Kashmir HillAfter I did the story about the dad whose Google account was closed and deleted for taking a photo of his naked toddler for the doctor, I heard from a distraught mother in Colorado who was going through the same thing and didn't know why. Her Google account was disabled, taking with it her wedding photos, videos of her 9yo son growing up, tax documents, email and everything else. And she had no idea why. She was in tears. "It feels like my house burned down," she told me: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/30/technology/google-appeals-change.html
The mother used a form to request a review of Google's decision to close her account, but to no avail. She was told only that there was harmful content in her YouTube account that might be illegal. She had no idea what it could be. This went on for weeks. And then her nine-year-old son finally confessed: He had used her old smartphone to make a YouTube short of himself dancing naked. He thought it would be funny. The YouTube app was signed into her account. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/30/technology/google-appeals-change.html
When I told Google this month about the mother's account being closed because of her son's ill-thought-out prank, the company decided to reinstate her account. I called her and asked her whether she'd gotten the news. No. She hadn't. She got emotional. She logged in and it worked. It had been reinstated 10 days earlier. "It's here. It's all here," she said. "I can't believe you did this. I have goosebumps." https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/30/technology/google-appeals-change.html
I can't do tech support for every parent whose Google account gets shut down over innocent depictions of their naked children, so I'm happy to report that Google said that it's changing its appeals process for users who have sexually explicit material featuring a minor in their accounts, allowing them to provide more context and documentation (such as a conversation with a doctor re: a picture taken for a medical diagnosis): https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/30/technology/google-appeals-change.html
NiceMicro