All the cards are stacked against the users though. It's not that easy for a non-tech person to use any sort of email/photo library etc that isn't free from Google/Apple etc.
Even self hosting email is impossible now. You won't be able to send emails because nothing trusts you.
If Google intentionally incentivized everyone to move their entire digital lives into their platform for profit, they should have some sort of responsibility for that. There have absolutely been significant impact to people's lives because they've gotten locked out of their account for reasons that even Google can't explain, and there is no recourse or action they can take.
> for reasons that even Google can't explain, and there is no recourse or action they can take.
It's even worse. When it was publicized that Google wrongfully flagged multiple accounts and tipped the police for child porn, they refused to reinstate those accounts. Instead, they chose to retaliate by further defaming the account owners on the record. That was after the police cleared their names and they haven't made a single apology to this day.
This is my judge/jury/executioner thing. Objectively only google decides what Google does with our data, and only google decides if they are right or wrong. "We can't be sure we're wrong" is their getout clause in the court of public opinion regarding CSAM.
Another line of reasoning i see frequently is "you don't know all the material facts" which is of course also almost always true. So the original complainant may have multiple things going on, may have been abusive, using facilities otherwise for commercial gain against T&C, had innocuous but IPR abusing files, you name it. None of this would ordinarily trigger lockout. Google just avoid having to say sorry and re-enable by handwaving "other reasons" statements.
Of course there are; I'm assuming the GP has too. All I'm saying is that I've personally had no trouble, thus disproving the assertion that it's impossible to self-host. I don't know what I've done differently - perhaps I'm lucky with the IP range that I'm in?
IP range is definitely a problem. I manage to get blacklisted a couple times per year by Hotmail, who still only support IPv4, despite SNDS always saying everything is fine. They don’t seem to care that blocking a whole IPv4 netrange of a reputable VPS provider because some other customer was sending junk mail will cause collateral damage.
IP/domain reputation is also probably an issue; I’ve been using the same IP address and domain names for over a decade so services like Talos are reasonably satisfied I’m harmless. If someone sets up a server and it has never sent mail for their domain before—or, worse, they get a radioactive IP address—it may be hard to become accepted by other email providers.
I get the sense that the relative lack of trouble I have maintaining a mail server is more to do with being effectively grandfathered in and worry that if I ever have to shift away from my current provider that email sending is going to become a lot harder since I won’t have my IP reputation any more.
It's impossible to self host with the guarantee most emails sent from that host won't be outright rejected or flagged as spams by centralised mail services.
Same here, been self hosting on a managed VPS for about a decade for my business, there's very little maintenance, our deliverability is excellent.
Not that there are zero issues, in particular if you set up a brand new mail server with zero reputation, it can take a while to get yourself out of the hole.
I think for normal people though it makes a lot more sense to just pay for email. I'm not sympathetic at all to someone who complains about the quality of service of free Gmail. You are the product, so for the ten millionth time, it's going to suck for you somehow. Fastmail costs 3 bucks a month, if you have 3 bucks, go buy it, it's better (or buy one of their many decent competitors).
I had trouble one time when I stupidly used my email as credentials for local testing SMTP server, I was banned for like a day. Had to send an appeal to spamhaus or something.
Other than that, it has been pretty smooth sailing.
I think we're in the fine grained differences between "should" and "must"
I definitely think they should have better account recovery process, if need be for $, prove identity and get your data as takeout if they want to decline service but I would be amazed if any part of the current agreement we make with them could be said to obligate it.
As a defacto monopoly I do tend to think they should be made to have some process. Which jurisdiction?
singing up for email isn't difficult. neither is paying for a place to store your photos. Google is just that much easier so anything require beyond that is now all of a sudden too difficult for the average user. that's on you and your own inherent laziness to take the easy way out.
All the cards are stacked against the users though. It's not that easy for a non-tech person to use any sort of email/photo library etc that isn't free from Google/Apple etc.
Even self hosting email is impossible now. You won't be able to send emails because nothing trusts you.
If Google intentionally incentivized everyone to move their entire digital lives into their platform for profit, they should have some sort of responsibility for that. There have absolutely been significant impact to people's lives because they've gotten locked out of their account for reasons that even Google can't explain, and there is no recourse or action they can take.