I had been leaving reviews for about a decade on a number of businesses I interacted with.

Some were pretty bad and I had extensive reviews with photos etc. The most egregious was a hotel in Lisbon where all the fire extinguishers were empty (with pictures).

One day I got an email from google maps that one of my reviews had been reported and flagged, and that they removed all my reviews ever and disabled my ability to post reviews.

To this day, I have no way to reverse the decision, or even find out which review was reported and flagged. I can’t leave new reviews anymore, can’t talk to anyone at google about it (of course), and all my reviews have indeed been taken down (verified by going to places I remember reviewing and not seeing my review anymore when not logged in)

On one hand I feel it’s google’s loss for their own idiocy and blind automation, but on the other I feel like it’s just letting the scammy businesses win: just report reviews you don’t like and they’ll get taken away making your scammy business have only 5 star reviews.