Serious doubts about the competence and integrity of the Trust and Safety team

[James Smith]

Good morning,

I have an OAuth app that makes use of sensitive scopes and therefore needs verification. I contacted the Trust and Safety team but as a result of their responses I have serious doubts about their competence and integrity. I have kept a record of the replies they have made which now total eight. To summarise:

* They claimed my app was in development when even a cursory glance would have told them that it was not.
* They claimed that the buttons and links on the home page were inaccessible and/or broken but they were not.
* They pointed out that the sign in branding needed work. I didi this work and reported it to them. However, in two subsequent emails they twice claimed that the branding needed work. I had to point out to them on two further occasions that the branding was already done.
* They asked for detailed explanations of why the sensitive scopes were needed. These I provided on four separate occasions but they were clearly not read at all.
* They claimed that my video did not show how users selected the scopes they needed but this is untrue.
* They asked my to "Enlarge the OAuth Consent Screen' which is completely non-sensical. I had to point out that the consent screen was presented my Google and not by my app.
* They seemed to conflate federated login, that is, users using their Google accounts to sign in to third party applications, with OAuth. I had to point out the difference.

After eight responses from them I am no nearer to getting my application verified. It seems that no amount of patience or diplomacy on my part will work. I have tried my utmost to respond to their often non-sensical emails but this has got me nowhere. I am frankly alarmed at their levels of literacy and engagement and what appears, to me at least, frankly their arrogance and stupidity.

What oversight is there over this so-called Trust and Safety team?

Kind regards,
James
https://djalbat.com

[Google Cloud Developers]

Hello James,

Thank you for sharing you experience with us. I understand how frustrating it can be during the review process for your OAuth scope verification.

Even though I cannot help you influence the process I can share with you the FAQ and direct you to the feedback section. 

I would first like to mention that OAuth API verification FAQs can all be found clearly outline here [1], and further down at the bottom of that page there is a section on how to submit feedback directly to the verification team at oauth-f...@google.com [2]. That section also says that the verification team will review feedback but will not respond directly to submissions.

This is a self-service process that does not involve the GCP Support team. Due to GDPR reasons, GCP Support can not even see the correspondence between T&S API team and app developers, nor can facilitate / influence the review. Please understand that these precautions are taken to protect Google users privacy, and note that the trust and safety team receives thousands of requests per week.

If you are having a difficult time with your verification, I encourage you to communicate your feedback through the above mentioned channel. And, ensure that you are also following all the requirements for verification. I believe you that these requirements seem nonsensical but they must be followed for all applications for verification, and the verification team will not move forward until they are satisfied that they have been. They cannot, there job is too important.

I hope this helps answer you question, trust and safety is intentionally opaque, but highly competent.

Sincerely,

Andrew

Google Cloud Platform Support

[1] https://support.google.com/cloud/answer/9110914

[2] https://support.google.com/cloud/answer/9110914#zippy=%2Chow-can-i-submit-feedback-about-these-policies-and-changes

[James Smith]

Hello Andrew,

you and I will clearly never agree on the competency of the so-called Trust and Safety team. To me there are obvious and serious problems. However opaque the process, and I understand that and the need for that, I cannot excuse what I can only describe as their collective arrogance and stupidity. I stand by that assessment and I am prepared to share the whole sequence of correspondences with anybody in order to back it up. I find it mind-boggling that this situation has been allowed to persist and it does not speak well for Google.

We have a saying over here:

"If you argue with pigs, you end up smelling of shit."

I can afford neither the time nor the goodwill to argue with these people any more. I find the process demeaning.

I will rework the Google Drive integration in time so that Xomi users who make use of it will have to go through the verification process themselves. And I will point them to this exchange as a warning. In fact in all likelihood I will ditch the whole thing eventually when the effort I have put in to it can by applied elsewhere.

It is also now highly unlikely that I will ever offer any other services leveraging Google. Whatever road Xomi goes down from here, it will likely never involve Google and I will do my best to steer Xomi users away from Google and towards other cloud providers.

Regards,

James
https://djalbat.com