There are escalative methods to employ in such situations.

In many legal jurisdictions, a 'demand letter' holds weight. These can be served by courier, with proof of delivery as valid. One aspect of such a letter is a hard, specific time by which you will start legal action, along with associated additional costs.

You have two paths after the letter. The first is small claims court, or normal court. In many places, small claims court does not allow lawyers, and the judge will even have to explain any confusing terms.

Which means the playing is leveled, including reduced or no disclosure requirements, and legal cost assignments. Where I am, it's $100 to file.

The goal is to force a fix, at threat of legal consequences.

I am sending an email.

There are a few physical Google stores. They aren't really very helpful at anything, and even don't have phones in stock often.

I went to one, wanted a Pixel Fold in the spring, and was told "we'll get one". Some guy left to do so, and 20 minutes later I just walked out. Just as with everything else, when Google does it, it's half-assed.

The broken logic is that it will expose why the account was flagged, and thus, allow 'bad actors' to better navigate and bypass such flags.

Of course, this is absolutely silly and beyond absurd, for bad actors share information of forums, can deduce fairly easily, and even have help from people on staff.

Such actors typically know about detection and flagging methods within days of implementation. There's literally zero benefit to secrecy. None. Security through obscurity can be a beneficial additional layer, but it simply never helps here.

We really should pass a law requiring full disclosure of the precise method of banning. I can even see a 'trial' period, where accounts activated (and used!) for 3 months receive this benefit, but new accounts, or new + dormant accounts do not.

This should likely be coupled with mandated full refunds of phones or computers, as an example.

Note that this isn't a 'free' account we're talking about here. An Apple account, or a Google account is required to use an iphone or pixel in its default config, and all the features it entails. These accounts aren't free, they're part of purchase cost, and core-required.

(Even if it's a, for example, Samsung phone? It comes pre-installed, with uninstallable Google Play cruft, as part of an agreement with Samsung. Same conditions need apply here)

You can use an Android phone without a Google account.

For the average person, including buying apps, this simply isn't a reality.

And Google will now be throwing up massive "OMG! You're going to install an app that isn't from the Play Store?!" warnings to anyone that tries, including requiring some degree of technical skill to do so.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45908938

You can nitpick this, but the truth is my comments are about the average user, and from that perspective, factually accurate.

If you want to truly save your photos, make backups of the locals and put it in your safe deposit box at the bank. Or alternatively, at a trusted friend/relative's house.

Even doing this yearly can save the immense sadness of lost memories. And of course, this works for emails, and everything else.

If you encrypt it, make sure you use a method not tied to any external service, or the machine you're on. I don't use Apple, yet I suspect that an encrypted external backup might be tied to your Apple ID, or some such, because that's how the world flies today.

Yeah, the plan would be external disk -> offsite storage.

I wouldn't bother to encrypt, it's just family photos and I wouldn't want to complicate restores. Especially if it was my wife who eventually needed to use it.

Their point was completely valid. HN policies are what help keep this place sane.

When you see a dog, or describe the entity, do you discuss the genetic makeup or the bone structure?

No, you describe the bark.

The end result is what counts. Training or not, it's just spewing predictive, relational text.

So do we, but that's helpful.

" Training or not, it's just spewing predictive, relational text."

If you're responding to that, "so do we" is not accurate.

We're not spewing predictive, relational text. We're communicating, after thought, and the output is meant to communicate something specifically.

With AI, it's not trying to communicate an idea. It's just spewing predictive text. There's no thought to it. At all.

Russ Hanneman's thigh implants are a key example. Appearances are all to some people. Actual growth is meaningless to them.

The problem with AI, is that they waste the time of dedicated, thinking humans which care to improve themselves. If I write a three paragraph email on a technical topic, and some yahoo responds with AI, I'm now responding to gibberish.

The other side may not have read, may not understand, and is just interacting to save time. Now my generous nature, which is to help others and interact positively, is being wasted to reply to someone who seems to have put thought and care into a response, but instead was just copying and pasting what something else output.

We have issues with crackers on the net. We have social media. We have political interference. Now we have humans pretending to interact, rendering online interactions even more silly and harmful.

If this trend continues, we'll move back to live interaction just to reduce this time waste.

In the best of gaslighting and redirection, Youtube invents a new codec with integrated AI, thus vastly complicating your ability to make this point.

After posting a cogent explanation as to why integrated AI filtering is just that, and not actually part of the codec, Youtube creates dozens of channels with AI-generated personalities, all explaining how you're nuts.

These channels and videos appear on every webpage supporting your assertions, including being top of results on search. Oh, and AI summaries on Google searxh, whenever the top is searched too.

I don't think you want to try that argument with immigration officials, although it might just keep your incorrect answer from being straight up fraud or willful misrepresentation.

I mean, some US govt immigration forms asking for your social media usernames include pastebin sites like "justpaste.it". See for example: https://static.feber.se/article_images/42/10/92/421092_1280....

Knowing that, it's crystal clear HN falls strictly within that definition of "social media", although it might not be as clear if you don't know what that particular site is.

I love how bad that list is.

For what it's worth, the somewhat hilarious reason justpaste.it is on the list is likely that it used to be a favourite of Islamic State terrorists a decade ago. https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/08/islamic-stat...

Googling 'site:gov "justpaste.it"' also brings endless results of government documents mentioning the site in the context of terrorism.

I somewhat doubt US immigration authorities thwarted any would-be terrorists by asking for their justpaste.it username, but what do I know, perhaps this was an important breakthrough in the global war on terror.

You'd be surprised at the number of people who willingly give up their social media accounts, only for immigration officials to find comments in support of terror attacks in the Middle East.

It's pretty easy to think it's harmless if you live in a country where that viewpoint is not uncommon.

That's not surprising at all, but I think the people who could get caught by the justpaste.it thing are not the same people casually praising Hamas on Instagram.

If you're putting terrorism related content on justpaste.it, you're probably pretty deep into the whole thing.

It can be an easy charge of “lying to the government on an official form” when they discover you have a user account somewhere that you didn’t disclose, even if they can’t get anything else to stick.

I agree with the glove fit bit, while at the same time thinking that we're at the next level of siloed bubbles. All aspects of your world, tailored to how you already think, including TV series/movies/etc.

No new ideas.

(Not saying this is your intent, and yes I do indeed watch what I like. I am not immune to the very thing I worry about)

I agree. And I don't think you communicated it poorly, it's just that I think it will be more and more difficult to get that full range. Most folk don't want that. Most even prefer siloed.

Yet perhaps I am too jaded on this. There will be lots of niche content...