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Mom's Google Account Banned and Can't Talk to a Human

37 points by b8 ↗ HN
My disabled mom recently was notified her Google account was banned for violating the T&C or something along those lines. She can't watch YouTube and had her YouTube TV subscription canceled. Is there any human that she could appeal to? Her granddaughter uses her account to make YouTube short videos and make comments with her YouTube account, so I'm not sure if she posted something that got her account banned.

She's disabled and YouTube TV was the cheapest option for her to watch live TV... She tried using her other gmail account to watch YouTube, but it appears that the ban propagated to her other account (IP ban?).

21 comments

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mouse_
Sorry to hear that happened. Can never trust centralized corporations to have your back in times like these.

For the time being, have you considered getting her a digital antenna? When I first got mine I was shocked by the amount of channels I was able to pick up; it's not like the old days.

db48x
No, you cannot talk to a human; Google doesn’t waste much money on that sort of thing. The only recourse you might have is the courts. Talk to a lawyer.
michaelteter
> YouTube TV was the cheapest option for her to watch live TV.

...

Wertulen
“Waste” is what bothers me. The thought that having anything like a verbose relationship with their customer base being seen as a waste of time or money or both.
b8
I know there's legal resources for low income people, so maybe I can try getting her to call people that I find Monday. It just really unfortunate, because she injured her back and just watches movies/tv shows 80-90% of the day in her special like chair. I know there's not too legal alternatives like IPTV, but I don't want her to get in trouble (ACE/DOJ is cracking down on that stuff) and would take a long time to get her setup.

I'm in college right now, and it took two hours to get Zoom installed on her iPhone, so I could try troubleshooting to help her. It'd probably take half a day + to get something special like IPTV setup (sideloading, etc.) and I'm only able to fly back for xmas. I thought about me paying for YouTube TV and her logging in, but I don't want my account to be banned. I can setup a throwaway account via mobile service though and chargeback if I get banned. Also, I think her ISP requires a proprietary router/modem which has a hardcoded MAC address(therefor, static IP), so she would need another router/modem.

orangepurple
VPN and burner SIM for SMS verification
envy2
And how many 60+ year olds know how to do that?

Don't forget using private browsing / incognito mode; cookies will link your accounts immediately irrespective of VPN/SMS use.

Oh, and credit card + billing address, if the goal is to sign up for a paid YouTube TV subscription again.

orangepurple
> Oh, and credit card + billing address, if the goal is to sign up for a paid YouTube TV subscription again.

Gift cards

envy2
Sorry to hear. As someone who works for a non-Google Big Tech company, you will get nowhere on this trying to work with Google (or any other Big Tech) support.

If you believe your mom (and anyone using her account) definitely did not violate the T&Cs, the only thing that might realistically get a response is either [1] a personal contact who trusts you at Google escalating internally for re-review; or [2] reaching out to your state AG / consumer protection office.

That said, there's usually a very high bar for fully disabling accounts like this — either repeated violations or very severe violations (like child sexual abuse or terrorism). Might be good to figure out what the granddaughter has been up to...

seanmcdirmid
The granddaughter could be under 13 or something like that. Kids under 13 aren’t allowed to make YouTube videos, I’m not sure what happens if they catch an account being used by someone under that age.
ReptileMan
A bit side topic - but having detailed description of why you were banned should be basic consumer right. You violate the toc is just not enough.
WirelessGigabit
This has been made impossible by using heuristics.

There is a model somewhere that basically judges you. It has a significant amount of inputs, and an output that is a risk score.

Websites like Amazon use this to determine whether your account is safe for example.

Example inputs:

- IP origin

- Age of account

- IP history

- Activity (whatever that means)

The system is a black box.

timeimp
Contact your local member of Parliament or Congress and raise hell.

It’s an easy win for everyone.

As for _why_ - if someone else is using the account for content creation, it’s probably the source of these problems.

hotnfresh
“We think you posted bad things, so we’re going to ban you from… paying us to watch things.”

I swear to god, without the bias of the zeitgeist around tech companies and the mythology of genius surrounding them, one might suspect they were run by full-on idiots.

throwaway290
It's one thing if your user does something bad but worse if you also keep making money from that user. So I bet they auto banned her billing account and it had consequences for all services. This is why paying Google is scary to me. I am banned from paying for any Github features forever because I was sponsoring projects using a Russian debit card. If it was with Google I would probably be locked out.
GeekyBear
Unfortunately, Google doesn't think paying customers deserve a customer support number so you can at least talk to a human being and find out what they think you did.
shrimp_emoji
Set her computer up to use a VPN or (more easily) the Tor Browser (at lowest security settings so the least breakage occurs) without signing in (which is the only way I use YouTube lol).

The only downside is that she might have to solve captchas (if she's able).

dirtyid_ta
At least they cancelled your subscription. My youtube red/premium account(s) got banned for community violations despite only using them to view videos. When they ban youtube accounts, they block you out of the subscription page so you can't even cancel membership. Multiple (three) accounts one after another that I signed up for premium thinking it would get resolved and refunded, but it never did. I can't even say it's tied to my IP, because other people on my network are fine. Maybe device specific.

Regardless, unlikely you'll find a human to talk to, there might be option to appeal which for me was every 4 weeks and got automated rejection. I had a Google One account that boasts in person support, and indeed a person tried to coordinate with youtube team and the TLDR they're not equipped to deal with other Google services like youtube. Anyway, ended up cancelling credit card and Google still owes me $100. Hilariously 2/3 accounts got unblocked after submitting random appeal a year after the fact on whims. But not my primary account. Just utter shit show.

meristohm
I don't know how to fix the Google-account-banned situation; that really sucks.

Another way to watch TV is the Hypnotix program present by default on Linux Mint. Many channels from around the world, including some in English.