I've said this before here, I'm pretty libertarian, and very much in favor of small gov, but at this point its become clear that anyone who strives to become an internet platform where market dominance equals monopoly or duopoly, should be held to strict regulatory standards, re: free speech, appeals, etc. similar to what a gov entity is held to.
About that - the government can be pretty opaque. I too would like some strict regulatory standards to apply to the CBP.
Getting your account unbanned shouldn't require having an insider.
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There should be a clear reason for why an account is banned. When you're accused of a crime in a society, we don't just tell you to read abstract law. We tell you exactly what you've been accused of, such that you can defend yourself appropriately. There is this basic principle in English law that states:
- It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer.
What's been happening with many of these companies is that many guilty actually do escape, whilst many innocent actually still do suffer.
Although, in this case, I guess the guy was just looking for any qualitative explanation for how to fix the situation, not specifically asking for exceptions to policies to be made.
Disclaimer: not saying anything about the qualities of said services.
Not at all.
Being able to more efficiently access other systems and employees at your company than outsiders isn't "unjust" in any way.
Not being able to do so, seems very broken and weird. :(
Couldn't that same argument be used to support secret laws and secret courts enforcing those secret laws? After all, we're definitely seeing the problem of people going as close as possible to the line without overstepping.
I think those laws would help tremendously, but mostly by forcing everyone to be overly cautious not to break them, creating strong chilling effects. They'd stifle freedom, and so does Google's secret law system.
To minimize fallout, I think it's more useful to split up Google along services (Search, Youtube, Gmail, Office/Suite etc). You could search for double plus ungood things on Google Search then without running the risk to loose access to your emails.
No need to have new secret laws - there are already enough obscure laws that I guarantee you have broken many of them whose statute hasn't expired. That is why you shouldn't speak to cops without a lawyer.
That said - it's not a Google problem as it's the norm. Most services, banks or even potential employers will tell you the reason for declining service - not because they want a chilling effect, but because there are so many ways it can get wrong (for them).
And I'm definitely not "so sorry" about.
Why?
edit: also, I have the battle scars from moderated a few niche online forums/properties that were mildly popular. People who abuse services are surprisingly tenacious and creative. If there is the potential to make money - even a little - you get abusers who are tenacious, creative and sophisticated
Unfortunately the devil’s advocate has brought us no closer to an understanding of the problems posed by OP: how to appeal an unknown violation, how to regain access to ones data, etc.
The problem with such opaque systems is that it can go terribly wrong, but the answer is to not centralize anything important; always keep a backup. After all, the cloud is someone else's computer.