Suspended G+ account for no reason?
I woke up this morning to a frozen G+ account. I was warned my account was blocked due to infringing user policies and that I was no longer able to post until fate was determined. I was offered all sorts of informative pages about what those policies are about but none about what I might be doing wrong. It was vaguely said that I was spamming.
Not owning a business to advertise and not knowingly advertising other businesses, beyond the casual comment of that shop seems to have good prices to friends, I was puzzled. Whether the issue was triggered by a user complain or a bot detecting some offending content, I was not told.
I was just told that some content was against Google+ policies but not flagging which that content was I was left to my own devices, in the dark. It is as if the police will arrest you saying that you know why we do this without explaining further.
Being convinced that this was a mistake and that I was not, knowingly, spamming anyone (in fact I hate spam), I decided to risk my fate and ask for my account to be reviewed. Still, I would have felt more comfortable if some detailed explanation of the "wrongdoing" on my side. If some of my content was flagged, I might find it easier to remove it, but asking them to review the content, as it was, may be a bad thing is something they considered spam is not removed. Not giving the user the information to act upon is helping no one here.
But to my surprise, and this time without any type of warning message on my screen, my account was back on-line and I was able to make posts again. I am glad that at least the trouble was not long for me, but I still wonder what trigger it.
From now on I guess I will refrain from posting links to commercial sites on G+, not that I have done that so often though and will keep my fingers crossed. But in the long run, I am going to keep this issue rolling in my mind to decide whether I want to pull the plug myself on a system that may ultimately do that for me for no reason in the worst possible time for me. By the way, this morning I had scheduled a hangout with a business partner that did not happen, as you cannot use hangouts if your account has been suspended ... think about it.
And as for Google doing no evil, I guess you can do better, and at least signaling us users what you think we did wrong. In my case, as I removed no content, I tend to think it was a mistake on Google's, but I cannot be sure as they won't talk.
Not owning a business to advertise and not knowingly advertising other businesses, beyond the casual comment of that shop seems to have good prices to friends, I was puzzled. Whether the issue was triggered by a user complain or a bot detecting some offending content, I was not told.
I was just told that some content was against Google+ policies but not flagging which that content was I was left to my own devices, in the dark. It is as if the police will arrest you saying that you know why we do this without explaining further.
Being convinced that this was a mistake and that I was not, knowingly, spamming anyone (in fact I hate spam), I decided to risk my fate and ask for my account to be reviewed. Still, I would have felt more comfortable if some detailed explanation of the "wrongdoing" on my side. If some of my content was flagged, I might find it easier to remove it, but asking them to review the content, as it was, may be a bad thing is something they considered spam is not removed. Not giving the user the information to act upon is helping no one here.
But to my surprise, and this time without any type of warning message on my screen, my account was back on-line and I was able to make posts again. I am glad that at least the trouble was not long for me, but I still wonder what trigger it.
From now on I guess I will refrain from posting links to commercial sites on G+, not that I have done that so often though and will keep my fingers crossed. But in the long run, I am going to keep this issue rolling in my mind to decide whether I want to pull the plug myself on a system that may ultimately do that for me for no reason in the worst possible time for me. By the way, this morning I had scheduled a hangout with a business partner that did not happen, as you cannot use hangouts if your account has been suspended ... think about it.
And as for Google doing no evil, I guess you can do better, and at least signaling us users what you think we did wrong. In my case, as I removed no content, I tend to think it was a mistake on Google's, but I cannot be sure as they won't talk.
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