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Comment by RockRobotRock | Hacker News Reader

Imagine making a mean comment on YouTube and losing access to your bank account (everything runs on SMS 2FA)

No human to talk to, no appeals process. Don't trust Google, they are indifferent.

My class read a science fiction story in CS about a guy getting executed on death row for a late library book in a comedy of errors where a series of automated systems glitch out and a detached bureaucracy is slow to react. Or something like that.

I feel like it should be required reading to protect against "automate all the things" hubris.

Sounds somewhat reminiscent of the Terry Gilliam film Brazil. Basically a fly dies and gets caught in a teletype machine, causing the name on an arrest warrant to be misprinted. This snowballs into all sorts of darkly humorous and depressing hijinks.

Literally a bug in the system.

Do you remember what it was called?

I had a fuzzy memory of this story from years back, and recently stumbled across it recently on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computers_Don't_Argue

Basically a modernized version of the premise of "The Trial" by Franz Kafka. An unknown authority charges the character with a unstated crime and bureaucracy chugs along on errors and assumptions.

That’s a real reason I don’t comment on YouTube or risk using any other Google services except Gmail and Voice.

God forbid I chargeback a purchase on Google Pay (or whatever their PayPal is this year) and trip some anti-fraud system that locks me out of my 20 year old email account. We all know their support is either automated or nonexistent, so it’s not worth the risk.

Today it's commenting, tomorrow it might be watching a few bad videos

> locks me out of my 20 year old email account

And you effectively can't even run your own system, as has been discussed here many times.

But there‘s many providers that you pay actual money to (Like Fastmail) and if something goes wrong you, as a customer and not a potential ad target, are their top priority and you can call a human on the phone.

Exactly, vote with your dollars. Email is important and worth paying a few bucks a month for solid service.

Oddly enough, the EU isn’t racing to bust down the door of these “gatekeepers” and require third-party interoperability with this socially-critical service.

Pretty much just an apple thing as far as I can see.

switch to Fastmail or literally anything else :)

It's crossed my mind, but would require more effort than not commenting on YouTube or using Google Cash

I think this is one of the reasons that Google Plus failed. It's like if North Korea set up a social network. Nobody would post cause post the wrong thing and get executed.

If you see what people post with their real name on newspaper comments, Instagram or Facebook it‘s clear that people don‘t care, or don‘t think that far ahead.

Google Plus failed for many reasons but I doubt that one was a big factor.

You can have multiple Google accounts. Just make sure you use app-based 2FA on each so you don't get locked out.

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