How much are you paying for this service you need google to fix? I ask because with their paid email products there are a fair number of routes to get help, your admin, then if that doesn't work you can go up the chain... If you are on a free account you may not be (individually) worth a ton to google revenue wise and so support is going to be poor (they have 1.8billion+ ACTIVE gmail users I think - if they increase costs by $5/user, that's a $10B expense. )
Does helping you look like potentially helping a hacker take over an account, recognizing that google deals with totally crazy state level attacks? Google faces some significant liability and risk here.
Would you pay google to make it worth their time to help you (I actually think this should be an option - if a physical in person visit + someones time is what it takes - then google should have some system for $500 + you get to their office somewhere to recover your account)
I've had relatives in this situation. If you do know someone at a large institution with an institutional relationship I think you can sometimes get help - I had a relative go this route, wasn't sure if the IT folks there just figured out how to fix / work within google, or could escalate somewhere to get it addressed.
Because google will worry about reps selling access to account resets - they may REALLY lock this stuff down, so even if a rep wanted to help, they may not be able to (insider attacks a big issue again especially state sponsored attacks).
It's pretty tone-deaf to tell someone who's posted about being poor and previously homeless that they should have to pay Google $500 to recover their account.
Honestly to be expected here. I opened up about my own homelessness while being employed in my field of study for over 20 years. I received a bunch of vitriol and downvotes for my honesty. If ever you need a reminder that you are surrounded by "anarcho-capitalists" just scroll through any HN comments field pertaining to the intersection of ethics and the economy.
There's a lot of abstract victim-blaming here re articles etc, and for sure the SV set for the most part is pretty clueless about the real world (though it looks like it's coming for them!).
But people here seem a bit less threatened by very poor individuals actually posting here than in most online places. I know from my own experience that mentioning you're homeless is usually a red rag to a bull. Add that you're an unemployed software developer, and the self-loathing middle class is often very quickly off on a hate-rampage. Less so here, for some reason. Perhaps just because people here are focused on topics of common interest, so if you're a loser (generally hated by the winners, worried that by the grace of providence they might have been you ..), at least you're one of our losers?
HN is a big forum, so you get all kinds here, but it is at least not mod policy to actively encourage membership to target and hate on its poorest members as was done to me elsewhere while I was homeless -- on a forum that gets chatted up an excessive amount as some wonderful online space.
Does helping you look like potentially helping a hacker take over an account, recognizing that google deals with totally crazy state level attacks? Google faces some significant liability and risk here.
Would you pay google to make it worth their time to help you (I actually think this should be an option - if a physical in person visit + someones time is what it takes - then google should have some system for $500 + you get to their office somewhere to recover your account)
I've had relatives in this situation. If you do know someone at a large institution with an institutional relationship I think you can sometimes get help - I had a relative go this route, wasn't sure if the IT folks there just figured out how to fix / work within google, or could escalate somewhere to get it addressed.
Because google will worry about reps selling access to account resets - they may REALLY lock this stuff down, so even if a rep wanted to help, they may not be able to (insider attacks a big issue again especially state sponsored attacks).