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This wasn't due to some random Gemini request. Users were using sketchy antigravity auth plugins to use their antigravity tokens on things like OpenClaw, clearly against ToS. It's great that Google is giving these users a second chance.

Yes, our masters once again embarrass us unworthy peons with their endless grace, generosity and forebearance. How lucky we are to entrust our data and our lives to them!

Anyone can buy the tokens via the API and do whatever they want with them.

Its not evil of Google to say "Here is an allotment of steeply discounted tokens, but you can only use them with our services."


It is evil to block your email and hold your photos hostage over it though :)

I’m amazed at how many people think this happened, despite it not being true.

They only blocked access to Antigravity and GeminiCLI for the offense.

Didn’t they only block Antigravity though, leaving other services available?

That didn't happen though.

I would question the judgment of anyone who thought they would maintain "don't be evil" beyond IPO.

Your argument is basically : human being will always choose money over ethics.

Could be true, but a somewhat depressing worldview.


https://youtu.be/ntICHMV-WMA?t=40

"Google Shuts Down Gmail For Two Hours To Show Its Immense Power"


> our masters once again embarrass us unworthy peons with their endless grace

Masters who serve you in exchange for money?

be as sarcastic as you want but you demand a thing they did not agree to provide, for the same money = they have a right not to serve you. If you disagree with that and think they owe you something then you are the one playing master here.


If a 3rd party product advertises compatibility with a Google service and you use it to login via a first party Google login page, doesn’t the responsibility fall somewhere between the offending product and Google itself? In practice it’s structured pretty much like a phishing attempt.

Notably some model providers explicitly allow that very flow, while others will ban you without notice.


If the "3rd party product" is you selfhosting FOSS, then that's you (OpenClaw users)

Why do you call it self-hosting? It appears to be installable app with a fancy homepage. At what point does the software being covered by an open license changes the responsibility model?

That's exactly what self hosting is, you install some app on your own computer host(s).

> At what point does the software being covered by an open license changes the responsibility model

When you agree to an open license that says you're liable for anything and not the author of the software.

> THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.


Okay but they were paying customers paying $$$ for the service. Banning your customers without prior warning is not right, however sketchy their behaviour might appear. Even if it's obvious to Google that there's a difference between a Gemini API key and an Antigravity API key, it's not necessarily obvious to others.

The correct and sane thing to do is to send them an email, with at most a 24 hour suspension. If they keep doing it despite being warned then by all means fire them.


The concern is not losing access to some new IDE for operating outside the terms of service. The concern is when you lose access to the IDE, you also lose access to your 20 year old Gmail account.

A general problem for Google products is that everything is mixed together.


But that's not what happened.

It’s be great if Google just revoked antigravity access if terms were violated. No need to disable the entire account.

How do so many people think this happened? All of the articles I’ve read have been clear that it did not happen. Yet it’s all over the comments here. Why?

> just revoked antigravity access

That's exactly what they did, plus Gemini CLI and Code Assist, which are the same product in different formats.


No Google account has been banned for this. People just keep spreading this lie because no one agrees that they have the right to steal the OAuth token.

"steal" is semantically incorrect here.

It's their OAuth token, it's not being stolen. It's just being copied from one place on their computer to another. This is no different than a competing browser importing your localStorage and cookies from Chrome on first launch.

No, the OAuth token is supposed to be used solely with the context of a first-party app only. Clearly, if you need to extract the key by reverse engineering or set up a proxy to spoof requests to a service, you're doing something shady.

> No, the OAuth token is supposed to be used solely with the context of a first-party app only.

The web doesn't work like that. The operators of google.com saying you must only use Chrome to load it is a ridiculous concept. It's not spoofing to use your own access credentials on your own computer to access your own account on an HTTP API.


By this logic video game companies shouldn't be allowed to ban cheaters.

>The web doesn't work like that. The operators of google.com saying you must only use Chrome to load it is a ridiculous concept.

I have no idea what you are talking about. Chrome? Are you sure you are replying to the right thread?


Only Antigravity and Gemini access was banned, not email or other google account stuff.

I’ll go further: there should be laws addressing account consolidation. Getting banned from an Apple or Google account is an incredibly wide blast radius. It would be like being banned from buying Unilever or Nestle food from your grocery store.

Email providers should be utilities and also legally require a warrant before disclosing any information whatsoever to the government.

Unfortunately the government is full of corrupt geriatrics who do not understand technology and are paid to continue not understanding technology as they sign bills prepared for them by ALEC.


>It's great that Google is giving these users a second chance.

I hope this is sarcasm. A permaban as the first action is never a good idea.


When's the last time you read the ToS of a service you signed up for?

This would be a great job for an AI agent. Even better if a few million such agents collectively refused to agree to unconscionable terms.

They were banning people and those people couldn’t even cancel their subscription. That’s a rookie mistake and you expect the same company to have a flawless ban system?

Telling your users they can't use certain software to access your HTTP API is exactly the same as telling people they can't use certain browsers to load https://google.com.

"Hey Gemini, write a short blurb casting our capriciousness in a good light."

You need to stick Gemini in a straightjacket; I've been using https://github.com/ClavixDev/Clavix. When using something like that, even something like Gemini 3 Flash becomes usable. If not, it more often than not just loses the plot.

There was also a spree of migrants attacks in Germany, just before the election, which greatly swung public opionion to the AfD.


Source for these claims?


I wouldn't be surprised if Meta turned WhatsApp into a TikTok clone just to get around the restrictions. They know that banning WhatsApp for teenagers in Europe is almost impossible. I look at my kids, all their sports clubs and other extracurricular activities are organized through WhatsApp. I already had to block Youtube on their devices. I was alright with them watching a couple of long-form youtube videos every day, but now if I unblock Youtube all they do is watch Shorts, with no way to disable it.


You're in luck! They recently rolled out updated parental controls letting you block it.

https://blog.youtube/news-and-events/updates-youtube-supervi...

"YouTube has introduced enhanced parental controls allowing parents to manage or block YouTube Shorts for teen accounts. Parents can set daily time limits for Shorts ranging from zero to two hours, configure custom bedtimes, and set "take a break" reminders" (AI summary)


You can block shorts this way? Neat! Excuse me, I need to go set up a subaccount for my newly adopted fictional child.


all they have to do is log out of their google account and clear their cache, and there go the YouTube parental controls


Ha, didn't even realize the possibilities.


If WhatsApp got banned, all those groups would simply switch to Telegram or Signal or similar. It would be very easy.


But why does it always have to be a mobile app?


Because the devices involved are mobiles? What else would you use.

Almost all end–user devices are mobiles. When everyone had a desktop you made a desktop app. When everyone has a mobile you use a mobile app. When everyone has brain implants you'll make a brain implant app.

That's if you want to reach the most people. If you want to reach the much smaller community of people who oppose the current thing, you'll make a different type of app.


As opposed to what?


Tbh, anything that is not a proprietary closed garden. Why access to the clubs/interest groups now requires to compromise the privacy?


Wait, you're saying that using Signal or Telegram is compromising privacy?

I'm really curious what you're hoping for?


>Wait, you're saying that using Signal or Telegram is compromising privacy?

How come after all these years even people here still don't know telegram by default has no end to end encryption at all making it worse than facebooks WhatsApp? At this point it deserves to be called telegram distortion field.


For starters, not sending a notification "he is now using this app!" to everyone who has my phone number.


Check out the NewPipe app. It works only on Android — it’s YouTube for minimalists. No Shorts, no feed, no ads.


The second a ban is announced everyone would just migrate to the next thing. That's the nice part of social media and communication apps, they're easy to migrate off of.


As long as they're groups for real life things. The football club can announce they're now on Signal. A pure digital group like "C++ programming discord" can't do this.


> extracurricular activities are organized through WhatsApp. I already had to block Youtube on their devices. I was alright with them watching a couple of long-form youtube videos every day, but now if I unblock Youtube all they do is watch Shorts, with no way to disable it.

If you want to block Shorts. I recommend you to try out revanced which gives you youtube without any ads and a lot of other customizations.

To be honest, I find it funny that paid youtube customers might shift to revanced which is technically piracy jsut to remove shorts.

I was this close to rooting the phones but she had just bought a new phone.

But if pricing wasn't the concern for me (which right now it is but I don't think for many HN users it might be), here's what I suggest.

Go buy a phone which can be easily rooted and also use an somewhat secure os (just short of graphene)

Patch revanced (I have even made a nix flake or some nix file [i don't use nix that much but I was curious and ended up using LLMs to generate the file] whose purpose was to take android file and patch it when I was in nix, but I don't have it with me right nwo as I may haev lost it)

Have in the options the short block option.

Newpipe is great as well but it doesn't really allow having comment support.

Also given that HN is a very techie and well hacking with software community. If anyone's interested to take an challenge within Java/Kotlin (Unfortunately, they scare me) then I have got an idea for you guys:

"But the option of turning shorts back on can still be toggled. I wish if anybody whose an expert in java/kotlin can take a look at how revanced works and maybe how to have a revanced patch which can block shorts by default (additionally with ads preferably too with the download option patch as well & the sponsorblock) while atleast in the revanced specific settings option blocking just the option/toggle switch to turn shorts back on."

Also I am a teenager. I would consider the fact that I am on this website partially because of a loop of youtubers that I started following [ Fireship the goat before he turned VC -> Primagen the legend -> Theo t3 (I do feel like he's not the best guy following but he covered so much about YC that I ended up opening news.ycombinator.com and reading it and not watching him read it and ended up making account)

oh yeah before Fireship, I used to follow Code with harry when I was around ~13 yo. I learnt python from him many years ago before it was introduced to us in school so much so that I ended up picking the finance subject out of curiosity and I enjoyed both finance and tech.

One of the funniest stories from this whole is when Code with harry loved one of my comments on youtube loooong time ago and I was around 14 or osmething and then my mum saw it and she didn't know what loving a comment in YT mean and she got suspicious about it and questioned me and then I had to describe hearting a comment to her xD.

Oh yeah. I started learning about python itself around this time because one of my cousins whom I deeply respect who works in aerospace but back when in his university started mentioning how he worked on a ~2-3k loc and he mentioned python and I was like hmm what's python.

I don't know if a parent is interested to hear this but I feel like teenagers really replicate those they admire. A lot of my traits first started just being around that cousin & he actually taught me about assets/liabilities when I was in 5th grade and taught me chess which both became very obsessive points for me later down the life (My joy when I finally ended up beating him at chess fair and square)

I don't think that I do that well academically per se though, it really just depends on my mood so :/ yeah but I really ended up butchering some prestigious college's paper real hard and still tensed about it but honestly as a teen, I don't even know why I am typing this but my point is that your kid would have a personality and just nudge him in the right manners & let him think for himself to think that he reached at a particular conclusion. I do feel like that's generally how I approached and I was the youngest of my whole entire family tree so that made me more mature but I do feel like it came at a trade off of wishing to grow up fast asap when I was a child and now wishing to go back too seeing say not being able to cope up with massive study efforts or competition but that's another matter I guess.

Though parenting is definitely really really hard, kudos to every parent out there.

Did go a little tangent so sorry about that.


I'm a bit glad that it's no longer Facebook groups. But WhatsApp is also disappointing. I have to keep an account on my 'throwaway' phone for junk apps just to communicate with those groups and clubs. And usually WhatsApp is the only way with them.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67Jm8IiwURQ

That's 14 years old. Kind of crazy this concept hasn't developed more in the meantime.


I had that it was a cool concept but it kinda sucked. It would have been great for doing stuff over SSH but not much else as the hardware was lacking at the time


Why do you think it’s crazy?


I feel like the market for this product is definitely out there, but manufacturers don't want to cannibalize their own laptop margins.


This is a cool little project you might be interested in - https://github.com/mausimus/ShaderGlass


Anecdotally I noticed a big uptick in pro-Trump content in Europe recently. Was flooded with anti-Jack Smith clips in the last couple of days, for example. Also seeing a lot of anti-immigration, far-right content.


Flutter is undergoing a major refactor where they're decoupling Material and Cupertino into separate packages. This is the reason why they're not implementing those new conventions right away. The way you've framed it is pretty disingenuous.


It really isn't. Did you see their latest time estimate (https://youtu.be/W4olXg91iX8?t=538)? Late 2026 just to get the widget sets broken out into separate packages? And only then can they start considering modernizing them and trying to mimic the latest UI?

Flutter can't even get animations to look and feel right for iOS 18 and below (read through this thread and every other HN/Reddit thread that mentions Flutter vs. native components). Do you really think they'll ever get Liquid Glass looking and feeling convincing, let alone performing acceptably?

Read over the 100+ comments in the GH issue I posted. You see actual Flutter contributors — not people who merely vibe-coded a Potemkin L.G. demo and declared victory — saying that it is effectively impossible.


I got one of those Google TV Streamer boxes, put a different launcher on it (Projectivy Launcher), and it's been great, no ads or anything.


I don't know, seems like Vance hates Europe even more, especially since they're regulating his benefactor's tech investments.


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