patrick.net

https://www.businessinsider.com/google-users-locked-out-after-years-2020-10

Entrusting your data to big tech platforms can be highly risky.
Users who have been banned by Google for supposedly violating its terms of service have been left without access to key parts of their lives.
Many have appealed the suspensions but have received automated responses.
They don't know why they've been banned. "This is just how life is when you're dealing with trillion-dollar faceless corporations," said Aral Balkan.

When he received the notification from Google he couldn't quite believe it.

Cleroth, a game developer who asked not to use his real name, woke up to see a message that all his Google accounts were disabled due to "serious violation of Google policies."

His first reaction was that something must have malfunctioned on his phone.

Then he went to his computer and opened up Chrome, Google's internet browser. He was signed out. He tried to access Gmail, his main email account, which was also locked.

"Everything was disconnected," he told Business Insider. ...

He feels anger, too. "I'm extremely angry at Google for just completely locking me out or deleting all my data without a single notice, losing money, data on personal projects, contacts, so much," he explained.

The lack of transparency about how he broke their terms of service also has him worried. "I keep thinking there has to be a reason they've suspended me, even though it could just be some algorithmic glitch or something.," he said. "It's difficult to shake this feeling, given that Google practically has mountains of data on me.

"I'm also angry at myself for not having even thought of the possibility I could lose my Google account with everything in it and accounts linked through Google," he added. "Apparently I'm not alone in this blind faith though. Hopefully that changes."

Patrick says

"I'm extremely angry at Google for just completely locking me out or deleting all my data without a single notice, losing money, data on personal projects, contacts, so much," he explained.

Google be like: "How much did you pay for the service, Sir? $0? Here's your money back, sorryaboutthat."

The truth however, is you paid Google with your ass.

It was data-rape.

Google is extremely expensive for users.

Google targets companies to sell GSuite, it's one of their biggest products outside of search. GSuite is basically email/documents/etc... all ran by google. So a lot of companies do have it, and now Google targets government so they'll be collecting government data soon too.

Google targets children too. All the teaching stuff my wife is doing with 3rd graders is using Google products. You just know they are accumulating data on those little consumers already.

FNWGMOBDVZXDNW says

Google does provide you with incognito mode in chrome to handle this.

I'm not saying you specifically, but incognito mode is misunderstood by many/most people. Its main benefit is (at least hopefully) to not store your personal data from a browsing session on the computer you are using to browse. Example of use: Use incognito mode when browsing using the computer at the public library so that the next person to use that computer won't see your "recently visited pages" history. The websites still run all their scripts and, if logged into their website, know exactly who you are, etc.

FortWayneAsNancyPelosiHaircut says

Google targets companies to sell GSuite, it's one of their biggest products outside of search. GSuite is basically email/documents/etc...

Just took a new job at a company using this. Already late for a meeting because the calendar notifications suck.

Already late for a meeting because the calendar notifications suck.

Need to add that as an entry to the "Big Book of 'Scuses"

True story. Wed browsers don't have notifications that pop out like Microsoft office suite does.

When you're 'in the zone', deep in some code you need that. It's why I didn't use ubuntu at work as well. No MS integration.

Damn, I wanted to check if my ballot was counted right, but cannot do that without the government turning all my info over to Google via the recapcha shit js they include on their page. Page won't work unless you let Google fuck you in the ass first:

Why are you turning over every bit of data entered on https://california.ballottrax.net/voter/ to Google?

I'm a javascript programmer. This is not merely a security hole, it's outright betrayal of the public interest:

script src="https://www.google.com/recaptcha/api.js?onload=onloadcallback&render=explicit"

Any javascript included on a page can read everything the user enters on that page, track every keystroke, every mouse movement.

Please, stop this crime.

Patrick Killelea
Menlo Park, CA
p@patrick.net

Booger says

Who exactly has deplatformed them? AWS? Azure? Google Cloud?

Patrick says

Google via the recapcha shit js

Didn't make me do that. I just checked mine. Apparently it was 'accepted'.

@just_passing_through Actually, it did. Google was given free access to all the info about you. Even if you didn't see the Recaptcha, it happened by spying on your keystrokes, etc.

Try blocking all Google domains and resubmit. It won't work.

You can block Google with /etc/hosts for example. I use Little Snitch.

Problem is that just about everyone does not block Google domains and more than half of all websites betray everything you do to Google, even government and medical sites.

Oh, yeah, I know... I just didn't have to click buses n' stuff to prove I'm human.

Oh, dug out my old trial proton mail account. I remembered both passwords! I may be switching soon/finally. Just need to figure out how I'm going to handle 17 years of email and what sort of calendar I'll use to replace gogles.

GreaterNYCDude says

Is it just me or has Google's search algorithm gone to shit?

Google hires based on what kind of junk you have between your legs, how many genders you have, and how much melanin is in your skin.

Yes - it HAS gone to shit. Use www.yandex.com or www.duckduck.go (wrapper for google, but still an improvement).

Remember when Yahoo was king of the Internet? That's Google and Facebook in 10 years. They're crap.

richwicks says

www.duckduck.go (wrapper for google...

Is it really?

Duckduckgo is completely separate from Google I believe. Nothing at all in common, and they don't like each other.

richwicks says

Use www.yandex.com

I've already switched to https://translate.yandex.com/ for translation things because it's definitely as good or better, and I'm pretty sure the Russians are not sharing their dossier on my searches with the US government, or China.

"best tits" results are waaay better on yandex!

Patrick says

Duckduckgo is completely separate from Google I believe. Nothing at all in common, and they don't like each other.

Google once portrayed themselves as the champions of free speech and not being evil, and enemies of propaganda and government censorship.

Don't trust anybody.

All I know though, is google is only slightly more useful than tits on a bull for doing searches now. Bing isn't bad. Google is one of the last places I go to in order to find technical information.

Eric Holder says

richwicks says

www.duckduck.go (wrapper for google...

Is it really?

I think it is.

I believe it started out as a wrapper for a GROUP of search engines. Used to be pretty lousy but it's improved beyond the point of google. Google will actually remove sites entirely now.

richwicks says

Eric Holder says

richwicks says

www.duckduck.go (wrapper for google...

Is it really?

I think it is.

I believe it started out as a wrapper for a GROUP of search engines. Used to be pretty lousy but it's improved beyond the point of google. Google will actually remove sites entirely now.

Two years ago their CEO was saying they don't:

Found another non-google search engine: https://www.yippy.com/

I used to like dogpile:

https://www.dogpile.com/

Also http://metasearch.com/ which pre-google searched other engines and collated.

Nice Youtube replacement: www.rumble.com

NoCoupForYou says

Nice Youtube replacement: www.rumble.com

how does it compare to bitchute?

FortWayneAsNancyPelosiHaircut says

how does it compare to bitchute?

Less bigfoot/illuminati/The Greys are working with the Jewish Jesuits to keep gold prices down crap. Pretty much Movie/TV Reviews and conservative vloggers.

I quit YouTube last night. I couldn't stand it any longer.

I've had a bitchute account for a while but haven't used it because it was glitchy. I went on last night and there was all of the insanity YouTube used to be. Watched a couple old favorite characters. I have to go find the rest of my favorite old characters. They had disappeared off of YouTube lately.

NoCoupForYou says

FortWayneAsNancyPelosiHaircut says

how does it compare to bitchute?

Less bigfoot/illuminati crap.

I'm going to have to give it a try. Can you share some links to some good channels/ commentators?

That being said, I love Cranks of the old "UFOs are Real" documentary type.

For the past 3 years, I've been reminiscing about how amazing the internet was 20 years ago. It's devolved into a pile of stupid social media videos/posts, fabricated media stories, and orwelian overlords deleting and censoring free discourse. Meanwhile, there clearly was a coordinated effort to reduce discourse by nearly every media site "temporarily suspending" or eliminating comments going into this election.

Everything gets wrecked when Regular Males aren't in charge.

I keep hoping for Freenet or some alternative to the entire damn thing, that requires a good half hour for a well intentioned lay man to connect to, and the process is deliberately changed every few months so dumbasses and chicks can't get a cut and past on how to do it like myspace themes

Somehow make it ass backwards to connect so it's not a matter of just connecting to WiFi.

just_passing_through says

"best tits" results are waaay better on yandex!

This is true. Personally tested.

Yandex does make requests to a zillion different sites when you load those images, far more than Duckduckgo, but maybe it's not nefarious.

NoCoupForYou says

I keep hoping for Freenet or some alternative to the entire damn thing

Maybe I should put some time into my idea of just having an sftp proxy locally.

Your browser would connect to that, and that would use your ssh key to connect to someone's server and sftp the content down to you.

Thing is, it would still require people issue a set of arcane commands in a terminal to get set up.

NoCoupForYou says

Nice Youtube replacement: www.rumble.com

Thanks! This looks good too.

Does not demand that I let them track me with cookies or localstorage in order to work. Sadly, Bitchute does.

I just tried the rumble app on my roku. It sucks. I can't even read the black text on a white background.

Hopefully they improve it. I just started clicking on videos but I didn't know what they were about necessarily. Also, no timestamps so I couldn't tell if it was some old vid.

So far getting bitchute onto the roku apparently requires some surgery. I plan to try that soon.

Onvacation says

NoCoupForYou says

FortWayneAsNancyPelosiHaircut says

how does it compare to bitchute?

Less bigfoot/illuminati crap.

I'm going to have to give it a try. Can you share some links to some good channels/ commentators?

I'd like to also suggest https://www.brandnewtube.com as well.

Put 5 different sites together and you have the youtube you liked and wanted, but "youtube" now is just corporate propaganda and a few people not giving up on the shitty site.

I made a script that I used to download all youtube videos I watched that I wanted to review later. It's interesting as hell to see what has been censored - got a script for that as well. I'll eventually take everything that's been removed (for whatever reason), and make a torrent. You get a list of what has been censored and the most interesting thing to see is what your overlords don't want you to see.

Do we just need to go back to dial up BBS to find free discourse?