this case, Google would have to prove that they actually emailed the person, but I doubt they will reply as they might not even be watching this space. Should we just assume that this person is telling the truth? Are there reasons why someone would lie about this?

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One is a developer putting his reputation on the line for a free open-source product he has put hundreds of hours of work into. The other is a faceless trillion dollar advertising company operated mostly via black-box Machine Learning with a very public history of incorrectly censoring users and terminating accounts. I know who I would tend to trust.

I am not picking any side here. I don't know the developer, and I don't know Google. My comment was more on the philosophical side, showing that someone is making a claim that he can not prove. This applies to a lot of stuff that is posted online, and the problem is people just take things for granted, when a lot of them are just some claims by unknown people. Anyway, I don't expect most of the people to understand the nuances, but maybe at least 1 person will open their eyes due to this thread.

How does one prove that they did not receive the violation notifications? Regardless, is it that hard for Google to actually list out the specific violations in the termination notice and provide a direct, responsive way to address them?

This is an excellent point. You can't prove much. If the person or the AI closing the account knows enough to make a decision, those details can be repeated again.

This is how it's done in the real world. When judges sentence someone, they repeat the charges and the guilty verdict. When parents scold a child, they tell the child why.

I mentioned in my first comment that he can not prove this, and the Wikipedia link explains why he can't (fundamental law rule). I definitely agree that Google should list the reasons for what they did. Ideally there would be a public mechanism where everyone can see the history of violations associated with a developer account.

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