alt Hacker NewsAddressing Antigravity Bans and Reinstating Access
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Over the past week,
A week? Try at least 16 days
https://discuss.ai.google.dev/t/account-restricted-without-w...
The danger here is they'll ban you with no specific reason, fill out the form and you get an automatic unban and then something else automatically flags and you're banned the second time permanently.
Support bot will then say "you were warned, read the TOS" and you get to guess what you did wrong.
You'll notice there are no appeals or reviews in this workflow.
Google has no creditability when it comes to handling account bans.
I still kinda wish that the subscriptions would just allow you to use the tokens however you wish. I get that they rely on people not using all of their quota. But e.g. with open code it doesn't really matter if I use antigravity or gemini-cli the usage should be about the same.
What they are actually trying to force you to do is to pay for the tokens that you don't use in their applications to increase their revenue and/or give their in-house tools an "unfair" advantage. But this is bad for the consumer because it means that there is less competition between coding agents and unless I'm willing to pay per token I have to take one of the model labs agents.
Anticompetitive behaviour imo they could just ban reselling tokens or something like that instead of locking your subscription in like this.
The Gemini-CLI situation is poor. They did not communicate that AI Pro or AI Ultra accounts cannot be used with this API broadly earlier. I specifically remember searching for this info. Seeing this made me wonder if I had missed it. Turns out it was added to the TOS 2 days ago - diff https://github.com/google-gemini/gemini-cli/pull/20488/chang.... I'd be happy to stand corrected here.
Anti Gravity I understand, they are subsidizing to promote a general IDE, but I dont understand constraining the generative AI backend that Gemini CLI hits.
Finally, it's unclear what's allowed and what's not if I purchase the API access from google cloud here https://developers.google.com/gemini-code-assist/docs/overvi...
The Apache License of this product at this point is rich. Just make it closed source and close the API reference. Why have it out there?
> Using third-party software, tools, or services to harvest or piggyback on Gemini CLI's OAuth authentication to access our backend services is a direct violation of Gemini CLI’s applicable terms and policies.
It's been 2 months since these bans have started, first Anthropic, then Google. And their wording is still so confusing that I can't get a simple answer to a simple question:
Is piggybacking on headless 'gemini-cli -p' or 'claude -p' a TOS violation? Because there's really no reason why you can't do exactly what these tools did that caused these two companies to start giving out bans.
Unless you're in for a very specific configuration of models for some niche concern, CLIs give you nearly exact same access to the backend that snatching an OAuth token from them does. They give you JSONL for stdin, JSONL for stdout, and if you spin up a local proxy, you even get the same exact API contract in responses that you get from public APIs.
In fact, I already built a small tool for myself that does exactly that, to allow usage of alternative harnesses I prefer. Once I release it to the public, will -p be banned too?
What I don’t understand about policy violations is why Google never warns the user before banning. A simple alert or email would reduce so much frustration on the part of users and so much overhead for Google.
ToS change frequently and it’s not really fair to assume the user knows what is and is not correct use of tokens.
Why is this published on github.com? Is google somehow incapable of making official announcements through their own web properties?
It’s interesting that with both Anthropic and Google we’re seeing them develop agentic models that are supposed to do anything a human can do on computers without human intervention, but at the same time, if you plug one program into another of their programs or APIs in a way that wasn’t preapproved you may be blocked or banned.
To be charitable, maybe they’re expecting AI agents to eventually start reading the ToS docs
I see a lot of comments in googles defense, part of me wonders whats the split between google employees(even so people in teams related to these products) and normies who ignore the true underlying issue here…
Google consistently fails to provide a process to deal with user issues. You donot see many reports of these at Amazon, Microsoft, Apple, and many more providers. Though Meta learns from google I think.
Just wanted to say that Windsurf is chugging along just great. No drama for users, excellent outputs at low cost. I am confused why they are not used more widely.
All this whole thing did is ensure I never, ever use any google AI service. The fact that they didn't instantly comprehend what a total account ban means when they've got people with 20+ years worth of personal data in those accounts is incredibly concerning.
Refreshing response from Google especially given the incompetence with which Anthropic has handled bans.
Still no clarification if they block your whole Google account or just Gemini?
I am sick and tired of companies forcing a shitty fork of vscode down my throat. If I am paying let me use your api how I wish to. Most people aren’t malicious and just want to use their own workflow.
this is good.
problem is google's security concerns. when people connect gmail to openclaw, google flags the activity as weird and suspend the account because of unusual activity. Many whose accounts got locked because of this and they thought it was because they connected it to antigravity use against the policy (which happened in some cases). We will still see google account suspensions, and that would keep making news. and it wont be because of antigravity usage.
This is the correct way to handle this situation.
Complete risk to use google products like this with your real account. My youtube is still banned over uploading two clips of Dexter's Laboratory over 15 years ago.
Today I could have uploaded them fine, and let whoever owns the cartoon make money I was just a fan of the show.
The problem is that Google treats its customers as college kids who can be banned from a college maker lab for using too much 3D filament rather than entrepreneurs who are trusting their livelyhood to a service provider that promises to be reliable. If War Department uses too many Gemini tokens, do they cut them off, make them go through recertification process and permaban the next time around?
Which means that anyone serious about AI and not going local route should be using a provider with better reputation. I don't know if Alibaba, Z.ai or moonshots AI are also known for hair trigger responses, could be decent options for coding AI otherwise? If not, time to look for smaller providers with good reputation?
Incompetence of Google is amazing. They take an existing thing like Windsurf and somehow make it constantly coredump. And can't fix it for months.
this is the long-standing problem with using Google services. either they become deprecated and removed without notification, or they outright ban you for using tools as intended. either way, using Google tools for anything doesn't make business sense to anybody who's seen the history of this.
I feel dumb. I've never heard of Antigravity until now.
cool. now do something about the hundreds/thousands of people getting rate limited on Antigravity even after upgrading their plans, even on their $250 /month plan.
> to address violations of the Antigravity Terms of Service (ToS), specifically the use of 3rd party tools or proxies to access Antigravity resources and quotas
Translation: Google doesn’t want you using Gemini oauth with openclaw
Another recent concern on other posts here on HN is whether a private company should have veto power over the US government. Or, another way to look at it, whether the US government should be able to designate a company as a supply chain risk and ban them from most business in the host country.
If I squint at the conversation, it doesn't seem that different from a behemoth company taking an employee of a private company and forcing them to still stop working for arbitrary reasons.
I'm giving agents and coding tools wide berth here, but if AI is going to replace all employees, what guarantees do you have as the employer that your employees will do your bidding, and not the bidding of enterprises with a shifting moral landscape?
Once we have tooling wrapped around specific agents, it'll be hard to rehire. What will we do then when our "employees" are furloughed?
This will be especially relevant when the big AI labs decide they need to enter a market to justify an obscene valuation. Or, when the sovereign wealth fund decides they don't like the direction of a business.
This is a good and honorable decision by Google. But it also brings up scary times ahead.
Way too risky to use Google services like this tied to your primary account. There’s too much risk of cross damage. Imagine losing access to your Gmail because some Gemini request flags you as an undesirable. The digital death sentence of losing access to your email with a company that notoriously has no way for the average human to contact a human is not worth the risk.