My son pleasured himself on Gemini Live. Entire family's Google accounts banned

testbjjl

Honestly, making the content unavailable for anyone who hasn’t already downloaded it by blocking the entire account is probably not the worst thing. Also, family account?

xvxvx

Mark my words: they’ll make a movie about this but change his age to 18. The whole family. Including his 2 sisters… what a nightmare.

0xy

Outsources parenting to megacorp, complains when megacorp shows responsible behavior instead of him, the absent parent more concerned with his business than his son.

neonstatic

The terrifying part is how much one can be dependent on services from a single company, that may at some point simply decide to not do business with you. Whether they have good reason for that is secondary. I moved away from relying on Google a while ago when I noticed, that I have zero recourse in case something happens. Turned out to be a sensible decision. I still use my google account, but only for things I wouldn't miss if I the account was nuked.

hyperhello

Where the hell is the open source app that downloads all your google stuff? There is a huge opportunity to be a hero.

sourcegrift

Google will be a better monopoly than Microsoft i promise. GitHub is great, I know it in the heart of my hearts. Steam is owned by literal reincarnation of Jesus Christ, they'll never turn on me. Loyalty is of course a quality of a decent human being. But not loyalty to corporations that you trade fair with, or worse, use YOU as a product. Only loyalty to people committed to you

iamnothere

This kind of thing is not the only modern example of guilt by association, but it’s probably the most common. (Not this specific event, I mean the banning of “cloud” accounts based on proximity.) There is a reason that we once eliminated this idea. It’s a stain on a free society and a constant drag on the economy. Corporations embracing this tactic are laying the groundwork for a terrible future.

nozzlegear

This was kind of an interesting comment from that thread. "Just invoke GDPR" is a refrain that's oft-repeated on Reddit (and, dare I say, HN), but it didn't seem to do much in this person's case: > I did an SAR with Google last year and it took over a month for a single account. It also ended up containing very little because of the way they decide what is and isn’t ‘personal data’, e.g. for the one I used for work, they outright refused to release most of it apart from specific emails and docs where I was mentioned by name because the email address was a standard contact@mywebsite.com (which to be fair is correct grounds for refusal). They were very helpful in padding out the SAR release by re-sending the emails of me requesting the SAR, and also redacted the data protection employee name whom I was conversing with though lol. > For SARs themselves there’s also grounds to refuse if they think it might interfere with potential future legal investigations, which given the ban reason I suppose isn’t an impossibility but unlikely.

1123581321

It sounds like the son was desperately using the linked family accounts he had access to as the previously used accounts became banned. But he only admitted to doing it on his own account. That would account for the time it took for the bans to spread, and for why the son came clean a few days later instead of right away or never. Brutal situation; hope the can restore access.

Mistletoe

I’m just over here trying to understand why or how you would do that to Gemini Live. >Visual Context: On mobile, you can choose to share your camera feed or screen. This allows you to ask questions about what you are looking at in the real world or get help with tasks on your device. >Common Use Cases • Brainstorming: Talking through ideas for a project or event. • Role-playing: Practicing for a job interview or a difficult conversation. • Learning: Asking deep-dive questions about a complex topic while you're on the go. • Daily Tasks: Getting help with things like gift ideas, travel itineraries, or summarizing information from your screen.

elephanlemon

Google really needs to do something about this. It’s one thing for them to stop doing business with you, it’s another to withhold your data from you (in particular after they set up their services such that you’re inclined to store everything with them). Every time I read one of these stories it reminds me that I really need to break away from them. I currently use Google Voice for almost all SMS 2FA after a nightmare scenario where I realized that the mobile carriers are entirely susceptible to social engineering and will happily port your number to an attacker’s phone. I planned to switch to Fi as they are probably the only one that this is not susceptible to… but if I were to lose both email and phone access I’d really be fucked.

elevation

If I ever become a life coach for small business owners, I don't know how I can recommend GSuite. Horror stories of "I've lost everything I had with them" are so plentiful I've stopped saving them. Seems like even Microsoft is not as bad.

apt-apt-apt-apt

There's a story of an OnlyFans star who slept with Meta employees "in hopes" of getting her IG account unbanned, which worked.

koolba

This is the exact scenario I described one month ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47195943

neko_ranger

yo I'm not an anxious person but this has set it off. If it truly is anyone who had logged into the same device, I wonder if a system reset keeps you clean from any bad accounts going forward. For example if I system reset and sold a tablet on craigs list

vessenes

Oooof. This is going to take a lawyer. A team of lawyers. Everything on that account has no doubt been LOCKED down for CSAM-grade review. I'm just imagining how you'd get a judge to help you here. You'd need to have found an acceptable third party that would do the data access, you'd have to agree on an attorney's eyes only list of data that you'd request.. Any chance anyone might possibly access CSAM = no. Any chance someone might possibly try and delete CSAM = absolutely no. I don't know what the OP does for work, but almost certainly it's going to be easier to just start over with a new website. Maybe get the daughter's laptop taken to a data recovery specialist and try and pull browser history for the thesis.

troad

God, this is a real nightmare. I'm pretty reticent to rush to regulation, but I really don't know what other solution is even possible here. The average person cannot realistically exist in a digital vacuum, self-hosting their entire online world. Google should not be able to do this to them. No one should have to rely on trying to whip up public mobs on Reddit or HN to get Google to give them access to their own freaking tax spreadsheets.

Aurornis

Reminder that Reddit is a hotbed for creative writing stories posted as pleas for advice. It’s a trend across all of the advice subreddits. They usually have rules that you’re not allowed to question the posts, only provide advice, so it’s a safe output for LARPing for attention, weirdly enough. This story is triggering a lot of my skepticism senses because it fits the mold of a typical creative writing Reddit post: - The OP claims Google just banned their account for CSAM content, yet nobody is considering the legal consequences of this? Their details would be referred to law enforcement and they could have police knocking on their door any minute. Why is the only thing anyone is talking about the access to their email? - OP is a helpless victim in a story where the world conspires against them - This is ostensibly a request for legal advice, but they didn’t post the one communication they claimed to have received in the matter (an e-mail explaining the reason for their bans, which they somehow received despite all accounts being banned) - A lot of unnecessary extra details about how the tragedy is amplified, like the doctor’s dissertation just happens to be due next week. Apparently she’s been writing this for so long but hasn’t shared a copy with anyone for review, editing, or feedback once? Right. - Villain is a safe target like an evil megacorp, with a guest villain of a teenage boy who is also safe to dislike - OP only responds to helpful suggestions with new facts that conveniently obviate those helpful suggestions, like the response explaining they have to use an obscure bank that doesn’t have any physical branches for reasons - OP completely ignores helpful responses that provide actionable advice. The real accounts are usually all over these comments with requests for additional detail. - OP has a strange timeline of events where the “AI” banned the first account, then Google manual review started banning accounts that had ever been linked to the tablet, but it did so in a weird way that happened in sequential order with each occurring several hours later. The timeline is oddly specific with these occurrences, too. The piece that really broke the story for me was this quote: > Son eventually comes clean and tells us what he was doing. We get the email informing us that accounts have been banned due to child protection reasons So they can’t access any of their accounts but they also received an email somehow? Details about that conveniently omitted despite the excessive detail in so many other things. They also only receive an explanation for why the accounts were banned after this long process where all accounts were banned one by one, and only after son “comes clean”? This seems like a detail that comes from a story where someone decided the plot point first and then needed some supporting details to try to minimize doubt. If you’re thinking that maybe the account ban email went to the recovery account, they claimed that their recovery accounts were also part of the lockout: > Shortly after, accounts which weren't on the tablet, but were used as recovery emails for those accounts also got hit. This feels like another red flag from someone who lost track of how their story’s facts intersected each other. These creative writing stories always rely on triggering your sense of “Well it could happen” combined with a set of acceptable villains (Google + “stupid” 14 year old boy) mixed with a set of details designed to amp up the sympathy factor (daughter’s dissertation due next week, no copies exist outside of Google Docs).

Fire-Dragon-DoL

This is terrifying (I have 2 young kids, but they'll get there). How do I avoid that? When is a Google account considered linked? If I log into 2 google accounts and swap between them, are the accounts considered linked? Also, I have plenty of photos of my kids naked when they were little (my son refused to wear anything for 1 year), do I have to be concerned?

apparent

> All my emails, all my documents saved in Google Drive. I would think someone whose business depends on gmail would use an email client, at least periodically, to download their emails.